Ground Zero

22:22 to Montgomery. In Selma, we had a prayer service and then we exited the historical Tabernacle Baptist Church and made the one-mile trek tracing the footsteps of our courageous ancestors. And we marched from Tabernacle Baptist Church to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I was blown away by several things. We were asked by Pastor Mike McBride, who was the visionary and architect of the program, that we would march in silence, listen to the ancestors, reflect on the sacrifices that had been made for us. I did that. As I was walking, I could not help but note that in 2026 in Selma, we had a police escort.

23:22 In 1965, the police were the terrorists who beat, bloodied our ancestors. In 2026, I'm marching to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in silence and noted that the police escort was black. now you're not impressed but that's a long way from 61 years ago and we marched to the Edmund Pettus Bridge and we arrived there and we prayed and then we went from Selma to Montgomery passing through Lowndes County look it up if you don't know what that means we arrived in Montgomery and there we had the rally on the steps of the old capital of the Confederacy that was catty corner to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor. It was a powerful and meaningful moment that helped me and fueled what I'll share in the remaining moments before we're blessed with the brilliance of Demetria McCain. I want to just share a few things with you. I'm going to jump right to the third slide because I want to make sure we know here in Texas that Texas helped to set the disenfranchisement table that is going on in this country. In order to get one congressional seat in Texas now, it takes what? 430,000 residents. That's what it is across the country. But if you want to get one congressional seat for Latinos, it's going to take 1.2 million residents. That means it takes three times as many Latino voters to get a congressional seat as white people. The value of the Latino vote in Texas is one third. But then come on home to Oak Cliff, that's our hood. And if you're black in Texas,

25:30 it now takes 2 million people to get one congressional seat. That means the value of a black vote is one-fifth of white people. We didn't have lost ground because at least in the Constitution, we were three-fifths. And now we've been demoted to one-fifth in a democracy that's about to celebrate 250 years of the Declaration of Independence, which was precluded by a cry of give me liberty or give me death. And taxation without representation is tyranny.

26:13 And now we got one, our vote is one-fifth of whites. That's taxation without representation. because SCOTUS, the Supreme Court, the prostitutes of their orange pimp, they sided with the fascist. The Supreme Court turned, and you'll unpack this better than me, the remedy into a violation. And so you got Shelby County versus Holder, Rucho versus Common Causes, Brenovich versus the DNC, Louisiana versus Calais. And again, I'm not going to go through all of this because we got the real legal person here. But y'all, all of this started in 1982 at least when the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Roberts, he was appointed to be a part of the Reagan administration and he immediately began using everything he learned to overturn the 65 Voting Rights Act.

27:18 That's who we have as the chief justice right now. Someone who has spent from 1982 to 2026 trying to overturn the Voting Rights Act. Y'all, they play a long game of chess where they are looking at moves decades down the road. And so, given all of that, I just want to remind you that voter suppression hits home. Five Democratic-held congressional seats were targeted by the 2025 Mid-Texas gerrymandered racist remap because of the fact that the governor of this state was brown-nosing with his orange pimp, and his orange pimp said, give me five seats. And Governor Brown-nosed said, I'll get you five seats. And in August, we were all over the state.

28:14 Arlington, Austin, all over the state. And we testified in hearings that we were against redistricting mid-decade. Senator West, they had hearings where they did not hear us. People we elect didn't hear us. And so now you have at least 30. Oh, got to go to March to show you how this thing started working already. At least 30,000, I think it's more, Dallas County voters were redirected on March 3rd. During the primary, 1,200 Dallas County ballots cast between 7 and 9 p.m. in that chaos ultimately were not counted. So the question becomes, okay, we name in the moment, how do we frame a movement? And here's the good news.

29:10 We are the cavalry. We are the solution. Because we've always been. We've always been. We believed in democracy in a nation that refused to practice it. We believe in democracy. So I give you a few things that I've done. Framing a movement, short game and long term. And long game, Freedom Summer 2.0. In 64, our ancestors went to Mississippi under the threat of lynching and terror. Some died, Schwerner, Goodman, and Cheney. And they go to Mississippi and had Freedom Summer where they educated the populace. They organized and they mobilized.

30:05 And by the summer, Fannie Lou Hamer went to Atlantic City during the Democratic Convention and stole morally the heart of that convention. Fannie Lou Hamer did that. But please don't forget Freedom Summer that led up to that. And so I'm proposing that we have, watch this, civics education and voter registration and mobilization throughout the state of Texas. I'm so proud of Pastor Ayers and Minister Edwin Robinson. They just got back from Beaumont, Texas with Freedom Summer 2.0. We've got to do it. Understanding that local power is the answer to a fascist national takeover. Where they crack and pack, we energize and mobilize. So they're doing the cracking and the packing when it comes to, and please look that up because I ain't got time to unpack it, but they're cracking and packing.

31:06 So they've packed District 30. They packed it. It's our district, but they've cracked other districts to make sure that our voting power is impotent in that particular district. So wherever they crack and pack, we energize and mobilize. I like what Roland Martin is saying. We've got to make sure that there is at least 70% voter turnout in black communities throughout the state of Texas.

31:34 Royce West has told me repeatedly, he said, Texas has more black people than any state in this country. Texas, any other state got more black people than Texas. What we got to show for it. we've got to have at least 70 percent of us turning out and if every black church said if you're going to join this church you got to have a voter registration card if every black church said we are going to make sure that on super sunday you vote and we're going to check you the sunday after to make sure that you did vote if we had black church folk voting alone we're going to get to at least 60%. Congregations, community groups, divine nine activists should adopt precincts, train at least five poll chaplains per congregation.

32:35 Why? Because Trump has already asked Abbott. Abbott gave it to him. For the roles, the roles of Texas voters are now in Washington, D.C. They're already planning on showing up at the polls in November. So we're going to show up. All right, you bring your peeps, we're going to bring five of ours. And we're going to stand there as preachers and people of faith and offer a moral presence. Voter roles vigilance. Every other month, we ought to run quarterly registration checks and build rapid responses lists for voters purged or moved without notice because they're purging. They're purging. And then have Know Your Rights Sundays. If you're going to have Women's Day and Youth Day and Pastor's Anniversary, we ought to have a Know Your Rights Sunday. Pulpit to policy advocacy.

33:34 Now, I catch a lot of flack because people say I'm political in the pulpit. Catch a lot of that. I get it. I hear it. So don't worry if you say, oh, he found out. Yeah, I've been hearing about it for over 30 years. And here's the deal. Pastor Ayers, stand up one more time and turn around. Let them see your shirt because it says justice ain't political. It's biblical. Voting rights must be enshrined in the Constitution. Here's our vision, long game. We got to have a long game where we basically say, you know, we're tired of this. We need voting rights enshrined in the Constitution with a constitutional amendment. In the meantime, we must pass, we must push Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. If you ain't going to do that, don't come to our church on Sunday. I'm asking all of my colleagues, don't come to our church on Sunday if you ain't down with enshrining voting rights and voter protection in the Constitution.

34:34 And if you're not about passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Reverend Jesse Jackson said upon graduating from high school, students should receive a diploma in one hand and a voter registration card in the other hand. And then, and I don't know how, Royce, I ain't talked to you, but we got to expand the Supreme Court. We got to expand the Supreme Court. Right now, it's a hot mess, and we got to expand the Supreme Court. Ellie Mastall, brilliant brother, says we need 20 Supreme Court justices. Got to have 21 as far as I'm concerned. And so, work to expand the Supreme Court and expand the cap on the House of Representatives. If you're going to be the house of the people, if you're going to be the house of the people, then you need to represent the people when it comes to numbers. I close with this.

35:28 Reverend Jesse Jackson was talking to Rodney Ellis, and Rodney was complaining. He said, man, Jesse, these folk keep coming for us. And Jesse said, that's a good thing. And he said, why is that a good thing? He said, because in football, the only person they're trying to stop and tackle is the one who's got the ball. Evidently, this country knows we got the ball. Question is, what are we going to do with the ball? Would y'all receive now this super bad sister who is brilliant, who can break it down like it should be broken down? I'm talking about Demetria McCain, who is the director of policy of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.