From February 12-14, 2010 six Pushback Network members from California, Nevada and New York visited New Mexico to participate in the SouthWest Organizing Project’s (SWOP) census campaign. Over the weekend our members organizations, Oakland Rising and Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN), met with SWOP to discuss strategies and tactics around increasing participation in undercounted communities and participated in field work in Albuquerque’s South Valley and Southwest Mesa. This peer-to-peer exchange fostered honest and authentic dialog about the strategic significance of strengthening local census programs as a strategy for building national electoral power and movement. The goals of this exchange were to 1) deepen staff knowledge and experience about strategies and tactics to conduct an effective census program, 2) provide space for staff from different organizations to discuss how scope and scale are impacting work, and 3) lay the foundation for strong movement building relationships and partnerships.
Since the exchange, each organization has refined their individual census programs to include the lessons learned from New Mexico. They learned how to do more concentrated, effective outreach in “hard to count” precincts. They also used the canvassing experience to develop a more nuanced door-to-door plan. In particular, SWOP shared the following best practices to the participating Pushback organizations:
• SWOP’s bi-lingual field program messaging articulated the significance of participating in the Census using multiple language.
• Census outreach cleverly connected civic engagement with employment opportunities with the Census. This tactic helps to redefine the role and relationship between disenfranchised people and government. We believe that reducing anti-government sentiment and suggest a model of government where services (including employment) are projected essential function of effective government is central to generating long-term civic interest and participation.
Please read two first-hand reports from both Oakland Rising and PLAN:
“The most beautiful shift has been the increased confidence in our staff. They are simply more comfortable and confident about our field program and their knowledge of what Census work can look like. This trip was powerful.” ~ Esperanza Tervalon-Daumonte, Executive Director of Oakland Rising
“The takeaways that I have from my time in New Mexico include the need to start using a census script that includes census awareness, census participation, and persuasion based on public goods and the positive role of government. I also became inspired to try and hold a peer-to-peer exchange session in Las Vegas around our great work on a constitutional ballot initiative. I also can see strong similarities between New Mexico and Nevada as Southwestern states.” Howard Watts III, Field Organizer for Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada
Moving forward, these organizations are already planning a follow-up exchange to further consolidate and strengthen their census work. Stay tuned for those reflections!
