URGENT: ACTION NEEDED | Tennessee Is Testing the New Redistricting Strategy
After the Supreme Court’s latest voting-rights ruling, lawmakers are moving fast. Memphis may be the first major test case. How you can help:
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🚨 WHY THIS IS URGENT🚨
This is urgent because attacks on Black voting power are attacks on democracy itself. We care because Black voters in Memphis deserve full, fair, and meaningful representation, period. We should also understand that these tactics do not stop with one community. Today, the target is majority-Black Memphis. Tomorrow, it could be working-class voters, young voters, rural voters, union voters, or any community that becomes politically inconvenient. That is why protecting District 9 is not charity. It is solidarity, accountability, and democracy self-defense.
Protect The South
Pack The Committees | Wednesday, May 6
Sign Up For All You Can Attend: Mobilize.us/forwardtn
Tennessee is moving through one of the fastest and most consequential redistricting fights in the country right now
Speed is part of their strategy:
Tennessee Republicans are using a special legislative session to redraw congressional maps and potentially break apart the Memphis-based 9th Congressional District, Tennessee’s only Democratic-held U.S. House seat and a district rooted in majority-Black Memphis.
Key committee meetings are happening today, Wednesday, May 6.
Organizers need people to help pack those rooms!
Tennessee is testing how fast political power can be redrawn.
On April 29, the Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Reuters reported that the ruling gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act by making it harder for minority voters to challenge maps as racially discriminatory, and that it could prompt Republican-led states to seek new maps before the 2026 midterms.
Gov. Bill Lee called a special legislative session beginning May 5 to review the state’s congressional map. Specifically, the 9th Congressional District, Tennessee’s only Democratic-held U.S. House seat and a district centered in majority-Black Memphis. WPLN reported that the special session could redraw congressional maps in the Memphis area and potentially eliminate the state’s remaining Democratic district.
Tennessee lawmakers are considering legislation that would remove the state’s existing prohibition on changing congressional districts between apportionments.
If this works in Tennessee, it becomes a standard for other states looking for a fast way to weaken representation before voters can organize. A state sees a favorable Supreme Court ruling, calls a special session, changes its own redistricting rules, and redraws the map before the public has time to respond. That is not governance, this is an ambush and all of our rights are on the line.
On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters gathered at the Tennessee Capitol as the special session began. WPLN reported that lawmakers may have only three days to redistrict, even though the process usually takes months, and that Republican leadership rejected Democratic efforts to require more public feedback or release proposed maps 72 hours before a final vote.
Redistricting decides if a community votes together with enough strength to elect someone who reflects its needs, or if that community will get sliced apart and scattered across districts where its voice disappears. When lawmakers redraw lines to weaken a community’s representation, they are deciding who gets heard in Congress.
That is why today matters and why we need you:
Today, the Tennessee General Assembly has a packed schedule.
According to the Tennessee General Assembly’s official calendar, the Senate State and Local Government Committee meets at 9:30 AM Central Time. The Senate Judiciary Committee meets at 11:00 AM Central Time. The House Congressional Redistricting Committee meets at 11:00 AM Central Time, followed immediately by Finance, Ways, and Means and then Calendar & Rules.
Again, this was intentional. Speed benefits the people drawing the maps, not the people living inside them.
The room needs people today. ASAP.
A full committee room tells lawmakers that people are watching. And it tells the press this is not a quiet procedural fight. This tells voters across the entire South that Memphis is not being carved up without witnesses.
Pack the committees today, Wednesday, May 6. RSVP through Forward Tennessee’s Mobilize page at www.mobilize.us/forwardtn.
Share this post. Send it to friends, family, organizations, churches, unions, student groups, civic groups. Send it to anyone in or near Tennessee. Send it to anyone who knows someone in Tennessee.
Protect District 9. Protect Black voting power in Memphis.
Protect the South from becoming the testing ground for mid-decade attacks on representation.
SOURCES
Watching America unravel in real time isn't pleasant. Republicans are consistently in action to undermine our democracy at every turn. The money financing all these efforts is immense and cannot be denied. It's a gargantuan struggle attempting to counteract their insidious efforts. A corrupt media adds to the dilemma. Even with these obstacles we must not give up. VOTE this year to replace the Republicans with progressive representation. Clear purposes of protecting humanity is the only way to save our democracy. The truth lies in history, not the distorted minds currently controlling our government.
Just passed along to folks in TN to make lotsa calls today!