SPLC says: ‘We are here!’

By DeAnna Tisdale Johnson

Jackson Advocate Publisher

To continue the momentum of the Day of Action for voting rights, where thousands convened in downtown Jackson on May 20, 2026, organizers and activists are diligently working to host a series of community events over the next few months. 

One of those organizers is Waikinya Clanton, director of the MS office of Southern Poverty Law Center. Clanton was one of the resounding voices who galvanized the crowd that gathered in the Jackson Convention Complex in the events surrounding the march. Her clarion call at the rally, “We are here! We are standing on business…the business of voting rights,” isn’t just empty words. Clanton is energized to continue the work to keep the momentum of that day up to November’s election and beyond. 

Clanton was inspired by the number of people who decided to take an active part in having their voices heard. “We saw more than 6,500 people descend on the Capital City. People said, ‘Not on my watch.’ That was really powerful. It led to a ripple effect. People are rising up and they’re pushing back against these systems that have long been designed to suppress people’s voices and their say.”

“The work doesn’t stop for us,” she continues. “These series of community hearings that we’re gonna be implementing, from North Mississippi all the way down to the Gulf Coast are critically important because there’s so much misinformation out right now around voting rights [and] redistricting – what it means [and] what it doesn’t mean for people.”

These community hearings start in June and will also be paired with teach-ins in late July and early August. Clanton says that it’s imperative that people have all the tools necessary to make good decisions at the polls in November. She states three things that are important for voters to know.

Knowledge is power.

“Voters need to gain as much information as [they] can in these next several months because a lot of things are going to be coming fast. And so we want to always make sure that we are providing the community with the best possible resources on everything that’s happening. Whether it’s the impacts of Callais vs Louisiana or the SHIELD Act – which is also gonna have a direct impact on voters here in Mississippi – we want people to know, and we want them to share that information with other people that they know. Each one needs to reach one.”

Speak up.

“The other thing that I really want people to do is to continue to make sure that their voices are heard. Tap in, tell your story, and connect with organizations who are doing similar work to this mission of making sure that everyone has as much information as they can around voting and around voting processes and procedures. But also volunteer. We need poll workers desperately. Particularly in this moment, we need to make sure that we’re protecting people from misinformation and disinformation and that we have people who are trained, qualified, and trustworthy to work the polls.”

Vote Early.

“If you can, vote early because this election matters. Every election matters, but this one in particular, because they’re looking for every reason to count people out. And the best way to ensure that you’re able to vote when you show up is by checking your voter registration.”

The Day of Action started as a rallying cry against the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision (Callais vs Louisiana) to drastically roll back Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The origins of this decision date back to 2022. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of the Louisiana NAACP and other civil rights groups who stated that the Louisiana redistricting plan drawn from the 2020 Census was in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (Robinson v. Ardoin). This required the state to add a second congressional district in which Black voters had an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice, according to the ACLU. 

In 2024, 12 white plaintiffs stated that the newly drawn Louisiana district violated the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (Callais v. Landry). The case made it all the way up to the Supreme Court this year and because of the court’s decision, Section 2 – which “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups” including African Americans, people of Spanish heritage, American Indians, Asian Americans, and Alaska Natives – is now directly limited by the scope of the 14th Amendment. As a result, states, especially southern states, are taking this ruling as a chance to redistrict in a way that significantly hinders Black and minority voters from obtaining adequate representation. 

The march and rally showed solidarity from people across the Deep South. A pivotal moment for Clanton happened when she caught the eye of an older woman in the audience. “I recall that there was this sweet lady in the front of the crowd of the rally once we came into the convention center,” Clanton relays. “She was sitting there in her wheelchair. She said she had come all the way from Arkansas to Mississippi to stand with the people of this state who were willing to stand up and fight back for ourselves. And I thought that was such a powerful moment to know that the fight that we were in wasn’t just about Mississippi, but it was about the Collective South, the Collective Deep South. Those of us who’ve been long overlooked and overshadowed by everyone else in this nation.”

“I think a lot of people felt like everything that we had been working for and striving for here in America had now been put in extreme jeopardy,” expresses Clanton. “It had been overshadowed by this real overt sense of racism and bigotry and hate that we thought we had advanced beyond. There are people who have fought and bled and died for visibility in their humanity and their civility in this country so now you see an uprising of their descendants.”

With the addition of statewide community hearings and teach-ins, the fight will continue. Clanton notes that “being vigilant about your voice is equivalent to being vigilant about your vote. All of that together puts us in a really great position to make sure that we show up.”

To learn more, visit https://www.splcenter.org/states/mississippi/.