We all watched in real time this past week as any hope for voting rights reform, or a return to the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, failed to pass the Senate. Moments later, when 50 Republicans and two Democrats refused to carve out the filibuster to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, voting rights activists felt the weight of the setback to all of their work. 

One of those activists is Rev. Al Sharpton. He joins In Focus to talk about what it felt like to watch the hope for voting rights protections disappear. More than that, as state after state enacts restrictive voting laws which will invariably harm communities of color across the country, Rev. Sharpton talks about who, in his opinion, is to blame, how this could have been done differently and, perhaps most importantly, what he is telling the president and the Department of Justice need to be the next steps so that everyone, no matter where they live or the color of their skin, has equal access to the ballot box. 

Sharpton also talks about his new book, “Righteous Troublemakers,” which celebrates the lives and the courage of civil rights activists who are, perhaps, not names we recognize, but whose contributions were massive.