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.

“I have the right to fight for my rights and I won’t let anyone stop me.” ~Sondra Montez

While in New Mexico for The Project, Pushback Network’s week-long, two-state, multi-media electoral project, PBN Communications Coordinator Brigid Flaherty worked in the field helping SWOP Field Organizer Sondra Martinez get out the vote.

While together, Brigid had a chance to talk to Sondra about what prompted her to get involved with the election and her community. Sondra’s husband, Salvador, is a new citizen who was able to cast his first vote this year.

How did you become involved with SWOP?

I moved to this community in 1997. I started working with SWOP because there were no basic services: no hot water, no roads. I saw a meeting going on where SWOP was giving a presentation. I approached SWOP at the meeting and asked if they could help us get basic services.

Before SWOP, I tried going to the county myself. I’d ask them about the public utilities and why the prices were going up and they wouldn’t give a reason. When I met SWOP, I heard they were involved in giving support to people who were losing their land, and that’s how I came involved in SWOP.

What’s your role at SWOP?

They saw that I had a potential for being very active in my community, someone who seeks out answers to the conditions we’re living in. And they asked if I could come in as a part-time organizer. I thought, sure why not. Recently I became a full-time organizer. I’ve been with them for ten years. I like doing the environmental justice outreach.

How did you get involved in activism?

I had just turned 16 and I hung out with people who were involved in land issues and they brought me in. One thing that happened to me as a result of my involvement in the land grant struggle was that my house got burned down; someone had set up a homemade bomb in the house where I was staying. Luckily no one was injured. We were fighting for justice. I feel like it was a way of intimidating us. By making threats to us, they thought we would stop. Up to this minute, I feel I have the right to fight for my rights and I won’t let anyone stop me.

How has the movement changed from then to now?

The change I see is that when I was younger it was mainly older folks who were doing this. Now I see more youth getting involved and getting educated. At school you hear a lot of lies. They don’t give you the facts about how the land got taken from us and now I see a lot of youth are getting involved and it’s through strategic planning. Now we are more into planning, thinking it through, and making it safe. I also see that people of color are having more power. We don’t get intimidated too easy.

What changes have you seen in terms of women’s involvement in the movement, particularly women of color?

There’s been a lot of change. In the 60’s, it was male-leading. Now, you see female leaders that are coming out. And that has changed a lot.

For more information:

1. On the land grant struggle in New Mexico
2. Chicana Women’s Liberation
3. Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, “A View from New Mexico: Recollections of the movimiento left”

While in New Mexico for

Why are you involved with the GOTV program at SWOP?

Being a community organizer for most of my life, I never thought we could get the intense feedback from the community like we are now. We’ve gotta push these elections in Albuquerque and around the state because we’re getting somewhere. When I was with the Chicano Movement in the late 60’s and 70’s the racism was really intense. We were dealing with issues where people of color were having nothing done for them. We had no programs set up for Chicanos, Native Americans, African Americans. A lot of the organizing we did was on the basic needs. Well here I am now at 56. And where does the energy of a person my age go? I have found that energy through the youth at SWOP. Because of them I said OK, let me try to be apart of these changes.

Can you tell us about yourself?

My family’s been here for two hundred years. Two hundred years ago our family had land and water rights. And then we saw that taken away. So, in the 60’s and 70’s our movement was about getting our land back. At a very minimum, we needed a certain amount of autonomy because we had land, we had a language, and we were a people. Now, a lot of young folks are asking me for that history. And I say how do we keep that history and also move forward? The election has given us the opportunity to get tighter, to work on those issues, and to talk about history.

What have your experiences been like at the doors?

Well, one time I went to a house where the doors were busted, the windows were broken. And I’m saying wow, does anyone live here? Usually you don’t go to a house like that because chances are they are not registered. And someone came to it and I found the person and they already voted. And I’m seeing those types of things. Before people didn’t feel we had someone that represented us. And now that feeling is out there.

To learn more about the issues Joaquin mentioned in the interview, please check out these links:

1. El Grito del Norte
2. History of the Chicano Movement

SWOP

“We really owned what happened on November 4th. It was all about us, the big us. This election wasn’t about Barack Obama or John McCain. It was the American people and their hunger for change.” ~Robby Rodriguez, Executive Director, South West Organizing Project.

It’s now Friday, November 7th. I returned from New Mexico two days ago and am still reflecting upon the implications of the historical election results. How do I summarize what I felt, tasted, and experienced during my stay in Albuquerque? What words can adequately capture the great Get Out the Vote work accomplished by the teams of SAGE Council and Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP)? Perhaps the best way to begin is to let the results speak for themselves.

The hotly contested, battleground state of New Mexico was the first Western state to be called in this week’s election. Last election they had to wait weeks before it was officially called. There are nearly 1.2 million registered voters in the state. When early voting began on October 18th, Bernalillo County opened 15 satellite voting locations to encourage people to get out and vote. County officials said more than 2,000 people showed up to vote within the first hour and a half that polls were open. In total, it is estimated that 80 percent of New Mexico’s registered voters cast ballots in this year’s general election. This makes it among the best rates of voter participation in a presidential election in New Mexico history.

What does this strong voter turn out point towards? In my mind, it demonstrates that the people came to the general election with a renewed zeal in the democratic process.

“I know what it’s like to not have something to eat,” remarked Tracy Chacon, a 19-yr old first time voter and a SWOP member. “But when I tell people to go out to vote and have your voice be heard, it’s because if everyone from where I came from voted, if everyone who had a problem with how things are working now would go vote, then things would work out in our benefit.”

What I saw during those days spent with SAGE Council and SWOP—at the doors in Albuquerque or on the pueblos of Acoma and To’hagiilee–was an indefatigable spirit in the youth, women, and men of New Mexico, who all stood up to exercise the rights and privileges guaranteed to them in the constitution of the United States. The people seized the vote in order to take back control over their lives to which have been overlooked and slighted in our political institutions for many years. In my heart, I feel it was the people on November 4th who finally pumped blood and life back into the tool that is the ballot!

During the 2006 electoral season, PBN partner Kentuckians for the Commonwealth learned first hand how paratrooper tactics disrupt years’ worth of work in their communities. According to nationally based, numbers-centric guidelines, national groups did a better job targeting the KFTC’s population, and reached more people.

But a closer look shows that while KFTC contacted a third of the people the national paratrooping group reached, they did it for a tenth of the money. KFTC’s numbers, unlike those of the paratroopers, reflected three person-to-person contacts for each individual counted. KFTC’s contacts included civic education and leadership development on a personal level – a crucial benefit that lasts, and one that you can’t get from mailings or robocalls.

This was achieved despite having to constantly firefight to battle the bull-in-a-china-shop blunders of the national organizers. “Last November, on election day, our Lexington organizer was flooded with phone calls from people all over the state asking for a ride to the polls,” said KFTC director Burt Lauderdale. “Somebody at a national organization had contacted our office months before and asked, in general terms, if we provide rides to the polls. We said yes and gave them the info for the local guy.”

“What happened next,” said Lauderdale, “without our permission or notification, was that 36,000 letters were sent to a targeted selection of voters from all over the state. The letters were a mildly threatening attempt to increase turn out by intimidating voters who stayed home for the last election. The organization didn’t identify itself in the letters, listing only a P.O. Box. What they did say was, ‘If you need a ride, call this number.’ That number was the direct line to our lone organizer who was inundated with calls from hundreds of miles away. KFTC had nothing to do with this direct mail piece, but communities across our state were left with negative feelings about us and our work.”

“Now, when I talked to the director of that organization in the days after he was embarrassed,” Lauderdale continued. “He apologized for the miscommunication, then turned around this Spring and did it again. This same group sent another huge mailing to their database encouraging them to register to vote; only it was sent out to them after the voter registration deadline. This was all very expensive to do. It’s frustrating because it’s an ineffective waste of money. Plus, it creates a mountain of mess that we’re left to clean up.”

This organization was knowledgeable enough to locate KFTC and put their phone number onto its direct mail outreach. The next logical step is to find ways to connect with their work in a complementary way. This is where paratrooper tactics fail, and where effective bottom-up collaboration wins.

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]]> http://pushbacknetwork.org/2008/11/01/collateral-damage/feed/ 0 http://pushbacknetwork.org/2008/10/31/brigid-heads-to-new-mexico/ http://pushbacknetwork.org/2008/10/31/brigid-heads-to-new-mexico/#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:26:21 +0000 Samiya Bashir http://pushbacknetwork.org/?p=164 Brigid is getting ready to head down to New Mexico for a full week of rock-doc’in the vote through PBN’s engaged civic mobilization model.

Pushback Network is excited to launch The Project in October 2008. We’re sending two of the scrappiest young organizers we know, Brigid & Jason, down South (coordinated by our own “Wizardess of Oz” Samiya, hanging with our community organzing partners in New Mexico & Mississippi all through Election Week to Rock-Doc the 2008 civic engagement process.

The days up to, through, and beyond November 2nd will be tracked using PBN’s Tumblr blog, its website, and online social networks. Follow The Project on:

Be on the lookout after the election for our wrap-up.

Follow The Project, Pushback Network’s Election 2008 Multi-Media Project online through your social networks, at our Project Updates Blog, or on Friend Feed and watch history happen with updates all day, every day through Election Week!

We’re going to the battlegrounds of New Mexico and Mississippi November 1-7, 2008, to show what the work our partners are doing to fuse community organizing and voter engagement and mobilize people of color, poor people, and young people looks like — in action and in near-real-time using photos, videos, micro-bloggging and more. Check back each day to see where we are with preparations, and see the organizing work happen through the post-election wind-up November 7th.

We’ll also be sharing work from our other state-wide partners to showcase how, from New York to California, integrated voter work builds and strengthens organizations, creates leaders from contacted voters, and shifts public consciousness towards an agenda that supports progressive social values.

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]]> http://pushbacknetwork.org/2008/10/29/keep-up-with-the-project/feed/ 0 http://pushbacknetwork.org/2008/06/09/pbn-partners-get-on-the-bus/ http://pushbacknetwork.org/2008/06/09/pbn-partners-get-on-the-bus/#comments Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:42:49 +0000 Samiya Bashir http://pushbacknetwork.org/?p=126 From June 25 – July 2, 2008, PBN’s Mississippi and New Mexico State Alliance Partners will come together with grassroots organizers from Texas to expand on South X Southwest, an ongoing project working to build Black/Brown progressive partnership across traditional cultural, geographic and political barriers. The meetings will take place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and 41 Mississippi leaders will travel by bus across the Southwest to participate.