FutureNowUSA

A man named Robert LaBrant reshaped the rules of MI politics without ever being elected. He was in a room in 2011 w/ state legislators, political consultants & maps of MI cut into large squares or long and narrow shapes designed to take power from MI's black & Democratic voters.

They referred to those voters as "Dem trash" & in Nov, MI has a chance to fix what happened in 2011. Thanks to ace grassroots mobilization there's a constitutional amendment on the ballot—Proposition 2—that would take redistricting out of politician hands https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/opinion/redistricting-gerrymandering-citizens-michigan.html …

Why does that matter? Thanks to the gerrymandering, the MI House majority has been able to ignore voters and follow the “advice” of their funders — sorry, friends — at a Koch Brother-backed think tank representing a small number of corporations rather than, you know, people.

State legislators imposed emergency city managers. In Detroit, Flint & Pontiac, 1/2 of MI's black citizens had their city-level votes taken away. And the legislature eliminated straight-ticket voting — a move that a fed judge declared was designed to disenfranchise black voters.