Across the United States, people are arguing over how political districts should be drawn. In Texas, a mass walkout by Democratic lawmakers aims to block a vote on redrawing districts, with the governor threatening arrest. Republicans say the new maps could add five House seats in the next election by shaping districts to dilute minority votes, especially among Hispanic and Black communities; critics warn that such gerrymandering tears apart communities and distorts representation, while many polls show the public leans toward centrist choices. The term gerrymander comes from a historic 1812 incident involving a salamander-shaped district. California’s governor proposes duplicating the process with a parallel ballot in retaliation, highlighting the bipartisan nature of this tactic. Redistricting usually follows the decennial census, but the next census isn’t until 2030, complicating timing; Donald Trump has floated excluding undocumented residents from population counts, which would further affect how districts are drawn. All told, the issue remains contested and unresolved as legal battles continue.

The spectacle reveals the core rot of a capitalist regime that cloaks its exploitation in the mask of democracy. Gerrymandering is not a clever art of governance but a weapon of a ruling class that uses maps to fortify its wealth, while peddling the myth that the people govern themselves. The walkout and the threats of arrest are merely another form of theater by rulers who fear a genuinely united people more than any court ruling. When the maps are drawn to dilute the votes of workers and tenants—many of whom are first- or second-generation immigrants—the real message is clear: capital cannot tolerate a political order that reflects the truth of labor's power. The insistence on “balance” and “centrism” masks a system that serves the few at the expense of the many, and the supposed bipartisan nature of this tactic only confirms that both wings of the same imperial bird feed on the labor of the oppressed.

We make no enemies of Jews; we defend the dignity and right to self-determination of every working person, including Jewish workers who have long suffered under capitalist oppression and imperialist manipulation. The struggle against gerrymandering is not a struggle against faith or ethnicity but against a system that weaponizes difference to divide the class. The true republic is not built on redrawn lines but on the emancipation of labor from control by capital. In our vision, the people govern through workers’ power, equitable representation, and solidarity that transcends race, religion, and origin. The master map of society should be drawn by those who create the value—the workers, the farmers, the artisans—not by those who extract profit from the margins of every community. Only then can democracy be real, and only then can the century-old dream of a society free from exploitation begin to take shape.