Veatch's Support for Long Term Civic Engagement
Many voters experience politicians and interest groups as only caring about their views come election time. Candidates’ campaigns aggressively engage with voters in communities for the months leading up to November, and then seem to disappear post election — often taking their campaign promises along with them.
The type of non-partisan civic participation work Veatch supports, however, happens over the long-term. Our grantees understand that civic participation is vital to strengthening and sustaining our democratic institutions — and that this is work that must be done year around.
Increasing voter turn out in communities of color is a key component of our grantees' work. Collectively, our grantees help register and turn out hundreds of thousands of voters in underrepresented communities, all across the country. For just one of many examples, tune into this recent PBS segment, which features Andrea Mercado, executive director of the New Florida Majority, discussing the group's work to increase Latinx voter turnout in the crucial battleground state of Florida.
Veatch grantees also know that civic participation means a whole lot more than just turning out to vote every four years. It's also about finding ways to engage people in the policy making decisions that impact their everyday lives.
This work is helping to reshape the electorate in the United States to be inclusive of Black, Brown, Indigenous, working class, immigrant and LGBTQ communities — which in turn is helping to ensure our representatives at the local, state and federal levels are more reflective of the communities they serve. Below is just a sampling of the important, long-term civic engagement work being waged by Veatch grantees all across the country, which will continue after the 2020 election cycle, regardless of the outcome.
I hope you will join the Veatch Board of Governors and the Social Justice Committee for a very special Election 2020 Debrief on Wednesday, November 11th at 7pm, featuring a panel of experts from UU the Vote, the Public Policy Education Fund of New York and the Center for Community Change. Let’s make the most of this crucial, historic election. The hour long program will begin at 7:00 PM. Register here to receive your Zoom link.
Joan Minieri
Executive Director
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Veatch grantee, Maine People’s Alliance — a group organizing low-income, of color, and immigrant communities in the state — has been actively working to protect the integrity of the election, while also increasing voter turnout. As part of an intensive public education campaign, the organization is ensuring voters understand the importance of the election, and that the outcome will have national implications.
Their non-partisan civic engagement work is ensuring voters are registered, understand the issues at stake in the election, and have a plan to vote safely amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Maine People’s Alliance has hired a team of 23 canvassers who have been contacting voters every night since August. In just the past month, this team has already spoken to over 1,300 voters, educating them on ways to request a mail-in ballot, or to make plans to vote in person, safely. Through twice weekly phone and text banks they are increasing the number of voters they can reach before election day. Maine People’s Alliance has a robust media arm in the form of MaineBeacon.com, which features online articles and podcasts. This successful media strategy is keeping voters informed and engaged.
Maine People’s Alliance’s civic engagement work is not limited to increasing voter turnout — nor will the group’s efforts to protect and expand democracy stop after the coming election, regardless of the outcome. Whether it be efforts to mobilize its members in support of racial justice reforms, pressuring elected officials to take action on climate change, or increasing support for affordable housing initiatives, Maine People’s Alliance provides meaningful opportunities for civic participation all year long.
Read more about the Maine People's Alliance here.
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Voces de la Frontera — Wisconsin
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Voces de la Frontera in Wisconsin is another Veatch grantee whose work demonstrates the importance of engaging voters all year long. They conduct deep, neighborhood-based civic engagement work — centered on critical issues like housing, immigration and health care — building strong relationships in the process
Last week, the New Yorker ran an article about both the work of Voces’ political arm and their nonpartisan issue and civic engagement work. In the piece, Voces Executive Director, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, discusses efforts to increase voter turnout among underrepresented groups in the state, particularly in Latinx and Black communities. Voces has adopted an approach that encourages its membership base to engage within their own connections and relationships, forged in churches, community organizations, parent teacher associations and neighborhood gatherings, to discuss the importance of voting.
During the 2018 midterm elections, Voces organized a group of roughly 400 members, and asked them to reach out to people they knew who were eligible to vote. From there, they created a list of more than 5,000 voters, the majority of whom had never voted. In neighborhoods the group targeted, voter turnout surged by 17% compared to the previous midterm election cycle.
You can read the entire New Yorker article here, and read more about Voces de la Frontera here.
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Ohio Organizing Collaborative
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The Ohio Organizing Collaborative — a Veatch grantee made up of 20 organizations working to expand social, racial and economic equality across the state — has similarly been engaged in substantive civic engagement work. Since 2012, the group has registered more than 390,000 Ohioans to vote, and has worked to dramatically increase municipal election turnout.
The group engages in civic engagement work, in part, as a strategy to build power with community members to advance campaigns related to socioeconomic equality — work that continues to unfold all year long. Towards that end, the organization educates communities about the importance of participating in the political process, while also developing the organizing skills of its leaders, to advance campaigns on criminal justice and police accountability, expanding access to harm reduction strategies, eliminating student debt, and more.
The group's goals extend well past November — in the next 15-20 years, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative is looking to activate a 400,000 person multi-racial governing base, across 44 counties, with the goal of winning campaigns on progressive issues.
Read more about the Ohio Organizing Collaborative here.
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Texas Organizing Project (TOP) — a Veatch grantee organizing in Black and Latinx communities in Texas to increase political power and representation — has been deeply involved in ensuring fair elections take place in the state. For instance, the group led a lawsuit against the Bexar County Elections Department in state court over the closing of polling sites in the County in advance of the November elections. As the group said in the lawsuit, '“These closures are not merely ill-advised for the safety and convenience of all voters, but they will also negatively impact voters of color and Spanish-language voters.
The group is also employing an organizing tactic they call "authentic listening" in order to help increase civic participation in underrepresented communities, not just during the 2020 election season — but all year around. TOP recently worked with a consulting group called Culture Concepts to engage in deep conversations with 104 Latinx voters in the state, as part of research — and the results helped counter the notion that Latinx voters are somehow ambivalent or disinterested in the political process.
Here's an excerpt from a recent news article covering the report: “Voters feel empowered. they feel invested in the political system. They feel that they have the right to be heard. When you hear them speaking, they express these ideas a lot.They’re not sure their vote matters. They tend to not come from families where people have voted. They don’t feel that people in government or candidates or parties care about their experiences or perspectives.”
Learn more about the Texas Organizing Project here.
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Down Home North Carolina — a Veatch grantee organizing in small town and rural communities in the state — is made up of local chapters, led by residents seeking to build power for poor and working people. The group, which is an affiliate of the national Veatch grantee organization People's Action, has been involved in "listening campaign" efforts in rural areas of the state.
The group has been using this strategy — which involves lengthy, personal conversations on a wide range of issues like immigration, health care and police reform — to great effect this election cycle. Volunteers and leaders prioritized conversations in areas of the state with little to no progressive organizing infrastructure — yet these efforts even in typically conservative areas of the state still led to a 15% increase in support to include undocumented immigrants in public benefits.
More more information on Down Home North Carolina, check out this recent podcast, which features the work the group has been doing, over many years, to build a multi-racial grassroots movement against white supremacy.
Read more about Down Home North Carolina here.
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New Virginia Majority — a Veatch grantee working to build the power of marginalized communities in the state — has been active in efforts to protect and expand the right to vote in the state. In support of this effort, the group is pushing legislation that would help guarantee fair elections. These include:
- Establishing redistricting criteria that includes careful protections for communities of interest and partisan neutrality.
- Establishing a constitutional right to vote that cannot be abridged or taken away
- Establishing automatic voter registration.
- Allowing early voting to ease burdens around getting to the polls on Election Day.
- Providing access to same-day voter registration.
This election cycle, the group has also worked to expand the electorate in the state in a way that is more reflective of Virginia’s diversity — they have registered nearly 300,000 voters, and knocked on over 3 million doors to ensure underrepresented people, like people of color and young people, show up to the polls. As of the first week of October, these efforts helped convince 770,000 Virginians to cast their ballots early — the second highest total in the country after Florida.
Read more about New Virginia Majority here.
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TakeAction Minnesota — a multiracial and multigenerational Veatch grantee working to increase the civic participation of low-income people in the state — has also been engaged in "deep canvassing" efforts as part of the national People's Action coalition. The group has been engaged in lengthy, meaningful conversations with locals regarding issues of importance in advance of the 2020 elections. As part of that effort, the group has recruited a team of 500 progressive volunteers to serve as part of a "People’s Squad" to win campaigns, build a progressive movement, and defend the state's democratic institutions.
TakeAction Minnesota's work to increase civic participation isn't limited to election years, however. The organization is also working to advance a more vibrant democratic society in the state by advocating for a co-governance model. Co-governance, as defined by the group's Movement Politics Director, Bahieh Hartshorn, is “a model of governing that leans into deep partnership and accountability between electeds, appointed leaders, staffers, people’s organizations and people’s collectives.”
The group has been putting its co-governance strategy into action this election with a series of "People's Forums," in which candidates for office are pressed on issues of importance to the group's membership. For an example of one of these forums, see the video below. And then read more about TakeAction Minnesota here.
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Southerners on New Ground
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Southerners on New Ground (SONG) — a Veatch grantee organizing in Black and Brown LGBTQ communities in the Southern United States — has been working to increase civic participation across the Southern United States.
Before the 2016 General Election, SONG members created a public education campaign called, ‘Dream, Vote, Organize: Our Lives Depend On It’. Across the South, members placed thousands of yard signs in their communities with this mandate. As the group writes on its website, "many of the signs remain, slightly tattered but deeply neon and deeply queer."
The group has used the intervening years to double down on its 2016 message — working with with its membership to protect and expand the right to vote. In particular, SONG has focused on expanding access to the ballot to incarcerated communities.
As the group wrote in a description of a training it recently held on the subject, "Thousands of our community members — family, friends, and comrades — have been ripped from our communities and placed in jails across the South. Our people are forced into poor conditions and denied access to their freedom before trail while being held on cash bail. Despite many being eligible to vote, too many have no access to casting a ballot by mail. Because of the legacy of racialized exclusion and its role as a tool of domination over captured Black bodies, our people are being denied power over one's own life, denied an opportunity to inform the conditions that condemned them to the inside of a cage, and denied an opportunity to connect with the community."
Read more about SONG here.
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Center for Popular Democracy — National
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Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) — a national network of grassroots organizations advancing a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda in the United States — has also been active in protecting our democratic institutions and expanding civic participation.
For instance, CPD is working to address potential unrest at the polls during the November 3rd election, and during early voting, which is currently underway. As Ría Thompson-Washington of CPD recently told the New York Times in an interview, "We are training folks to be prepared to deal with provocateurs — usually you would advise them to not engage and divert attention.”
The group is also pushing Congress to push back the reporting deadline for the Census because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has hampered efforts to collect important demographic information of U.S. residents this year.
As the group writes on its website, "This year has brought a host of new challenges for the 2020 Census as we continue to deal with a public health crisis on top of President Trump’s repeated attempts to cut the census short and deprive millions of their right to participate in it." In response, CPD member organizations have made thousands of phone calls and text messages, as well as remote events on social media, and "car caravans" throughout communities to help get out the word about the importance of engaging in the census to their communities.
Read more about the Center for Popular Democracy.
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