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Washington, D.C. — Congressman Marc Veasey, TX-33, member of the Congressional Black Caucus, released the following statement in response to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's recent announcement that Fort Worth will be one of six pilot sites for the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, a nationwide program designed to enhance procedural justice, reduce bias and support reconciliation:
In what one North Texas congressman calls an effort to "prevent the next Ferguson," Fort Worth is one of six pilot sites chosen for the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, a Justice Department program to help fight crime and build trust between communities and law enforcement agencies.
Federal officials will provide high-powered technical, research and training assistance to the cities, where officials welcomed the news.
"The reason why our country was in the situation that they were in during the civil rights movement is because they didn't want to do anything. They were prepared to just ride it out; they didn't want to take any risk, any chance," said Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), who was the lead plaintiff in the challenge to his state's voter identification laws.
That's how Republicans look now, Veasey said, but "they have the chance to change that perception."
U.S. Rep Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, joined a bipartisan delegation in Selma this weekend, listening to Obama and visiting historic sites.
He posted on Facebook about his visit to Brown Chapel AME Church, which served as a triage site 50 years ago for those injured in the march.
"While we have made great strides in the voting rights movement, fifty years later we continue to fight restrictive voter ID laws and heavily gerrymandered districts," he wrote. "It is my hope that we can look back on history and apply these lessons we learned to today."
Still, watching an African-American president speak on the spot where African-Americans were beaten for protesting the right to vote, Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) said he was thinking about his 103-year-old grandmother.
"For individuals like her that lived through Edmund Pettus, that lived through separate washrooms, that lived through voting lines being drawn to at-large districts where African-Americans never had any real power," Veasey said. "For them to finally see that, to see their work come to fruition, it's very moving for me."
There's no place that U.S. Rep Marc Veasey would rather be this weekend than Selma, Ala.
Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth was among the Democrats who did attend, along with Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Gene Green of Houston and Henry Cuellar of Laredo.
"We must show our country's continued commitment and support to Israel, who is a solid ally of the U.S. in the Middle East," Veasey said. "That's especially true right now, when there are significant challenges in that region of the world."