This story is part of a series of essays by members of the Black to the Future Public Policy Institute network. Read more.

The state of Mississippi, where I live, has the highest Black population per capita in the United States and once had some of the strongest Black representation following the Civil War. Today, the state boasts the largest number of Black elected officials and yet, a Black politician has not held a statewide office — including governor, secretary of state or attorney general — since 1890.

This is thanks in part to the trifecta of anti-democratic laws used to suppress the voice of the people: preemption, gerrymandering and disenfranchisement.

The most insidious of all roadblocks, preemption happens when a higher level of government, like a state, denies lower levels of government (including counties and cities) the authority to pass their own laws and rules. From labor standards and environmental protections to abortion and education, state politicians in red states are increasingly, though not exclusively, using state preemption laws to quash democracy on the local and regional levels.

In 2023, the Mississippi State Legislature, a mostly white and conservative Republican body, and GOP Gov. Tate Reeves took state preemption to unprecedented levels when they seized governing power over local Black and Democratic leadership in Jackson — the state’s capital, which is 82% Black. Now the city of Jackson is patrolled by the Jackson Police Department, the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department, and daily additional patrolling by the state-run Capitol Police.

In addition to the state-controlled law enforcement, another preemption law passed in 2023 established a new court system within Jackson, where the judge is not elected by the local citizens. The judge is instead appointed by the Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice of Mississippi.

With the state taking control of our court system as well as local police, the people who call Jackson home are losing their ability to self-govern. We are losing the opportunity to work with elected leaders that we choose, who come from our community and are intimately familiar with our local issues and concerns. We are now under the control of white conservatives who are not invested in our success: They are intent on controlling Black inhabited land, revenue, and bodies.

If state legislators were serious about reducing crime, they would invest in our communities and ensure every Mississippian has access to clean water, affordable housing, good-paying jobs, and community-led nonprofits, trained in violence prevention and intervention. Evidence shows public safety begins with community-led programs that alleviate poverty and inequality. Law enforcement is designed merely to react to the symptoms of violence and crime, inherently unable to address the root causes of it. Instead, they’re using the guise of increasing public safety to sow confusion and inefficiency in an already flawed system.

The consequence of politicians who work to maintain control at the expense of hard-working Mississippians is that our state is ranked 47th in infrastructure, 48th in children’s well-being, and has the second-highest poverty rate in the country, all while leading the nation in incarceration. Internationally, Mississippi imprisons the highest percentage of its people compared to every other independent democratic country on earth.

Mississippi also ranks last in the country in women’s health and reproductive care outcomes. This is because the state also maintains strict control over women’s bodies. The site of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade, Mississippi has one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country. It has always been Black women, our babies and families who have suffered the most. This is not a flaw; it is by design. Instead of teaching sex education or providing preventative care, we rely on abstinence only education, with no preventative care, leaving women without the knowledge and resources they need to care for their own bodies.

Despite state legislators banning essential health care, we know criminalizing abortions does not eliminate the need for abortions; they just make them more dangerous for people who are pregnant. This is why despite preemptive state abortion bans, Mississippians continue to need and access abortions.

Our ancestors fought hard for federal preemptions that serve as a check to state rights, which was founded in anti-Blackness to reinforce slavery. The Dred Scott decision didn’t just uphold the “right” of southern states to claim Black bodies even when they were in “free” states. It made every state a slave state to some extent, whether it was their law or not, because states’ rights have always leaned toward racism and heteropatriarchy. With the absence of a federal government and federal law that sets a higher standard, Black and Brown cities and Indigenous nations are in these battles for our lives.

Preemption may be a powerful tool used by those in power to suppress local voices, but it is not unbeatable. In Mississippi and across the country, communities are rising up to protect their right to self-governance and to demand a democracy that serves everyone — not just the powerful few. This is why my organization, People’s Advocacy Institute, engages communities in electoral justice efforts and cultivates ideas and solutions through an intentional grassroots process, called people’s assemblies. We are working to build new institutional power that paves the way for a more just system rooted in restoration, resilience, and self-determination.

This post was originally published on Next City.