By CLUE Board of Directors
Proposition 50 Endorsement: The Election Rigging and Response Act
We, the members of the CLUE Board, endorse Proposition 50, the Election Rigging and Response Act, for California’s Statewide Special Election on November 4. As members of an interfaith social justice organization, we endorse the measure from our conviction that the protection of democratic institutions and values is a fundamental issue of justice.
If approved by voters, Proposition 50 would replace existing congressional district maps with maps drawn this year by the California legislature. The change is a response to an unprecedented mid-census redistricting in Texas, a redistricting that resulted in the loss of five predominantly Democratic seats – and the consequent suppression of electoral voices of the many voters of color in those districts. The California measure, if passed, would authorize the new California maps through 2030, at which time California’s independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission would resume the drawing of maps.
We adhere to the principle that our government is a government of the people and by the people – and that it must function only with the consent of the governed. We recognize that, historically, conflicts over the right to vote have been at the center of struggles over the nature of American democracy itself – struggles that have challenged the nation to fulfill its promise of becoming a truly multiracial democracy.
Since, as members of the CLUE Board, we hold as sacred our responsibility to stand with low-wage workers and immigrants, we insist on inclusiveness as a core value of the Beloved Community. Every person, we hold, is entitled to a place at the table – a place and voice in the co-creation of our collective destinies.
To suppress any person’s vote, by gerrymandering or any other means, is an act of injustice insofar as it violates that person’s right to participate fully in the political and social life of the nation. Insofar as legislative imbalances in one or more parts of the country affect policy making throughout the country, we view it as entirely appropriate that California voters have the right to redress such imbalances as affect us all as a nation. We do so recognizing the necessity for the kinds of fair and impartial redistricting processes conducted by California’s Citizens’ Redistricting Commission, and we look to the day not only when California returns to those processes, but when all other states adopt them as well. As Dr. Martin Luther King eloquently declared over half a century ago, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”