With Gratitude This Season for the Wins of Veatch Grantees
I hope everyone is doing well and taking good care. As we go from the election season into the holidays, we are grateful to be able to make sense of things by listening to the experiences and perspectives of Veatch grantees.
Following their many civic engagement wins, some of which are featured in this News Update, our grantees are now turning to advancing their campaigns for social justice given our new political landscape.
This includes continuing to educate and register voters in the critical Senate elections in Georgia. Our long-term general operating support, as always, is advancing causes aligned with our values.
Despite considerable challenges, to say the least, Veatch grantees were astonishingly impactful in the elections. They collectively contacted tens of millions of voters all across the country — voters who are all too often disengaged from and disenchanted by the political process. (Check out this great clip of LaTosha Brown, founder of Veatch grantee Black Voters Matter, discussing this issue as a part of Oprah's recent Zoom interview series.) This work helped lead to record turnout in states all across the country where Veatch grantees are working hard every day, and not just during election seasons, to engage people in civic life.
Below is a sampling of how Veatch grantees helped to protect our democracy by ensuring low-income people, communities of color, immigrant communities and other vulnerable groups had their voices heard – experiencing directly how their votes make a difference.
We take heart in how Veatch grantees are leading the way towards the transformation our country so desperately needs, and that we know is possible.
Joan Minieri
Executive Director
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Georgia Stand Up — On Progressive Change in the State in the NYTimes
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Georgia Stand Up — a Veatch grantee that organizes in communities of color for progressive change in the state — was recently featured in a front page article on the New York Times. The piece credited the work of organizers — and Black women in particular — with the record voter turnout in Georgia this past election.
Deborah Scott, the founder of Georgia Stand Up, mentions in the article the difficulty she faced attracting funders when she first started the organization back in 2004. Veatch was an early supporter of Georgia Stand Up, funding the group since 2007. Deborah's recent success in the state is a testament to Veatch's commitment to long-term, general operating support. As Deborah says in the article, she was not "surprised" by the outcome of the election in Georgia, because "we've been working on it for 15 over years."
The article discusses many of the Black and women-led organizers who have been active in the Georgia for years, helping usher in a more progressive political landscape. As the author notes, "The political vision and advocacy of a group of Black women have led a decades-long organizing effort to transform the state’s electorate... The achievement seemed to confirm mantras that have become commonplace in liberal politics, like 'trust Black women' and 'Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party.'"
Read the whole article here.
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Veatch Grantees Reflect on the 2020 Election Results
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On November 11th, the Veatch Board of Governors and the UUCSR Social Justice Committee jointly held a virtual “Election 2020 Debrief.” We welcomed a fantastic panel of Veatch grantees and Social Justice Committee partners who led educational and mobilization campaigns related to increasing voter turnout and civic engagement in low-income, immigrant, and people of color communities.
We were joined by Rosemary Rivera, Co-Executive Director of Citizen Action of New York and the Public Policy & Education Fund, Seft Hunter, Director of Black Led Organizing & Power Building at Community Change, and Nicole Pressley, National Organizer, UU the Vote. The conversation celebrated the historic turnout seen in marginalized communities across the country, a victory owed in part to the tireless work of many Veatch grantees and their allies to register and turn out often-ignored Black, Latinx and Indigenous and youth voters. Our panelists also discussed how these efforts helped to educate people about ballot measures that communities we support will benefit from, including increases in minimum wages and expansion of health care.
You can watch the event in its entirety below:
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New York Grantees Expand Representation in Long Island
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Veatch grantees across the country work hard to ensure that their elected officials reflect the diverse racial and the ethnic composition of the communities they serve. Without this representation, low-income people, communities of color, immigrant communities and other vulnerable groups are more likely to be excluded from the policy making process. Two Veatch grantees — New York Communities for Change and Make the Road — secured an important victory in the fight for equitable representation, right here on Long Island.
No Latinx politician has ever been elected to the Islip Town Board, even though the Latinx community makes up nearly 30% of the town’s population. In fact, all current board members are white, and only one person of color has ever been elected to a governmental position in the town. The cause of this problem has been the town’s “at large” voting system — in which every Islip resident is allowed to vote for their preferred candidate for all four seats. Such a system has, in effect, systematically deprived the town's sizable Latinx community representation— leading to persistent neglect of Islip’s Latinx areas.
As Lucas Sanchez, the Long Island organizing director of NY Communities for Change, recently said in an interview: “We have a more diverse Long Island, but that hasn't translated into more political power for people of color on the island — So this case is about chipping away at that exclusionary white supremacy that has structural power on Long Island.”
Veatch grantees filed a lawsuit alleging that this voting method systematically excluded the voices of Latinx community members who are concentrated in Brentwood and Central Islip, in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. In October of this year, they won. In future elections, the town will now be required to use geographic districts in local elections, meaning the sizable Latinx community in Islip will have a much better opportunity to secure representation on the Board.
Read more about this important win in this recent City & State article.
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United for a New Economy Helps Win Paid Medical Family Leave in Colorado
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On Election Day this year, Colorado voters approved Prop 118, which will create a paid family and medical leave insurance program for all Colorado workers. United for a New Economy (UNE), a Veatch grantee working for progressive change in Colorado, worked hand-in-hand with groups — including 9to5 Colorado, Together Colorado, SEIU and the Working Families Party — to make the historic win happen.
The law will now guarantee that every employee in Colorado can take 12 weeks of paid time off, starting in 2024, for the birth or adoption of a child, to care for themself or a family member with a serious health condition, or for additional things like seeking safety from domestic abuse.
As the group wrote after this victory in an email update, "For too long, a handful of greedy corporations blocked our efforts to ensure paid time to care for ourselves or be there for family when we’re needed most. This year, the virus has shown us that we are dependent on each other and no matter what we look like, where we live, or what’s in our wallets when someone we love is sick, we want to be there to care for them. We stood together united across our differences to adopt paid family and medical leave to help every- day people."
UNE won this victory by conducting intensive voter outreach — even amid a global pandemic — that resulted in record voter turnout. In all, UNE contacted 27,000 voters, knocked on 8,165 doors, and had 3,949 live conversations.
For more on UNE's campaign, read this Colorado Public Radio article.
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Florida Grantees Help Increase Minimum Wage
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A coalition of progressive groups, social justice activists and labor organizations, which include Veatch grantees like Florida Immigrant Coalition, a group that organizes in immigrant communities and communities of color in the state, joined forces over the past year to help pass Amendment 2 — by just over 61 percent of the vote. The initiative will amend the state’s constitution to enshrine minimum wage increases that will scale up to $15 by 2026, up from $8.56 an hour now.
Florida is the first state in the southeastern part of the country to pass such a progressive wage hike — and is only the 8th state in the country with a $15 minimum wage. The coalition effort included groups like Dream Defenders, Common Ground, Organize Florida, WeCount! and the labor union SEIU.
Read more about the victory, as well as efforts to pass a minimum wage increase nationally, here.
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Virginia Civic Engagement Table
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This year, Virginia Civic Engagement Table — a Veatch grantee that serves as a hub for progressive non-profits and advocates in the state — built a robust nonpartisan voter engagement program. In less than a year, the group raised more than $400,000 to engage 800 volunteers across 220 precincts during the state's early voting period, and on Election Day.
As the group said in an email to supporters on Election Day, "We made it easier for Virginians to vote during a global pandemic through our advocacy work, ensured voters knew their rights, and regranted more than $170k in funds to partners. As a result, more than 2.7 million voters cast their ballots ahead of today!"
Read more about the work of the Virginia Civic Engagement Table here.
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National Domestic Workers Alliance
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The National Domestic Workers Alliance — a Veatch grantee that represents a coalition of organizations across the country fighting for the rights of domestic workers — executed an extensive non-partisan civic engagement program in cities all across the United States this year.
In total the group made 5,844,072 contact attempts, and had 3,233,309 live connects with women of color in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan in an effort to ensure their voices were heard in this election. Additionally, the group sent 2,378,389 text messages. The group also developed a "social media bot," that responded to requests on social media channels with personalized voter protection information.
As the group reported in a recent email update, "Low-income women of color have faced impossible choices and suffered devastating loss of life and livelihoods in this time of crisis and reckoning. And domestic workers across the country have played a central role in supporting their engagement in our civic process during these unprecedented times, staffing our paid phonebank teams in states and volunteering their time by text-banking to remind other women of color like them of the stakes."
Read more about the work of the National Domestic Workers Alliance here.
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Center for Popular Democracy
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Center for Popular Democracy, a Veatch Grantee that organizes a network of progressive organizations and advocates across the country, engaged in extensive voter outreach over the course of the election. In total, CPD affiliates made 13,516,975 calls, 8,151,091 texts and knocked on 399,967 doors in targeted states — including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.
The group also made efforts to combat the extensive disinformation flooding social media by creating and disseminating digital ads in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona to ensure that Black and Latinx communities were not discouraged from voting by mail or in person. Voters would hear from CPD affiliates via phone, text or in person — and then have that message reinforced via these digital ads. One of these ads, featuring John Leguizamo, Dolores Huerta and Rita Moreno, had a "video completion rate" of 75%, meaning three-fourths of viewers watch the entire ad, an impressive figure. Ads such as these were seen by a total of 2,337,214 people.
CPD also trained 3,020 "voter guardians" nationally in deescalation tactics, to help keep communities and polling sites safe on election day. You can see an example of the training material used to do so here.
And then click here to learn more about the work of the Center for Popular Democracy.
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Faith in Action — a Veatch grantee organizing in faith communities across the country — also reached impressive civic engagement numbers this election cycle. As of Election Day, the group held 1,352,397 conversations in every region of the country, with a priority placed on voters who are rarely engaged by most voter programs. The group also regranted $1,032,000 via Faith in Action to other organizations across the country.
In a recent email update, the group shared with us just a couple of conversations they had among these 1 million contacts:
"We heard from Ms. Eileen Hayes that she delivered 500 ballots from the jail to the county board of elections office (with a police escort). Eileen was demonstrating how sacred each vote is. She is doing the sacred work of hearing from those whose voices are most often muted or ignored. We also heard from Pastor Rhonda Thomas. She described that Supervisors of Election in Florida were NOT making accommodations for elderly and disabled voters. She mentioned how she sat in the pouring rain with hundreds of senior citizens who were not allowed to step inside to stay dry. Yet, still, they persisted."
Read more about Faith in Action's civic engagement work here.
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