This past weekend, Hope Springs from Field PAC led canvassing in Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It was the second weekend that we had all the states we are involved with in the field at the same time. Still eager to get to Arizona, but we need people who can lead canvassing there, first.
In Florida, we had volunteers knocking on doors in Osceola, eastern Polk and southern Orange counties. In Osceola, we continued knocking on doors in Hispanic neighborhoods in our last canvass to collect Incident Reports about acts of voter intimidation and racial confrontation in the 2020 November election. We have collected almost 50 reports from witnesses before this weekend that were related to voter suppression acts towards Latino voters in the general election. This week, we will be delivering copies of these Incident/Witness Reports to the local State’s Attorney.
But the most interesting factoid about Saturday’s canvass is that it included 8 Spanish-speaking volunteers who came out because we had knocked on their doors! This is quite an accomplishment.
The reason they came out to knock on doors is the same reason why we were knocking on doors — to make sure that Hispanic voters in Osceola knew that Democrats want to protect their right to vote, to stop racial confrontation and that we were doing something about it.
While this particular purpose was driven by a single incident, we discovered other reports and complaints from Latino voters about voter intimidation and improper activity at two different polling places (one of which was a huge polling location with multiple precincts). The lack of poll workers who could speak Spanish was definitely a factor in one polling place (and possibly more).
As we have been walking, we have filled out quite a few Q (or question)-slips about voter concerns and questions they had about voter safety and freedom. While most of these voters are of Puerto Rican heritage, there are a mix of others from Central and South America with their own history of voting and voter intimidation. Just because they have moved to Florida and become American citizens, they have those family memories that influence how they see American elections.
The presence of what I think we can safely call white supremacist thinking among older residents of Osceola County, when it was primarily just cow patches, does not help. Strong arm tactics in Latin America can be mimicked by their behavior towards Hispanic Americans. It’s noticed.
These new, Spanish speaking volunteers helped illuminate some of this. They were not traditional Democratic activists. They are probably better described as community activists, although at least one of them described herself as a Disney-Rican. But they were thrilled that both Democrats and their local Congressman were concerned about the racial incidents in November and wanted to help spread the word that we were taking it seriously. Two of them will be accompanying us on Thursday as we take copies of the collected Incident Reports to the office of State Attorney Monique Worrell in Orlando.
Even though we do not have high expectations that Worrell can do anything at this point, the fact that we are making the effort to document voter intimidation and racial incidents around Election Day builds confidence in the Hispanic community.
In training the volunteers that knocked on those doors, almost all of whom who either spoke Spanish or (like me) was married someone who spoke Spanish, we emphasized that we had a strategy for dealing with such incidents that started by making sure voters were aware that Democrats Care!, that we would be present in their polling places as poll watchers armed with Incident Reports as well as the numbers of who to call immediately if something untoward happens in the next election. NALEO has agreed to partner with this effort and will provide legal support in 2022. Even though people don’t tend to know about NALEO, this partnership has increased their membership among Latin elected officials by 11 (that we know of) in the area. People are taking Voter Intimidation and Suppression among this community seriously.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been involved in the efforts to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, responding to the new laws Republicans are enacting in the various states and expanded practices by thinking how to mitigate them, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance" with them in 2022, helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets) of these new voter suppression laws. Some of our actions are very simple (asking voters if they are registered at their current address instead of just asking if they are registered to vote) and some are more complex (such as helping voters in these communities meet the ID requirements). So we are returning to the basics old school: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of the protocols, meeting them were they are.
Obviously, we cannot do this alone. All too often, efforts to mitigate voter suppression have been done in the last month before the general election, generally by campaigns. But they don’t have to be. As Republicans now begin their efforts to shape the electorate at the outset of election cycles, so should we. We need your help to make voter suppression mitigation and super-compliance a year(s) round activity. If you support field/grassroots organizing and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopevoteprotect
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success, and election protection was an integral part of our GOTV plan. The approach Obama organizers adopted was focused on listening, on connecting voters and their story to the candidate. Repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors.
Protecting the vote can be pro-active and be 24/7/365. Even with all the "new" tactics that Trump and his supporters brought out in 2020 (trying to overturn the Electoral College is definitely new!), most voter suppression tactics are old and occur in the same places. Even though the internet allows for greater distribution of knowledge about efforts to keep (largely) minorities from voting, the locations or targets of that activity tends to be the same locations year in and year out. So we know where we need to be connecting with voters who might have faced voter intimidation, suppression or even violence and where we can expect it to happen in future elections.
But the purpose of collecting Incident Reports is not just for the last election, but also for future elections. And OUR purpose on Saturday was as much for preventing future occurrences of voter intimidation and suppression as re-assuring voters in affected areas that Democrats had their backs. Historical patterns are an overwhelming predictor of future incidents.
While canvassing in these Hispanic neighborhoods was not our only focus on Saturday (we hit African-American and other suburban neighborhoods as well), this weekend was the culmination of this particular election protection drive. We feel like we have hit all the neighborhoods that would most likely have been affected by or heard about the Publix incident. The very fact that we mobilized 8 new volunteers by having knocked on their doors demonstrates, to me, at least, how effective we have been in this specific election protection drive. We even had high school students who asked about volunteering on election day, in several different capacities. One young man, who will be a high school senior next November, asked about volunteering (his word, that is not the correct word) at his local polling place. Once I had received that request, I sent his name to Supervisor Mary Jane Arrington to train and serve as a poll worker. They loved that!
We are just getting started!
If you support our grassroots efforts to protect the vote, especially in minority communities, please chip in:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopevoteprotect
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you! And your support is appreciated...