A Plan for Ending School Segregation in New Jersey

 “Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Principles:

  • A school integration plan must involve everyone. All districts bear some responsibility. All have a role to play.
  • It must be implemented statewide and must engage entire regions if it is to shut off all doors to “flight”. Small scale pilot projects will not work.
  • It must set meaningful, achievable, and fair goals for inclusion and integration. The state’s aim should be to support, incentivize and push all districts, schools, faculty, and classrooms to better reflect the diversity of their regions and the state.
  • Goals must be based on “Opportunity” as well as race.[1]

9 Point Legislative Plan for Eradicating School Segregation in New Jersey

1.      We must conduct an Opportunity Analysis. A desegregation plan and its goals must be based on a thorough analysis of racial as well as economic and social factors that define “opportunity”.

2.      We must reform and strengthen the Department of Education’s civil rights capacity and enforcement so it can develop a desegregation plan and has the power needed to advance and enforce it.

3.      We must expand and strengthen the state school funding formula to advantage and incentivize diverse and integrated schools.

4.      We must direct and increase state school funding to suppprt and incentivize local integration and desegregation best practices where diversity already exists.

5.      We must reform the Interdistrict Public School Choice program to become a mandatory tool to advance integration within regions based on an opportunity analysis.

6.      We must require charter schools to advance integration and meet regional inclusion goals.

7.      We must create and support pro-integration magnet schools in urban areas and require county schools to meet regional integration goals

8.      We must end secessions; ban the termination of regional send-receive arrangements and the dissolution of unified districts. We must amend the school consolidation bill to prohibit secessions while requiring an affirmative obligation to create integrated districts.

9.  We must strengthen the Fair Housing Act to Increase Mount Laurel obligations on “far flung” wealthy communities with exclusionary schools.

 

Caveats: 

a)  Avoid Short-Term Quick-Fixes, especially ones that trade costly expenditures in place of true inclusion; because “sperate is never equal”     

b)     Don't Blame the Victim. NJ’s high poverty, racially isolated districts did not create segregation. Their students did not choose it. They should not bear the burden of fixing it or paying for it.

c)      Not all suburban and urban districts are the same; consider the relative diversity and fiscal capacity of all districts.

d)     Do No Harm - The best intentions often bring unintended harmful consequences, including some well-meaning proposals: 

County consolidation in most counties in NJ will not capture a diverse enough area to stop white flight. 

Simply removing district boundaries would only accelerate flight and deepen segregation.

e)     Magnet and vocational schools should not be allowed to create new layers of exclusivity and exclusion. They must all meet meaningful goals for reflecting the economic and racial mix of their region.


[1] Opportunity is defined by social and economic factors such as income, wealth, quality schools, jobs and tax base.

 

Statewide Conference on Segregation, Education & Opportunity

Join Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, award winning education writer and activist Jonathan Kozol, national education expert and practitioner Linda Darling Hammond, demographer and civil rights lawyer Myron Orfield (and many others) on September 24 - the anniversary of the day federal troops were deployed to integrate Little Rock High School - to address the appalling state of school segregation in NJ and what we can do about it.

64 years after the Little Rock Nine, New Jersey has the shameful distinction of being more segregated by race and class than almost any state of the former confederacy. 


Why is this? Is it accidental or coincidence? Is it by choice or just the result of a segregated residential market?

Why should we care? What's the harm? And how does it affect me, my family or my community?

What can be done?  Are there solutions?  What are they, and what can I do?   

The conference on September 24 will explore all of these questions with facts, new data, history and analysis from experts, practitioners and constituency leaders. And it will present a series of proposals for legislative action that can powerfully move us in a different direction in New Jersey.

The event will go from 10:00 to 3:00 PM. Lunch will be included. There is a fee of $75 to cover costs including meals. Discounts are available for members of affiliated organizations, sponsors and students.

Racial segregation in schools is a structure and a system made by people that can be dismantled by people.  It is more than just residential segregation and it dmages more than just those who are segregated. It has devastating consequences for the segregated, but it harms us all in a myriad of profound ways, politically, economically and morally. 

Friday, September 24 at 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. The Conference Center at Mercer - Mercer County Community College - 1200 Old Trenton Road, West Windsor, NJ 08550  


Pre-register here for this live gathering of faith, community, political & policy leaders.

 

Registration for the day long conference is $75.00. Discounts are available for affiliated organizations and members. Go here to see discount codes. 

 

   

Statewide Conference on Segregation, Education & Opportunity

Join Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, award winning education writer and activist Jonathan Kozol, national education expert and practitioner Linda Darling Hammond, demographer and civil rights lawyer Myron Orfield (and many others) on September 24 - the anniversary of the day federal troops were deployed to integrate Little Rock High School - to address the appalling state of school segregation in NJ and what we can do about it.

64 years after the Little Rock Nine, New Jersey has the shameful distinction of being more segregated by race and class than almost any state of the former confederacy. 


Why is this? Is it accidental or coincidence? Is it by choice or just the result of a segregated residential market?

Why should we care? What's the harm? And how does it affect me, my family or my community?

What can be done?  Are there solutions?  What are they, and what can I do?   

The conference on September 24 will explore all of these questions with facts, new data, history and analysis from experts, practitioners and constituency leaders. And it will present a series of proposals for legislative action that can powerfully move us in a different direction in New Jersey.

The event will go from 10:00 to 3:00 PM. Lunch will be included. There is a fee of $75 to cover costs including meals. Discounts are available for members of affiliated organizations, sponsors and students.

Racial segregation in schools is a structure and a system made by people that can be dismantled by people.  It is more than just residential segregation and it dmages more than just those who are segregated. It has devastating consequences for the segregated, but it harms us all in a myriad of profound ways, politically, economically and morally. 

Friday, September 24 at 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. The Conference Center at Mercer - Mercer County Community College - 1200 Old Trenton Road, West Windsor, NJ 08550  


Pre-register here for this live gathering of faith, community, political & policy leaders.

 

Registration for the day long conference is $75.00. Discounts are available for affiliated organizations and members. Go here to see discount codes. 

 

   

From Brown to Plessy - May 18 Clergy Gathering

An Important Conversation about the State of School Segregation, Education & Opportunity in New Jersey.

 With Assemblyman Benjie E. Wimberly and Legislative Black Caucus Chair Assemblywoman Shavonda E. Sumter.

Also John C. Brittain, Civil Rights Law Professor at UDC School of Law in Washington, DC and Leslie Wilson, Montclair State University, Associate Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, American History and African American studies and Myron Orfield, Professor of Law, University of Minnesota and Director of the Institute for Metropolitan Opportunity.

Hosted by Rev. Willie D. Francois of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Pleasantville and Rev. Kenneth Darryl Ray Clayton, Pastor of St. Luke Baptist Church, Paterson. 

Tuesday, May 18 at 1:00 to 2:00 pm. Please pre-register here for this virtual gathering of faith leaders

Tuesday, May 18 marks 125 years since the infamous Plessy v Ferguson decision that codified legal segregation in America. It falls only 1 day after the 67th anniversary of Brown v Board which overturned Plessy on the grounds that “separate can never be equal”.

Today in New Jersey, we are experiencing enduring and deeply unequal racial segregation in our schools too often combined with a lethal mix of economic isolation and poverty concentration.of us know the dark history of deliberate and intentional discrimination and redlining that contributed to modern Jim Crow segregation in the north. However, many are unaware of recent and ongoing efforts by individuals and institutions to deny our children a decent education by hoarding resources and opportunity through continued efforts to maintain and even expand segregation by both race and class. A situation that is only expected to get worse in the aftermath of the pandemic.

On Tuesday, May 18 we will present some of this information for you and members of the legislature so we can prayerfully consider and agree on meaningful action to combat these real time examples of institutional and systemic racism in all of our regions and across the state. Please register here for this virtual faith leaders meeting.

Star-Ledger Guest Columnist - Willie Dwayne Francois III

No time for handwashing, absolving ourselves of segregating schools | Opinion

Updated Apr 01, 2021; Posted Apr 01, 2021

Willie Dwayne Francois III, senior pastor at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Pleasantville, says we need courageous and imaginative state leaders who won't wash their hands of the responsibility to cure the shameful inequality permeating our deeply segregated public schools.

Star-Ledger Guest Columnist 

By Willie Dwayne Francois III

Holy Week occasions some concentrated time of reflection and action as large segments of the Christian world prepare to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth — a poor Palestinian carpenter victimized by political malfeasance and a politics of self-preservation of the state and its power.

This year, April 4th is not only Easter Sunday and the last day of the Jewish Passover. It also marks the 54th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who never wavered in his intense opposition to segregation as a vile systemic sin and an assault on humanity. This Holy Week, almost 66 years after Brown v. Board of Education, New Jersey carries the distinction as the sixth most racially segregated school system in the United States in terms of the highest segregation of Black students and seventh in segregation of Latinos.

Today, in New Jersey, we need courageous and imaginative leadership at the state level, who will not wash their hands of the responsibility to cure the shameful inequality permeating our deeply segregated public schools.

Holy Week’s storied traditions and narratives include one of the most infamous acts of moral betrayal and political cowardice — one of the world’s most notorious acts of handwashing. Pontius Pilate, who was presiding over the kangaroo trial and state-sponsored death of Jesus, served at the pleasure of Emperor Tiberius as the governor of colonized Judaea. Matthew’s account of the episodic execution of Jesus depicts Governor Pilate, in a cowardly gesture to the crowd, washing his hands with water, absolving himself, and sentencing Jesus to capital punishment.

This is no time for Governor Murphy to wash his hands of the responsibility to end school segregation— a priority thrust upon him when more than 90% of the Black vote delivered him a win in 2017. Each time New Jersey students enter segregated classrooms or log into segregated Zoom sessions, it eviscerates public trust in the Murphy administration’s commitment to racial equity and economic justice.

School segregation inscribes the stigma of shame and inferiority on the psyche of the children forced to live under marked powerlessness and disinvestment. There is a clear consensus among social scientists, educational experts and civil rights scholars of the high correlation between racial education segregation, concentrated poverty, poor educational outcomes and many other debilitating social and economic problems.

For years, a group of majority white school districts across New Jersey has waged efforts to terminate their send-receive relationships with majority Black and brown districts. In the past, New Jersey courts have consistently and correctly struck down these secession attempts because they would exacerbate racial segregation and, therefore, violate New Jersey’s constitution. This was the case with Englewood Cliff’s efforts to separate from Englewood and North Haledon’s attempt to secede from Manchester Regional High School.

Recently, however, a group of lawyers and consultants led by attorney Vito Gagliardi of the firm Porzio, Bromberg, and Newman has delivered a string of secessionist victories to their clients (majority white school districts), relying on a handwashing Education Commissioner and Governor. Last year, Governor Murphy’s previous Education Commissioner allowed Maywood to separate from Hackensack, a decision that contradicts the Supreme Court’s decision in Englewood Cliffs. There was neither a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge nor anyone to challenge the fallacious claims that the separation would have no racial impact.

The most egregious decision occurred in 2015 when the state-sanctioned the will of Merchantville to sever its relationship with Pennsauken and join majority White Haddon Heights High School. For Merchantville, the Porzio firm embarked on an aggressive and expensive multiyear campaign to strand Pennsauken on the isles of segregation and isolation despite Merchantville’s best efforts in state courts.

Gagliardi promised that the separation would have no racial impact. Today we see his promises proved false. The year Pennsauken was cut loose, the 9th-grade class at Pennsauken’s high school declined from 328-272 students, and the number of White ninth graders fell from 40-24. Merchantville’s new destination, Haddon Heights, increased from 104 white students in 2015 to 149 in 2018.

Soon to be on the commissioner’s desk is Absecon’s latest petition to withdraw from Pleasantville High School. Like the other secessionist efforts, Absecon possesses a history of lobbying to end this agreement, including a rejection from the state in 1988 because withdrawing the 20 to 30 students they send to Pleasantville would result in more, not less, segregation. They are making the same argument today.

The majority white school district hopes no one cares about Pleasantville’s children, just like the Porzio team believes no one cares about Pennsauken or Hackensack’s students. They are counting on the new Acting Education Commissioner to roll over like the last one. They are banking on Gov. Murphy to pull a Pontius Pilate and wash his hands of it all.

If the state affirms Absecon’s resolve to secede, this administration only reinforces and validates school segregation. What message does it communicate to Pleasantville students I know, like Tanitra and Saul? Or students like Jose and Erin — young people matriculating into adulthood and civic life — will be forgotten by the state. There is no question that students in Absecon deserve a high-quality education. The students in Pleasantville deserve the same.

Absecon’s petition, if approved, would leave Pleasantville 100% nonwhite and completely isolated. That is not only illegal under our constitution; it is immoral and deeply corrosive to us all. Therefore, this moment requires action from state policymakers like Gov. Murphy, Senator President Stephen Sweeney, and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin. This is no time for handwashing when the future of children’s lives and democracy are in question.

This Holy Week, the courageous, self-sacrificing examples of the revolutionary Jesus summons us to get our collective hands dirty to end social arrangements of powerlessness and to end school segregation and secessions. We start by demanding the rejection of Absecon’s petition and the many nearly identical proposals all across the state.

Willie Dwayne Francois III is the senior pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Pleasantville. He is also an author, an adjunct instructor in African American Studies at the University of Houston and president of the Theological Working Group of the Black Church Center for Justice and Equality.

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LEADERSHIP TRAINING

Issues and Action and Strategic Campaigns

Training for leaders who want to wage and win campaigns that change structures of opportunity.

April 13 and April 15 (Tuesday and Thursday) 7:00  PM to 9:00 PM

Mt Zion Baptist Church, Pleasantville, 353 S New Rd, Pleasantville, NJ


Building One America and the Coalition Against Racial Exclusion will conduct a four hour training for leaders and organizers to better prepare us for the fight for our children and schools. The training will be held on two evenings for two hours each. Attendees will be asked to attend both. The training will focus on the principles, disciplines, tools of waging and winning a campaign for racial justice and economic opportunity for all.

Some of those principle, disciplines and tools will include:

  • Understanding power: In any contest people and organizations must understand both their capacity and their limits as well as the limits and capacities of their adversaries.
  • Issues and actions: Understanding the difference between a problem and an issue. Learning how to cut an issue and make it actionable. Learn how to conduct an effective action.
  • Strategic Campaign: Here we focus on issue campaigns with larger objectives involving structural social change. Strategic campaigns often have multiple objectives, targets, tactics and allies as well as strategic and organizational goals. It will be important for leaders at all levels to better understand these elements and principles of strategy.
  • Elements and purpose a power organization: Understanding the key elements of an organization that can fight and win a strategic campaign that changes structures of opportunity. We will spend some time on better preparing ourselves organizationally for a fight including the role of leadership, money, training, information, structure, allies and communication.

The training will take place over two evenings and run for two hours each evening. From 7 PM to 9 PM. There is a $25 fee to cover the costs of the training. Discounts are available for students and affiliated organizations.

  • When:  April 13 and April 15 (Tuesday and Thursday) 7:00  PM to 9:00 PM. The training will take place in two parts over two evenings and run for two hours each evening. There is a $25 fee to cover the costs of the training. Discounts are available for students and affiliated organizations. It will take place at the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Pleasantville, NJ.  Attendees are asked to attend both evenings.
  • Where:  Mt Zion Baptist Church, Pleasantville, 353 S New Rd, Pleasantville, NJ. Because space is limited, interested individuals must apply and register to participate in this program.  Go HERE to register. 

Inquire at info@buildingoneamerica.org about congregational, organizational and students or senior discounts.  


 

Summit for Civil Rights 2021

 

https://buildingoneamerica.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=18

We are seeking to Make America One Nation The Other America, Dr. Martin Luther King, 1967


 

Summary of Transition Recommendations

An Agenda for Racial Justice and Middle Class Opportunity for All Americans Within a Metropolitan Framework

On July 30 and 31, 2020, over 50 civil rights leaders, including renowned scholars and litigators, clergy and faith leaders, grassroots organizers, labor union presidents and elected officials including powerful members of Congress, convened with over 500 participants to examine and call for action on today’s triple crisis of deadly racial injustice, vanishing middle class opportunity and toxic political polarization. One of our central conclusions is that spatial disparities (segregation by race and income), especially across America’s metropolitan regions, are significant and critical drivers of structural inequalities in wealth, education and opportunity, widening both race and class divides and contributing to our already fractured politics. What follows are recommendations for federal action for reducing these disparities and expanding an inclusive middle class through structural reform at the regional level.  

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
 
The first Summit for Civil Rights began on November 9, 2017 at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis. It was held a year to the day after the election of Donald J. Trump and featured Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, Vice President Walter Mondale and many others. Since then, we have held two more gatherings sponsored by Rutgers University School of Labor Relations in New Brunswick, NJ and Georgetown University Law School’s Workers’ Rights Institute in Washington, DC.  Between events, a core committee of Summit organizers representing civil rights scholars, labor leaders, law students, clergy and elected officials have been assembling research and analysis to produce a set of recommendations for a strategic approach and a policy agenda to address some of the most critical issues facing our country.

The Summit for Civil Rights held this past July was the latest in the series of three convenings that included, among others: House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, House Committee on Education and Labor Chairman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, NEA President Becky Pringle, NAACP President Derrick Johnson, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Vice President Walter Mondale, AME Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, NAACP Legal Defense Fund President Sherrilyn Ifill, AFT President Randi Weingarten, Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman; and many other civil rights activists, litigators, scholars and experts in education, housing, finance and labor .  
 

Our third Summit was held virtually under the cloud of the current health emergency and economic catastrophe resulting from the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the immediate crisis of the pandemic, the Summit for Civil Rights conference maintained its focus on addressing the three main interrelated topics listed above: racial injustice, economic inequality and political polarization in America. We did not ignore the pandemic. On the contrary, the still unfolding crisis has acted as an ill-timed and regrettable overlay that seems to have only magnified racial disparities, deepened economic inequality and widened the political divide.

This document is an attempt to summarize some of the key areas of transformational reform we believe can and must be pursued by Congress and the new Administration to move our country in a different and better direction. It hopes to unite the energies and the constituencies committed to racial justice and those focused on middle-class opportunity for all Americans—especially groups tied to civil rights and organized labor, including faith communities and local elected officials. Much of this argues for a regional, or metropolitan, approach to bringing us closer together as a country socially, politically and economically.

 

 

The Summit for Civil Rights 2019 Sponsors

 

 

The Summit for Civil Rights 2017 Sponsors

  

 
 
 
 
 

https://buildingoneamerica.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=18

March on Washington Anniversary - Get Out the Vote Kickoff

This Friday, August 28, will mark 57 years since the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.    It will also mark just 67 days before 2020 general election.

Join us for a remote March on Washington commemoration and kick off of our voter registration drive to give a powerful voice to the voiceless in South Jersey. This Friday, August 28,  5:00 PM to 6:30 PM.

This non-partisan event is being sponsored by the NAACP NextGen program, Building One America, the Summit for Civil Rights Project and Fannie Lou Hamer Voice to the Voiceless in CD2.

Sign up here to receive the remote log-in link to participate in this tribute and inauguration of building a powerful movement for racial and social justice in southern New Jersey.

We are honored to be joined by Timuel Black. Mr. Black was the Lead Organizer of the Chicago contingent of the 1963 March on Washington which sent over 4000 delegates, including nearly 2000 on the two "freedom trains" chartered by A. Philip Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union. 

Mr. Black and others will share their recollection of the March; what it meant to them then, and what it means to us today, as we struggle against lethal racism and racially polarized politics to build broad multi-racial power for social, racial and economic justice.

We are also honored to be joined by the dynamic and powerful Congresswoman Barbara Lee of Oakland California. Ms. Lee has been consistent and powerfull voices for racial justice, economic opportunity, and peace throughout her career in office and activism.

 

 

 

 

 

The program will be moderated by Yolanda Melville, National Chair of the NAACP NextGen Program with comments from Marcus W. King, President of New Jersey’s Teamsters Local 331, and Director of the Human Rights and Diversity Commission for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Washington, DC and Richard Tolson, recently retired National Executive Council member of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, Rev. Willie Dwayne Francois, Senior Pastor, Mount Zion Baptist Church, Pleasantville, and Alexander Bland, President of the Cape May County Branch of the NAACP.

On Friday, we launch our new campaign to add 10,000 more registered voters to the roles before the 2020 deadline on October 13, 2020.

The Fanie Lou Hammer, Voice to the Voiceless  (FLH V2V CD2) project is a non-partisan initiative to organize multi-racial grassroots power and increase voter participation among historically disenfranchised and underrepresented communities, including African American, Latino, young people, and working class and low income people of all ages and backgrounds.

 

https://buildingoneamerica.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=18

Summit for Civil Rights 2020

Presented by:
  • The Workers’ Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, D.C.
  • The Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity and
  • The Journal of Law and Inequality at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • Building One America 

We are seeking to Make America One Nation - The Other America, Dr. Martin Luther King, 1967


For the past three years, the Summit for Civil Rights Rights has convened multi-racial and intergenerational gatherings of some of the nation’s top civil rights leaders in the field of organizing, labor, faith, academia, law and government to respond to the powerful and dangerous intersection of enduring racial disparities, widening economic inequality, and rising political polarization throughout our entire society.  Our next Summit will not veer from these timely topics that have only intensified with the pandemic and been courageously amplified by the protesters.

The 3rd Summit for Civil Rights will be held remotely and hosted by the Workers’ Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, DC, and the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 30 and 31.

We have witnessed an extraordinary outpouring of anger, outrage and solidarity across the nation, sparked by the killing of an unarmed Black man by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25. This movement for radical change is coming at a time of a global health crisis, political turmoil, and a massive economic catastrophe deepening existing inequalities while accelerating economic trends already devastating workers and communities.

We have confirmed the participation of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and will release more details as we receive confirmation on speakers and participants. The Summit will start at 1:00 PM on Thursday, July 30 and end at 4:00 PM, Friday, July 31. It will be broken down into four distinct but interrelated discussions over the course of the two days.

 

While much attention is rightly directed to immediate demands for sweeping police reform, our forum will attempt to examine some of the deeper, historical structures of racial apartheid in American’s institutions and their meaning, especially at this juncture, for working people of all backgrounds and the implications for political action, multi-racial power, and a meaningful and transformative policy agenda.

Some of the topics, building on the past two Summits and attempting to learn from and draw on the new energy, anger and desire for change, include:

Click here for the timed program


SUMMIT TOPICS

THE STATE OF MULTI-RACIAL AMERICA AND BLACK POWER

  • The national election/s
    • The Black electorate and the rise and fall of populist insurgencies of both the left and right
    • From Black Lives Matter to Black Power

THE TWO AMERICA’S - THE STATE OF AMERICAN APARTHEID

  • The consequences of our inaction and our acquiescence to a racially divided society
    •  52 years since Kerner Commission, 57 since March on Washington
    • Pandemic as microscope and telescope

WHO’S PROFITING?

  • Racial segregation as a lucrative and anti-worker business model
    • How America’s enduring ”Color Line” drives economic inequality

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?  HOW CAN WE HELP?

  • Is America ready for a 2nd Reconstruction? A 3rd “Founding”?
    • What would a Civil Rights Restoration Act look Like in 2020?
      • A New Agenda for Economic Opportunity, Racial Justice, Freedom, and Inclusion

 

 

The Summit for Civil Rights 2017 Sponsors

  

 
 
 
attachment: 

Mail in your Ballot

This year's election is Vote By Mail. It must droped off or postmarked today! 

If you are registered, you should have received a Ballot in the Mail

You have until the end of the day TODAY, Tuesday , July 7 to Vote in this Year's Primary

Go to this link for the steps to filling out your ballot

Or you go to this link and watch a demonstration video from the Mainland Pleasantville NAACP

Your ballot must be postmarked before or on July 7th   Best to bring it to an official drop box location

Take your mail-in-ballot to any one of these Drop Box Locations in your County.

 

In 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the speech "Give Us the Ballot".

In 2020, we must Send IN Our Ballots!

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
This year we've partnered with First Lady Michelle Obama and her non-partisan campaign called When We All Vote. Just as with President Obama’s historic elections to the U.S. Senate and Presidency, we have to start by increasing the number of registered voters, especially among the underrepresented and historically disenfranchised, including African American, Latino, as well as low-income, working-class and young people of all backgrounds.


 Join our campaign now and receive the Outvote texting App for your cell phone.
as well as the link to Michelle Obama's When we All Vote voter registration campaign. 

https://buildingoneamerica.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=18

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