In response to county commissioners’ proposed, Republican-favoring district maps that will neuter Black and Latino votes (“Ghettoization?,” May 28, 2025), a protest is planned for tomorrow/Tue downtown at Tarrant County’s G.K. Maenius Administration Building (100 E Weatherford St) at 8am, two hours before the commissioners start a meeting in which they will vote on a new map.
As of this afternoon, more than 150 people have signed up to speak beforehand.
There also may be an appearance by several Tarrant County mayors, including Fort Worth’s Mattie Parker and Arlington’s Jim Ross. Along with eight other city heads, the two recently signed a letter in opposition to any new, racially gerrymandered map like the ones proposed by the county commissioners.
Though redistricting typically occurs after every decennial census, majority Republican commissioners — led by hyper-conservative County Judge Tim O’Hare — appear to be pushing for a new map now to consolidate power before the 2026 elections, when O’Hare, another Republican commissioner, and one Democrat are on the ballot.
Tomorrow’s protest has been organized by the Justice Network of Tarrant County, Indivisible TX-12, Progressive Women of Arlington, and Southeast Democrats.
Over the past few weeks, the commissioners have heard from hundreds of citizens, most vehemently opposed to all five of the proposed, racially gerrymandered maps. The commissioners still intend to move forward with voting on a new map, one that will disenfranchise potentially thousands of Black and Latino — and mostly Democratic — voters.
The majority Republican commissioners believe that their leadership is what has made Tarrant County so successful and that they have earned the right to racially gerrymander out any dissenting voices. Democrats and other progressives counter that as populated and prosperous as Tarrant County may be, it still lags decisively behind its Democratic-led counterparts in Dallas, Houston (Harris County), and Austin (Travis County) in job creation and annual wages. And no other city in Texas has a county jail as deadly as Tarrant’s.
