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u/fellowWorker_2025

▲ 4.1k r/TheRealProgressive+13 crossposts

The white supremacist forces in America never accepted the victories of the civil rights movement as final. For six decades, they have been chipping away at the progress we made towards a true multi-racial democracy, with notable success at the Supreme Court under supposed institutionalist moderate John Roberts, and yesterday they made one of their longest-standing dreams real. A Samuel Alito-led 6-3 majority in Louisiana v. Callais effectively gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the central safeguard against racially discriminatory redistricting.

The right-wing plans to take advantage of this ruling and silence the voices of people of color in our government to the maximum extent possible are already in motion. Since we’re relatively deep into the primary season, most of the damage won’t take hold until 2028. But in Louisiana, Governor Jeff Landry is planning on attempting to delay the May 16th primaries to ensure the maps are redrawn by November.

The impact could be devastating. A Black Voters Matter-Fair Fight Action analysis found that up to 30% of the Congressional Black Caucus and 11% of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus might lose their seats with Section 2 eviscerated. At the state level, we could see as many as 140 Black or Hispanic-majority legislative districts disappear.

There is no easy path forward here, and rebuilding is going to be a struggle. The very tools we use to secure change are being taken away. As the NAACP Redistricting Project manager Stuart Naifeh said yesterday, this was a multi-generational fight for them, and it’s going to be a multi-generational fight for us too. We are going to need deep structural change for this hijacked Supreme Court and to our battered democracy, including adding justices and a national ban on racial and partisan gerrymandering. We’ll be talking more about how in the coming days and weeks, but the asks will be high commitment.

For today, here are some places we can start.

The entire purpose of this project is to ensure the votes of people of color can be suppressed or devalued. It would be a terrible mistake to concede that they’ve won and we can’t do anything about it. We need to redouble our support for the folks looking to get these communities out to the polls. 🙋🏾‍♀️ Let’s consider donating to and volunteering with organizations like Black Voters Matter, Fair Fight Action, the Texas Organizing Project and Voto Latino. 🙋🏻

KEEP ORGANIZING

As we’ve been painfully reminded over the last year, much of the fight over redrawing maps will play out at the state level, often in the legislature. One of the strongest weapons we still have available is passing state-level voting rights acts, which also requires us to pick up seats downballot. Winning these races has never been a high enough priority. That has to change. 🗳️ Let’s use tools like FlipSeats.org (via Jordan Zakarin) to help identify where we should focus, consider a donation to Every State Blue’s First in Line program (via Michele Hornish) to redirect funds to under-resourced races, and sign up to volunteer with States Win to make sure we’re doing the work to get out the vote in legislative elections. 🗳️

FIGHT DOWNBALLOT

Ultimately, we are going to need to pass a new voting rights act, and it would be useful to make sure our members of Congress know that’s our minimal expectation. 🗣️ Let’s reach out to them today – we can find language and an email tool via Resistbot here, or text SIGN PLHKCU to 50409. 🗣️

CONGRESS MUST ACT

🫱🏾‍🫲🏼 Finally, we can join Indivisible for a rapid response call tonight at 8PM ET, featuring experts from the NAACP and the ACLU, to talk about the work ahead. We can sign up here. 🫱🏻‍🫲🏿

MASS CALL @ 8PM ET

And if we’ve got questions we want answered, we can direct them to the experts at Bolts Magazine here.

Also in today's Rogan's List:

u/fellowWorker_2025 — 13 days ago