The ‘State of the People Power Tour’ comes to the Jackson area

Community activist Angela Rye says Mississippi was chosen in order to amplify the issues that impact the Black community - a group that makes up a significant portion of the Southern region’s population. 

“Mississippi finds itself in the bottom half of so many things, whether you're dealing with health care or obesity or education or so many issues,” she said. “We want to make sure that our people know that we will never give up on the South. We know that more than 60% of black people reside in the South, and Jackson is a key part of that.”

Rye says Jackson was the ninth stop of a 12-city, nationwide tour.

“We came to Jackson because folks voted on it,” she said. “We had a convening of black leaders and talked about potentially going out and doing a tour. So many of our folks are like, what are we going to do in this environment where we're attacked on every side? We said, you know what? We need to get into the streets, go into the community and really talk to our folks about all of the amazing work that people are already doing.”

Although many of the events of the tour highlighted the need to discuss federal policies impacting the Black community, Rye says the events were not political rallies.

“I think that what's different is this is not a protest,” she said. “This is an invitation to come in. For black folks, the summer is family reunion season. So I don't think it's a mistake that it ended up being a family reunion feel.”

Organizers of the event did use the occasion to try to construct a policy agenda that could be beneficial to Black communities throughout the country.

“Part of that is also through our black papers,” Rye said. “It's a policy initiative where we're laying out agendas that matter to black folks, and that'll be the basis of something else that includes demands and policy change that we want to see everywhere, from the local level to the state to the federal level.”

Other national and local leaders also conducted panels at Tougaloo focused on community engagement, women’s rights and the voices of youth leaders. 

Elizabeth Booker Houston, a lawyer and podcast host from Memphis, asked second district Congressman Bennie Thompson about the role of the Democratic Party in the south. 

“Since we're here in Jackson, Mississippi, and a as a black Southerner myself, I want to talk about the fact that a lot of black folks in the South feel like the Democratic Party has left behind the South, feel like the South is not a place to even try to fight for, because this is just MAGA country,” she said.

Thompson acknowledged that his party had issues.

“We need some work. We need a lot of work,” he said. “It's part of what happens in the South, is they count our numbers, but they don't count our intellect.”

Although many of the discussions held during the tour explored issues unique to Mississippi, many of the panels during the tour discussed the regional impacts of the Trump administration’s policies. NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson says this has importance even outside of the Black community. 

“If you cut SNAP benefits, that impacts farmers,” he said. “If you cut Medicaid by $800 billion, that means individuals who are in nursing homes will have to find somewhere else to go. That's not a race issue. That's not a gender issue.”

Youth engagement was another major theme the tour tried to tackle. Vicksburg native Paul Winfield II is the chair and founder of the political action committee, GenZ Forward.  

“I think that the impact of young people can never, ever be negated,” he said. “We see so much stuff about young people, about our futures, whether it's Medicaid cuts, food stamp cuts, Social Security probably being solvent by the time I turn 65. And of course, the way that they're changing student loans and making it more difficult for people my age and people younger than me to get a good education in college, whether it's a two year or four year or graduate school.”

Waikinya Clanton, the Mississippi state director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, says the tour was also a reclamation of Mississippi’s importance within the legacy of civil rights.

“Jackson is just kind of like our representative when it comes to the battles and the struggles of Mississippi,” she said. “But in every community in all 82 counties across the state, people are being faced with just the ramifications of this self-righteousness that we are experiencing here as a country. I just think that what was beautiful for me today was to see hundreds of Mississippians come from all across the state to be a part of this moment, to say that they won't go silently into the night, that they will stand up for their rights.”

The tour will end in Baltimore in commemoration on June 19, or Juneteenth.