organizations announced a get-out-to-vote campaign aimed at registering and mobilizing GOTV for 10 million more African Americans to vote in time for the 2022 midterms.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe NNPA has talked about the vote, and there is no better time for us to show our power,\u201d NNPA Chair Karen Carter Richards stated during the announcement at the national convention in the Big Easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLet us take the lead and not be on the tail-end so we can show the present-day power of the Black Press,\u201d continued Richards, who publishes the Houston Forward Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is a great opportunity for us; we\u2019ve got to make this happen.\u201d Attorney Barbara Arnwine, the founder, and president of the Transformative Justice Coalition, and her board chair and fellow lawyer Daryl Jones, told a captivated panel that their organization had recorded 72 voter suppression tactics to prevent a large population from casting ballots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among them are strict voter laws in many Republican-led states, deceptive practices like robocalls; early voting cuts; and voter intimidation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBlack voters did our share in 2020,\u201d Arnwine remarked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNinety-three percent of all eligible Black voters registered in Georgia. Yet, in the 2021 Georgia Senate run-off, 93 percent of all registered Black voters turned out. That\u2019s why people don\u2019t understand where the real power is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Along with NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., Richards, NNPA Executive Board members Janis Ware, Fran Farrer, Cheryl Smith, and Jackie Hampton, Arnwine and Jones announced that the groups would utilize a multivehicle \u201cvotercade\u201d to get out the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They said individuals riding in new and COVID-safe tour buses would hit swing states ahead of the November elections to register and mobilize GOTV for 10 million new Black voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chavis said artists from Roc Nation, the company run by hip-hop magnate and business mogul Jay-Z, would accompany the votercade in some cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Music superstar Stephanie Mills also pledged to \u201cget on the bus with the Black Press and the Transformative Justice Coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chavis said he\u2019s convinced other celebrities will also join the national GOTV campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first form of voter suppression is self-suppression,\u201d Dr. Chavis asserted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis last primary election showed that some of us were keeping ourselves from voting. There are 55 million unregistered Americans eligible to vote, and 10 million are African Americans,\u201d Chavis continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat if those 10 million were registered? We wouldn\u2019t have worried about Donald Trump or the craziness of what the U.S. Supreme Court is doing now. Elections have consequences. The overturned Roe v. Wade, the overturned gun laws \u2013 are consequences of elections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With more than 235 African American-owned newspapers and media companies serving as members, the NNPA represents the Black Press of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Transformative Justice Coalition\u2019s mission includes the systematic change that achieves racial justice, gender, economic and social justice, and human rights through public education and engagement initiatives that attend equally to hearts and minds as well as the social systems and structure in which they exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Further, the coalition dedicates itself to informed civic engagement and equal voting rights for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They use a voting rights map of shame to inform the public of threats to America\u2019s democracy, how to protect their voting rights, and steps to take to ensure the ability to cast a ballot and make sure it\u2019s counted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The organization also seeks the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[Anti-voting rights organizations and individuals] have trained 10,000 people to be poll disruptors to go to only Black polling sites,\u201d Arnwine declared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not sending them to white polling sites, and if you watched the [Jan. 6] hearings, this is a concentrated effort to disempower Black voters,\u201d she stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Davis, more than 18 million people are eligible to vote but don\u2019t know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey are the felony disenfranchised,\u201d Davis insisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey are confused. It\u2019s intentionally done in various states. For example, in some states, you never lose your right to vote, and in some states, you can run for office if you\u2019re incarcerated,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The votercade would help educate voters and explain what\u2019s legal, among other things. \u201cWe\u2019re calling on all 235 NNPA members,\u201d Dr. Chavis encouraged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat call and response from our brothers and sisters are vital. It\u2019s movement time, it is time Get-Out-The-Vote\u201d he declared further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith the Transformative Justice Coalition, the NNPA will help move our people forward to get out this vote. In 2022, we will make the critical difference in the midterm elections in terms of increasing Black voter participation throughout the country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ahead of the all-important 2022 midterm elections, reports show that more than 55 million Americans remain unregistered to vote \u2013 and about 10 million are African Americans who are eligible to vote but who are unregistered. Whether the reason is apathy, suppression, or something else, the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and the Transformative Justice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1425,1214,1626],"class_list":["post-2586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dr-benjamin-f-chavis-jr","tag-nnpa","tag-transformative-justice-coalition","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2587,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586\/revisions\/2587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}