New American Journal: Missouri Voters Fight Attacks on Citizen Initiative Rights and Democracy by Republican Legislature

When pulling up the canopy stakes in the Washington, D.C. metro area on Monday worried about the militarized occupation in the nation’s capital and heading across the Midwest as fast as possible to a political meeting here Wednesday night, nothing really prepared me for the scene where hundreds and even thousands of citizens are working together town hall style to save democracy in Missouri and potentially inspire a movement that could sweep across the country.

As the New York Times and others have been reporting on a move by Missouri Republicans in the Legislature to join those in Texas trying to build a security wall to protect President Donald Trump from a takeover of the U.S. House by Democrats in 2026, what is most likely an illegal and clearly a corrupt mid-decade effort to re-gerrymander the electoral maps to favor Republicans, what I found was another citizen movement with potentially as serious consequences, with long-term implications.

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More than 2,000 people protested at the Capitol on Wednesday, literally drowning out the voices of Senators who were about to take up the measure passed by the state House, according to a woman I met in St. Louis who attended the protest. The noise in the Capitol was so loud the Senate quickly went into recess because they could’t hear themselves speak, she said.

My arrival could not have been timed better, just in time for friends in the suburbs of St. Louis to whisk me off to a political town hall meeting where more than 500 citizens – Republicans, Democrats and independents – packed a synagogue to begin building a new grassroots movement called “Respect Missouri Voters,” beginning with a petition drive for a proposed constitutional amendment that would make it harder for state legislators to reverse or revise citizen-led initiatives already approved by voters.

You can read the full article on the New American Journal’s site here.