We'll always have Mississippi, it appears. Whenever things start looking bad in this country, Mississippi will come along with something that will convince us that matters are utterly bleak. From Mississippi Today:
If House Bill 1020 becomes law later this session, the white chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court would appoint two judges to oversee a new district within the city—one that includes all of the city’s majority-white neighborhoods, among other areas. The white state attorney general would appoint four prosecutors, a court clerk, and four public defenders for the new district. The white state public safety commissioner would oversee an expanded Capitol Police force, run currently by a white chief. The appointments by state officials would occur in lieu of judges and prosecutors being elected by the local residents of Jackson and Hinds County—as is the case in every other municipality and county in the state. Mississippi’s capital city is 80% Black and home to a higher percentage of Black residents than any major American city. Mississippi’s Legislature is thoroughly controlled by white Republicans, who have redrawn districts over the past 30 years to ensure they can pass any bill without a single Democratic vote. Every legislative Republican is white, and most Democrats are Black.
I trust I don't have to explain why none of these developments are coincidental, or why there are about a quintillion ways this can go horribly wrong.
For most of the debate, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba—who has been publicly chided by the white Republicans who lead the Legislature—looked down on the House chamber from the gallery. Lumumba accused the Legislature earlier this year of practicing “plantation politics” in terms of its treatment of Jackson, and of the bill that passed Tuesday, he said: “It reminds me of apartheid.”
That's only because, well, it is.
Rep. Blackmon, a civil rights leader who has a decades-long history of championing voting issues, equated the current legislation to the Jim Crow-era 1890 Constitution that was written to strip voting rights from Black Mississippians. “This is just like the 1890 Constitution all over again,” Blackmon said from the floor. “We are doing exactly what they said they were doing back then: ‘Helping those people because they can’t govern themselves.'”
Lumumba and Governor Tate Reeves have been lobbing charges at each other ever since the Jackson water system collapsed. The Mississippi state legislature, now hopelessly gerrymandered and, therefore, majority white and Republican, has weighed in on the governor's side. Things got so bad that the federal government stepped in and now the Jackson water system is run by a third-party administrator. This is reminiscent of former Governor Rick Snyder in Michigan, who liked to take away home rule from impoverished cities and towns, appointing "special masters" to oversee them because the residents couldn't be trusted with self-government. It was really for their own good, you see. Just as this power grab in Mississippi is supposed to be.
The bill was authored by Rep. Trey Lamar, a Republican whose hometown of Senatobia is 172 miles north of Jackson. It was sent to Lamar’s committee by Speaker Philip Gunn instead of a House Judiciary Committee, where similar legislation normally would be heard. “This bill is designed to make our capital city of Jackson, Mississippi, a safer place,” Lamar said, citing numerous news sources who have covered Jackson’s high crime rates. Dwelling on a long backlog of Hinds County court cases, Lamar said the bill was designed to “help not hinder the (Hinds County) court system...My constituents want to feel safe when they come here,” Lamar said, adding the capital city belonged to all the citizens of the state. “Where I am coming from with this bill is to help the citizens of Jackson and Hinds County.”
What a guy!
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
