This week, we’re all in on North Carolina. Read about this state’s 2020 journey from red to blue and hear about it differently from two amazing leaders on the frontlines.
[Series] On The Ground: Michigan Liberation
by Lorrie Goldin
Turning non-voters into voters: Airlift’s mission aligns perfectly with Michigan Liberation, one of several grassroots groups our “Lift the Midwest” fund supports. Founded in 2018, Michigan Liberation is a statewide network of people and organizations organizing to end the criminalization of Black families and communities of color in Michigan.
One of Michigan Liberation’s first endeavors was a series of listening sessions with individual citizens that revealed just how widespread the impacts of archaic and discriminatory laws and policies have been among poorer communities, especially among people of color. As one session participant noted, “Too often, people are caught up in the system because of financial instability. Between cash bail, court fines, legal fees, and other costs, it seems impossible to escape from under the load of expenses that start to rack up, further oppressing marginalized people. How is that about justice? A wealthy person could pay up and be done, but that’s not true for most of us.”
Those who have been incarcerated and their loved ones—which includes over half of Michigan Liberation’s staff and volunteers--know all too well the long-term devastation caused by criminal-legal involvement. Their leadership is key in healing communities from the pain and trauma of incarceration, and in transforming a broken system.
One such leader is Kimberly Woodson, Canvass Team Leader extraordinaire who was sentenced for life as a pregnant 17 year-old. After the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles serving a life sentence could apply for case review, Woodson was released in 2017, having spent 29 years behind bars. She started the non-profit Redeeming Kimberly to assist other returning citizens with housing, food, clothing, and jobs. Woodson facilitates forgiveness sessions, and inspires everyone at Michigan Liberation with her incredible energy and warm-heartedness.
Deep engagement and multiple conversations with low-propensity voters about issues that affect their daily lives were key to the electoral successes up and down the ballot in the 2018 mid-terms. In just five weeks, Michigan Liberation knocked on nearly 28,000 doors and talked personally with more than 5,000 people in three counties. Those for whom every day is a struggle may not pay much attention to national politics, but they care deeply about who’s elected as local sheriffs, prosecutors, and judges. Michigan Liberation’s education, endorsement, and empowerment efforts create powerful community advocates, and get people to the polls.
Michigan is one of the few states that automatically restore voting rights once people who have been convicted are released from jail or prison. But as Co-Director Meredith Loomis Quinlan explains, returning citizens often don’t know they can vote. Many probation and parole officers tell them it’s illegal, and people are too afraid to do anything that jeopardizes their freedom. Michigan Liberation works hard to change this through education and voter assistance. They’re advocating for registration forms in every release packet in the state. Quinlan even imagines the day when packets include a letter from the Governor saying, “Welcome back to the democratic process!”
Such long-ignored voices matter in rebuilding an engaged citizenry and achieving electoral success up and down the ballot. In 2018, Michigan Liberation helped flip four state Senate seats, three State House seats, three County Commission seats, and a US Congressional seat. Statewide offices turned from red to blue in the Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State races.
“A Vision for a Liberated Michigan” was launched in November 2019. The agenda highlights eight themes vital to resolving the state’s mass incarceration crisis, including the school-to-prison pipeline; police and surveillance; mental health; sentencing; jails and prisons; and re-entry services after release. An example of the latter is Michigan Liberation’s Technology Empowerment classes for returning citizens.
These amazing successes by an increasingly effective movement not only have been transforming families, individuals, communities, and the state; they‘ve also paved the way for even greater voter engagement and turnout for 2020.
Then came COVID-19. The virus has had a particularly devastating effect on incarcerated populations, where overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and inadequate health care are routine. High rates of infection and even death among inmates and staff have catapulted the crisis into the news. Michigan Liberation and others are calling for immediate steps to stop the spread and save lives. On March 30, Governor Whitmer issued an executive order permitting (but not mandating) the early release of vulnerable inmates who pose no risk to public safety.
Earl Burton, a formerly incarcerated Michigan Liberation organizer, said Whitmer is on the right track, but more needs to be done, such as immediately releasing elderly and medically infirm prisoners and those already granted parole. “I personally know a few who are in no way shape or form a threat to public safety. You have prisoners who have been there for decades, and are no longer the same people that they were 30, 40 years ago,” Burton notes.
In addition to highlighting the urgency of Michigan Liberation’s criminal justice efforts, the coronavirus has also shifted the organization’s focus to providing desperately needed services such as water and food to suffering communities.
The political work continues under extremely trying circumstances. The staff switched to working from home before the shelter-in-place order. They all know someone who has died from COVID, and are hearing horror stories from friends and loved ones who are currently incarcerated.
Nonetheless, Michigan Liberation has nimbly pivoted to online community outreach and organizing. The prior year’s experience with Zoom and providing Tech Empowerment classes has come in handy! Michigan Liberation recently hired 14 online organizers and 4 digital communications people to amplify social media content. Canvassers engage in wellness checks, then connect people’s experiences with how their votes are vital in bringing about change.
Co-Director Quinlan notes a silver lining: As COVID has exposed the fault lines of a broken and unjust criminal-legal system, it has generated more empathy. “COVID provides a tangible measure the elected officials’ performance. What did they do or not do during this crisis?” she remarks. “We see it as an opportunity.”
Airlift also sees it as an opportunity. Michigan Liberation exemplifies how building movements from the grassroots up engages marginalized communities, which in turn translates into meaningful and progressive electoral change. Now more than ever, your contribution matters.
Your generosity makes a difference. Please support Michigan Liberation and all the other great grassroots organizations Airlift funds by donating at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/airlift. Thank you!
From The Frontlines Of COVID: PA Stands Up
by David Ford
(All “From The Frontlines Of COVID” articles are summaries based on Zoom calls between Airlift and group leaders. Full audio is available upon request from donors.)
“People are at home and they want to talk!”
So says Hannah Laurison, Executive Director of Pennsylvania Stands Up, in a conversation with the Airlift team. Hannah reported that their canvassers are having an easy time getting voters to open up about the problems they face: “The Covid crisis has really magnified all the issues that were on our radar.”
As many of us have done, PA Stands Up went through several weeks of revamping the way they work. Through March, their game plan had been about making contact person-to-person by knocking on doors. Since they’ve had to change to calling people, it’s a good thing they can now get people on the phone! Hannah explains the change, “It’s scary and precarious, I won’t deny that. But I feel very proud of our team and how they’ve been able to pivot and identify new tactics.” This in spite of the fact that four of them have already lost family members to COVID-19.
Like many of the groups Airlift supports, PA Stands Up is providing local aid as well as political advocacy, asking people in the communities they serve what’s needed. One of the many areas of focus for Hannah’s group is health care: “With mass unemployment, people are losing their employer health care.” In response, PA Stands Up hasn’t missed a beat, disseminating information on where to find free food and helping with aid applications.
PA Stands Up has also begun a series of virtual forums with people like Varshini Prakash. She is the Executive Director and co-founder of Sunrise, a youth organization supporting the Green New Deal. Varshini can help voters make connections between the administration’s failure with addressing COVID-19 and its failure in addressing climate change.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania has passed its first vote-by-mail bill, but it’s new and confusing and it requires voters to re-register. So PA Stands Up is doing crucial work in assisting voters with the new procedures. Hannah reports that Republicans have been much quicker to engage their electorate than Democrats have, leaving organizations like PA Stands Up on the front line of preparing voters for the new system.
The Democratic candidate for president has been chosen, but Hannah is as excited by the down ballot candidates as the national ones. She knows what gets voters to the polls—candidates who have a direct, local impact on voters’ lives.
“I want to emphasize the cohort of movement candidates that are running in PA. We have more than a dozen candidates running down ballot for state house and state assembly in competitive seats. We are working together to retake the gavel from the Republicans. So we will be sending some progressive voices to Harrisburg next year and not just from liberal Philadelphia but from central and western Pennsylvania, as well.”
These candidates put their hearts into it just like PA Stands up does, and they are proving, through COVID-19, who will have voters’ backs.
From The Frontlines Of COVID: LUCHA
LUCHA Is Doing Essential Work For Arizona’s Essential Workers
by David Ford
(All “From The Frontlines Of COVID” articles are summaries based on Zoom calls between Airlift and group leaders. Full audio is available upon request from donors.)
The folks at LUCHA can see that the Covid-19 crisis is a game changer.
Tomas Robles, LUCHA co-director, describes this shift in a recent conversation with Airlift staff:
“The essential workers are the grocery store workers and our farm workers, they are the ones who are feeding America. We’ve really been able to show that undocumented communities, low-wage communities, working family communities are much more necessary than the CEOs! I think you’ll have a lot more individuals, voters, community members who will feel more empathy towards those workers than they did last February.”
Arizona, with its Republican governor and state legislature, has not responded to the changes the crisis has brought. The administration has been reluctant to act in order to reduce health impacts or to provide support to Arizonans who are reeling under the economic effects of the crisis. And Arizona has the resources to do more. The state has a 1.5 billion dollar ‘rainy day fund’ but Governor Ducey, stuck in old ways of thinking, wants to use that for tax cuts.
Fellow co-director, Alejandra Gomez, outlined some of what LUCHA is doing to change the political landscape. “We are doing ‘LUCHA Listens’ work online to understand what resources our communities need at this time and that’s catapulting the legislative fight to really push Governor Ducey.” Like the other grassroots organizations Airlift supports, LUCHA is effective because they pay attention to what the community members say they need.
LUCHA doesn’t just reach out to workers:
“LAZOS is our network of small businesses that focuses on small business owners of color, who traditionally have very little say in landlord-tenant rights, contract procurement for state contracts, or state tax breaks that larger corporations receive. And most of them want to improve things in the community. They were very helpful in defeating the referendum to ban sanctuary cities that the Republican governor attempted to pass this year. It’s really helped to get our small and micro-business owners to see that they have influence that yields power. Mitzi, our LAZOS coordinator has done webinars on how to apply for small business loans during the crisis.”
But of course, LUCHA itself has been hit hard by the crisis. All their work had been door-to-door and now it all has to move online. It’s a complete change of their tactics. You can watch this Facebook Live meeting to see exactly how they are effectively and efficiently pivoting to online grassroots work. We’re so proud of LUCHA.
Subscribe to The Drop for regular updates on our groups’ goals, challenges and wins.
The DROP - May 2020 - Issue 1
From The Frontlines Of COVID: New Georgia Project
New Georgia Project Has A Whole New Set Of Tactics
by David Ford
(All “From The Frontlines Of COVID” articles are summaries based on Zoom calls between Airlift and group leaders. Full audio is available upon request from donors.)
In times like these, what you need is someone like Nsé Ufot on your side. “We are changing our tactics, but not our goals,” says Ufot, the busy CEO of the New Georgia Project (NGP), who recently took time out to talk with Airlift’s fundraising folks about making political change during the current health crisis.
Ufot told Airlift that, despite the pandemic, Georgia Republicans have been up to their usual tricks. Although they recently made vote-by-mail possible, they then created a complicated application process that will (unsurprisingly) make voting harder for the poor and the elderly. But, NGP remains undaunted:
“Our priorities come from conversations we have with voters. People know us for our large-scale registration work. We have registered 420,000 people of color. Our policy agenda and political agenda has always been informed by what’s at the top of the list for the people we organize with,” Ufot explains.
And, the team is showing unwavering determination and creativity in its efforts to protect and expand voting rights. For example, they’re engaging an Atlanta ice cream company in partnership to outfit ice cream trucks with scanners to help voters who need a copy of their driver’s license to send in with their ballots.
NPG still aims to turn 25 Georgia assembly seats blue this year, not because it’ll be easy, but because it has to be done. Georgia Republicans have blocked Medicaid expansion, which led directly to hospital closures. Georgia is the third worst state in terms of the uninsured, and—not surprisingly—the Covid19 death rate in Georgia is also one of the highest in the country.
Despite numerous uphill battles, NPG can hit their goals because they have the trust of underrepresented communities—trust they earned by being part of the community, by listening to and serving the communities they organize. Ufot clearly illustrates NGP’s invaluable community ties:
“Clay County, that’s part of the rural black vote, there is no newspaper there and only one doctor, so during the Covid19 epidemic, our team sends out text messages whenever there’s breaking news, to make sure there is a credible voice communicating urgent messages to black citizens.”
Supporters of Airlift directly help groups like NGP (and their communities) reach their health care and COVID response goals.
Subscribe to The Drop for regular updates on our groups’ goals, challenges and wins.
The DROP - April 2020
The entire Airlift team hopes you and yours are feeling healthy and supported during these challenging times. Our COVID-caused anxiety, frustration, and grief has only crystallized our own gratitude for this Airlift community. In the past, we have ask for your support - now, please know are here for you.
On The Ground: Texas Rising
Update: The world has changed due to the Covid-19 crisis since this was written in early March. All of us at Airlift hope that you and yours—and those in the grassroots organizations we support--are staying as safe and well as possible during these uncertain and anxious times.
Right now our groups are figuring out what they need to meet the current moment. Texas Rising, which is based on campuses that are largely shut down except for online learning, is utilizing its nimble resourcefulness to adapt. They currently need funding to support additional text and phone banks, phone and internet stipends, remote home office functionality costs, and upgraded Zoom accounts.
These are times of enormous strain and limited bandwidth. But if you’re so inclined and still can, please consider supporting Texas Rising and all the other great grassroots organizations Airlift funds by donating at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/airlift. Your generosity makes a difference, now more than ever. Thank you, and be well!
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By Lorrie Goldin
It’s been said that Texas isn’t a red state or a blue state—it’s a non-voting state. But that’s beginning to change. Huge increases in turnout, especially among young and Latinx voters, are turning the Lone Star State increasingly purple, threatening the strong conservative grip on its more than 25 million residents. At the national level, we saw this in 2016 when Hillary Clinton significantly narrowed the margins of loss from 2012. In 2018 Beto O’Rourke came tantalizingly close to defeating Senator Ted Cruz. That same year, two U.S. House seats and 12 State House seats flipped to the Democrats, with similar gains in local races throughout the state. For this year’s Super Tuesday primary, turnout in the Democratic primary skyrocketed past 2016 numbers.
In Texas, people under 35 make up half the voting age population, and 6 out of 10 are people of color (predominantly Latinx). Turbo-charging these demographic advantages has been a key strategy behind the success of turning non-voters into voters. Airlift is pleased to support two organizations deserving huge credit for this achievement. MOVE Texas, which Airlift has funded since our inception, is a campus-based organization that registered 30,000 students in 2018, increasing the early voting youth turnout by 500 percent. Now we are proud to introduce the newest member of our Airlift family: Texas Rising.
Dedicated to building the power of young people in communities and at the ballot box, Texas Rising has burst onto the political landscape with ambition, enthusiasm, and effectiveness. They focus on voter registration and turnout of young Texans; organizing on college campuses; youth leadership development and trainings; grassroots and digital organizing; and issue advocacy. Key priorities are LGBTQ equality, reproductive justice, immigrant rights, criminal justice reform, voting rights, and climate justice. The organization has put together an amazingly helpful online scorecard to show how every state legislator has voted on relevant bills.
With a presence on more than 20 college and university campuses across the state, Texas Rising is active in every major metropolitan center in the fastest growing areas for under-represented communities of color. Chapters engage in voter registration drives, Get-Out-The-Vote campaigns, issue and candidate forums, hands-on political training, as well as creative direct actions and media events. Texas Rising is also expanding their voter registration and education efforts into high schools. Along with other partners in the Texas Youth Power Alliance, they are already half way to their goal of registering 100,000 new voters before November’s election.
Rae Martinez, Texas Rising’s Director, caught the activism bug while attending community college in San Antonio. “No one in my family had ever been civically engaged in any real way,” Martinez explained. Then, they began hanging out with a friend who started telling them what was happening in the world, including a hearing on a non-discrimination ordinance to expand protections for gender identity, expression and sexual orientation. Martinez recalls, “I have to go to this. I’m a trans queer Texan. I have a lot of friends who are queer and trans. I wanted to show up, speak for my community, talk about why we need these protections when it comes to employment. Thankfully, the ordinance passed.” This sparked further involvement: registering voters with a local organization, becoming a regional field coordinator in San Antonio. The work helped Martinez build community and organize young people in San Antonio, then in a larger swath of the state before joining Texas Rising two years ago.
Martinez’s dream is “to establish youth power so that elected officials work on the issues we care about most,” ensuring that politicians can’t skirt the issues anymore. “If they don’t have a real solution, they won’t be elected into office.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Texas, long known for its voting restrictions, has led the South in eliminating polling locations, disproportionately affecting Latinx communities. Texas Rising has fought to preserve polling locations on campuses, and Martinez describes how they packed a hearing at Texas State to protest: “’Don’t make it difficult for us to vote’…we won!”
Impressive victories abound. During the 2019 Legislative session, Texas Rising fought numerous bills using religion to discriminate against LGBTQ Texans; as a result, only ONE bill passed, and it was watered down. They fought attacks by corporate interests against paid sick policies, and all attempts to take those benefits away were defeated. Texas Rising’s advocacy paid off in opposing one of the worst anti-voter bills in the country—protecting voting rights for millions of Texans! And, of course, the fight goes on against the numerous bills filed that attack and stigmatize abortion rights.
Thank you, Texas Rising, for your inspiring grassroots organizing. You are the future of Texas, and Texas is the future of America.
