Our Democracy Centers Turn Infrequent Voters in Voting Rights Activists!
RJ Hamster
Center for Common Ground Democracy Centers: Hawkinsville, GA, Huntsville, Alabama, Roanoke and Richmond, VA, Florence, SC
RJ,
We opened our first Democracy Center in Hawkinsville, Georgia in December 2020; the team knocked on 2,400 doors and had 2,100 conversations with voters before the runoff election on January 5th. Now they operate a food pantry and provide civic engagement and voter education to local community members. The model of trusted partners working year round supporting community needs, voter education and civic engagement is a successful one employed by the RNC for their “community centers”. We self-fund our non-partisan Democracy Centers and need your help.
As we work on our last 2022 primaries (South Carolina, Virginia, Arizona and Florida), our Democracy Centers have shown that when we invest in local communities, they invest in themselves and even other communities. From texting to making phone calls and sponsoring postcard parties, our Democracy Centers have stepped up not only for themselves but for other communities.
Conservative groups are pouring millions of dollars into “community centers” which is their version of Democracy Centers; however we are still self-funding. Democracy centers are registering voters, providing rides to the polls, sending postcards, making phone calls, hosting events, texting and canvassing to Get Out the Vote in their communities. When they are not in election mode, they are hosting events on gun violence prevention, distributing COVID test kits and masks, providing food and basic necessities to the most vulnerable in their community.
Democracy Centers are located in BIPOC communities where 55% or more of registered voters have simply stopped voting. In Virginia, our rural Democracy Centers saw Black Early Voting Turnout range from 14% to 63% as voters embraced the new early voting rule changes; non-Democracy Center locations had Black Early Voting turnout between 8.55% and 15%.
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