Mondaire Jones

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, 8 years ago the Supreme Court demolished the Voting Rights Act, in the deluded, dangerous belief that we had somehow overcome white supremacy and no longer needed the greatest achievement of the Civil Rights Movement. The next day, States began making it harder for Black and Brown Americans to vote, initiating the biggest wave of racist voter suppression since Jim Crow. But today, we act to restore the Voting Rights Act. We also act to reverse the Supreme Court's recent assault on the right to vote by passing my bill with Representative Ruben Gallego, the Inclusive Elections Act, which is part of this package. Having said that, let us be clear-eyed about how we got here and the threat that remains. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act will not be safe so long as six far-right justices of the Supreme Court stand ready to destroy our democracy.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, in September 1972, during the Munich Olympic Games, the terrorist group Black September murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic Team. The victims became known as the Munich 11. Their names were David Berger, Ze'ev Friedman, Yoseff Gutfreund, Moshe Weinberg, Yoseff Romano, Mark Slavin, Eliezer Halfin, Yakov Springer, Andre Spitzer, Amitzur Shapira, and Kehat Shorr. They were athletes and coaches at the 1972 games. May their memory be a blessing. The international community was deeply affected by the attack, and memorials have been placed around the world, from Rockland County, New York to Tel Aviv, Israel. The Jewish Community Center (JCC) Maccabi Games have included a memorial tribute to the Munich 11 at the opening ceremonies of every JCC Maccabi Games since 1995. When the JCC in Rockland County, located in my district, hosted the Maccabi Games in 2012, the Center decided to take up this cause. JCC Rockland created an online petition calling on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to hold a minute of silence at the 2012 London Olympic Games, which was denied. But soon, the JCC began to find success. At the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, a memorial service in honor of the Munich 11 was held inside the Olympic Village. Further, the IOC established that a memorial service in their memory will be held at every future Olympic Games. Starting with the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, Ankie Spitzer, the widow of fencing coach Andrei Spitzer, and Ilana Romano, the widow of weightlifter Yossef Romano, have gone to nearly every Olympic Summer Games. They have been leading the effort on behalf of the families to memorialize the Munich 11 at the opening ceremonies for the past 49 years. After tireless advocacy from Ms. Spitzer, Ms. Romano, and JCC Rockland, the Munch 11 finally received a minute of silence during the opening ceremony of this year's Tokyo Olympic Games. It is my hope that every future Olympic Games opening ceremony includes a moment of silence to commemorate the gravity of this tragic event for all Olympians and humankind. The Olympic Games serve to send a message of hope and peace through athletic competition, and reject and repudiate terrorism as antithetical to the Olympic spirit.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, I would like to address my remarks to President Biden. Mr. President, as you rightly said in Philadelphia this month, we face the most dangerous threat to free and fair elections in our history. To meet this threat to our democracy, we need only do what is plainly possible: Use our majorities to pass the For the People Act. But we cannot succeed unless you call for abolishing or reforming the filibuster. You have urged the American people to be, ``clear-eyed about the obstruction we face.'' Well, that obstruction comes not only from Republicans, but also from Members of our own party. I know that you do not have a voice in the Senate. But you do have a voice, the most powerful on the planet. Unless you use it to lead, the Senators who stand in the way of democracy will continue to do so. The truth is, Mr. President, we can't just out-organize partisan gerrymanders. We can't just out-vote a party that is committed to overturning elections whose results they don't like. And we better not ask Black and Brown voters to do twice as much to save our democracy, when we in Washington cannot be bothered to do half as much as we should. We need new laws and we need your help to pass them.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, people in suburban communities benefit from convenient, reliable public transportation to urban areas. It allows them to move to more affordable neighborhoods while maintaining access to the economic opportunities in the city. This is evident in part of my district, where a one-seat ride on the east side of the Hudson River in New York makes it easy to get off the roads and commute by train between Westchester County and New York City. Unfortunately, Rockland County, on the west side of the Hudson, lacks direct rail service to the city, making the commute deeply inconvenient and the area a more challenging place to live. My amendment would commission a study on the economic benefits of one-seat ride commuter rail service between urban and suburban communities. This study would help Federal, State, and local governments plan for expansion of direct rail service to communities like Rockland County and identify areas where improvements are not only feasible but necessary. I urge support for my amendment because communities like Rockland deserve convenient, reliable public transportation to urban areas like New York City.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to my Republican colleague's amendment mandating a study before the bill can go into effect. This is not an earnest attempt to look into the Supreme Court's impact on age discrimination cases. It is a delay tactic and nothing more. We know that age discrimination happens. In fact, not long ago, we heard compelling witness testimony in the Education and Labor Committee highlighting the need for this very legislation. Ageism is one of the most common and, sadly, most accepted forms of discrimination in the workplace. Last year, the EEOC received over 14,000 age discrimination complaints, accounting for over 20 percent of all discrimination charges filed in this country. This is a problem that impacts not just workers but our entire economy, and it particularly harms women and people of color. According to the AARP, nearly two-thirds of women and more than three-quarters of Black workers age 45 and over say they have seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace. We don't need a study to tell us that a substantially higher burden of proof for some forms of discrimination makes it more difficult for workers who can prove discrimination to get their day in court and to prevail. That is just common sense. What we need is a return to a mixed-motive standard, which says that any consideration of age, as opposed to ability to perform a job, is impermissible in employment decisions. We can look at two cases that were proceeding under a mixed-motive standard but were dismissed following the Supreme Court's precedents. Courts dismissed both of these cases on the grounds that the facts, which were sufficient under a mixed-motive standard, were no longer sufficient under the heightened but-for standard. First, there is the case of Jack Gross, an older gentleman who had been demoted after refusing a buyout when his employer underwent a merger. As he and many older workers were demoted, his younger colleagues received promotions. Mr. Gross challenged his demotion under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and won his case at trial under the motivating factor framework. However, after the Supreme Court changed the rules and required him to retry his case under the new and more stringent but-for causation standard, he lost despite the fact that he had proved the same set of facts with the same parties in the same courts as before. Second, consider the impact of the Nassar case on anti-retaliation claims under the Civil Rights Act. In the case of Shumate v. Selma City Board of Education, an elementary school cafeteria worker alleged that she had been passed over for promotion due to having filed earlier discrimination claims, and that those claims had been discussed by the interview panel. The district court denied the employer's motion for summary judgment on her retaliation claim. However, the Nassar decision was issued a few months later and the employer moved for reconsideration under the new causation standard. This time, the district court dismissed the worker's retaliation claim and granted summary judgment to the employer, stating that, ``the Supreme Court has changed the rules since then.'' Same facts. Same case. Different causation standard, and a win was turned into a loss. The Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act reinstates the legal standard for proving age discrimination and aligns it with the existing standard for proving discrimination based on sex, race, or national origin. Mr. Speaker, there is simply no excuse for discrimination of any kind in the workplace, and there is no reason to delay this legislation any further. We have already had a 12-year delay in restoring justice. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject the Allen amendment and support the underlying bill.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I was a sophomore in high school when Congress gave the green light for war in Iraq. Nearly 20 years later, I am here as a freshman Member of Congress, urging my colleagues to repeal that authorization. For over half my life, Republican and Democratic Presidential administrations have used the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force as a blank check for war and the justification for aggressive military actions in the Middle East. Young people today have never known a time when our country was not fighting overseas or conducting strikes on poor and Brown nations. It is time for that to stop. The American people are tired of endless wars. We need a more peaceful and productive foreign policy grounded in diplomacy and human rights, and we, finally, have an administration that agrees. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, as we near the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is long past time to confront what my colleague and dear friend, Representative Meng, has described as the additional pandemic of hatred, violence, and discrimination against our Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Madam Speaker, I am proud to support the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act today. I would like to address our AAPI communities directly: I cannot know exactly what you are feeling in this moment, but as an openly gay Black man in America, I know what it is like to be marginalized and to be harassed because of who you are. I turned 34 years old today, and while the end product may look okay, there is a lot that I carry with me. I know what it is like to feel both invisible and exposed, both unseen and targeted. I know what it is like to have to fight for rights that you should just be able to take for granted. And I know that in the United States of America no one should ever have to feel this way. So what I want the AAPI community to know is this: As surely as the Earth revolves around the Sun, I will be with you always because we can only get through this together.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, due to personal reasons, I was unable to record my vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 138.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, the American Rescue Plan is the most transformative economic legislation for working families in a generation. Our expansion of the child tax credit will literally cut child poverty in half. But unless we make the expansion permanent, we will find ourselves a year from now in the same dire straits that existed before the pandemic: A country where we accept that 11 million people live in poverty, nearly 15 percent of all children in this country; a country where we accept that 25 percent of Black children live in poverty. I have been in Congress for 5 months and I am already tired of having to vote to reauthorize things that we know should be permanent. Expanding the child tax credit is a moral and economic imperative. It should not have an expiration date. For the last year, we have talked about the impossible choices that families have been forced to make: childcare or healthcare; food or rent. The reality is, these impossible choices existed for millions of families before the pandemic began, and they will continue to exist after the pandemic is over. Poverty is a choice that we make here in this Chamber, and we can choose to end it.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, the truth is, there is no good-faith argument for disenfranchising over 700,000 people, most of whom are people of color. These desperate objections are about fear--fear that, in D.C., their white supremacist politics will no longer play; fear that, soon enough, white supremacist politics won't work anywhere in America; fear that, if they don't rig our democracy, they will not win. Today, Democrats are standing up for a multiracial democracy, to democratize all 51 States in this country.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, there is no good-faith argument.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, that is fine. You have my consent to withdraw.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I have had enough of my colleagues' * * * insinuations that somehow the people of Washington, D.C., are incapable or even unworthy of our democracy. One Senate Republican said that D.C. wouldn't be a ``well-rounded, working-class State.'' I had no idea there were so many syllables in the word ``white.'' One of my House Republican colleagues said that D.C. shouldn't be a State because the District doesn't have a landfill. * * * * The truth is there is no good-faith argument for disenfranchising over 700,000 people, Mr. Speaker, most of whom are people of color.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, my amendment makes a simple change that would help improve the development of workplace violence prevention plans required under H.R. 1195, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act. As you know, our Nation's nurses, social workers, and other caregivers suffer from workplace violence injuries at far higher rates than any other profession. In fact, these workers are nearly five times as likely to suffer a serious workplace violence injury than workers in other sectors, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The underlying legislation would require employers within these sectors to develop and implement a workplace violence prevention plan to reduce the incidence of injuries and create safer working conditions for their workers. In order to ensure that covered employers in the healthcare and social service industries develop thoughtful and comprehensive workplace violence prevention plans, my amendment clarifies that employers are able to outreach to experts and specialists who lead in the issue of workplace violence. Healthcare and social service workers have unique needs and face many difficult challenges in the workplace.

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a letter of support for H.R. 1195 from the CEO of AIHA, Mr. Sloan.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, I swear, sometimes I stand in this Chamber and feel like I am in the Twilight Zone, listening to a number of my Republican colleagues espouse white supremacist ideology to denigrate our wonderful Dreamers. I am over here standing with a clear understanding that this bill does not go far enough. I want to share the story of a constituent of mine, Mr. Paul Pierrilus, of our Spring Valley, New York, community, who was deported to Haiti, a country where he had never even been, in apparent defiance of the President's 100-day executive order. We need a bill that goes further. I am going to vote for this, but we need a bill that goes further, that forgives people who make mistakes. Mr. Pierrilus, in his case, made a mistake in his early 20s. We need a bill that allows him to return home, and I am going to be fighting for that moving forward.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the PRO Act, which protects a worker's right to join a union. This is not just an issue of economic justice, as we seek to restore power to the people, as we experience an era of entrenched corporate power, and as members of this very body dare to debate the need for a $15 minimum wage. This is also an issue of racial justice. History shows that unions help to reduce the racial wage gap by empowering Black and Brown workers to fight for better pay and better working conditions; but, due to Republican policies, much of that progress has been lost. Today, we are seeing the increasing exploitation of workers of color. Antiunion policies have hurt Black and Brown workers the most. Today, people of color are the most likely to be exploited by greedy corporations. We cannot achieve racial justice without economic justice, and we can't achieve economic justice without protecting all of our workers and their right to organize. Mr. Speaker, I strongly support this proworker bill, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes.''

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, 56 years ago, 600 peaceful protesters, led by the late John Lewis, prepared to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the right to vote. On the other side stood Sheriff Jim Clark and his armed patrolmen ready to stop them. The protesters marched on. Clark and his troopers put on their gas masks, blasted the marchers with teargas, and then brutally beat them with billy clubs and cattle prods. Some of Clark's men mounted their horses and charged into the crowd trampling protesters while unleashing a rebel yell. They beat John Lewis so hard, they broke his skull. He and dozens of his fellow marchers were hospitalized. Mr. Speaker, 5 months after Bloody Sunday, Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act. As we remember Bloody Sunday, let us also recognize the Jim Clarks who blocked the bridge to democracy today. Five decades after Bloody Sunday, the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in a decision in 2013 called Shelby. As we commemorate our first Bloody Sunday without John Lewis, Republicans in Georgia have passed a new law cracking down on the right to vote. Today, as we answer John's call to cross the bridge to democracy once again, let us hope that no Supreme Court Justices stand in our way on the other side. If they do, may we, like our ancestors, march on.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I stand in this Chamber today thanks to the young people of Westchester and Rockland Counties. When I first ran for Congress, I was joined by a small group of young, committed volunteers. Many of them were not eligible to vote. Many of them were 16 and 17 years old. And my goodness, did they know more about policy and national politics than people who are four and five times their senior. In this country, when you are 16 and 17 years old, we charge you as an adult in the courtroom. You are able to drive to the job we expect you to work in order to help support your family. So I think that the least we can do is give 16- and 17-year-olds a say in who governs them.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from California, Karen Bass, for her leadership; as well as the Congressional Black Caucus for always speaking truth to power. Madam Speaker, today we take a stride towards ending racism in policing. But this is just the beginning. We must recognize that systemic racism extends well beyond law enforcement. Systemic racism is the way governments have deliberately impoverished Black families, then condition necessary medical care on our ability to pay. It is the way we fund our public schools, a property tax-based system that concentrates tens of billions more dollars in White communities than in Black and Brown communities. In America, it is the way we run our elections, purging Black voters, especially in Southern States, from the rolls and closing the polls in Black neighborhoods. We can't stop until we have eradicated systemic racism in all of its forms.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, today, we legislate for the people. Our passage of H.R. 1 is deeply personal to me. Unlike many of the people we are used to seeing in our politics, I don't come from money or from a political family. I was raised by a young, single mother who worked multiple jobs to make ends meet, and we still needed Section 8 housing and food stamps to get by. Of course, my family struggles could be traced to one common cause, and that is our broken democracy. At the root of why housing, higher education, and healthcare are out of reach for so many millions of Americans is the fact that our democracy does not reflect the will of the American people. Independent redistricting commissions would change that. When I ran for Congress, the first question political insiders asked me wasn't what I would be campaigning on or how much support I had in my community, but, rather, how much money could I raise? Public campaign financing would change that. Many people were surprised that I defeated a billionaire who tried to purchase this congressional seat. But my election should not be the exception to the rule; rather, it should be the norm. Once we pass H.R. 1, it will be.

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, I rise to vindicate the right to vote as precisely that, a constitutional right, not a privilege, a right. It is a travesty that our Nation's laws do not fully protect the right to vote. The reason, of course, is white supremacy. Over 150 years ago, during Reconstruction, we tried to build a multiracial democracy in this country. For the first time, Black people won seats in this very Chamber, but white supremacists were not having it. So, like today's Republican Party, they devised ways to deny Black people the right to vote. Madam Speaker, thanks to the 15th Amendment, they could not expressly prohibit Blacks from voting, so they barred prisoners from voting. Then they invented excuses to put Black people in those prisons. It took 70 years for a Black candidate to win a seat in this Congress from the South again. These Jim Crow laws remain on the books. They are why over 5 million incarcerated people are barred from voting. These people look like me. They are parents. They are children. They fall in love. They make mistakes just like we do. They are citizens of the United States of America just like we are, and they deserve the right to vote.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, it is not often that this Chamber does remarkable things. Today, we pass the Equality Act, which includes my bill, the Juror Non-Discrimination Act. This has been a long time coming and it represents progress that, for me, was unbelievable when I was growing up. You see, to grow up poor, Black, and gay is to not see yourself anywhere. It is also to feel completely unseen, as so many people around you invalidate your very existence. Growing up, I watched helplessly as opportunistic, straight politicians--mostly White, mostly male--used my basic human rights as a political football to further their careers. Had this legislation been enacted when I was growing up, it would have been direct evidence of the fact that things really do get better, that I didn't have to hide or cry so much. Thankfully, since childhood, things have gotten better, but that hasn't been because of the mere passage of time. It has been because LGBTQ advocates made life better. Today, we send a powerful message to millions of LGBTQ people around the country and, indeed, around the world that they are seen, that they are valued, that their lives are worthy of being protected. How remarkable that is, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished co-chair of this incredible Special Order sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus for those very kind words. I will say, as someone who has spent most of his life following the work of this Black Caucus, it is an honor to finally join the legends, the luminaries who helped to inspire my own run for the United States Congress. Thank you. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the CBC for holding this hour to reflect on Black history. I want to share, in particular, the story of a young lawyer who came to the village of Hillburn in Rockland County, New York, during his fight to desegregate our public schools. Like many places in 1943, the Village of Hillburn had a main school for White children. It was called the Hillburn School. And it had a school for children of color without a library, a playground, or indoor plumbing. That was called the Brook School. But our elders did not accept this. They fought back. Parents of the Brook School children organized and, with the help of a young attorney with the NAACP's legal defense fund, they sued the district. With the help of their lawyer, the parents of the Brook School children won their fight against segregation in a case that helped to lay the groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education 11 years later. Who was this young lawyer who came to the Village of Hillburn? He was the man who would later become our Nation's first Supreme Court Justice who was Black: Thurgood Marshall. I am moved by the story because it shows how Black history creates Black futures, how the courage and resistance of the Black leaders of years past are the reason a poor Black kid from Rockland County now stands in this special Chamber as the United States Congress Member representing that same school district today.

Mr. JONES

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, the economy has been left in ruins by the prior administration's historic failure of leadership. Now, millions of Americans are out of work and we must remember that it is people with disabilities, people of color, and especially women of color, who have been the hardest hit. As Members of Congress, we must do all we can to ensure everyone--and I do mean everyone--can live in dignity. That is why I support the National Apprenticeship Act of 2021 which will create 1 million new apprenticeships. This bill includes the Apprenticeship Access for All Act, which I am proud to have coauthored with my colleague, Congresswoman Alma Adams. This legislation will help remove racist and ableist barriers to employment of our national apprenticeship system, because everyone deserves a good-paying job no matter your race or your ability.