It is with joy that we celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who fought tirelessly to make sure every American’s vote counts. And it is with outrage that we recognize that in Michigan we have to fight again today for that very same right.

In King’s day, tactics such as poll taxes, intimidation and tests were used to deny voters their rights. Today, our state government has its own tactic: the expanded emergency manager law that Lansing is using to dismantle our democracy.

As the state moves closer to appointing an emergency manager to take over Detroit, we must understand what’s at stake. The law is unconstitutional, plain and simple. It violates our basic rights as citizens. It abolishes our right to elect our own local leaders and run our own communities. When our government can do this, we no longer truly have the right to vote.

Dr. King said the right to vote is sacred: “So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself,” he said. “I cannot make up my mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen. … I can only submit to the edict of others.”

The emergency manager law silences our voices, throws out our collectively bargained contracts and allows others to determine our own future. It violates our rights as voters, workers and human beings. And it is part of an attack on these rights that is spreading around the country.

This is why the people of Michigan must keep fighting this law. The NAACP State Conference supports and joins the legal challenge against the law, known as PA4, filed by the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice on behalf of 28 citizen-plaintiffs in Detroit and around the state. We applaud Sugar Law for recognizing this power grab by Lansing politicians and their corporate friends and empowering citizens to stand up against it.

The NAACP and Sugar Law also recognize that this law targets communities of color. The cities and school district already under emergency manager rule are predominantly African-American. If emergency managers are appointed for Inkster and Detroit, about half of Michigan’s black citizens will be stripped of local representation — reduced to second-class citizens.

We must fight this attack on democracy not just for ourselves, but for every American. What happens in Michigan — both the strength of our resistance and the outcome of our battle — will guide whether other state governments try to obliterate the constitutional rights of their citizens by taking over entire communities. And we know that the communities most vulnerable to this kind of power grab are already suffering from both poverty and racism.

Dr. King would be proud to see so many Michigan citizens standing up against this unjust law by using the tools of our precious democracy, even as our government is trying to destroy it.

The nation is watching. Our brothers and sisters around the country are counting on us to hold the line and protect our most basic of rights. Stand up, Michigan!

By Yvonne White, President, Michigan State Conference NAACP