The Fight for Voting Rights Doesn’t End Here

This week, the Supreme Court dealt another blow to Americans’ voting rights. 

In their ruling, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority gutted the Voting Rights Act– a law that ensured that communities of color could build power and have a voice when electoral maps are drawn. For decades, the Voting Rights Act ensured that communities of color could elect leaders who reflect their values and lived experiences. This ruling weakens those protections. 

The decision in Louisiana v. Callais has made it easier for extremists to draw maps that silence communities, splitting them apart or packing them together so that families find themselves in electoral districts where their concerns– like the cost of groceries, access to healthcare, or funding for schools– are ignored because they no longer have a real say in who represents them. It’s a process that North Carolinians are all too familiar with. 

North Carolina has redrawn its maps five times over the past six years. The most recent redraw was done at the request of President Trump, who wanted a personal advantage in this year’s midterms. The NC General Assembly delayed on passing a budget and has failed to fully fund public schools, but they did take the time to attack North Carolinians’ voting rights.   

But no matter how many obstacles are put in our way, North Carolinians will find a way for their voice to be heard. Every major civil rights victory in our history grew out of moments just like this one. 

It was right here in North Carolina where four brave NC A&T students took a seat at a “Whites Only” lunch counter in Greensboro, inspiring the nationwide sit-ins that helped end segregation in the United States. 

It was in Raleigh that Ella Baker formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a group which would become key to the Civil Rights Movement. 

And it was in North Carolina that a massive voting rights Supreme Court case was born. In 2016, a lawsuit against Governor Pat McCrory resulted in the Supreme Court striking down racial gerrymandering, a ruling that would protect the Voting Rights Act across the country for another ten years. 

This week was a setback, but we’ve come too far and sacrificed too much to give up now. The democracy that we’re fighting to defend was built on the work of countless people who came before us– anonymous people who fought day in and day out to move our country closer to its ideals. 

Young students who joined protests, concerned parents who wrote their representatives, union workers who led strikes, working families who knocked on doors and talked to their neighbors– we’re still benefiting from the love and sacrifice of those who came before us. It’s our turn to pay it forward.