Lawmakers to convene for special session to redraw state supreme court districts at building with racist history
When Mississippi lawmakers met in 1861 and voted to secede from the union in an effort to continue enslaving people, they did so in what is now known as the Old Capitol Museum. From 1839 to 1903, lawmakers met at a building that witnessed some of the state’s most racist history.
And now, on 20 May, when members of Mississippi’s house convene for a special session to redraw state supreme court districts, they will do so at the Old Capitol, ostensibly because of renovations in the house chamber.
“And now they plan to do it in the Old Capitol, the same building where Mississippi voted to secede from the Union over slavery, and where white supremacist delegates crafted the 1890 Constitution that stripped Black citizens of their voting rights and ushered in decades of poll taxes, literacy tests and racial terror,” Taylor said in a statement. “Rep Kabir Karriem is right. It is a slap in the face to the 1.2 million African Americans in this state. It is also a confession. They are returning to the scene of the crime to try and finish the job.”
The census is in 4 years. If red states in total have population decline numbering in the millions we can make real change. If you or anyone you know is in a red state, they need to vote with their tax money by relocating. It’s tough but doable. My family did it back during the great migration when they literally had nothing. It gave our family a better way of life for decades. I don’t see how anyone can stay when your freedoms are being taken away so rapidly at the state level. And now blue votes in red states are pointless. That leaves very few options for individuals to make any impact. At least in a blue state their vote will go towards the electoral college. If movement in this happens red states will go into complete panic and change ideologies because they’ll have no future without progressing to the modern world.
Realistically red state depopulation is not happening by next census. There has already been substantial net migration towards red states since the last one and it would be quite a tall order to go back to the 2020 status quo in time let alone to substantially reverse those migrations. And the regressive policies of red states aren’t unknown; most people making those moves just consider them less as important than the housing affordability angle as evidenced by them still making those moves even as many are getting more extreme in policies. In theory it would be easy to game the electoral college if people moved in organized ideological ways but most people are moving for mundane kitchen table reasons rather than for their rights and ideology.