“I’m confident that but for Covid, we would have had a million people,” said Marc Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League, a sponsor
The march “has to be understood as a moment for which these protests must lead to something,” he added. “So it must lead to significant policy change. Structural racism is not addressed with talk or good will alone.”
While the protest commemorates the 1963 march, its larger purpose is to rally African-Americans and others on behalf of concrete goals. Those aims include increasing voter registration and participation in the 2020 census and enacting a new version of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, said Tylik McMillan, the national director of youth and college at the National Action Network, which Mr. Sharpton founded in 1991.
A major goal, he said, is to push for passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, backed by House Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus, which would overhaul law-enforcement training and conduct rules to limit police misconduct and racial bias.
