From Minneapolis to Memphis to Mississippi

As we approach the midterm elections and the MAGA movement feels their power slipping, they are turning up the heat on their racist attacks– from terrorizing Haitian and Latino communities to the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. They do this because racial justice is bad for billionaires and bad for authoritarianism, and to drum up support in white communities with their racist lies. Racism and scapegoating have been at the core of the authoritarian movement’s strategy since the Civil Rights movement won landmark change that massively threatened capitalists and oligarchs. So it’s critical that we center racial justice, especially the movements for Black political power in the US South, in our strategies to not just win in the short term, but win the multiracial democracy that we truly need. Join SURJ in conversation with Southern political powerhouses, Rukia Lumumba and Justin Pearson, on the importance of building Southern Black political power and SURJ’s electoral plan for 2026 and the necessary work white people have to do in the upcoming midterm elections. Rukia is the co-director of the Movement for Black Lives’ Electoral Justice Project and is an abolitionist, founder of several anti-carceral, transformative justice organizations in Jackson, Mississippi, and the daughter of the late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba. Justin Pearson is currently running for US Congress in TN-09, and as a representative in the TN state legislature, he is a leader in fights for racial and environmental justice, and in 2023 led a protest against gun violence in the legislature that gained national attention. Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), is the largest organization in the country that mobilizes white communities into movements for racial and economic justice.