61 years ago today, on August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed, one of the most significant civil rights achievements in our country’s history, protecting Black voters’ rights and a core part of protecting democracy for all of us.
The gutting of the VRA this year was not only a pointedly racist attack on Black and brown communities, it is a chilling step towards authoritarianism that will affect us all. Racism is at the core of the authoritarian, billionaire agenda because Black political power threatens to break the status quo, which those at the top rely on to stay in power.
On this important anniversary, SURJ is proud to share our endorsement of Justin Pearson for Congress in Tennessee’s 9th District, the state’s only majority-Black district that was recently carved up by state Republicans as a result of the weakening of the VRA. You may know him as one of the “Tennessee Three,” expelled from the state legislature in 2023 after protesting for gun safety. He has been a leading voice for racial justice and working class people in the South, taking immense personal risk and proudly locating himself in the legacy of Black Southern freedom fighters.
SURJ works in the South because it is and has always been a stronghold of the right’s power, and a stronghold of Black political power and a vision of liberation for all of us. Can you give a gift today to help us organize in Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and North Carolina to show up for candidates like Justin this year?
As a direct result of the Supreme Court decision, Louisiana v Callais, Tennessee Republicans split TN-09 into three heavily Republican districts in an effort to wreck and divide the voting power of Black communities that have organized together for generations. So, this race is bigger than one Congressional seat– it’s about fighting back against anti-democratic authoritarianism and fighting for the legacy of the Civil Rights movement.
For SURJ, this is exactly where white people have a responsibility to show up. The Right’s strategy in the South, including the SCOTUS ruling on the VRA this year, has been central to the MAGA takeover of institutions and the rise of white supremacist and fascist forces. And thus we will never beat the authoritarians if we don’t beat them in their regional stronghold.
Taking up the mantle from SNCC and Anne Braden and other white Southern freedom fighters before us, organizing white Southerners around their shared interest in racial justice and multiracial democracy is core to SURJ’s strategy. We’ll be doing it in not only Justin’s race this fall, but key majority-white districts across the South.