By Ashley Murray, States Newsroom
WASHINGTON — About 100 rallygoers gathered on Capitol Hill Wednesday to hear from activists and members of Congress protesting the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down federal protections for the voting power of minorities.
The justices diluted a major part of the Voting Rights Act in their 6-3 decision on April 29 that declared Louisiana’s congressional map that created a second majority Black district an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
Speaking to the crowd Wednesday, Louisiana native and resident Kentravius Coleman said “we are not a powerless people.”
“Black people in Louisiana may feel defeated because on a random Wednesday we learned we’d have less reflective representation,” said Coleman, 27, who works as an administrative coordinator at the progressive organization United for Democracy, which hosted the rally.
“We need to demand accountability from all three branches of government. As the nation watches Louisiana, we need to focus on the aspect that there is no more business as usual,” Coleman, who lives in the state’s central city of Alexandria, added.
State legislatures across the South quickly began work to draw new congressional districts following the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais.
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said voters are “angry.”
“When you see respected, leading Black members of Congress who win, and have enjoyed the respect of their states, redistricted out of their office by political manipulation, that gets you mad,” Whitehouse said.
“Whatever they may gain in redistricting mischief, let’s make sure that they lose where they can’t redistrict, like in Senate races … and governor’s races,” he said.
U.S. Rep. Analilia Mejia, D-N.J., said the country is at a “crossroads” and urged rallygoers to remember Civil Rights Movement leaders.
“Let’s be good ancestors for those who will come later, who will say in a moment in which a despotic authoritarian and his cowardly lackeys attempted to revert to, frankly, pre-Civil War or Jim Crow-era level of politics, that we stood up and we stood strong and we said, ‘Oh hell no,’” said Mejia.
