You’re no doubt seeing a lot of emotional moments in the news this month revolving around Selma, Ala.

There was the spectacle of 40,000 people pouring into Selma a couple of weeks ago for the 50th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" Freedom March, that pivotal and violent battle for voting rights.

This Wednesday there will be another media blitz as we mark 50 years since the third and final Freedom March, the one where 25,000 marchers finally reached the Alabama State Capitol to demand equal voting rights for all.

Of course I was deeply proud to have participated in a congressional pilgrimage to the "Bloody Sunday" commemoration, working with Sen. Mazie Hirono to bring 150 lei from Hawaii for participants.

The lei symbolized peace, tolerance and aloha, as did the Hawaii lei worn by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders in that monumental third Freedom March 50 years ago.

But now that the ceremonies are almost done, we must recognize their most important role:

They are a call to action.

They remind us that the battle for equal access to voting — indeed, for even simple equal regard across the races — is still far from over.

Here in multicultural Hawaii, we tend to take equal rights and equal treatment for granted. But we shouldn’t. Our friends in other parts of our nation are still fighting for the basics when it comes to equality. Tensions boiling over in Ferguson and elsewhere show us that divides over race issues still run deep.

Further, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in its 2013 ruling on Shelby County v. Holder, when it freed nine states, mostly in the South, to change their election laws without advance federal approval, thereby reopening the possibility of discriminatory practices. Consequently, several of my congressional colleagues and I are working for greater protection of our civil rights and re-affirmation of the Voting Rights Act.

Last Thursday I helped introduce the Voter Empowerment Act, which seeks to modernize our voter registration system; allow online voter registration; expand early voting; ensure the equitable allocation of polling place resources; and prohibit voter caging and other deceptive practices that deter people from exercising their constitutional right to vote.

I also am working to create a Civil Liberties Day, similar in purpose to Hawaii’s Civil Liberties & the Constitution Day, which I helped to enact while serving in the state House, to keep equality issues top of mind.

In addition, I was glad to help get the World War II internment camp in Honouliuli designated recently as a national monument. The monument will teach future generations about a grim episode of discrimination in our nation’s history, and hopefully help prevent its repeat.

Indeed, teaching our keiki — including my children, Matthew and Kaila —about the battle for equality, and urging them to keep fighting, is the only way our country might one day reach Dr. King’s dream of that world where our children "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character."

These complicated issues might never be wholly resolved. But I feel obligated to carry the torch, as a fourth-generation Japanese American, one of only 14 Asian Americans in Congress, and a humble beneficiary of the efforts of so many brave civil-rights pioneers.

We have to keep vigilant, for our children, and their children, and the new Americans who come clutching that dream of equal rights and opportunity.

We must continue to acknowledge our country’s dark episodes of discrimination, so we don’t keep repeating history.

And we must keep honoring those historic battles for equality by the Freedom Marchers and all social-justice pioneers. Any less would dishonor their legacies.