On May 7, the Tennessee State Capitol was filled with righteous anger and protest as the state’s Republi-Fascist legislature voted to redraw the Tennessee congressional maps, splitting up and essentially eliminating the only Black-majority congressional district. Democratic State Representative Justin Jones burned a Confederate flag, and several activists wearing white Klan-style hoods and holding rope chanted, “Don’t lynch the Black vote.”
Yes, this is the dead hand of the Confederacy, resurrected by the Trump Fascist Regime, rising up to crush what’s left of the hard-fought gains of the civil rights era. AND, it is a big nail in the coffin of the mid-term elections, which the Trump regime has been actively rigging for months.
The April 29 SCOTUS ruling in Callais v Landry ripped away key protections of the Voting Rights Act that for decades placed some limits on racist gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement. Within days of this ruling, Republi-fascist leaders across the South — including in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Louisiana — moved to redraw congressional maps in their favor ahead of the midterm elections. These new maps are designed to dismantle majority-Black districts and could hand as many as 19 additional House seats to the fascists.
Millions of people are being told to “wait for the next election” to stop the Trump regime, even as the very mechanisms people are relying on are being gutted, rigged, and gerrymandered away in plain sight. Millions acting together – nonviolently but with courage and conviction – need to step outside of the normal channels that are being ripped away to fiercely oppose these fascist attacks on our rights and demand Trump Must Go Now!