Thousands of people rallied at the National Mall on Friday, August 28, the 63rd anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington. But a group of over 50 Michiganders who had planned to attend the event instead spent Thursday evening in a church parking lot in Adrian, waiting for a bus that never came.
The canceled bus trip was one of several reported across the Midwest, all on buses scheduled by the National Action Network, a civil-rights organization founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton.
The rally in Washington, cohosted by Sharpton and Martin Luther King III, focused on protecting voting rights amid recent changes to election laws in several states, and a Supreme Court ruling that undermined a key provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Denise Benjamin, a coleader of Lenawee Indivisible, said she coordinated with the National Action Network to request the bus and organized the group of attendees. She said she spoke to a division leader at the network around 8 p.m. Thursday, an hour before the bus was scheduled to depart.
“And they just said, we're sorry, but all the buses in Michigan, all the buses from Chicago and the buses from Indiana have been canceled,” Benjamin recalled. “That’s all they would tell me.”
Media outlets in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cleveland reported similar last-minute cancellations of Action Network-scheduled buses.
The National Action Network has not publicly explained the cancellations or identified specific bus companies that had been contracted for the transit. The organization did not respond to a request for comment.
In a Facebook video, Bishop Clyde Posley Jr., a leader with the Indiana chapter of the network, claimed that although the organization had scheduled and paid for buses, “the bus companies in those areas somehow were somehow gotten to, and for whatever reasons … they backed out.”
Benjamin called the experience “disheartening and very disappointing.” She said her group had looked forward to joining the event and getting a chance to voice their concerns about potential voter suppression in the upcoming midterm elections.
“But we're going to continue the work,” Benjamin said. “We're going to continue to protect the vote as best we can, in any way we can.”
