Excerpt from The Contrarian

 The response to Callais must be just as ferocious as the Supreme Court’s assault on voting rights. This is not simply an issue for the Congressional Black Caucus or the Democratic Party or one racial group. “This is an American crisis dressed up in colorblind language,” Brown reminded us. We do not have a true democracy when millions of Americans cannot elect representatives of their choice, or when a virtually all-white ruling class has a lock on office.

In the short run, Brown and other movement champions will organize massive voter registration drives, economic pressure campaigns against corporations that align themselves with White supremacy, and a voluminous communications effort to explain the stakes to all Americans. Engaging and turning out millions of new voters is the key to halting America’s descent into authoritarian, Jim Crow MAGA rule.

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Beyond November, Brown implores Americans to think big to meet the moment. “I am asking us to stop being incrementalists. Incrementalism assumes a system that operates in good faith. We do not have one.” Instead, she explained, “I am asking us to be the architects. The people who understand that we are building for a hundred years, not for one election or news cycle.”

She proposes, for example, “proportional representation with multimember districts and ranked choice voting, so that Black voters at 30% of a state’s population reliably elect 30% of its representatives.” In other words: “No districts to gerrymander. No maps for the Court to strike down.” Other proposals include election of the president by popular vote (via the National Popular Vote Compact), same day registration, a federal department dedicated to democracy protection, and Supreme Court reform. “We are the architects now, “ Brown reminds us. “Pick up the tools so that we become the founders of what is next to come.”

Callais is a calamity, but not one we must accept as the new normal. The MAGA court does not get to define American democracy. Their judicial abomination can and must be the impetus for Americans to seize control of their own future. As Janai Nelson put it: “It has always been the ordinary Americans who have bent the arc of this country toward justice — yes, on a bridge in Selma and at so many other places throughout history: a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina; a shirtwaist factory in New York City; a bar in Greenwich Village.” She and other civil rights veteran know that “collective power — the power of the people — will always be greater than the people in power.” She implore us not to “let Louisiana v Callais be the end of the story, the final chapter in a short-lived saga of a fledgling multiracial democracy.” The only question is whether we have the will to use our collective power.

Brown, Nelson, and their civil rights coalition partners remain undaunted, unafraid, and undeterred despite MAGA justices and lawmakers’ quest to undo 60 years of progress in achieving pluralistic democracy. They understand that mass political action is the answer to judicial Jim Crow and a reactionary movement rooted in White supremacy.

We salute the civil rights activists and “architects,” and urge all of you to join the movement to bring about a “new birth of freedom” that delivers on the promise of pluralistic democracy.