The line, now drawn.

I spent last week watching redistricting in action

In his recent oral arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts described Louisiana’s newly defunct 6th Congressional District as a snake, a caustic nod to the way it wound across the state, spanning some 200 miles connecting parts of Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Alexandria, and Lafayette.

(We’ve been describing it as a sash, but why quibble?)

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

District 6 is now gone, erased by new lines drawn by a familiar hand, a voting map created after a marathon legislative session last week at the Louisiana State Capitol. The Roberts Court ruled that the district, one of Louisiana’s two majority Black districts, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and sent it back to the state to address. Address it they did. The subsequent hearing and public testimony were rescheduled, cynically, many concluded, from Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. the night before, preventing hundreds of voters from attending on previously arranged buses.

And yet, hundreds did get there in time, lively and prepared, and lined up to speak until nearly 5 a.m. Spending hours listening to them from an overflow room was a poignant experience, like watching a play unfold in multiple acts, even if in their minds, the tragedy was foretold.

Just two days later, the State Senate affirmed the new map in a party-line vote in a somber, performative hearing that felt like watching a funeral.

I spent the better part of last week in Louisiana, where I have been traveling regularly since March. At this point, I’ve been to the Capitol often enough that some legislators, advocates, and even security have started to recognize me by face or name. It’s a rich and rewarding way to be a reporter, despite the fraught circumstances. When we launched the Draw the Line podcast project to focus on Louisiana, Callais, and the unique design problem that is democracy in the U.S., I was worried it would be an uphill battle to win the public’s attention.

Now, with an unprecedented mobilization of voting rights activists in play around the country, I’m also worried about other things.

I spent two days driving across what was once District 6. It contains a bit of everything that is beautiful, historic, and strange about Louisiana and its Red River. For one, it was the launch pad for so much joyful noise: gospel, early rockabilly, with Cajun and Zydeco versions of the Delta blues thrown in for good measure.

But much of it is also home to Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, an 85-mile stretch of land with some 200 petrochemical and fossil-fuel production plants. The area produces about 25% of the U.S.’s petrochemical products; it also experiences pollution that causes respiratory illnesses, maternal and newborn health issues, and related cancers that are more than seven times the national average.

A lack of representation hits different when you see it up close.

Since I returned, there has been another march on Selma and widespread calls for “a new playbook” on civil rights in the U.S. What once felt like an exercise in understanding democracy as it is now has become a chance to document the rise of something new, in somewhat real time.

The podcast is coming soon. I’m particularly grateful to the many players on the ground who have opened their hearts and minds to help me understand what’s at stake and how the messy business of coalition-building with your neighbors.

W.E.B. Du Bois liked to say, “as the South goes, so goes the nation,” a slogan that is currently making the rounds on many signs in many meetings in Louisiana. But he also wrote in his 1953 book Black Reconstruction in America, “War and especially civil strife leave terrible wounds. It is the duty of humanity to heal them.”

Ellen McGirt
Editor-in-Chief

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This edition of The Observatory was edited by Rachel Paese.

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