Coalition Signs Up 1,000 New Voters

A woman at the Fair Haven Community Health Care clinic on Grand Avenue had a question: How can she get her kids to go vote?

She posed that question Tuesday on the last day that Connecticut voters could register to cast a ballot in next week’s election without standing in long lines on Nov. 6 for same- day registration and voting.

She posed the question to a group of people who have been working since the spring to get historically marginalized groups, particularly those who are Spanish-speaking and Latino, registered to vote in time for the upcoming Nov. 6 election and motivate them to actually head to the polls. And if they’re not documented and can’t vote, to advocate for themselves.

As the woman already knew, it’s not that easy to get people motivated.

“I can get my kids registered but they won’t vote,” she said. ​“They don’t want to vote.”

About 50 people gathered at Fair Haven Community Health to take stock of the efforts of a coalition called Greater New Haven Vote to address that challenge.

Coalition organizer Kenneth Reveiz, a Fair Haven alder, said that the group made progress but ran into a lot of the same obstacle that the woman witnessed in her children: apathy.

“It has been very difficult,” Reveiz said of trying to reach hundreds of new youth voters, Spanish-speaking and Latino voters, other voters of color, those newly arrived from Puerto Rico, and those who are formerly incarcerated. ​“It has been grueling, it has been demoralizing sometimes but also incredibly important and powerful, and inspiring and worth it.”

Reveiz said it is estimated that Greater New Haven Votes 2018 will have registered about 1,000 new voters after registrations are tallied. More than 1,000 people also signed pledge cards to cast a ballot next week.

Reveiz said it took a lot of effort and education on the part of the coalition of not-for-profit and nonpartisan groups that took on the task.

Part of the new voters’ commitment was to consider key issues in casting their allots: affordable housing, education, immigration, health care, and criminal justice.

Merryl Eaton of the Christian Community Action Agency suggested to the woman asking about her children to talk to discuss what they care about and remind them that all those things come down to public policy. She said elections matter in part because those who are elected get to decide what becomes public policy and what doesn’t.

“I agree that this has been an incredibly frustrating experience, particularly when we’re talking to young people,” she said. ​“One of the only things that I have found that has been able to make an impact on people is forcing them to understand that everything that we care about is public policy.

“If you care about hospitals, if you care about children, if you care about health care if you care about the future of this country it is all tied into public policy,” Eaton added.

She urged people to remember that voting is not the end of the work. The next step is holding elected representatives accountable for their actions.

“Mayor Harp can attest that when she was in the legislature and she saw us coming, she had two choices: to welcome us in or to run,” Eaton said drawing chuckles from Mayor (and former State Sen.) Toni Harp and the audience. ​“We came fully prepared to talk about what the needs of the community were. I hope everybody will use this as a stepping stone to be that much more involved.”

Shawn Marshall with the Greater New Haven Clergy’s Association recommended three Ps and an L: prayer, planning, push and love. He said far too often when young people are asked if they’re going to vote, the response is, ​“Nah, I’m all right.”

He said he often tells them they’re not all right if they have access to only poor schools and neighborhoods infested with drugs and crime. He also likes to tell them that he’ll see if he can get the president, or the Ku Klux Klan, to call them and thank them for not voting.

“What they need to understand is that in fact, the future is now,” he said. ​“They think it’s out far.”

He invites people to pray for their future which he said would be worse than the present if people don’t vote. And while they’re praying, he encourages them to plan because you just can’t pray that things will change, he said. And then he invites them to push for change.

“We’re not doing much different now than we did when we got the gift in the White House that we have now,” he said. ​“If we’re not doing new and different things… calling 10 people… and saying are you registered and can you get 10 who are not registered down on the day of to register and vote?”

And he said in the face of this week’s killings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and the murders in Kentucky more than ever there is a need to conquer hate with love.

Greater New Haven Vote organizer Caprice Taylor Mendez, who works with the Progreso Latino Fund, urged the audience not to give up when people say they don’t want to register to vote, or that their vote doesn’t matter.

“Every single person that you convince to vote, that’s more power to address those issues that we care about,” she said. ​“Post-Nov. 6, per the pledge cards we were given permission for the not-for-profits to contact people and say ​‘Hey this is what’s going on in the state house, here’s what’s going on at City Hall, do you want to make your voice count? Now that you voted you can actually say, ​‘I was part of putting you in office,’ or ​‘I’m a voter and I didn’t put you in office but you better watch out because this is what I care about.’

“It’s about voter power,” she added. ​“Voting is the first step, being informed on the issues we care about [is another part], having your voice heard throughout the year is the important part.”

Click the Greater New Haven Vote Facebook Live video below to catch some of the roundtable.