By David Ford
Art by Sierra DeVuyst
MOVE Texas is using visual and performing arts to get young voters motivated. Young voters are the key to this election. 41% of Texas voters are under 30 and 61% of those are people of color. If this portion of the voters can be motivated to vote, it will utterly change Texas politics!
Every Thursday MOVE is presenting performance artists on Instagram live. On Thursday, Sept. 3 I caught Texas musician Alyson Alonzo. She’s an alt-R&B singer and composer with a honey voice. She wanted to volunteer her time, “for the queer babies and the trans babies and for a more progressive Texas and San Antonio!” As she said, “If you think it is crooked then vote so it won’t be!”
MOVE Texas streams the concerts on Instagram live.
The National Artists of Texas Fellowship is MOVE’s program for visual artists. They named five artists as fellows back in April. The artists have spent the summer creating “touch points” to motivate youth of color to vote and the images you see on this page are some of the work they have posted on the MOVE Texas Instagram. Here’s a link to information on the artists.
Photo by Adraint Bereal
Meanwhile, in a zoom conversation with MOVE Texas executive director, Drew Calloway, The Airlift team learned that MOVE just completed the largest youth voter registration effort in the history of Texas and one of the largest ever in the country. On one marathon day they made 100,000 calls to encourage young people to vote.
You can, “Brand yourself as a registered voter” - meaning put a circle-R (yeah, that kind of brand, it’s Texas!) symbol in your Instagram name. MOVE has even created free circle-R sticker designs.
Art by Ana Ruiz
Of course, the Republican Governor and legislatures are not making voting easy. MOVE is working overtime on voter rights protection: pressuring key counties to increase voter access. They’ve demanded and won several 24-hour polling places. And they are in constant contact with young voters on what hoops the Republicans have set for them to jump through.
Of the engagement with artists Drew said, “We are really trying to cross the cultural organizing and the field organizing together because we know that communicating with young people we need to tell them that it’s important to vote but we also have to make it social. We have to create spaces for young people to show up in.”