Voting advocates in South Central Alabama are ramping up organizing efforts ahead of the November 5 general election — the first for the newly redrawn District 2.
Last month, nearly 40 participants gathered at the G.W. Carver Interpretive Museum in Dothan, Alabama, for a weekend of intense Community Action Training. Participants studied successful best practices for campaigns in the fight for fair pay, strikes for safety standards and — most applicable to the voting district — equitable voting access.
The training provides volunteers and canvassers better tools for organizing as they head out into the streets this summer. Of the three voting rights groups that attended the training, two are engaging with infrequent voters and the third is working to get people registered to vote.
“Organizing is essential to mobilizing communities,” Rodriesha Russaw, executive director of The Ordinary People Society, said. “When you get people in a place where they can actually use it as a think tank to vocalize what they’re feeling about what’s going on in the political climate today, it gives us room to hear from the folks that are not voting.”
Last fall, federal courts decided that Alabama’s congressional district lines likely violated the Voting Rights Act. The state’s population is around 27% Black, but there was previously only one district that was majority Black. Now, there’s District 2, which is about 49% Black and spans South Alabama from its West to Eastern border.
Letetia Jackson, one of the plaintiffs in the historic lawsuit that caused District 2 to be redrawn, said that though America’s founding principles are of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, daily circumstances can hinder registered voters from heading to the polls.
“You can’t have all that if you’re hungry; if you don’t have any housing,” Jackson, who’s also the convener for the South Alabama Black Women’s Roundtable, said. “[If] our children don’t have food to eat, or you can’t afford to send them to daycare, or you can’t go to the doctor.”
South Alabama is a region struck by poverty. Many in the new district are in health care deserts and around 20% grapple with food insecurity. Though Dothan isn’t in the new District 2, Jackson said the issues that impact those in the region affect them all.
“We’re organizing to talk to people about real issues, so they can understand how to impact their lives,” she said. “We teach them that your voice is your vote, and your vote is your power. So if you want to have power and you want your voice to be heard — vote.”
Jackson said she hopes to have volunteers working in every county in District 2, urging Alabamians to the polls in November.
This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.