In January, when my term of office began, my first message was entitled, "A Call to Service." I write now to announce our first effort to engage scholars to produce knowledge for empowerment: The Voter Empowerment Project.
Before the Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder and the Zimmerman verdict, it was clear to many that a new era in race relations had been inaugurated as a result of the off-year elections of 2010. The Stand Your Ground laws in thirty states, the takeover of democratically elected governments in Michigan, the attempt to disfranchise us through new voter identification laws, the erosion of worker rights, the anti-abortion laws, and others result from low voter turnout.
State and local elections are the battleground, and ASALH must do its part by empowering people through knowledge. Social media must be harnessed to organize and deliver accurate and useable knowledge and information to our communities. State laws matter.
Through our own efforts and partnerships, we plan to create a Voter Mobilization App that will allow community groups who engage in voter registration and mobilization to know the following two things: 1) the state-by-state histories of African American efforts to secure and maintain the right to vote and 2) the current laws and policies governing voting in state and local districts throughout the country with on-going updates. The resulting micro-histories-less than 2,000 words each-and local policies will serve as a crash course for groups wanting to mobilize their neighbors to register and to vote, especially in off-year elections.
Please respond to this call for service. We need scholars who have specialized knowledge to take leadership roles on committees to write the histories and create the databases. Those of you who are interested, please email us at empowerment@asalh.net.
Best regards,
Daryl Michael Scott
President
.jpg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment