In my recent County Party email “blast”, there was a notice of a rally today featuring Rev. William Barber as a speaker (they already had me there), and with “training”. My husband and I made plans to go and invited a new friend I had made at the nail salon the other day, and she met us there.
It was held in a huge, lovely church, and since I can stand only briefly and walk not very far, my husband decided to push me in my chair with my O2 tank. They put us in the front which was great for seeing and hearing speakers but not so much for seeing who was coming in and milling around, but I didn’t see or recognize anyone I knew. It’s a joint effort; a tour of congressional districts in NC that will last a few more days, run by several organizations, including the Poor People’s Campaign, Repairers of the Breach, and Beloved Community Center.
The point of the rally was to get everyone fired up about voting and about getting a specific bloc of voters to vote, namely those who are poor/living below the poverty line, which is essentially half of the people in the state. I can remember Dr. King talking about this before he was murdered, that if we could just get all the poor people to vote, we would have an amazing majority that no one could touch. I was inclined to agree with him then and still do.
The speakers emphasized the importance of calling, texting, and knocking doors to contact lower income voters to make sure they’re registered and planning to vote. No political ads target them, politicians don’t meet with or talk to them, and I can see why they think their votes don’t matter. But as you know, they do.
I wanted to write letters with Vote Forward, and since my writing hand has bad arthritis and carpal tunnel, my husband does the letters and I do the envelopes as I can. So far we have 1300 letters ready to go with no intention of stopping. I hope that a lot of these letters may be reaching poor voters. A friend of mine believes that “a letter or a postcard is a door knock” but I’m not sure I agree with that. Nothing takes the place of the energy there can be with actually meeting someone.
I bring this to y’all’s attention since you are far and wide and have all kinds of contacts. Any suggestions for engaging the most poor among us and getting them to vote are welcome. Here is a link to an earlier speech by Rev. Barber at the beginning of the tour —www.breachrepairers.org/…
If corporate fatcats are forced to raise wages, they will likely whine and raise prices but hell, they’re doing that anyway!
I was actually pretty disappointed in the turnout at today’s rally, I had hoped there would be many more people there. But we need low-wage voters to vote too, and like everyone, to be reminded to check their registration shortly before the elections (especially here in NC where we are in danger of another supermajority in the state legislature and they are full of dirty tricks). A friend also told me today that they are now cutting her sister’s SNAP down to $20/month. $20??? Seriously? Why even bother?
There are no ads targeting lower-income people. No politicians meeting with or talking to them. How do we change that? I don’t know but with the incredible amount of brainpower I’ve seen on this site over the years, I have a sneaking suspicion there may be some answers shared in the comments section. At least I hope so. I also hope that some of you will be inspired to tackle your own GOTV activities from this angle. There’s a good article in the Winston Salem Journal about the tour which I can’t get to this page being technologically challenged but if you type the name of the paper and Rev. Barber’s name in your search engine, you’ll get it;
Best to all you Kossacks in all your endeavors, democracy is on the ballot!