Local Majority Information

With the federal government firmly in the hands of the right wing, the front line in the battle to advance Democratic priorities in America has shifted to key state capitols. Progressive victories in 2018 and beyond will depend on the immediate implementation of robust state-level efforts combining grass-roots activism with strategic investments in high-potential candidates and races. The right wing is already there. Local Majority plans to fight fire with fire. In some ways, the outcome of the November 2016 election may have been inevitable. Focused on national policy over the past several decades, progressiveswho tend to be concentrated in a handful of politically friendly regions in coastal stateslargely ceded power in many states to the right wing as it took up residence under the Republican banner. The result is that 25 American states are now governed by a Republican majority or supermajority in which the right wing controls the governorship and both houses of the state legislature, sometimes with a two-thirds majority that allows for implementation of an extremist agenda with near impunity. In a number of cases, this ideology also extends to the state supreme court. This is increasingly becoming a human rights issue. Having lost their protection in Washington, our brothers and sisters in Republican-controlled states who seek basic human rights such as equal protection under the law, affordable health care, environmental justice, and the right to control their own reproduction are today more vulnerable than ever. These basic rights are under attack right now in fully one-half of our country. And the trend is not moving in the favor of liberty. Voter suppression is on the rise. We need to act now to stop this erosion of liberty affecting millions of Americans. How can state assembly races in far-flung districts affect the entire nation? In a word: gerrymandering. Every ten years the publication of the federal census triggers a redrawing of the district boundaries governing a populations representation in ...