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California voters are days away from deciding on Proposition 50, the poll initiative that might redraw the state’s congressional map at hand extra seats to Democrats. The measure is supposed to counter President Trump’s ongoing marketing campaign to get different, Republican-led states to blatantly create new maps that can favor the GOP in subsequent yr’s midterms. Because the Nov. 4 particular election will get nearer and the stakes of the result get increased, I preserve considering: What would John Lewis say?
Lewis, the longtime Georgia congressmember and civil rights icon who died in 2020, deeply believed in voting and truthful illustration because the bedrock of racial justice, and of justice for all. Alarmed by the GOP assaults on voting and elections, which started in earnest after the Supreme Court docket tossed out a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act greater than a decade in the past, Lewis fought again.
The Voting Rights Development Act, first launched and co-sponsored by Lewis in 2015 (later renamed for Lewis after his dying), sought to revive the protections, generally known as preclearance, minimize from the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It additionally sought to ban gerrymandering — the apply of carving up congressional districts in a method that benefits one political social gathering or group. Although all the time a bipartisan apply, gerrymandering was used traditionally, mainly within the South, to suppress or dilute the voting energy of Black individuals and different individuals of coloration and deny them illustration of their alternative. Whereas nonetheless in play, Lewis’ invoice has but to make it into regulation after a number of makes an attempt to beat opposition from Republicans, and some Democrats.
We are actually at a degree that not even Lewis may have imagined, with Trump, 10 months into his second time period, facilitating a full-on gerrymandering warfare between the states. It started with the president’s demand earlier this yr that the GOP in Texas rewrite maps and create 5 extra congressional seats, he says Republicans are “entitled to” so as to enhance the social gathering’s possibilities of successful the 2026 midterm elections. Texas lawmakers obliged. Different purple states are in varied phases of following swimsuit. All of it prompted outrage from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who determined that Democrats within the nation’s most populous blue state couldn’t stand by and watch the GOP gerrymander their method to a degree the place elections won’t matter in any respect. So he and different California Democrats rapidly devised what grew to become generally known as the Election Rigging Response Act and fast-tracked it onto the poll.
We are actually at a degree that not even Lewis may have imagined.
Proposition 50 quickly units apart present congressional maps drawn by the state’s impartial redistricting fee and replaces them with new maps designed to provide California 5 extra Democratic districts. It’s gerrymandering, to make sure, however with the particular intention of neutralizing the GOP gerrymandering that many say isn’t simply one other energy seize, however a transparent and coordinated undermining of democracy itself. Newsom and others have referred to as Prop. 50 combating hearth with hearth, although it’s vital to notice that the fires are usually not fueled by the identical factor.
Different Democratic-led states, akin to New York and Maryland, are answering Newsom’s name to arms by wanting into redrawing their very own congressional maps, although no plans for change have been finalized, both legislatively or by means of state propositions. California voters appear up to now to be siding with Newsom: A current Emerson School ballot exhibits that 51% plan to vote for the measure, whereas 34% plan to vote no.
For a lot of Black individuals the gerrymandering combat isn’t solely private and political, however deeply rooted in historical past.
Black assist is essential. As a result of the GOP gerrymandering spree Prop. 50 is designed to offset is greater than only a energy seize; at its core, it’s a severe undermining of racial justice that took generations to construct. It’s no accident that the redrawn maps in Texas redistribute Black illustration of considerably Black districts; among the many losers are distinguished Black Democrats, together with Rep. Jasmine Crockett, recognized for talking out towards Trump and the GOP in movies that continuously go viral, and the equally outspoken Rep. Al Inexperienced.
A number of Black Californians, together with these whose households arrived throughout the Nice Migration final century, have roots in Texas; they embody State Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, one in all many members of the Legislative Black Caucus who helps the proposition. For a lot of Black individuals the gerrymandering combat isn’t solely private and political, however deeply rooted in historical past. At stake isn’t just reining in Trumpian overreach, however thwarting white supremacy and preserving the civil rights features individuals like Lewis fought arduous for and in some instances died for (Lewis himself nearly met his finish on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, crushed severely by police as he and others tried to march to Selma for voting rights.)
State Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, who chairs the California Legislative Black Caucus, invoked that battle in a press convention with Newsom earlier this month, calling Prop. 50 “our weapon,” and noting that illustration “isn’t some summary idea,” however energy that impacts funding for necessities akin to housing, schooling, felony justice and well being care.
Congressmember Lateefah Simon, who represents elements of the Bay Space, mentioned the brand new Texas map remembers the lack of Black voting rights and illustration within the South that occurred after Emancipation. The potential lack of civil rights and the erosion of democracy can be the message that Black figures past California, together with former president Barack Obama and former lawyer common Eric Holder, are sending in their very own assist of Prop. 50. The endorsement from Holder is particularly important provided that he’s spent years combating the discriminatory results of gerrymandering as chairman of the Nationwide Democratic Redistricting Committee. However he’s mentioned the second leaves him, and the nation, no alternative.
Trena Turner, a pastor and a member of California’s impartial redistricting fee in 2020, got here to the identical conclusion. In a commentary for CalMatters final month, Turner wrote that the GOP menace needs to be met in actual time, and that certainly referred to as for assembly hearth with hearth. This doesn’t imply that supporters of Prop. 50 grow to be complicit in weakening democracy, as some opponents of the measure have claimed.
Opponents additionally warn that Prop. 50 will disempower Black voters in some elements of the state, although that’s refuted by a number of analyses of the measure, together with one by the nonpartisan Public Coverage Institute of California. For Turner and others, the massive image is essentially the most pressing. “To face by and permit extra of the identical is to give up to authoritarianism in gradual movement,” Turner wrote. “The safeguards we as soon as believed would shield us merely aren’t holding” (safeguards that embody the Voting Rights Act that’s prone to be dismantled fully by the Supreme Court docket within the coming months). Turner added: “If reversing course is what it takes to guard illustration, fairness, and democracy itself, then we should act.”
To face by and permit extra of the identical is to give up to authoritarianism in gradual movement.
Trena Turner
Inside the robust Black assist of Prop. 50 are some notes of warning. In an August article within the Los Angeles Sentinel, a traditionally Black newspaper, chairman and government writer Danny J. Bakewell Jr. applauded the initiative however warned the Democratic social gathering to not take the Black vote without any consideration, because it has up to now.
The paper identified that Black voter turnout within the November presidential elections dropped considerably between 2020 and 2024, because it did for all Californians. And there’s a lengthy historical past of California propositions turning out badly for Black people, from the voters’ 1996 approval of anti-affirmative motion Prop. 209 (strategically described by proponents as a “civil rights initiative”) to their overwhelming assist for final yr’s Prop. 36, which recriminalized sure misdemeanors as felonies in a dramatic swing again to regulation and order. Black Californians have lengthy recognized {that a} state well-known for being progressive is commonly something however.
There’s little question that Prop. 50 is a novel transfer born of necessity, a product of the urgency of this second created by Donald Trump’s relentless march towards authoritarianism that isn’t even a yr outdated. Drastic occasions have produced a drastic measure, with extra prone to comply with. I don’t know what John Lewis would have mentioned about what introduced us to this brink, and what it says concerning the state of the nation. I’m positive he would have been heartbroken. After which he would have fought again.
That is from Erin Aubry Kaplan’s column, The Arc, which examines the persistent obstacles to racial justice and alternatives for progress in an period of receding Black presence in Los Angeles and California.
