As The South Votes, Episode 4. 'Don’t boo, just vote' is a tired refrain. It takes more than an election to save ourselves—let alone Democracy.

Groups that employ continued, year-round civic engagement in the South walk us through the connection between electoral power and creating real opportunities for our communities to thrive.

It will take more than a single electoral victory or an additional pro-people candidate elected to change the status quo. Voting is just one of many tools in our toolbox to affect meaningful change in the South. At the start of episode four of As The South Votes, we are joined again by Brianna Brown and Dwight Bullard from episode three, who share ways their respective organizations build capacity and engagement beyond the ballot box. 

In the second part of this episode, we turn to rural North Carolina. Dreama Caldwell, co-executive director of Down Home North Carolina, talks about her experience making the move from being an interested community member to leadership of an entire organization. She came to the work as a directly-impacted person first, dealing with issues around her own experience with cash bail, before joining various working groups with the organization. 

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As The South Votes, Episode 3. Instead of simply focusing on get-out-the-vote campaigns behind particular candidates, these groups are building for the long haul. 

Organizers in Texas and Florida share what it means to build power outside of traditional electoral campaigns. 

“Building political power” and “people-powered movements” are two phrases that have become organizing buzzwords over recent years. But what exactly do either of them mean? We dig deeper into both in the third episode of As the South Votes.

Brianna Brown, Co-Executive Director of the Texas Organizing Project, walks us through what it looks like for her, as a fifth-generation Texas, to build political power across predominantly Latinx and Black communities in the state. Brianna spoke to us about what it means to grow a voting block, and how TOP has created intervention points that can break through the status quo and help achieve meaningful changes in people’s lives—getting deep into TOP’s value alignment,how they work cooperatively with community members, and the reality of doing this kind of work in the Lone Star State.

In the second half of the conversation, we check in with Dwight Bullard, Senior Advisor at Florida Rising, while he was en route to the state capitol in Jacksonville. 

As a result of the merger of two leading Florida organizations, Organize Florida and the New Florida Majority, Florida Rising engages in 13 counties across the state. The organization hopes to become a political “home” for folks who feel the existing political system does not work for them.

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As The South Votes, Episode 2. What gerrymandering looks like in the South—and what we can do about it before it’s too late.

Putting redistricting in context, with a spotlight on the legal challenges to some highly questionable maps that have been allowed to go into effect for the upcoming election.

We hear a lot of talk about gerrymandering and rigged maps, especially in the South, but few seem to understand what the terms actually mean. In episode two of As the South Votes, we cover gerrymandering and redistricting in-depth—and the impact on the concept of “one person, one vote.”

We spoke with Joshua Douglas, University of Kentucky law professor and author of Vote for US: How to Take Back our Elections and Change the Future of Voting about all of the above—as well as upcoming Supreme Court cases like Moore v. Harper, which could have broad implications which change the balance and separation of powers at the state level. 

In the second half of the episode, we speak with Ashley Shelton, Executive Director of the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice in Louisiana. The Power Coalition is a coalition organization that partners with several other groups in the state. Following its work during the 2020 Census, the Power Coalition and partner organizations geared up for the redistricting process in Louisiana, and prepared for attempts to gerrymander Black voter power to the margins.

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As The South Votes, Episode 1. For electoral and civic engagement organizers, there is no off-cycle.

Catching up with Mississippi Votes about what it means to organize young leaders to shift the balance of power in a state still combating deeply entrenched white supremacist power. 

In this first episode of As The South Votes, we hear from Arekia Benett and Velvet Johnson of Mississippi Votes, an intergenerational organization cultivating a culture of civic engagement and political empowerment in impacted communities across their state.

Arekia and Velvet share that as an organization, Mississippi Votes focuses on the issues that impact the communities they serve year-round—not just during the six to eight weeks of an election cycle when a particular candidate needs everyone's vote.

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In this season of As The South Votes, Scalawag and Anoa Changa team back up to talk about what's working, what's not, and what lessons Southern organizers have learned in their efforts to make the region we love a more just place.

Learn more and revisit past episodes at: https://scalawagmagazine.org/vote/