NAACP looks to get out the vote
Democrats try to generate high turnout by black voters
African Americans could be key in Alabama Senate showdown
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Catrena Carter and her two sons spent Sunday morning driving from church to church in the Birmingham area, tucking leaflets on cars of churchgoers and placing signs at intersections urging people to vote.
Carter, a community activist, was on a mission. “We really want our people to get out and vote,” said Carter, who runs a program called Women of Will that helps train women to run for office. “I think a lot of people have lost hope.”
She said it’s important to remind people “your one vote matters.”
Carter was among the many people who spread out across the state this past weekend to knock on doors, visit churches and attend rallies to urge voters to go to the polls Tuesday.
The close Senate contest pits Democrat Doug Jones, a U.S. attorney who prosecuted Ku Klux Klan members for the bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four African-American girls in 1963, against Republican Roy Moore, who is engulfed in a controversy over alleged sexual advances toward teenage girls when he was in his 30s.
African Americans make up a quarter of Alabama’s population and the majority of the state’s Democratic Party base. Getting a strong turnout from them is key to Jones’ chance of winning in this Republican-dominated state.
Carter later attended a get-out-thevote rally hosted by the Alabama NAACP at Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, the site of civil rights rallies and demonstrations in the 1960s.
In a state with a troubled history of access to the polls for African Americans, the NAACP and other civil rights groups are holding rallies and knocking on doors across the state in an effort to urge more blacks and others to vote.
“We’re trying to stir up people to see that they cannot just sit this one out,” said Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP. “This election is just as important as the presidential election, just as important as midterm elections.”
Simelton said the NAACP, which is non-partisan, invited Jones and Moore. Neither of them came.
In addition to the Birmingham rally, NAACP chapters have hosted GOTV efforts in Huntsville, Mobile and Tuskegee. The group uses social media, including Twitter, buying ads on Facebook and airing ads on radio stations.
“We’re trying to work all angles,” said Patricia Mokola, spokeswoman for the Alabama NAACP. “We’re trying to reach not only African Americans, we’re trying to reach Millennials as well. They will be instrumental in this election. … We’re not telling people who to vote for, but their vote is their power.”
NAACP representatives plan to go to polling sites Tuesday to make sure voters don’t run into problems.
Emily Allergrezza and her father, Jeff, braved the cold Sunday to attend the NAACP rally across the street from the
16th Street Baptist Church, where the four girls were killed in the bombing in
1963.
“I think it’s real important to be politically involved when there are issues I care about,” said Allergrezza, a political science major at Mississippi State. “I’ve been reaching out to everyone I know telling them to go out and vote.”
Both are independent and planned to vote Tuesday.
“I don’t want Alabama to go backwards,” Jeff Allegrezza said. “We have an ability to do the right thing. I know who I’m voting for. I’m not voting for some pedophile, I’ll tell you that.”
Hezekiah Jackson, president of the Metro Birmingham NAACP, helped kick off the GOTV rally. “We’re at a crossroad in the city, in the state, in the country,” he told the crowd.
Jones, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., held a rally for the Democratic candidate at one of his headquarters.
Booker, Sewell and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus are traveling the state, urging African Americans to vote. Caucus members, mostly Democrats, are stumping for Jones but said it’s important for blacks to show up in force at the polls and to get more politically involved.
“I’m here to try to help to get some folks woke,” Booker told a crowd Saturday at a rally for Jones at Alabama State University, a historically black college in Montgomery. “Now to get some folk woke, you got to let people know that democracy is not a spectator sport. You can’t sit on the sidelines rooting for your team — red or blue. You’ve got to get into the game and understand that democracy is and always has been a full contact participatory endeavor.”
In Montgomery, a county Jones needs to win big Tuesday to have a chance, Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., framed the election as a choice between policies and personalities.
Richmond, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, criticized the tax bill pending before Congress as a prelude to cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security “for tax breaks.” Richmond praised Jones for “having a track record of doing what’s right when no one’s looking.”
“The whole world is watching Alabama,” he said. “The question is, what will the history books and what will the world encyclopedias write about where Alabama stood in its toughest decision in a very long time.”
Canvassers were given fliers and signs to take with them on their rounds Sunday. Laurie Dill of Montgomery, who set out to canvass, said, “People need health insurance” when asked why she was canvassing.
The NAACP works with local groups, including the Greater Birmingham Ministries and the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice.
The organization received more than $50,000 in contributions for its GOTV efforts, Simelton said. He said he gets calls from groups outside the state asking how they can help.
We’re trying to reach not only African Americans, we’re trying to reach Millennials as well. … We’re not telling people who to vote for, but their vote is their power.”
Patricia Mokola Alabama NAACP