Last night, Georgians watching television might have seen a new ad featuring Barack Obama for Jon Ossoff. The ad connects Ossoff to another hero in Georgia, John Lewis, and more than a few Georgians have asked whether President Obama would be involved in the Georgia runoff. Obama ends the ad saying, "If we vote like our lives depend on it, because they do" -- making the stakes in this election abundantly clear. We are all in this together.
Hope Springs from Field PAC was asked to help the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Georgia share its congregant/voter mobilization project with other black churches in the state for the Senate Runoff on January 5th. We sent an African-American field organizer to Georgia from Florida to help extend this excellent project with other congregations in the state.
The AME voter project is an extensive peer-to-peer effort that has a goal of getting 80% of congregants to vote early -- by Christmas Day! Christmas Eve and following services will hold "I voted Early!" fellowships after services for early voters. AME churches are encouraged to recognize early voters in church services before election day by asking congregants who are registered (before Dec 7) or have voted early (before Dec 30) to stand during their announcements in church. Peer-to-peer!
Most AME Churches in Georgia also have a special election committee for the purpose of calling every member who is registered, reminding them to vote and they originally had the intent of asking if they already had voted. Our field organizer has been given instructions to help match records of Early Voters to congregation lists (which we are hoping are already in spreadsheets!) so that they aren't calling people who have already returned their ballots or otherwise voted early. AME efforts in earlier election cycles had not previously had this capability.
“There are more than 500 AME churches in Georgia, and the greatest concentration is in Atlanta, which has about 36 congregations.” AME is a part of the Historic Rural Churches preservation effort in Georgia (although not all AME churches are rural), and our first outreach has been to the 287 rural churches part of that program. With a field organizer and access to voter data, we will now be extending it to thousands more Black Churches in the state.
The Black Church has long been the cornerstone of the African-American community. As the AP wrote, there's a reason "Why racists target black churches in America." Black churches empower the African-American community (something recognized by the fact that the AME Church was prohibited from serving in Southern States before the Civil War!). Using the outline and tenets established by the AME in the past few years, Hope Springs PAC is helping contact Black Churches throughout Georgia, encouraging their participation and helping them mobilize their congregants to vote in this senate runoff. Having access to voter files is a big game changer in this effort.
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Alums because field organizing was the cornerstone of our success. Face to face interactions, even masked and socially distanced, are critical. We are sending field organizers and voter contact specialists to Georgia who had previously worked field in the Biden campaign as well as senate campaigns in the southern states around Georgia.
Whether detailing them to the Ossoff and Warnock campaigns, or connecting them to the numerous local civil and voting rights organizations in Georgia, or putting them on college campaigns -- especially the HBCU campuses -- as well as the AME effort targeting black churches and their communities, all make victory possible. We know that mobilizing the various parts of the Democratic coalition is critical to victory next month.
Obviously, we need your help. To send field organizers to Georgia costs around $12k per organizer (salary, taxes, benefits & expenses).
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization
This kind of field effort is definitely labor intensive. Collecting and updating various campaign (and church) lists of Georgia churches, reaching someone who can buy into the effort for their congregations, printing and delivering materials, these are the day to day tasks that field staffers do everyday. And when early voting starts (December 14th), their expertise becomes even more valuable.
We know that the only way for Warnock and Ossoff to win these runoffs, we have to insure that African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and young people -- who don't traditionally vote in the high percentages as white voters -- have greater voter contact and followup than in normal campaigns. Many of these voters will never see a direct mail piece (and I understand the economics of those decisions). But knitting together disparate parts of the Democratic (or FDR) coalition has been very effective for southern Democrats, especially in Virginia. Coalition building requires reaching out to groups and voters that haven't traditionally been on campaign's radar.
With your help, we can maximize voter contact among African-American Georgians. Please support Hope Springs from Field PAC in its efforts to put experienced campaign organizers on the ground in Georgia.
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