No “Enthusiasm Gap” in Nevada
by Kim Mack, Pushback Field Director
I had the pleasure of getting out the vote with PLAN (Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada), the Pushback Network’s awesome anchor organization in Nevada and I am stoked to share a bit of my experience!
PLAN Canvass Training
When I got to Reno I was paired up with two Latino canvassers who were knocking on doors in Reno’s Latino community. It was inspiring to hear these first time activists talk about how important it is to them to get their community involved in the political process. They are concerned about the anti-immigrant feelings of some that are out there but also motivated by those same feelings. I listened as he explained to me why he will continue to motivate the Latino and other communities to exercise their rights to make our communities a better place. [Read more]
The Good, the Bad and the Pretty: Reflections from Pushback Network on the 2010 Midterm Election
For those of us on the front lines of social and economic justice, Election Day was not something to be happy about. However, regardless of the political shifts that occurred at the state and national level, our chosen course to bring about transformation of this country has not shifted. As we survey the new political landscape wrought by the Mid-Terms, a couple of things become clear. Our visions for this country remain the same. The work we do to promote justice remains the same. What this election has successfully accomplished is that it has provided community organizers and progressives a moment of pause and reflection, with some good, some bad and some pretty lessons to bring back to our communities.
PLAN Canvassers
THE GOOD: Despite a ton of money, and a ton of free media, the electoral “tsunami of change” was more of a wave than a tidal wave. The high levels of corporate and anonymous cash resources are never a good thing, but it was matched by the voices of people of color voters in a number of states. In particular, the Latino vote made itself heard in the west and southwest, in ways that can only serve to help fight discrimination and racism against their communities. The voices against racism were loud and clear this year, and they made a difference in the tone and outcomes of the campaigns, regardless of the victor. [Read more]
Over 50 grassroots activists, lawyers, and cartographers from 20 community-based organizations met over the weekend at the Lakeover Center in Jackson, Mississippi to attend the Community Organizing Around Political Redistricting School.
The political redistricting school was organized by the Pushback Network and Southern Echo provided the training. With this experience, we sought to deepen the knowledge around the history, laws and regulations of redistricting and encourage grassroots groups to focus their organizing efforts on redistricting as a way to build broad civic participation amongst underrepresented and marginalized communities. [Read more]
“It gets into your mind, it gets into your heart,” Nick Salazar from the SouthWest Organizing Project.
After hearing personal stories from the women and men whose lives have been forever altered by the horrific practices of mountain top removal, Nick Salazar, elected official and member from the SouthWest Organizing Project, gave voice to the empathy he felt for those impacted by coal extraction in Kentucky. Having witnessed the deterioration of his own brother’s health from uranium mining in New Mexico, Mr. Salazar understood all too well how the energy companies, and those who protect them, circumvent rules and regulations that are designed to protect workers and the environment in order to maximize profit. [Read more]
Community Groups across the Nation are Mobilized to Stand with Immigrants in Arizona on July 29th
Within the Pushback Network, States are Organizing Actions and Marches in Opposition to Arizona’s anti-immigrant, racial profiling law SB1070.
On July 29th, the Arizona law SB 1070 that legalizes racial profiling, is poised to take effect. Community groups and alliances in Arizona are gearing up for a massive “Day of Non-Compliance”, to say no to racial profiling and NO! to unfair treatment of hard working immigrants and their families.
SB 1070 is not a matter for Arizona only. It is a blatant attack on fundamental freedom.
There is a growing national movement to overturn the unconstitutional law in Arizona and to challenge other anti-immigrant legislation around the country. Along with many other organizations and networks, member organizations of the Pushback Network will hold actions, marches, and engage in voter registration drives in support of the people of Arizona to protest SB1070 and unjust and inhumane immigration enforcement policies.
Pushback Network organizations plan to demonstrate our level of commitment to the struggle for full rights and respect for all immigrants. [Read more]
Pushback Network is fired up about the US Social Forum!
From June 22-26th, over 200 members from the 9 Pushback State Alliances are uniting in Detroit to strengthen our collective efforts and craft visions of liberation and justice.
Seeing as the time has come for us to build collective power in this milieu of massive unemployment, SB 1070, the oil spill, de-funding of public education, foreclosures and the bank bailouts, Pushback has constructed a strong program that highlights the diverse, multi-issue, multi-region, multi-constituency nature of our network.
You can catch us in Detroit sponsoring the following workshops, convention, and party:
You can download the entire Pushback program here: Pushback Network Schedule at USSF
[Read more]
By: Diego Gerena-Quiones
Sustainable Communities Organizer, Community Voices Heard
June 1, 2010
Ground Breaking Experience: Lessons from Mass Base Organizing
By visiting with our brothers and sisters in Albuquerque NM with the South West Organizing Project, I gained valuable insights into the model of organizing they call MASS BASE WORK. In preparation for our own election cycle in NY, I got to see first hand how SWOP approaches electoral work separate from ongoing campaign development, membership recruitment, and leadership development.
What they have is a separate track that acknowledges the opportunities for civic engagement that elections bring with them, while also recognizing the limitations of peoples lives that is not always conducive to becoming active members. In this sense, they have developed a whole strategy (MASS BASE), that seeks to develop shallower, but broader relations, with a much wider constituency of people that are not being engaged to be members. Rather, the goals of the mass base work seeks to build a collective of people that on some level, recognize SWOP and the image of the Campaign For A Better New Mexico, share the same progressive values, and are moveable to a small action step – usually voting, making a phone call, writing a letter, etc. [Read more]
On the heels of New Mexico’s June 1st Primary Election, Tomás Garduño, SWOP’s Director of Mass Base Political Organizing and Michael Montoya, SWOP’s Mass Base Political Organizer hopped on a plane to head out to Oakland, California to lend a hand in getting our communities out to vote for California’s Primary Election on Tuesday, June 8th. Oakland Rising (OR), a collaborative of 4 community organizations (APEN-Asian Pacific Environmental Network, EBASE-East Bay Alliance for an Sustainable Environment, Causa Justa/Just Cause, and the Ella Baker Center), hosted SWOP. Esperanza Tervalon-Daumont, OR’s Executive Director and Jessamyn Sabbag , OR’s Field Director exposed SWOP’s reps to their model, their GOTV field strategy and most importantly to “the Town” as Oaklanders call it.
All day Friday was spent cutting turf and prepping the California Alliance’s field packets for the Saturday Door Knock Day. [Read more]
Press Release for
May 18, 2010
[New York, NY] The Pushback Network (PBN) is honored to announce it partnership with the Southwest Workers Union (SWU), a grassroots organization based in San Antonio, Texas. This brings Pushback Network’s presence into nine states, and adds new depth to the Network’s capacity for electoral outreach and mobilization. The Pushback Network has built learning and collaborating relationships among community based organizations through peer learning, resource development and technical assistance in voter turnout and civic engagement. Our mission continues to focus on uplifting the voices of marginalized communities in local and state government and connecting those voices nationally.
The Southwest Workers Union has shaped a strong and significant presence in south Texas, through neighborhood organizing and multi-issue advocacy. They are an organization of low-income workers and families, community residents, immigrants and youth, united in one organizational struggle for worker rights, environmental justice and community empowerment. As a leading presence in poor and working class Latino communities in Texas, they have exciting new strategies for civic participation and electoral organizing. They have also made connections nationally and globally, working across state and national boundaries, and drawing the connection between peoples everywhere. [Read more]
By Peter Hardie, Pushback Network
It is time for local and federal government in the United States to play fair.
For decades, civic activists have argued that there is a fundamental flaw in the census count: those serving time in prisons, regardless of how short their sentence, are counted in the census tracts where the prisons are located, not in their home counties.
This is bad policy in many ways. Since the census is the key to both apportionment and the drawing of electoral seats, and prisoners cannot vote in nearly all states, the votes of those living in prison counties (but not in the prison) are substantially weighted, and those of the home counties of the prisoners similarly diluted.
Since federal aid for schools and hospitals, employment services, police and fire departments are also pegged to the census count., communities whose members are not residing there at the time of the count due to a jail sentence, experience a deficit in needed services. These communities are often already economically challenged, exacerbating the lives of residents and returning prisoners.
The dispersal of prisoners far out of their home state to so-called “super-prisons” in places like Texas, creates a new dynamic of biasing census numbers and dilution of voting strength across state lines.
[Read more]
