The Role of Black Women in the Democratic Party

[wildeyed]

22. The DNC knows who we are. They had their last convention here.

Obama always has. I live in Charlotte, NC, ground zero for both his campaigns. I have a picture somewhere of me shaking his actual hand from behind a barrier at a campaign event he had here long before he was the nominee. You could not get anywhere close later on.... We were always part of his plan. He stole our very excellent young mayor for Transport Secretary too

Before 2010, the little c3 group I volunteered with managed to put together coalitions that helped pass some of the best, most progressive election laws in the country. NAACP, ACORN, League of Women Voters, Democracy NC, Latin American Coalition, some really gifted student activist from Johnson C. Smith, a group called Blueprint who ran the VAN stuff out of Raleigh.

We got lots of early voting, same day registration during early vote, publicly funded campaigns for judges and hoping to extend that further. We piloted ranked voting in some primaries (a GREAT way to get accurate results when third party candidates run and also avoid costly runoffs). We lobbied for better campaign finance laws and did outreach and voter education in low turnout groups including low income and college students. We went from one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country to one of the better.

In my city at least, the black political community is well organized and efficient (not sure how true this is for the rest of the state). City government is relatively efficient and much less corrupt than anywhere else I have lived. The city Republicans are mostly business progressives who like infrastructure and basically want to make money more than anything else.

And the "DINO" "conservative" white Southern Dems the liberal purists love to hate? They were part of the coalition too. They gave us the muscle we needed in the legislature to get most of the good laws passed.

Until 2010, the census year, when our voters didn't turnout and we got redistricted by a bunch of GOP ideologues out for blood. That is another story, but suffice to say that the GOP backlash has been furious.

But NC has a history of racial cooperation for political gain. Google NC Fusion Party sometime, it is really interesting. The backlash to that was also furious. But you know what? History moves faster now, and demographics are moving in the right direction. I believe the arc of justice is still bending in the right direction here, we just need to keep working at it to win again