U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures made no bones about his predicament at a Montgomery Rally Thursday as he fights for reelection to a district drastically reshaped by Republican gerrymandering.
“Momma didn’t raise no fool,” Figures told the packed crowd at Legacy Hall. “But she didn’t raise no coward either.”
Voters elected Figures under a map drawn by federal court order after Republican-drawn districts were found to be racially discriminatory. But actions by the U.S. Supreme Court this summer allowed Republicans to return the map to its previous iteration, shrinking the Black voting age population and carving Figures’ home out of the district.
“We know what they have done to our district,” Figures said. “They have tried to make this district one that we cannot win; where they can predeterminate outcome … They took Mobile out of the district and they said ‘Oh. your home base is gone.’ I said, ‘Really?’ Because last time I checked, they had plenty of real estate that I could move to in Montgomery and that’s exactly what I did.”
U.S. Senate Democratic Minority Leader Cory Booker and U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell joined Figures on the stage, energizing the crowd to get out the vote and overwhelm the attempted gerrymander by turning out more voters.
The trio had earlier in the day rallied in Dothan, where Booker’s great-grandfather was born.
“Most of us Black folks in the North come from the South,” Booker said to applause.
Booker also told the story of a white attorney in New Jersey who saw the television broadcast of what happened in Selma, and was moved to assist int he fair housing movement in New Jersey. Years later, that movement helped Booker’s family secure a house in a formerly all-white neighborhood after initially facing discrimination by realtors.
“Everybody here has it within their power to redeem the dream of America, and it’s all around this country we are realizing as we march towards November 3 that we are still democracy—and in a democracy, the power of the people is greater than the people in power.”
