From Nov. 1st through Nov. 5th, Jason and I documented and broadcast the Get-Out-the-Vote work in two key PBN states: Mississippi and New Mexico. Before we even set foot in the states, we had high expectations for this project.
For one thing, we wanted to give people a minute-by-minute account of what was happening on the ground. We wanted to let the voices of the people be heard as to why they were voting, what issues brought them to the polls, and what it felt like to engage their communities through door knocking and phone banking.
We wanted to capture the energy and momentum of what we knew in our gut was a historical moment: young and old working side by side at the doors, first time citizens casting a ballot, the record number of registrations and turnout of a peoples who have endured a historical legacy of disenfranchisement at the hands of our political institutions–African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, women, and young people.
We also wanted to spotlight the ingenious ways our partner organizations were merging their electoral work to build upon a grander vision.
As members of Pushback, every organization around our table is committed to building long-term grassroots power through the combination of community organizing and non-partisan electoral organizing. Our model of integrated voter engagement is unique in that it consists of using multiple strategies to increase civic participation.
The ways in which each state alliance achieves this vision is a tad bit different. This is due to the fact that people are organizing in states with different constituencies, different issues, and different ways of developing leadership, creating policy change, and building out their state alliance.
However amidst these differences, the Project demonstrated how our bottom-up, state-based alliances are capturing political power by working alongside and as part of a multiplicity of peoples, regions, and issues.
Lessons Learned about Voter Engagement
“I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
~Fannie Lou Hamer
Our democracy rests on the ability of our political institutions to respond to and understand the needs of the constituencies that comprise the Pushback Network: people of color, working class and poor communities, women, and young people.
The common thread that connects our organizations is the consensus that we have to actively identify voters, engage them on issues that impact their lives at the local, state, and federal level, and then mobilize them to participate in the electoral system.
The victories accrued within one state are not confined to its particular boundary. When working within a national network, those state accomplishments are shared by every state in an effort to promote the progress and social justice of the entire nation.
Pushback Network’s goals are to:
- Build enough electoral power to insure that communities struggling on the margins have a voice in the decision-making process;
- Connect people to on-going community organizing campaigns that extend beyond the reach of short-term election cycles like the presidential election;
- Increase civic participation in order to hold America accountable to it’s promise as stated in the Constitution;
- An example of this within the network is New Mexico. In New Mexico, the Southwest Organizing Project initiated a non-partisan, nonprofit effort called the Campaign for a Better New Mexico. They agitate for the peoples of New Mexico to vote, because as they state in their literature, ‘If you don’t VOTE, they won’t listen…”
For many states within Pushback, their voter engagement programs had to overcome multiple barriers in this past general election. For example:
- In Mississippi, you didn’t need to tell anyone that the 2008 election was historic: the electricity of this defining moment crackled. Folks who had resisted every encouragement to register and vote since the 1965 Voting Rights Act jumped off the sidelines to vote for the first time. Teenagers, normally too cool to give a nod to politics, were thrilled to be engaged in this grand democratic enterprise. Young men came off the corner to lend a hand.
- Also, in Mississippi, community and electoral organizers actively worked to ensure their constituencies were not disenfranchised by voter intimidation and fear tactics. They did so by 1) educating them about their rights as a voter, and 2) devising creative strategies to deal with high illiteracy rates amongst residence of the Delta region and activating friends and family networks to help identify and mobilize voters.
- In New Mexico, SAGE Council worked tirelessly to push back against the wariness that some Native Americans felt about participating in the U.S. political process. However, through their voter engagement project Native American Voter Alliance (NAVA), they succeeded in increasing turnout by showing the importance for Native Americans to actively engage in the political process for the purposes of increasing funding for Urban Indian Healthcare, ensuring that development of Albuquerque is in balance with water resources, and preserving tribal sovereignty. NAVA is a non-partisan effort to build a strong electorate that is educated about issues that affect the health and quality of life for Albuquerque’s over 40,000 urban Native Americans.
Voter Engagement works best when organizers effectively build relationships overtime through the use of multiple voter contacts. Only through consistent contact, and long-standing presence within the community, will people begin to trust and engage with the political process.
- On Election Day, in Webster county, we preformed a knock and drag operation where we knocked on the door of every person that had registered within the 90 days prior to Election Day. What excited me was the fact that people recognized the organizers from the local organizations, thanked them for helping them exercise their right to vote, and time after time, door after door, they told us they had already voted. And for those who had difficulties with voting, we were able to trouble shoot and inmost cases help them out. This was only possible through the trust that was built over time.
- On the last day of early voting in New Mexico, a first time voter needed assistance in getting to the polls. She was 80 years old and couldn’t drive. Because of her affinity for SWOP, she asked a team of two SWOP organizers to drive her to the site.
Lessons Learned about State Alliances
“I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.”
~Lone Man (Isna-la-wica)
Each Pushback State Alliance has its own path to power and policy agenda that reflects their distinct constituencies. However, even with the multiple issues and geographically diverse regions represented within the Network, Pushback understands the dire need to come together and work in coalition with one another in order to achieve social change on a national level.
In Mississippi, their statewide alliance strategically planned and coordinated their GOTV activities throughout the urban and rural areas of Mississippi. The MS Delta Catalyst Roundtable, comprised of ten grassroots community organizations based in the Delta region, brought together on a non-partisan basis an intergenerational team of teenagers and community elders to go door-to-door, hold community meetings and voter education workshops, help hundreds of registered voters to transfer their registrations to the precincts in which they lived to ensure their votes would be counted, conducted voter turnout motorcades and parades, talked on half-day radio live remotes to reach voters in surrounding counties, worked voter turnout phone banks and drove voters to the polls.
The live radio remotes reached radio audiences in excess of 125,000 on each occasion. The result: the 10 organizations touched directly more than 41,000 voters to help create the largest voter turnout in the state’s history.
In New Mexico, their statewide alliance strategically coordinated their GOTV programs, with SWOP focusing on the communities in Albuquerque and SAGE Council primarily working with the pueblos of Acoma, To’hagiileee, and Laguna.
Lessons Learned about Leadership Development
“The only safe ship in a storm is leadership”
~Faye Wattleton
Increasing voter turnout in an election is only effective if it can serve as a catalyst in developing a large group of grassroots leaders. Promoting leadership from within your membership and increasing their ability to assert power within their communities is the lifeline of any grassroots organization.
SWOP is committed to building leaders through their youth program, Jovenes Unidos. They are dedicated to providing leadership development to young people with opportunities and access to resources we need to think for themselves and analyze their surroundings, to have a voice in decisions that affect their lives, and to build power in their communities.
I witnessed SWOP’s leadership development in action, when I rode with Joaquin Lujan and Aurea during a drag and drop on the last day of early voting in New Mexico. Despite the generational differences, the two of them worked together to achieve a common vision: turn out people to the polls. As we drove, they engaged in casual conversations.
However, it quickly became apparent that each was transferring knowledge onto one another. They both took turns sharing how they came to community organizing. Aurea talked about her experiences of being a young woman in Albuquerque and the issues that brought her to SWOP. Joaquin shared his experiences as a youth and the reasons why he’s continued to work for social change with SWOP. Both were respectful to one another’s standpoint.
SAGE Council is an Indigenous and people of color-led organization using community organizing to build power through action, education, leadership development and political participation. Our commitment to social change and self-determination is based in spirituality that honors Mother Earth and all peoples.
Bruce Maquakin explained to me his path to becoming a leader within SAGE during a drag and drop in the pueblo of Acoma.
“When I first started out, I didn’t have too much experience with phone banking. One of the first things I learned was phones and how to make phone calls. And then I started learning more about data entry and field. And as I progressed, I learned more about campaigns and how to be a part of a tea.”
Southern Echo is working to empower the African-American community in Mississippi through an inter-generational model of effective community organizing. Bringing younger and older together in the same training and work ensures that younger people become part of the evolving leadership process. When older leadership cannot carry on any more, younger people are already in place, with knowledge, experience and commitment to sustain the work. Younger people get hands-on experience that enables them to develop the vision, tools and skills necessary for effective leadership.
Taken together, Pushback Network understands that the development of new, accountable leadership and organizations to empower the community depends on the transformation of individuals who do the organizing work, and transformation of the communities in which they work. I saw this played out directly in New Mexico with the youth teams of SWOP engaging in door-knocking. As well as the youth in SAGE conducting phone banks.
Conclusion
“Democracy doesn’t end on Election Day.”
~Robby Rodriguez, PBN Co-Chair
From our experiences in Mississippi and New Mexico, Jason and I witnessed the power of engaging voters and increasing turnout. The GOTV efforts in both states weren’t about electing people into office. The GOTV efforts were about educating and mobilizing people around issues that impact their lives as a way to build stronger, healthier, powerful communities.
We were humbled to witness history in the making. From car door to car door in a Mississippi motorcade, from phone call to phone call within SAGE’s office, we saw people demanding to be counted! The Project shows us that voting is neither an abstract concept nor an empty gesture that bears no weight in the everyday machinations of our government.
Through the testimonies of organizers, staff, and community members, we were able to showcase the power of Pushback Network and the model being worked by our partners in eight states from coast to coast. With all that, we know that The Project still only skimmed the surface of the depth and breadth of Pushback Network. Join the hundreds of new followers who discovered our work through The Project and stay tuned to what other extraordinary feats we have in store.
