Opposition is mounting in Kansas City to a Missouri redistricting plan aimed at creating another Republican congressional district.
That opposition is coming from organized labor groups, who are planning Labor Day protest to Kansas City Monday at noon.
The protest will include SEIU Local 1, SEIU Healthcare, and other unions; Missouri Jobs with Justice Voter Action and the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition.
"Voters pick our leaders, our leaders should not get to pick their voters," organizers said in a statement.
They also accused Republican leaders of "conspiring with President Trump to enrich his billionaire backers through an unprecedented redistricting scheme — all while holding down wages, raising prices, and stealing away Missourians’ paid sick days."
Earlier this year, lawmakers overturned Proposition A, which guaranteed sick leave for workers in Missouri.
Missouri Republicans hope to dilute Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's 5th District by moving Democrats into the surrounding 4th and 6th districts, creating a 7-1 Republican-leaning map.
"President Trump’s unprecedented directive to redraw our maps in the middle of the decade and without an updated census is not an act of democracy — it is an unconstitutional attack against it," Cleaver said in a statement Friday, minutes after the special session was announced.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, also threw down the gauntlet on social media.
"They lost their damn minds if they don't think we know how to knock on doors in Belton, Grandview, Lee's Summit, Midtown (!!), and Westport to win a race," he wrote on Instagram.
Lucas added snark to the opposition. "This new Missouri map was written by a 23-year-old bro in Washington, DC who has never walked into a public school cafeteria in Jackson, Clay,
Platte, or northern Cass County," he said on the social media platform Bluesky.
The special session also will focus on initiative petition reform “to ensure our districts and Constitution truly put Missouri values first,” Gov. Mike Kehoe said in a statement.
The initiative petition changes, pushed by conservative lawmakers for years, would make citizen-led initiative petitions — like those overturning Missouri’s abortion ban and enacting a minimum wage increase and paid sick days — harder to enact.
