No Kings Movement and 'All Roads Lead to the South' to Protest GOP Voting Rights Attacks

Republican state lawmakers are seizing on the US Supreme Court's recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act to continue President Donald Trump's gerrymandering spree, including in Alabama, where "All Roads Lead to the South," the No Kings coalition, community members, faith leaders, and other organizations plan to come together on Saturday, May 16, in protest.

They are set to start at 9:00 am CT at Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon and the site of Bloody Sunday, "for prayer and remembrance—on sacred ground, in reverence for those who marched in 1965, in gratitude for the moral courage they showed the nation, and in faith that the same spirit that moved them still moves in us."

The organizers then intend to hold a rally at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery from 1:00-5:00 pm. People across the United States outraged by GOP attacks on voting rights are also planning solidarity actions throughout the day.

"Sixty years after Bloody Sunday, we are once again being called to meet this moment with collective action. The attacks on voting rights across the South are not isolated incidents, they are part of a coordinated effort to weaken Black political power," said Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown, co-founders of Black Voters Matter Fund, a leading partner organization of All Roads Lead to the South, in a Tuesday statement.

"But we have faced these challenges before, and we know our power," the pair continued. "Alabama has always been sacred ground in the fight for freedom, and this moment demands that we rise together once again. We are proud to stand with the No Kings coalition and people across the nation to make clear that our communities will not be pushed backward, our voices will not be silenced, and our power will not be denied."

Since Trump returned to office last year, the No Kings movement has organized three national days of action—in June, October, and March. Americans also held thousands of protests nationwide on May Day, or International Workers' Day, earlier this month.

"What is happening right now is deliberate, coordinated, and being driven by Republican politicians committed to abusing power and rigging the system to hold control for themselves and silence Black voters," the No Kings Steering Committee said Tuesday. "They plan on overturning every protection available for Black voters and will not be satisfied until they reinstate every Jim Crow-era law."

"That's why the No Kings coalition is joining in solidarity with All Roads Lead to the South this Saturday in Alabama and across the country for an emergency national protest against the attacks on voting rights by the Supreme Court and the swift effort by Republican-controlled states to disenfranchise millions of Black voters," the committee continued.

GOP state lawmakers in Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas have already responded to demands from Trump and fears of losing a slim majority in the US House of Representatives by redrawing their congressional districts to favor Republicans in the November midterm elections.

Democratic state leaders in California and Virginia have tried to fight the Trump-led GOP's mid-decade redistricting by enacting new voter-approved congressional districts that favor Democrats, though both of those maps face legal challenges. Party leaders in Virginia on Monday asked the US Supreme Court to block a recent ruling against the Democratic effort.

In a case about Louisiana's districts that predated Trump's push, the US Supreme Court last month found that the state map was an "unconstitutional racial gerrymander" and eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, leading Republican Gov. Jeff Landry to suspend primary elections, even though absentee ballots had already gone out.

Tennessee lawmakers swiftly took advantage of an opportunity from that ruling by targeting their state's only majority-Black congressional district, in Memphis. As Tennesseans sued over the new map on Monday, the US Supreme Court's right-wing justices cleared the way for Alabama legislators to break up their state's majority-Black district.

"The politicians attacking voting rights today are clinging to a shrinking vision of America rooted in fear, exclusion, and minority rule. They are trying to preserve a past this country has already rejected," said the No Kings panel. "In this country, we do not answer to kings—not in the White House and not in our state houses. Power belongs to the people, and we the people will decide."