Mississippi Republicans Want to Take Over a Majority Black City to 'Save' It
Last week, the Mississippi Senate majority—a solidly white bloc of Republicans—voted to move forward with legislation that bears an unmistakable likeness to laws from the state’s notorious Jim Crow era.
The legislation first garnered national attention as it moved through the House, because it sought to create a new and distinct criminal justice district containing all of the whitest neighborhoods within the capital city of Jackson—America’s second Blackest city—which would be overseen by an unelected and unaccountable white power base.
While the original version of HB 1020 has since been amended, purging some of its most controversial provisions, the legislation approved by the Senate still allows for a white conservative takeover of majority-Black Jackson’s courts and policing. In other words, as Mississippi-based writer and activist Makani Themba told me, there’s still plenty about the bill “that turns Jackson into a colony.”
In fact, the changes to the law seem merely aesthetic when examining how the details lay the foundation for white power seizure. Yes, the expanded Capitol zone—the “city-within-a-city” proposed by HB 1020—has been scrapped, and with it, language that would have numerically expanded the ranks of the Capitol police force.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mississippi-republicans-charge-ahead-with-jim-crow-redux?ref=wrap
= new reply since forum marked as read
"Miss Hilly" must have thought of this first.
