In
January, when my term of office began, my first message was entitled,
"A Call to Service." I write now to announce our first effort to engage
scholars to produce knowledge for empowerment: The Voter Empowerment Project.
Before the Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder
and the Zimmerman verdict, it was clear to many that a new era in race
relations had been inaugurated as a result of the off-year elections of
2010. The Stand Your Ground laws in thirty states, the takeover of
democratically elected governments in Michigan, the attempt to
disfranchise us through new voter identification laws, the erosion of
worker rights, the anti-abortion laws, and others result from low voter
turnout.
State and local elections are the battleground, and ASALH must do its part by empowering people through knowledge. Social
media must be harnessed to organize and deliver accurate and useable
knowledge and information to our communities. State laws matter.
Through
our own efforts and partnerships, we plan to create a Voter
Mobilization App that will allow community groups who engage in voter
registration and mobilization to know the following two things: 1) the
state-by-state histories of African American efforts to secure and
maintain the right to vote and 2) the current laws and policies
governing voting in state and local districts throughout the country
with on-going updates. The resulting micro-histories-less than 2,000
words each-and local policies will serve as a crash course for groups
wanting to mobilize their neighbors to register and to vote, especially
in off-year elections.
Please
respond to this call for service. We need scholars who have specialized
knowledge to take leadership roles on committees to write the histories
and create the databases. Those of you who are interested, please email
us at empowerment@asalh.net.
Best regards,
Daryl Michael Scott
President
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