Jolanda Jones (Wikimedia Commons)
By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
Texas State Rep. Jolanda Jones said she isn’t budging—not until Republican lawmakers end what she calls a blatant effort to strip voting power from Black and Brown communities.
“We’re all safe and we ain’t going nowhere,” Jones declared during an interview on the Let It Be Known news show, just hours after a bomb threat forced an evacuation of her hotel. “This is about racism. This is about taking Black folks back to before we had voting rights and before we had the Civil Rights Act.” Jones, a Democrat elected to the Texas House in 2022, blasted the GOP-led redistricting push as a targeted attack on communities of color. “Let me be clear,” she said. “The only way they get the five seats that Trump wants is if they go find Black people and Brown people where they are concentrated in Houston and Dallas and crack our communities and put us in districts with a whole bunch of white folks. It’s that simple.”
She called the effort “racism 101” and rejected criticism that she’s playing the race card. “I grew up playing Spades. I’m from Texas. And guess what? I’m going to pull that card from the bottom of the deck, the top of the deck, the middle of the deck,” she said. “If I have to pull it from those French cut sections, I’m gonna pull a race card every single solitary time—as long as you’re a racist. If you don’t want me to pull a race card, then stop being racist.” Jones is part of a group of Texas Democrats who have once again broken quorum, denying the Republican majority the minimum number of lawmakers required to conduct legislative business. She said the GOP may have the votes, but without a quorum, they have no power. “There are 150 of us in the state House. It takes 76 votes to pass anything. There are 88 Republicans and 62 Democrats. The key is they have to get 100 people there to conduct business, and they only have 88,” she explained. “So, they need 12 of us to show up. That’s not going to happen.”
In response to Governor Greg Abbott’s threat to arrest the Democratic holdouts, Jones, a lawyer for more than 30 years, dismissed the possibility. “There is no warrant that goes outside of Texas. Most warrants in Texas only go 150 to 200 miles. Let somebody arrest me. I’m suing them,” she said. “Trump ain’t the only person who can sue people.” She said quorum-breaking isn’t a crime, but a tool the minority party has when it’s otherwise powerless. “They’re mad and they’re whining because they have the numbers to pass it if we get back—but we’re not coming back,” she said. “Y’all might have the numbers, but we got the power.”
Jones spoke of the long history of resistance that informs her actions—from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the civil rights marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. “I’ve been Black all my life. It’s been a struggle all my life. But I can’t let this struggle stop me,” she said. “I Facetimed with my granddaughter last night. I miss her, but I’m doing this for her.” She called out the national consequences of unchecked gerrymandering, pointing to North Carolina, where GOP redistricting flipped three seats, giving Republicans a narrow House majority. “Congress is the only place that can stop the president. We can investigate him. We can impeach him,” she said. “And every day he’s alive, he’s doing something illegal.” Jones didn’t hold back on Trump, calling him “racist” and warning voters to believe what he says. “He told y’all what he was gonna do. When somebody tells you who they are, believe them,” she said. “Who thought he’d be deporting U.S. citizens? Who thought a backpack that used to be $15 now costs $50?”
While focused on the quorum break, Jones confirmed she is running for Congress in Texas’s 18th District, a seat long held by Democrats. Her run was planned before the current standoff, she noted, and she’s continuing to serve her constituents remotely while fighting on the front lines of the redistricting battle. “They’re saying we abandoned our duties. Boy, bye,” she said. “My district office is working. I’m in constant communication with my staff. We didn’t abandon anything.” Jones credited her public education, legal background, and life experiences, including witnessing her father’s suicide and losing multiple family members to violence, as shaping her resilience and commitment to public service.
“Any day above ground is a good day. God helped me see through the tragedy of my life. And I think God made my life really hard for this moment in time where I would not be sad,” Jones exclaimed. “If I can survive that, these people threatening to arrest me or calling me names—sticks and stones.” She urged the public to support the fight by donating to www.riggedredistricting.com and her campaign at www.jolandajones.com. “I’ll take anything—a dollar, five dollars. I’m the same wherever I go. I ain’t scared,” she said. Jones, the first openly LGBTQ Black member of the Texas Legislature, said she represents more than just a political district.
“If I go to Congress, when Medicaid or Medicare ain’t working, or your private insurance isn’t working, it’s a problem,” she said. “We paid into it. How dare you, Donald Trump, take what we’ve paid into. You are literally stealing from our savings. This is no different than Enron.” As the fight drags on, Jones said she and her colleagues are prepared to stay away for as long as it takes. “We’ll take it day by day. It’s not the best situation, but we’ve overcome more as Black people,” she said. “And I’ve been Black all my life.”