Resistance alert! Make the Senate phones ring off the hook in opposition to Jeff Sessions for AG

One of the first acts of President-elect Donald Trump (gag) was to nominate Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general (double gag). Sen. Sessions has a well-documented history of racism. So much so that his fellow Republicans denied appointing him as a federal judge during Reagan's tenure:

It was 30 years ago that Sessions was denied a federal judgeship. At the time, he was a 39-year-old US attorney in Alabama.

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony during hearings in March and May 1986, that Sessions had made racist remarks and called the NAACP and ACLU "un-American."

Thomas Figures, a black assistant US attorney who worked for Sessions, testified that Sessions called him "boy" on multiple occasions and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying that he thought Klan members were "OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana.”

HIs civil rights record is abysmal and his record of prosecuting civil rights activists is unacceptable. 

In 1985, when Sessions was the United States attorney in West Alabama, he prosecuted three African-American civil rights activists, accusing them of voter fraud. The case, more than any other, helped derail Sessions the last time he sought Senate confirmation, when he hoped to become a federal judge in 1986. Yet then and now, Sessions has defended the prosecution as necessary and just. If he had it to do over, Sessions would bring the case again, a Trump transition official told me in December.

To some black leaders who lived through the prosecution, however, it remains a reason, all these years later, for grave concern about a Sessions-led Justice Department. “If he is attorney general, I would not expect the rights of all people, including the least among us, to be protected,” said Hank Sanders, a longtime Alabama state senator. “To understand why, you have to start with that case.”

The crime the activists allegedly committed was helping black Southern voters fill out and mail their absentee ballots. There is genuine cause for concern about Jeff Sessions’ qualifications for the chief law enforcement officer and chief lawyer in the U.S. It would send a chilling message to communities of color. 

So, how do we stop him? The most effective resistance tool is the simplest—our phones. Hill staffers have confirmed that our elected officials often ignore emails and letters, but they sit up and take notice when the phones start ringing. Jump below the fold to find your senator(s) phone numbers and then use the tips and talking points to give them a call. It only takes a minute and it has a huge impact.