The way forward will be very difficult. Gerrymandering is the modern equivalent of post Civil War/Reconstruction voter suppression in the South. Jim Crow and segregation were accomplished by terrorism, lynching and control of state legislatures by white redeemers,former confederates and ultimately dedicated racists. With the writing of the Constitution, the Rule of Law was slavery until the civil War. Abolitionists, radical republicans and Lincoln broke slavery through military action.
The Emancipation proclamation was a military order that Lincoln and the radical republicans realized in 1864 had to be replaced by a constitutional amendment- the Thirteenth Amendment. For a brief period in American history equality of all Americans was championed by radical republicans who controlled Congress and had a vision of liberty based on natural rights and due process and equal protection as provided for by the Fourteenth Amendment. The 1866 Civil rights Act, the 1875 Civil Rights Act, and the Reconstruction Acts declaring military rule and written to fight the Klan were the mechanisms employed to further freedom in the unreconstructed south.
Sadly, this all came to an end with the election of 1877 and the removal of federal troops and the rise of a Supreme Court committed to economic plunder as opposed to freedom for all Americans. The rule of law became segregation, punctuated with white terror until the 1953 Brown decisions. A brief civil rights revolution was moved through the courts and Congress but it too has sadly ended. This court has shown its commitment to reactionary racism and economic destruction of civil rights.
Work should be going forward, now, to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College, the Senate of the United States, Gerrymandering, attaching an equal rights amendment, a constitutional guarantee of the right to vote in all elections, eliminating gerrymandering, and reform of the Supreme Court. Separation of powers as pointed out by George Mason at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 has always been a lie. I have pondered a new constitution because of the grave defects of the current one. I believe that such a constitutional convention would be a bitter fight between advocates of liberty for all and those who seek to restrict freedom on religious and economic grounds. This is a tipping point. The current presidency has highlighted the falsity of much of what we were told and taught about constitutional law.
I would be delighted to assist in your project in any way I could. I have been working on a book project about the Republic and Racism. I will follow up this communication with citation to a few books that may help you consider aspects of your new constitution. I would recommend for reading a political science professor at Notre Dame, Sotirios Barber, who has written on constitutional failure. For me jefferson is suspect because of his hypocrisy and racism. I would recommend a history professor Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders. Paine was a visionary whose personal life was a train wreck. This republican party has given up any moral commitment to liberty and constitutional norms and all of this has ended very badly for all Americans. The current presidency is a work in progress toward tyranny worthy of the fiction of Orwell and Vonnegut.
I agree action is needed. The debate on any constitution as it now exists and as it could be will be shaped by money and hate.
