DEFEND VOTING RIGHTS, OR “DEMOCRACY DIES IN OUR FACE”
By the League Basic Needs Electoral Committee
On May 7, the Tennessee legislature eliminated its only Black-majority Congressional district. It split Memphis into three districts, each tying inner-city neighborhoods to white-majority suburban and rural areas stretching hundreds of miles into the countryside. In the Senate, Sen. Charlane Oliver stood on her desk with a banner reading, “No Jim Crow 2.0 Stop the Steal”, until it was torn from her hands by Senate security. State troopers cleared protesters from both the House and Senate gallery when they applauded voting rights champions that spoke on the floor
The struggle started on April 29, when the US Supreme Court handed the ruling class a victory in its campaign for a fascist dictatorship in the United States. The court ruled that states could break up Black-majority Congressional districts, especially in the South, as long as they pretended it was not done with racial intent. This historic reversal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act shocked African American communities all across the country. It may well end African American political representation throughout the South, since virtually all African American officeholders there are elected from majority-Black districts.
Many people were unable to pay attention to these historic events because they were preoccupied with the attacks on their own living standards. But America’s workers, and anyone concerned with the future of democracy, ignore these events at their peril. The reversal of the Voting Rights Act is not just about Blacks, and not just about the South. It is an all-out assault on the entire working class movement. It is a step toward fascist corporate dictatorship and an end to the pretense of consent of the governed that America was supposedly founded on.
MASS PROTESTS
Southern legislatures immediately attempted to redraw Congressional districts in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, in time to subvert the 2026 midterm elections – even where voting had already begun. Resistance was immediate. Democratic legislators in Tennessee walked out of the chambers to boycott the redistricting process. When the Republican majority went ahead and passed the plan anyway behind closed doors, Rep. Justin Jones burned a printout of the Confederate flag outside in the hallway.
“This is how democracy dies in our face,” said Sen. London Lamar. “It’s not always with violence in the street. It is those secret meetings you have in the back of your rooms.”
On May 15, over 5000 protested in demonstrations in Montgomery and Selma, Alabama. “I would really like these legislators to focus on the quality of life of Alabamans,” said voting rights leader Khadidah Stone in Montgomery. “We have a lot of rural hospital closures, we have the highest maternal mortality rate in the country, 50,000 Alabamans just lost SNAP benefits, and most of the recipients are the elderly and children.”
On the same day, 400 people marched silently from Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma to the Edmund Pettis Bridge, scene of the notorious attack on peaceful demonstrators that set off the movement for the original Voting Rights Act in 1965.
SOLIDARITY
The only answer is working class solidarity, social and political organization, and political education. To fight effectively for political power, we need to understand that white supremacy was historically constructed by the ruling class to divide, conquer, and isolate Southern workers. It has served as the strategic pillar of the private property system ever since. We need to learn and value the historical contributions of all our various sectors. One of the first things the system teaches immigrants when they arrive in America is to hate and fear African Americans. But it is the freedom struggles of African Americans that make today’s immigrant rights movement even possible. Birthright citizenship today benefits primarily immigrant families, but the Fourteenth Amendment that codifies it was created out of African American resistance to slavery.
Literally tens of millions of immigrants who arrived in the last sixty years as a result of the 1965 Hart-Cellar Immigration Act would never have been allowed to be here without the Selma marches that made that law possible. Previous laws essentially banned immigration from nonwhite countries. The passage of Hart-Cellar happened because of the blood, sweat, and tears shed by SNCC, SCLC, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
SOUTHERN STRATEGY
The entirety of American history confirms that what happens in the South determines the outcome of every social struggle across the country. The emancipation of Southern slaves unleashed the labor movement in the North. The 1890s Southern populist movement triggered the farmer’s rebellion all over America, and the 1960s civil rights movement radicalized the entire country.
In this political moment, the stakes are even higher. The explosion of AI is creating a situation where, in a very short time, millions of American workers will be facing unemployment, poverty, and homelessness. Workers will inevitably try to use their vote to ensure that this doesn’t happen, and fight to use AI wealth to create housing, teach children, and provide the health care and social services they need.
The corporate ruling class will do everything in its power to prevent this. Fascism is the movement to preserve private property by ending the little democracy we have been able to create for ourselves in this system. This is not a choice. The laws of the private property economy require it to act on the principle of maximum profit. It is systemically incapable of accepting reduced profits or higher taxes to meet the needs of workers that it no longer needs. That is why the Supreme Court is evolving into an instrument of absolute tyranny.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used to say that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. This is not just about principles written on paper or in law books. It comes from the love of freedom that is written in our hearts. This has been the foundation of working class progress for 250 years, and it will not fail us now, as we enter the battle for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the era of AI.
Published on [insert date], 2026.
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