In this episode of Democracy on Fire, Kay Brown talks with Eleanor Andrews about voting rights, her civil rights history and the shrinking space for American democracy. Andrews, an Alaska civic and business leader, traces her political awakening to early encounters with Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson and the blunt reality of Jim Crow segregation. When she talks about attacks on minority representation, it is not theoretical--It is lived.

The conversation moves through the Supreme Court’s weakening of the Voting Rights Act, the shadow docket, court reform and the harder work of civic persuasion. But the strongest current is Andrews’ refusal to treat despair as strategy. She says we must talk to people, engage young voters, organize in public and use the vote while it still remains in hand.

Brown names the institutional danger. Andrews answers with her conviction that democracy is not repaired by waiting for power; power is repaired by people who refuse to wait.

Key Takeaways

• Andrews' civil rights memory begins with a childhood church appeal by Martin Luther King Jr. for Southern voter-registration work, which made voting rights personal early.
• Her trip through the segregated South exposed the practical cruelty of Jim Crow through public accommodations, ferries, theaters, and signage.
• High turnout can blunt the intended partisan effects of redistricting, especially in the 2026 midterms.
• Andrews warns that fractured media and social platforms make civic persuasion harder because people are not working from shared facts.
• Court reform must become a public conversation before Democrats hold power, so solutions are ready when political conditions change.
• The episode's practical strategy is simple: talk to people, engage youth, organize in person, and convert outrage into votes.

Research Links and Notes

• 2018 U.S. House midterm results
• The Andrews Group - Anchorage Museum collection note
• Eleanor Louise Andrews - The HistoryMakers
• Eleanor Andrews: Civic Entrepreneur | The Anchorage Museum
• Allen v. Milligan / Alabama congressional map
• Louisiana v. Callais
• Voting Rights Act - Section 2:

Mentioned in this episode:

The Path to the U.S. Senate Runs Through Alaska (Promo)

Leigh McGowan UAN Promo Stinger - Short -[2026]

Welcome to Democracy on Fire.

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In this episode, we'll take a look at how the Supreme Court's recent decision gutting the

Voting Rights Act is affecting the civil rights movement, how it could affect the midterm

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elections, and potential options going forward.

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My guest is Eleanor Andrews, one of Alaska's most celebrated businesswomen, a civic

entrepreneur who has a long history in government as well as the private sector.

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She's such an inspiration to many.

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Eleanor grew up in LA, took a trip to Fairbanks to visit her father, and fell in love with

Alaska, a state that, as she has said, offers off opportunity for women and anyone with

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curiosity.

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That curiosity carried her from youth counselor in a state corrections facility to a

commissioner running one of the largest departments in state government to founder of the

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Andrews Group.

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A management services company she built from a one woman operation into a thriving award

winning firm employing thousands over time.

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She officially retired a while back, but is still serving her community in many ways.

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Eleanor has been involved in the civil rights movement for many decades, so I'm interested

to get her reflections on how the movement stands in this moment.

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Welcome, Eleanor.

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Okay, thank you for having me.

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Thanks for being here.

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Well, the Supreme Court has struck a body blow to the Federal Voting Rights Act.

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And as a result, states across the s across the South have been trying to capitalize on

this opportunity to dismantle decades of hard-won black representation at all levels of

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government.

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And because of the loss of representation in in Congress.

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For blacks, that could shift the balance of power and is of concern to all Americans.

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The bottom line is that states can now enact discriminatory maps with impunity.

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Blacks are the most immediately and dramatically affected, but it could also affect and

discriminate against other minority groups.

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So uh yesterday we're

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recording this on June fourth, the court went even further and just completely eviscerated

section two of the act that prohibits racial discrimination in a ruling involving

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Alabama's map and gave the green light for that um map which eliminates one of two black

majority districts to be used in this upcoming election.

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So it's it's having big ramifications, and some of the elections have been suspended even

though they've already been in process so that states could go in and redistrict.

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And that's having effects that are uh concerning to a lot of people, and has obviously um

set things back many decades.

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So

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Eleanor, tell me about your history in the civil rights movement.

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Well, I didn't know I was involved in the civil rights movement at age eleven, but I

belong to a big Baptist church, uh fact the biggest Baptist church in California.

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Pardon me, my headphones just slipped off.

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Shall I start over?

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'Cause they're gonna keep falling down.

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Hold on.

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Okay.

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So one Sunday morning, Martin Luther King, whom I'd not heard of, and Jesse Jackson showed

up at our church.

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And they told a story about voting and people going down to the South and helping the

blacks there register to vote.

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I didn't know that that was an issue any place else in America, but after they gave that

information, they asked for in for money.

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And I had my dollar that I was gonna put in the collection basket.

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I gave it.

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And from that spring and summer on, I paid attention to what was happening in America.

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The next year, my parents took us to the South.

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They're both from Memphis, Tennessee.

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And my dad had a vacation, and we would drive from LA to Memphis and back and have a

vacation in between in two weeks.

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So we'd have three weekends.

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And was I shocked at what I learned on that first trip that people were treated

differently, totally differently.

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under the law and customs and accommodations, if you were colored.

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Those are the signs.

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No colored allowed.

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Colored, use these broken um life rings on the ferry going across Mississippi River.

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If you were colored, you couldn't go to the movies except through the back alley and sit

in the third balcony.

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So I noticed some things and I always been a person who's looking for solutions.

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And if I couldn't reason with people, I would tend to beat them up.

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So I've been beating up this system my whole life.

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So, how are you feeling about the changes that are unfolding now?

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You know, I didn't think anything would amaze me and surprise me anymore, Kay.

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But what I have come to feel is that what's going on in America is like the Houthis and

the Tutsis killing each other in Rwanda.

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Some thing has infiltrated the population where hate and ignorance are ruling the day, not

with people on the street, but with our highest courts and places of legislation.

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And so

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I don't think that with what's going on today, the rule of law as we have known it even

applies anymore.

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So I'm upset.

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And I feel that the call to action, what can we do?

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We certainly can't outraise people who are fomenting this hate and discontent.

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But you know what we can do?

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Each of us still has a vote.

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And those people that vote for those that are perpetrating these crimes.

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have got to be disappointed because they were promised honey and milk and the promised

land.

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What they've got now is a house they can't afford to buy, milk they can't get for their

children, they can't put gas in their car, and everything they used to buy is unaffordable

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because of tariffs that go back and forth.

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So they're disappointed.

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They won't admit it.

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Most of them won't admit it until they're out of harm's way, but I have a feeling they're

not going to be voting for those people so much anymore.

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Where on the other hand, people who have always been marginalized and have always had to

fight for everything are gonna fight harder and vote more.

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That's what I'm pushing.

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We absolutely need a huge blue wave and voting is the tool in the toolbox that we must

rely on now to try to correct the situation.

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And, you know, we have the midterm elections coming up here in um a few months.

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And I've seen estimates that these changes might give the Republicans an additional two to

four seats, House seats in twenty twenty-six, and maybe eight or more.

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additional seats in 2028 when the full impact of the decision will hit.

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And there's uncertainty right now because of litigation and special sessions that are

still going on.

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But we should keep in mind that these pickups are not guaranteed because the new lines may

not have the intended effects, especially if people become energized in this moment to

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push back and

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get involved and participate.

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You know, it's um it's been said that, you know, the people who didn't vote had a bigger

uh determination on the outcome than those who did in the last election when so many

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people just didn't bother.

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And we really have to uh turn that around.

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the loss is significant in these seats in Congress, but perhaps not

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determinative and I I think about the 2018 midterms which was in the middle of Trump's

first term and you know his approval rating then was about 40 percent and it's sunk now at

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least down to the mid-30s and even perhaps lower the Democrats picked up 41 seats in that

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Um if enough people show up and vote, we will have a similar um result and be able to

start repairing some of the damage.

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And you know what I think drove that?

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People had the hope that they could go back to all the positive things, things that

Americans came together on during the Obama administration.

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It wasn't so old that they'd forgotten how hope and action got him in office.

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And people got a little bit relaxed, and you got this charlatan, this you know, ringmaster

coming in, telling people all kinds of stories.

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That couldn't possibly be true.

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And so th they went for it.

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You know, we we have short memories here.

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People don't take history.

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They don't even remember what happened last year.

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You know, that's that's part of our our downfall in this country.

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So they went for it.

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But it Obama was fresh enough that they realized that they'd lost something and they tried

to go back.

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But I you know, I think that it's almost like somebody put something in the water.

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Because without reason, people are turning on neighbors, on tradition, on education, and

precedent.

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And I think that the biggest dose of something in the water is Supreme Court.

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They are shameless.

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I'm not a lawyer and I never tried to guess what lawyers do because there's always the

other hand.

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You know, keep litigating and deciding.

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But I've never seen a time in my whole grown life.

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Well the court can say, This is our answer, and we'll give you no explanation how we got

there.

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We're the majority.

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That shadow docket, we've got that's one of the reforms that needs to happen is we gotta

get rid of that.

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They shouldn't just be able to issue these decisions in the middle of the night with uh no

explanation and they they it's just chaotic uh where it's left everything and um is you

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know uh very distressing.

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But I wanted to ask you as you think about the the gains

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That were made and have been made over time in the civil rights movement, and the

obstacles obviously were very significant, as you mentioned earlier.

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And the tactics and the determination and the persistence that it took to overcome and

prevail.

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Um, and as you think about where we are now, do we need to repeat all of that, or how is

the movement going forward going to either

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look similar or different to the uh the civil rights movement of the sixties.

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Well, the sixties, the seventies, eighties, nine nineties, two thousands, it was a

movement of basic American people, not just black people, but women.

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You know, when the first affirmative action laws were enacted, the biggest beneficiaries

were white women because women had been so discriminated against in education, the

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workplace, everything, earning potential, that because they were white, they got in first.

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And blacks and Mexicans and everybody else came in behind them.

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But in the end, everybody benefited.

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And I always thought that during this period of time in my life, when people who were

afraid of losing, of not being in control anymore, the white male dominance in government

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in this country, when people saw a black woman who could do what they were doing, a

Mexican man with an accent that could perform that they could, a lot of that fear went

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away.

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But we've got someone who's clearly deficient surrounding himself with people even more

deficient and ignorant.

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They are terrified.

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And they're pulling out all the stops to make sure that they don't lose their place.

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You know, like Hamilton said, they got their shot and they're afraid of losing.

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Well, their place is definit definitely in jeopardy, isn't it?

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As

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is, you know, when you've always been the majority and you had no rules about what you

did, no borders, and then you start counting.

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Gosh, we're not the majority anymore.

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We're a majority minority country.

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What's gonna happen?

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You know, I've never heard of any group of people, women, ethnic minorities, whatever,

foreigners, nationalized citizens say we want to get those guys back.

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Everybody wants to move forward.

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There's so much opportunity and plenty for Americans.

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And we can solve problems together.

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Nobody wants retribution but our president.

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That's not how Americans are.

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I still believe that.

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Yeah.

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So how are we gonna get everybody to show up?

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Well, you know, I never stop talking.

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I meet with two groups of women all the time, one every Friday, and there are a group of

eight women who used to counsel youth.

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And we attack the world's problems based on what we learned in our twenties about working

with young kids that have problems.

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You keep talking, you display good behavior and offer solutions.

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I meet with another group of women once a month who are some of the biggest policymakers

and former elected people in the state.

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And we get together

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And we have a talking stick that a former judge called carved for us.

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We pass it around and we say what we've got to say.

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And the thing is, what's said in the room doesn't leave the room, at least attributable to

anybody.

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But we're kind of all saying the same things.

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We need to act.

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We've been sitting here on the fat of the land, and we need to do what we used to do,

which is put feet on the street, talk to people, engage youth.

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And tell them how things really are versus the fairy tales that they get on Facebook and

TikTok and dip top.

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I I don't do social media because my brain cannot deal with that much fiction.

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But you know, it's too much trouble to separate the facts from what you get in in

Facebook.

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But some people I hear, that's the only place they get their news.

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Yeah, the divided and uh fractured media environment is certainly a challenge.

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We don't know we're not all operating on the same set of facts and information and there's

dramatically different perceptions.

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May I say one thing to correct you?

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There's only one set of facts.

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Those are the truth.

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Kelly and Mary and Kelly, whatever her name was.

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Yeah, there's no such thing as alternative facts.

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It's a facts or BS.

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Okay.

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Right, exactly.

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Well, one thing I wanted to ask you about was several people have suggested and proposed

that the way we're going to need to fix this once there is a trifecta of Democrats in

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place in twenty twenty-eight is by reforming the Supreme Court, by uh appointing

additional people to overwhelm the re reactionary majority.

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Um, there are other s ideas, term limits, uh, ethics rules, disclosures, all kinds of

things that that need to be happening.

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D do you have uh thoughts about what we need to do to fix the Supreme Court?

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I have thoughts on every one of the things you've mentioned.

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First of all, we don't need a small number of people deciding these things.

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It needs to be a nationwide conversation.

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Sometimes we have to take a look at what the Constitution knew at that time when everybody

had the same lived experience and they came to the rules and the dictates over our

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constitution, things have changed.

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We have remember that uh news show that was left, right, and middle?

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Well, we have a middle that didn't exist then.

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And it wasn't party related.

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It was just people who hadn't had a voice.

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Now there's an opportunity for everybody to have a voice.

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We need to have these conversations that the results need to be, in my opinion, a larger

court, because there are more people in the middle in this country that the court could

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reflect on.

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And certainly some rules of behavior and ethics.

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Who the hell does a court think they are?

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That they decide on the rules and ethics for every other entity in America exfr except for

themselves.

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You know, that needs to change.

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They are not that supreme or superior.

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Well that I think I agree with everything you just said and uh we need to get this

conversation going so that we build support for the solution so that when the voting

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happens, if we are successful in changing the regime, that we will have solutions in place

and I don't think it's too early to start uh figuring that out and building support for

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it.

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And um as you said.

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Voting is the key and we've got to engage people in a way that they haven't been in the

past.

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So I want to thank you, Eleanor, for being with me and sharing your wisdom of perspective

or the any last thoughts you'd like to uh leave us with.

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Uh, I I just want you to know that I truly, truly believe that the answer is voting.

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It's a right that has not been taken away.

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The court has tried to marginalize who we can elect, but if enough of us vote, it doesn't

matter what they've done with the Civil Rights Act.

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Because you know what?

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We can create one that's a little bit more foolproof.

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That's what I think.

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Great.

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Well, gutting the VRA and erosion of black and minority representation is yet more

evidence that our that democracy is falling backwards.

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Democracy is on fire, and voting is how we extinguish the flames of fascism.

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Let's get America back on the path to an inclusive, multiracial, multicultural democracy

where everyone has a chance to succeed.

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Let's stand with and support the civil rights leaders and organizations who are leading

the way.

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We can do this.

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We will do this.

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We need to recognize who we are and what's in our toolbox.

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So let's do it.

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Thanks for watching and listening.

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Please like and share.

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Thank you for having me.

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I'm on it.