All Roads Lead to the South
A national voting rights mobilization is happening this Saturday. Here is how to be part of it.
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The Voting Rights Act was born from blood, courage, and generations of organizing.
Now, piece by piece, the protections it created are being narrowed just as states are moving to redraw political power.
On April 29, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais. The ruling, decided 6 to 3, significantly weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as a tool for challenging racially discriminatory congressional maps.
For decades, Section 2 has been one of the central federal protections against vote dilution in redistricting. Justice Kagan warned in dissent that the decision “renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”
Within days, several Republican-controlled states moved to redraw or revisit congressional maps.
Louisiana suspended its U.S. House primaries after more than 100,000 absentee ballots had already been sent out and roughly 42,000 voters had already cast ballots.
Tennessee’s governor called a special session and signed a new map that divides Memphis and dismantles the state’s only majority-Black congressional district.
Alabama asked the Supreme Court to lift a court order requiring a map with two largely Black districts, and the Court sent the case back for reconsideration in light of Callais, potentially allowing the state to use a legislature-approved map with only one majority-Black district.
In South Carolina, the House advanced a proposal that could have allowed lawmakers to target the district held by Rep. Jim Clyburn.
The state Senate blocked the effort this week in a 29 to 17 vote, though the fight may not be fully over if lawmakers are called back into session.
Join us, this Saturday, May 16.
All Roads Lead to the South is a national mobilization for voting rights, led by Black Voters Matter and a coalition of more than 90 civil rights, faith, labor, and community organizations.
The major anchor events are taking place in Alabama, but the call is national: people across the country are being invited to host events, join local solidarity actions, and help move the message through their own communities.
The day in Alabama begins with a prayer gathering at 9:00 a.m. CT at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, on the same ground where marchers were beaten in 1965 for demanding the right to vote. At 1:00 p.m. CT, a national rally begins at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery. Solidarity events are being organized across the country.
Rev. Dr. Bernice A. King, CEO of The King Center, is also expected to join the Montgomery event.
May 16 will begin a sustained summer of organizing, including voter mobilization, civic education, economic pressure, legal advocacy, and direct action.
“The attacks on voting rights across the South are not isolated incidents,” Black Voters Matter co-founders Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown said. “They are part of a coordinated effort to weaken Black political power.”
The No Kings coalition, which has organized three national days of action since last year, is joining in solidarity.
For the 50501 community, the connection is direct.
Every time we talk about protecting democracy, about making sure people’s voices count, about civic power that lives in communities and not just in courtrooms, this is what we are talking about.
Voting rights are not one issue among many. They’re the through which every other issue gets decided.
When maps are drawn to predetermine outcomes, the rest of the democratic process narrows. School board seats, state legislatures, city councils, congressional representation: all of it flows from whether voters can choose their representatives or whether politicians choose their voters.
For older Americans who remember the civil rights movement, this may feel painfully familiar. For younger Americans who were taught that the Voting Rights Act settled the question, this is a reminder that rights carry on because people defend them.
Not everyone can travel to Alabama. Not everyone can march. But everyone reading this can do something concrete before Saturday.
Find an event near you.
Use the Black Voters Matter Mobilize map to search for All Roads Lead to the South events happening across the country.
Host an event.
If nothing is listed near you, organizers are inviting people to create one through the Black Voters Matter event page.
Forward/Share this post.
Send it to your chapter, your group chat, your faith community, your neighborhood list, your civic club.
Share a message today.
Something like: “All Roads Lead to the South is happening this Saturday, May 16. Find or host a voting rights action near you.”
The South has always carried more than its share of America’s democratic burden. Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, the Black Belt: these communities have shown this country again and again that democracy is protected by people who organize, who show up, who register voters, who challenge maps.
All roads lead to the South this weekend because the South is where some of the most immediate attacks on representation are happening.
But the responsibility belongs to all of us.
This is our “Freedom Summer!” The fight is ours now to complete the work of Reconstruction once and for all!
Make America Great For the First Time ✊