Minister Abdul Sabur Muhammad (left), the Rev. Amos Brown (seated) and the Rev. Devon Crawford at the Defend the Vote rally at San Francisco City Hall on Thursday. Photo courtesy of Minister Abdul Sabur Muhammad.
SEIU 1021 brought union members, organizers and faith leaders to the front steps of San Francisco City Hall on Thursday. The message: the vote was paid for, and it’s still being paid for.
SAN FRANCISCO — The forecast called for rain. The people came anyway.
On Thursday, SEIU Local 1021 members, organizers and community leaders gathered on the front steps of San Francisco City Hall for the Defend the Vote rally, 12 days before Election Day. The union billed the event as a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the generations who bled for the right to cast a ballot.
Faith leaders answered the call.
Minister Abdul Sabur Muhammad thanked the union afterward for “inviting us to share truth before the upcoming elections.” He stood with two men from Third Baptist Church, the Rev. Amos Brown and the Rev. Devon Crawford.
“Remember, don’t settle for the lesser of two evils when you can vote for good,” Muhammad wrote in a social media post after the rally. He called it an honor to stand with “the brothers of 3rd Baptist Church.”
Phelicia Jones, who leads SEIU 1021’s Social and Economic Justice Committee and helped call the rally, thanked the three men for “accepting the challenge of the People” on the front steps.
Jones has said she fights for the vote because of her father, who was born and raised in Selma, Alabama.
“That’s what my ancestors had to endure for the right to vote,” Jones said ahead of the rally, pointing to the beatings, bombings and killings civil rights workers faced during Freedom Summer in 1964. “Let us not forget Bloody Sunday.”
Union President Theresa Rutherford put it plainly in announcing the event. “The right to vote was fought for over generations and we must protect this right,” she said.
Brown, the longtime pastor of Third Baptist Church, has been calling this city to the ballot box for decades. On Thursday, he was there again.
The steps are quiet again. The ballots aren’t.
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3. Read our preview of the Defend the Vote rally.
Related: Rev. Devon Crawford, the New Minister at Third Baptist Church, by Lee Hubbard.
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