BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — The Legislative Black Caucus has some lofty goals for this year. Some of the top priorities included redistricting, police reform, and education.
The organization says it will be working hard in the upcoming months to get this accomplished in the legislative sessions.
“That is what the Black Caucus intends to fight for, the hope for fair representation and the opportunity to build equal and just representation in the state of Louisiana,” said State Representative Vincent Pierre (D).
Although the Legislative Black Caucus changed leadership, their goals remained ambitious. Redistricting was a hot topic as lawmakers battle it out at the Capitol.
“We have looked at several of the maps, some of the status quo. Some of them is to improve districts in certain areas. But they still have not been any collaboration on where we’re going to be on these maps,” said Pierre.
The caucus advocated for more minority districts in session.
“Districting is about reassessing representation based on new information. And our new information is that Black people comprise 33% of the population of Louisiana. And so all maps should justify and reflect this reality,” Pierre explained.
The caucus calls for change as the Ronald Greene case continues to gain momentum nearly three years after his death.
“[We are] demanding a federal investigation and accountability of the state police to ensure that what happened to Ronald Green and the pain endured by his family will not happen again,” he stated.
Pierre said collaboration and education are what’s going to propel these goals forward.
‘Hopefully, we can all come together to ensure that our workforce is educated and able to deal with the many things that’s going to come before us in the coming years,” Pierre said.
It’s a tough redistricting battle for the Black Caucus, however, they said there are no plans for litigation at the moment.