BC
-
Help Get Out the Vote in 2020
There are many things you can do to help get out the word and help other Americans vote. Below is a shortlist of things you can do to help. If you have any ideas, please send your ideas to [email protected].
Overseas Voters: Register to vote or request a ballot if you are already registered.
Check your voter registration and share the link with your lefty family and friends in the states.
Donate to DA Global
Join the Social Media Warriors Team
Hang up VFB Tear-off Sheets and leave our business cards at businesses
Ask organizations you belong to put VFA on their website or in their newsletter.
- Fraternities and sororities
- Business or professional clubs
- Churches, Social clubs or any large membership group
- Make your request sound as altruistic and civic-minded as possible.
- You’ll never know until you ask.
How to contact your representatives
Follow us on social media and like, comment, share our posts
-
The Bandit Prowls, The Bandit Hides by Jasmine Cochran
COVID-19 is making its way through the world in silence, leaving destruction in its wake. This poem is for all of us.
-
Homage by Jasmine Cochran
Homage
This land is ours too, because of you
Your red rivers fertilized the land of the free
Because, still a stranger, you made home from hell
And conceived our culture from remnants
This land is ours too, because of you
Dreams ascend, fortified with dignity
Infinite glories our victories foretell
From fortitude birthed in your descendants
-
Time and Time Again
Here is our first poem. It is really moving and perfect for times like these.
-
The GBC Family Welcomes Kenya!
My name is Robyn T. Emerson; I’m the lead country coordinator for Kenya and Co-Chair of the Black Caucus here. I have traveled, studied, or worked in every corner of the United States, with my last port-of-call and my voting district being Austin, Texas. I am proud to say I have knocked on thousands of doors, managed hundreds of phone banks, did hundreds of advance work, coordinated hundreds of rides to polls all for the belief in collective power and justice prevailing. I’ve now lived in Kenya for over ten years, where creating communities and empowering people continues.
I’m an urban planner and a consummate organizer. People of color, more specifically people of African descent, are staggering in the life-affirming statistics and leading in the life-threatening statistics. Despite this, we keep rising; we keep singing, we keep fighting.
Living in what #45 considers a sh**hole country and the U.S. clamping down on immigration and refugee permissions out of nationalism and racism, I can not stand for its continuance another moment. With brilliant Americans living in Kenya, we aim to make our voices known and count on issues impacting African Americans. We’ve coined this 13-months to Change, being inspired by the 13th amendment. We will continue community socializing, sharing information, and taking action as a community of African-Americans. We will make a concerted effort to cast the net wider by having monthly meet-ups, connecting the dots between oppression & discrimination here to the experience on the same of our people in the U.S. We stand in solidarity for dignity, freedom, and justice for everyone. We will exercise our rights afforded to us...voting is our top emphasis. I hope you will join us in exploring, learning, and growing.
If you would like to join the DA Kenya Global Black Caucus, just click the join button on our homepage. Everyone is welcome, and I look forward to meeting up, discussing important issues, and winning some important seats with you!
Follow us on
-
Mississippi: African American voters sue over election law rooted in the state’s racist past
Mississippi: African American voters sue over election law rooted in the state's racist past
The Mississippi House of Representatives can choose the winner of a gubernatorial election under certain circumstances. AP/Rogelio V. Solis Gideon Cohn-Postar, Northwestern University
A lawsuit over a Mississippi election law, if successful, will change the way that state elects its governor.
Four African Americans filed the federal civil rights lawsuit in May 2019, charging that the way their state elects its statewide officials violates the Voting Rights Act, the 14th Amendment and the principle of “one-person, one-vote.”
To win election, a candidate for governor of Mississippi has to win an outright majority of the popular vote – and win a majority of the state’s 122 House districts.
If no candidate does both, the state House gets to select the next governor, regardless of who got the most votes. No African American has been elected statewide since 1890.
Republican legislators in Mississippi defended the law by arguing that the plaintiffs provide “nothing more than conjecture” that they would be harmed by this election method.
Media coverage of the lawsuit has emphasized that “no Mississippi candidate who won the most votes for a statewide office has been prevented from taking office because of the other requirements.”
As a historian of 19th-century voting rights in the U.S., I believe this analysis ignores the history of anti-democratic gubernatorial election laws.
Today, Mississippi is one of only two states where the winner of the popular vote does not automatically become governor. Vermont is the other. In the 19th century, however, many states had such laws.
The damage that these laws did to democratic legitimacy and political stability in the 1870s, ‘80s and '90s was not conjecture. These laws were intended to entrench the rule of the party in power.
This November, Mississippi is preparing for its first close gubernatorial election since 1999. The election law that is the focus of the lawsuit could decide who wins. Its origins and the track record of similar laws in more competitive states bear investigation.
-
GBC 2020 Poet Laureate Search
The Global Black Caucus seeks to raise the consciousness of our current and potential constituency. To that end, we are looking for our first Poet Laureate (volunteer) for the 2020 election cycle. The Poet Laureate will be selected annually for a term that lasts from January to December. Poetry selections will be featured on the GBC page of the DA website throughout the selected Poet Laureate's term.
The person selected would:
- Create a Poetry Series to explore societal issues and the 2020 elections through poetry's focused lens to describe “truth,” or at the very least, “truths,” in our world.
- They will be called upon to write poetry on significant occasions and throughout the election season.
- Poems should also encourage people to vote, volunteer, or donate.
- It would be great if the person selected would like to make multimedia/spoken word videos or other visual media.
- Occasionally, meet with the GBC Steering Committee.
The poet must be a member of Democrats Abroad and a member of the GBC. Any member of Democrats Abroad who supports universal, unconditional human rights can join the GBC.
