What we did in Memphis cannot stay in Memphis

Friends,

What an incredible day! On Friday in Memphis, we stood with candidates and clergy in a city that has carried the fight for voting rights and democracy in its bones for generations.

We learned and shared so much. Thank you for your generous support in making this happen. 

I was pleased to share some of our mission during an interview with A Better Memphis — you can watch that here.

In a matter of 48 hours following the Supreme Court’s shocking decision on the Voting Rights Act, Tennessee politicians tore up a 50‑year law so they could redraw the map mid‑decade and carve Memphis’s one majority‑Black congressional district into three pieces.

They did it, by their own admission, to create more Republican seats in Congress.

Vote Common Good brought elected officials and candidates from across the country into Memphis and gathered with Black church leaders and other faith leaders whose congregations are being sliced up on a map.

These pastors know what it feels like to be excluded, separated, and segregated so your political power shrinks. They know what it means when their people are under attack, and they show up.

We joined them to say together: this is a power grab, taking representation from some in order to benefit others.

Donate to turn our Memphis work into a victory in November >>

While the ACLU, the NAACP, and others pursue legal challenges, our work is to train and support candidates who can win in districts that were drawn to make their voters give up. 

Gerrymandering has been around since 1812, but every time in our history when more people voted than the map‑drawers expected, the outcome changed. The response to what has happened in Memphis has to be a march on the ballot box, a bigger “we” in “We the People” that MAGA politicians did not plan for.

The mid-term elections are just five months away.

We aren’t treating Memphis as just a one-day event; we’re carrying the lessons we’ve learned here with us all across the country. 

We’re staying on the road, continuing to train candidates, organizing with clergy, and calling more voters into this work so map-rigging in Tennessee and across the country doesn’t get the last word.

We’re working with faith voters to vote their values.

Will you donate today so we can keep building on what started in Memphis and carry it all the way to the ballot box this fall? Let’s grow “We the People.”

If you’ve saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:

In this together,

Doug

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