By Stacy M. Brown | NNPA Newswire
Ahead of the all-important 2022 midterm elections, reports show that more than 55 million Americans remain unregistered to vote—and about 10 million are African-Americans who are eligible to vote but who are unregistered.
The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and the Transformative Justice Coalition seek to get to the bottom of why, with so much at stake, voter registration and get out the vote (GOTV) mobilization remain lacking notably among Black Americans across the nation.
During the NNPA national convention in New Orleans, marking the 195th-anniversary celebration of the Black Press of America, leaders of both organizations announced a get-out-to-vote campaign aimed at registering and mobilizing GOTV for 10 million more African – Americans to vote in time for the 2022 midterms.
“The NNPA has talked about the vote, and there is no better time for us to show our power,” NNPA Chair Karen Carter Richards stated during the announcement.
“Let us take the lead and not be on the tail-end so we can show the present-day power of the Black Press,” continued Richards, who publishes the Houston Forward Times.
“This is a great opportunity for us; we’ve got to make this happen.” Barbara Arnwine, the founder, and president of the Transformative Justice Coalition, and her board chair and fellow lawyer Daryl Jones, told a captivated panel that their organization had recorded 72 voter suppression tactics to prevent a large population from casting ballots.
Among them are strict voter laws in many Republican-led states, deceptive practices like robocalls; early voting cuts; and voter intimidation.
“Black voters did our share in 2020,” Arnwine remarked. “Ninety-three percent of all eligible Black voters registered in Georgia.”
Along with NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., Richards, NNPA executive board members Janis Ware, Fran Farrer, Cheryl Smith, and Jackie Hampton, Arnwine and Jones announced that the groups would utilize a multivehicle “votercade” to get out the vote.
Stacy M. Brown is an NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent. She can be reached at @StacyBrownMedia.
