They’re Counting On You Not to Show Up
What would you do if you knew that just a 19% increase in poor and low wealth voters in North Carolina could be the key to affordable health care, protected reproductive rights or a living wage?
Would you knock on every door you could? Organize community drives to the polls? Text every eligible voter you know?
Poor and low wealth North Carolina voters have the power to impact this election in a big way and we are doing everything within our power to mobilize those who did not vote in the last election, 1 million out of 3.4 million eligible poor and low wealth voters.
Extremist legislators have consistently tried to suppress the voting power of North Carolinians and they are counting on us not to show up in this election. They are counting on us to remain unheard and unseen. They’re counting on things not to change.
This is a call to action.
While politicians are counting us out, our neighbors, our churches, our communities, our children are all counting on us to step up and demand a change. If just 19% of poor and low-income voters in North Carolina voted in their interests, for living wages, for healthcare, for voting rights, in this year’s midterm election, it would fundamentally shift the election, the state, and the nation.
If the politicians don’t want to hear us, we’ll make them hear us!
Early voting in North Carolina is well underway and Valerie it’s time to make your voice heard. Click here to learn more about how to participate in this year’s midterm elections, register to vote and find a polling station.
Then read below to find out what we, along with our partners, are doing all across the state to help get out the vote. Scroll to the bottom to find ways you can help get out the vote.
Durham & Asheville
Photo by Bob Karp 2022
In Durham, North Carolina, Bishop William J. Barber II, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, partners and impacted people gathered on the campus of North Carolina Central University. We heard from students like NCCU senior Ajai Felton, a member of the impoverished silent majority who admonished the crowd, “An attack on voting rights is an attack on humanity. Human rights are on the ballot. I stand here to encourage all eligible voters to vote”. And Matt Thomas, a member of Duke’s Graduate Student Union who informed us that graduate assistants at Duke don’t make a living wage.
“Voting is not just a matter of casting a vote on a candidate, it's about demands on public policy,” Bishop Barber shared. “In these midterm elections, North Carolinians get to express their demands for living wages and health care without their voices being suppressed and stymied because of various forms of voter suppression that were attempted in North Carolina and overcome. We must exercise the right to vote that's been so hard-fought for, not 50 years ago, but in recent history.”
And those demands were indeed expressed as students, advocates and impacted voters alike, marched to the highly fought for polling site on NCCU’s campus to cast their votes.
Photos by Jeffrey DeCristofaro 2022
Next we headed to Asheville where members of North Carolina’s Congressional District 11 gathered to uplift the stories of impacted people young and old. “Choose wisely how you vote,” shared Erwin Middle School 8th grader Julia Darity, “because our future is in your hands. You all need to vote because we can’t.”
Read & watch more on our Asheville stop in this ABC News 13 (WLOS) article: https://wlos.com/news/local/get-out-the-vote-rally-low-income-voters-turnout-midterm-elections-change-disengagement#
Here’s how you can help us get out the vote.
So far we’ve reached 3 million people through our text banking initiative with The Poor People’s Campaign. To sign up to help get out the vote visit bit.ly/rotbpledge.
Forward Together, Not One Step Back!