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alabama
In Alabama, Organizers Declare 'Day One' of Mass Mobilization to Stop GOP Attacks on Voting Rights
Labor rights and voting rights groups were among those who gathered in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama for the All Roads Lead to the South Day of Action.
May 16, 2026
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates...
In a show of resistance to the US Supreme Court's dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and Republicans' efforts to redraw congressional districts across southern states in a bid to retain power despite their party's unpopular agenda, labor and voting rights groups were among those that arrived in Montgomery, Alabama Saturday for "Day One" of a mass mobilization against GOP lawmakers who they said are intent on "resurrecting Jim Crow."
While groups including the Movement for Black Lives and National Jobs With Justice boarded buses in Atlanta Saturday morning to join more than 250 organizations at a rally at the Alabama State Capitol, other organizers began the "All Roads Lead to the South" National Day of Action with a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama—the same site of the historic 1965 voting rights march that became known as Bloody Sunday.
"We started here because we wanted to stand on sacred ground and consecrate ourselves," said organizer LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter. "You cannot fight hate with hate, you have to stand in the spirit of love, and so look around—this is what love looks like."We’re joining the All Roads Lead to the South coalition in Alabama today to show that We the People will not allow a Jim Crow 2.0.
Today’s march is a powerful reminder: courage and community are how we will get through this.
WATCH: https://t.co/9Z5DOblam1
— Democracy Forward (@DemocracyFwd) May 16, 2026
The march and rally were organized in response to a ramp-up of efforts by the Republican Party and right-wing courts, including the far-right majority on the US Supreme Court, to redraw electoral maps in states including Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee.
The mass mobilization was organized after the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais last month, effectively eviscerating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which has held that voters of color have the right to legally challenge racially discriminatory congressional maps.
The Supreme Court this week allowed Alabama to revert back to an electoral map with just one majority-Black district out of seven, despite that fact that 26% of Alabama residents are Black.
Tennessee Republicans also adopted a new electoral map that splits up the state's only majority-Black district, and the Missouri Supreme Court approved a congressional map that targets the state's 5th District, represented by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.
Arriving in Montgomery, Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones (D-52) said voters across the South need "a united front... to take on this new Confederacy... We know what the intent of these governors and state lawmakers are, to dismantle every gain made during the civil rights movement and dismantle the crown jewel of the civil rights movement, which was the Voting Rights Act."
Rep. @brotherjones_ in Montgomery: “We’re here united to take on this new confederacy, 60 years after the Selma March… because we know their intent is to dismantle everything gained during the civil rights movement.” pic.twitter.com/op87I4g8hT
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) May 16, 2026
"Our parents and grandparents marched, organized, bled, and won," said organizers ahead of the rally. "The Voting Rights Act was theirs. The fight to keep it is ours. Right now, state by state, that law is being dismantled. We know that we cannot fight the same battles the same way. New times demand new tactics—economic pressure, political organizing, community action, culture, and faith. But we know what we know: Organizing works. And we have unfinished business."
At the rally, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) emphasized the need for solidarity from across the US, with supporters of voting rights mobilizing in states near and far from the South—the current center of the GOP's attacks.
"They think they can draw us out of power. They do not know the sleeping giant they just awakened," said Ocasio-Cortez. "When Black Americans have the right to vote and that vote is protected, our schools get funded. When voting rights are protected, healthcare gets expanded. When voting rights are protected, our country moves forward. And Montgomery, that's what they're actually afraid of."
AOC: “It is time for the North to pull up to the South and let them know exactly what they have uncorked with this injustice. They think they can draw us out of power. They do not know the sleeping giant they just awakened. What they thought was the final blow is actually just… pic.twitter.com/kQvixR2Olv
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 16, 2026
Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs With Justice, said labor groups joined the mass mobilization because "the bridges we have to cross are not only in Selma."
"Jim Crow didn't just come for the ballot. It came for anyone who tried to organize and have a voice," said Smiley. "Efforts to rollback equality and democracy are happening in the occupied cities, shop floors, and now the halls of the Capitol across the country."
Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) called for the rally to mark the beginning of a "Freedom Summer," with rallies at "every State House" in the country to pressure state legislators to end the GOP gerrymandering efforts, which President Donald Trump has explicitly called for.
"Let's declare a Freedom Summer and go to every courthouse this summer, to tell those legislators, 'We will not go back,'" said Sewell.
Dozens of satellite events were also taking place across the US on Saturday.
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No Kings Movement and 'All Roads Lead to the South' to Protest GOP Voting Rights Attacks
"The politicians attacking voting rights today are clinging to a shrinking vision of America rooted in fear, exclusion, and minority rule."
May 12, 2026
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.
On May 16th, join civil and voting rights groups in a National day of Action in Montgomery, Alabama. Go to allroadsleadtothesouth.com for more details. #votingrights #50501movement
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— 50501: The People’s Movement ❌👑 (@50501movement.bsky.social) May 9, 2026 at 12:48 PM
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."
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As Tennessee Voters Sue Over Gerrymandering, Supreme Court Clears Way for New Alabama Map
"Boy, it's a complete mystery why the public thinks the court is making partisan political decisions," quipped one law professor following the ruling on Alabama's redistricting.
May 11, 2026
The US Supreme Court's right-wing majority Monday opened the door for Alabama to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district before this year's midterm elections in a decision that came as Tennessee voters sued to stop their state's racially rigged redistricting.
The nation's high court issued a 6-3 order with no explanation allowing Alabama officials to revert to a congressional map which, despite the state population being roughly 26% African American, has just one majority-Black district out of seven. The order came just a week before Alabama's primary election and less than three years after the same court ordered the state to create a second majority-Black district.
In that case, Allen v. Milligan, two right-wing members—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh—joined their liberal colleagues who sided with Black voters in defense of the Voting Rights Act.
SCOTUS, which ordered Alabama to create a second Black opportunity district just 3 years ago, has lifted that order a week before the primary. The Purcell principle says courts shouldn't permit chaos too close to an election—it's now an open question whether there will even be a primary on schedule.
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— Joyce White Vance (@joycewhitevance.bsky.social) May 11, 2026 at 3:32 PM
Monday's ruling follows last month's Louisiana v. Callais decision, in which the justices ruled 6-3, also along ideological lines, that Louisiana's congressional map is “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."
The decision ironically voided the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court.
Dissenting in Monday's decision, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that the high court previously found that "Alabama violated the 14th Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters."
"That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais," she added.
Earlier on Monday, the ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of three Black voters, the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, the Memphis A. Philip Randolph Institute, and the Equity Alliance seeking to block the state's racially rigged congressional map approved last week by the state Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee despite tremendous opposition from African American Tennesseans and their allies.
The lawsuit argues that the new map violates the Constitution by intentionally discriminating against Black voters in Memphis and retaliates against them for exercising their First Amendment right to political expression and association.
As the ACLU of Tennessee explained:
Tennessee has had a Memphis-based congressional district for the better part of a century. The challenged map dismantles that district, which is the state’s only majority-Black congressional district. It divides Black voters in Memphis and Shelby County across three majority-white districts that stretch from Memphis hundreds of miles into central Tennessee, diluting Black Memphians’ votes and stripping those communities of any meaningful voice in Congress...
A white-controlled supermajority of the Tennessee General Assembly enacted the new map targeting Black Memphians over mere days in a special legislative session that had been called after the candidate-qualifying deadline had already run.
"Black voters in Memphis did exactly what the Constitution empowers every American to do, which is to choose their representative,” ACLU of Tennessee executive director Miriar Nemeth said in a statement. “The Legislature’s response was an effort to ensure that those votes never carry the same weight again. The law has a name for this, and it’s not redistricting, it is textbook First Amendment retaliation. And it is, at its heart, racism.”
The Tennessee branch of the NAACP, state Democratic Party, Democratic candidates, and voters have also sued to challenge the redistricting.
The current partisan redistricting war began when President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, who fear losing control of Congress after November's midterms, pushed Texas to enact a mid-decade redistricting. California retaliated with its own voter-approved redraw, and numerous red and blue states have followed suit or announced plans to at least consider doing so.
On Monday, Virginia's Democratic attorney general and party legislative leaders asked the US Supreme Court to block a state high court ruling against a voter-approved redistricting that favors Democrats.
Last week, Roberts dismissed the increasingly prevalent public perception that Supreme Court justices are "political actors."
Chief Justice Roberts bemoans the public's view of the Justices as political actors ...and then offers no explanation at all as the Court sprints to vacate a finding of INTENTIONAL discrimination, interfering with an impending election to let Alabama Rs sneak in a touch more partisan gerrymander.
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— Justin Levitt (@justinlevitt.bsky.social) May 11, 2026 at 3:21 PM
Following Monday's ruling, Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt said sardonically on Bluesky, "Boy, it's a complete mystery why the public thinks the court is making partisan political decisions."
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