SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
black voters
Missouri's Racist Gerrymander Is an Attack on Working Voters
As these attacks target communities of color, we’re witnessing the systematic disenfranchisement of people who’ve fought hardest for economic justice and workers’ rights.
Sep 13, 2025
As a Wendy’s worker, mother of two, and leader with Missouri Workers Center and Stand Up KC in Kansas City, I’ve dedicated my life to fighting for working families. I’ve worked in fast food for over 20 years, and I know what it means to struggle to barely make ends meet while corporations make record profits off our backs.
Today, I’m writing as someone who believes deeply in democracy, especially as a group of anti-worker Missouri lawmakers prepare to divide our community so that they can silence our voices, including my own.
States usually redraw electoral district boundaries every 10 years following the US Census to account for population shifts and demographic changes. But for political reasons, Texas lawmakers have gone ahead and redrawn their political map. And now several other states, including Missouri, are trying to do the same thing.
The NAACP is suing the State of Missouri to stop this action, calling it an “unconstitutional redistricting process” and a “blatant effort to silence Black voters and strip them of their fundamental rights.”
In Missouri’s 5th Congressional District, where I live, the clear aim of this gerrymandering is to dilute the voting power of Black and brown communities instead of letting us choose leaders who reflect our values. This isn’t just politics as usual. It’s a calculated assault on democracy and a power grab for an elite few.
As these attacks target communities of color, we’re witnessing the systematic disenfranchisement of people who’ve fought hardest for economic justice and workers’ rights. These same corporate-backed lawmakers recently repealed guaranteed sick days for more than 700,000 workers, including me and my coworkers.
My community deserves a voice in choosing our representation instead of having politicians strip it away—politicians who care more about protecting themselves instead of the people they were elected to represent.
A couple years ago, I got sick with what I thought was the flu. I didn’t have health insurance, so I couldn’t see a doctor. I stayed home from my shift at Taco Bell to protect my coworkers and customers from a potentially contagious illness. I was already falling behind on rent after management cut my hours prior to getting sick, and taking time to recover was the final straw. I missed $450—over half my rent. I came home from work to an eviction notice. My son Rashaad and I lost our home.
As a parent, few things are more heartbreaking than not being able to care for your children properly. Had I been able to take a few days off while still getting paid, we could have stayed housed. I couldn’t help getting sick, but the greedy corporation I worked for chose to abandon me as soon as I stopped making them rich.
If I had paid sick days, that wouldn’t happen. And ironically enough, I previously helped win paid sick days through a ballot initiative. Despite promises to respect the will of the people, Missouri politicians sided with big business over working families and overturned our right to paid leave. By gutting this policy, these corporate-backed politicians didn’t just force workers like me to go to work sick—they stole money from our pockets and food from our cupboards.
This redistricting scheme is clearly part of a two-pronged plan to suppress voter participation and double down on attacking the rights of working people. In fact, they’re using the same special session they’ve called to pass redistricting to also destroy a 115-year old ballot initiative process in our state constitution that won us—across party lines—paid leave, Medicaid expansion, and restored abortion rights.
But working people like me don’t back down when our lives are on the line. We stay committed to the fight for our rights, from the streets, to the strike line, to the statehouse. My community deserves a voice in choosing our representation instead of having politicians strip it away—politicians who care more about protecting themselves instead of the people they were elected to represent.
We were already living in modern-day economic slavery. Now they’re trying to put us in political slavery too. But we won’t let them. Across this country, working people will not be silenced or divided. Our political leaders need to stop trying to rig the rules and let the people decide who represents us.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Choosing Rahm Emanuel as DNC Chair Would Drag the Party Backwards
If Emanuel ends up in the top DNC spot, the message will be that wealthy power brokers have fully recaptured the party.
Nov 21, 2024
If the Democratic National Committee is trying to find a new leader proficient at alienating Black voters, it couldn’t do better than Rahm Emanuel.
Emanuel has indicated in recent days that he’s interested in the job. If he goes for it at the party’s upcoming meeting, much of the old Democratic guard is likely to back him, setting up an intra-party brawl.
Last week, David Axelrod served as a digital advance man for his former Obama White House colleague, posting that “Dems need a strong and strategic party leader, with broad experience in comms, fundraising, and winning elections,” while touting Emanuel as just the man for the job: “Dude knows how to fight and win!”
The Democratic National Committee should not choose for its chair a pugnacious bully who relishes fighting with the party’s most loyal constituencies and committed activists.
In terms of well-connected power-brokering, Emanuel’s ties with Democratic elites and corporate donors have been second to none. And he can boast an impressive political resume—senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, congressman from Illinois, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Democrats’ 2006 sweep, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, and White House chief of staff for Barack Obama, before becoming mayor of Chicago in 2011.
But his eight-year record as mayor could trip up Emanuel if he runs for DNC chair. Long before leaving office in 2019, Emanuel had fallen into disrepute. By the end of 2015, a poll found that his approval rating among Chicago residents had sunk to 18%. No wonder he decided not to run for a third term.
Emanuel stands out at provoking bitter enmity from Black people, crucial voters in the Democratic Party base.
He earned notoriety for the cover-up of a video showing how Chicago police killed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald one night in October 2014. For 13 months, during Emanuel’s campaign for reelection, his administration suppressed a ghastly dashboard-camera video showing the death of McDonald, an African American who was shot 16 times by a police officer while walking away from the officer. (A jury later convicted the officer of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery.)
Memories of Emanuel’s malfeasance have remained vivid. In 2020, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) expressed a widely held view when she tweeted: “Rahm Emanuel helped cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald. Covering up a murder is disqualifying for public leadership.”
Last weekend, amid reports that Emanuel was weighing a bid for DNC chair, Ocasio-Cortez denounced him as a symptom of what ails the party: “There is a disease in Washington of Democrats who spend more time listening to the donor class than working people. If you want to know the seed of the party’s political crisis, that’s it.”
Longtime Chicago journalist and activist Delmarie Cobb wrote a scathing assessment of his mayoral record in 2021. While mentioning that Emanuel “closed 50 public schools in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods,” Cobb also pointed out that “he closed six of 12 mental health clinics in these communities.” She added: “Now, who needs access to mental health care more than Chicago’s Black and brown residents who are underserved, underemployed, and under constant threat of violence?”
Emanuel’s response to the McDonald killing was emblematic of his arrogant leadership method, routinely clashing with the basic interests of racial minorities and the non-affluent. When Emanuel was nearing the end of his last term, The Nation magazine summed up his term this way: “The outgoing mayor’s legacy will be defined by austerity, privatization, displacement, gun violence, and police brutality.”
It’s fitting that Axelrod is leading the charge for Emanuel to win the top post at the DNC. Both of them were well-compensated for providing services to the giant Exelon Corporation, a public utility with the nation’s largest set of nuclear power reactors. In fact, Emanuel “helped create the company through a corporate merger in 2000 while working as an investment banker,” The New York Times reported.
During that stint as an investment bank director—after leaving the Clinton White House and before entering Congress—Emanuel used his connections to make $18 million in just two-and-a-half years. It’s that kind of coziness with economic elites that has caused Democrats’ appeals for working-class votes to ring hollow.
A frequent refrain at Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign rallies was “We won’t go back!” But if Emanuel ends up as the DNC chair, the message will be quite the opposite—signaling that wealthy power brokers have fully recaptured the party.
As Emanuel’s days are numbered in his position as ambassador to Japan, the chance to become chair of the DNC might be too tempting to pass up. Shortly after President Joe Biden nominated him for the diplomatic role, Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke wrote that the idea was “laughably absurd.” As mayor, Huppke recalled, “Emanuel was, as he always has been in public life, a pugnacious bully.”
The Democratic National Committee should not choose for its chair a pugnacious bully who relishes fighting with the party’s most loyal constituencies and committed activists.
Keep ReadingShow Less
NAACP Joins Growing Chorus Demanding Biden Halt Arms Shipments to Israel
"The NAACP calls on President Biden to draw the red line and indefinitely end the shipment of weapons and artillery to the state of Israel," said Derrick Johnson, the civil rights group's CEO.
Jun 06, 2024
Citing Israel's killing of over 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza and its defiance of a World Court order to stop attacking Rafah, the NAACP on Wednesday joined the hundreds of human rights and civil society organizations urging the Biden administration to halt weapons transfers to Israel.
The leading U.S. civil rights group noted Israel's defiance of the International Court of Justice's May 24 order to stop attacking the southern Gaza city of Rafah and the Israel Defense Force's (IDF) May 26 bombing of a refugee encampment there that killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians, including many women and children.
"The total death toll of Gazans has reached over 36,000 with another 81,000 injured," the NAACP said. "Nearly 500 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 117 children, have also been killed."
NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson acknowledged the "tragedy" of October 7, when an attack by Hamas-led militants left more than 1,100 Israelis and others dead—at least some of whom were killed by Israeli fire—and over 240 others taken as hostages.
"It is our hope that those with loved ones still in captivity are reunited as expeditiously as possible," he said in a statement, adding that "Hamas must return the hostages and stop all terrorist activity."
"The Middle East conflict will only be resolved when the U.S. government and international community take action, including limiting access to weapons used against civilians," Johnson stressed. "The NAACP calls on President [Joe] Biden to draw the red line and indefinitely end the shipment of weapons and artillery to the state of Israel and other states that supply weapons to Hamas and other terrorist organizations."
That red line has repeatedly shifted. In March, Biden agreed that any Israeli invasion of Rafah—where around 1.5 million Palestinians forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza were sheltering alongside local residents at the time—would constitute a "red line."
Last month, as Israeli forces invaded Rafah, Biden qualified his red line by saying it would only be crossed in the event of a "major" assault on the city. Israeli forces have blasted their way to the heart of the city since then, killing and wounding at least hundreds of civilians. More than 1 million people have fled Rafah, according to United Nations officials.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken then denied that Biden had drawn any red line in Rafah, telling NBC News "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker on May 12 that "we don't talk about red lines when it comes to Israel."
Democratic strategists are worried about Biden losing Black votes over his complicity in the Gaza carnage. Polling shows Biden's support among Black Americans has dropped significantly since 2020, as it has among Muslim Americans and others concerned about Palestine. According to a Zeteo/Data for Progress survey published last month, a majority of Democratic voters of all races believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Citing an interview it conducted with Johnson, Reuters reported Thursday that "the NAACP's decision to speak out was driven in part by young Black Americans horrified by the images of dead Palestinian civilians."
"It's raising a lot of questions around why our tax dollars are being used to harm civilians," Johnson said.
The NAACP joins at least hundreds of other organizations calling on Biden to suspend U.S. arms shipments or military aid to Israel. More than 1,000 Black pastors representing hundreds of thousands of congregants from coast to coast have also demanded that Biden push Israel for a cease-fire.
On Tuesday, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, a group that has not historically taken a stand on the Israel-Palestine issue, implored Biden to immediately "stop providing offensive weapons to the Israeli military."
"Not acting on your own red lines, combined with the Israeli government's promise to continue to violate them, will further erode your viability as a candidate in a race where every vote will matter," asserted Jamie Beran, the group's CEO.
Palestine defenders welcomed the NAACP's call—even if it came so late.
"Glad to see NAACP and Derrick Johnson join our demand for Biden to halt all arms transfers to Israel," said Mohammed Khader, policy manager at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. "Israel is using U.S. weapons to commit grave atrocities in Gaza, including on Black/Afro-Palestinians. Hope to see more legacy institutions and other civil rights groups join us."
Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American human rights attorney who co-organized and took part in the 2008 and 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotillas—the latter of which was attacked by Israeli forces, who killed 10 activists—lamented in a social media post that "the NAACP has been shamefully silent for [the] last eight months."
But welcoming the group's call to halt arms shipments, Arraf added that "this should be a stark message to Biden that support for Israel may hurt him among Black voters" come November.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular