On May 7, Justin Jones, a Nashville lawmaker and Oakland native, set set fire to a paper replica of the Confederate flag in the Tennessee State Capitol rotunda to protest a Republican-led congressional redistricting plan passed during a special legislative session.
The Tennessee Legislature special session was held amid growing national outrage over voting rights and representation following the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that critics say further weakens protections under the Voting Rights Act and makes it more difficult to challenge racially discriminatory district maps.’
A few days later, Jones, a graduate of Fisk University, a historically Black college and university (HBCU) in Nashville, was locked standing arm-in-arm, shoulder-to-shoulder with members of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC) singing the civil rights movement anthem “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round” in the California State Capitol.
Jones, who represents Tennessee’s 52nd District, returned to California to sound the alarm about how the maps alter the political balance by eliminating Tennessee’s last remaining Democratic-leaning U.S. House seat. The plan also sliced up Memphis’s majority-Black and Democratic population into three districts.
“The only way we defeat this new confederacy is with a united front of the United States. What happens in Tennessee is connected to what happens in California. What happens in the South is connected to what happens in Sacramento.”
CLBC chair Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson (D-San Diego) and Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles) joined Assemblymembers Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), Sade Elhawary (D-Los Angeles), Mike Gipson (D-Carson), and Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood) at the event.
Assemblymembers Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), from the California Women’s Caucus, and Chris Ward (D-San Diego), from the LGBTQ Legislative Caucus, stood in solidarity with the CLBC.
On May 14, the California State Assembly passed Assembly Joint Resolution (AJR) 31 with an overwhelming bipartisan majority vote of 60-11. The legislation was referred to the Senate.
AJR 31, authored by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Ladera Heights) and co-authored by Bonta, calls on the U.S. Congress to enact legislation that restores and strengthens the full protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
“For the first hundred years of California’s existence, states across this country used poll taxes, literacy tests, and gerrymandering maps to keep Black and Brown people out of the ballot box,” Bonta said. “The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was supposed to be the end of that here. On April 29, the Supreme Court decided it wasn’t.”