Voting for Change: SPLC initiative helps underserved Southern
communities transform governance through the ballot

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Booth Gunter | Read the full piece here

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Friend,

Members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians have good reasons
to distrust the government.
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The Choctaw, descendants of ancient cultures that thrived for
centuries in the Mississippi River valley region, once occupied vast
swaths of the Southeast. During the Revolutionary War, they fought as
allies of the Continental Army - and did again in the War of
1812. Still, in the 1830s they became the first Indigenous tribe to be
forced from their ancestral lands under the Indian Removal Act, a
federal law that prompted a brutal act of ethnic cleansing carried out
on behalf of white farmers who wanted their land to grow cotton. Tens
of thousands of Choctaw and other Indigenous people were marched to
lands west of the Mississippi River in what became known as the Trail
of Tears.
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Some Choctaw remained in Mississippi, and today the Band has just over
11,000 members living on about 35,000 acres in 10 counties.

But nearly two centuries after the Trail of Tears, they remain an
underserved community, and when election season rolls around many
members see little point in voting for local, state or federal
candidates.

"Going back at least to the 1830s, tribal members do not trust
the government of the U.S.A.," said tribal member Cynthia
Massey. "Elders speak about being cheated out of our land, lied
to, forced to move, starved and much more. Seeing the importance of
voting is remote and a betrayal of their shared memory with our
elders."

Tribal leaders today are working to change that.

Last year, the Band received $55,000 from the Southern Poverty Law
Center's nonpartisan Vote Your Voice (VYV
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) initiative - a partnership with the Community Foundation for
Greater Atlanta - to mobilize voters and encourage civic
engagement in advance of the 2020 election. This year, it received a
multiyear

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grant of $50,000 for the 2021 and 2022 election cycles.

The Choctaw Band is one of 64 grassroots organizations, primarily in
five Southern states, that have received $23.3 million in Vote Your
Voice grants. The SPLC has committed a total of $30 million from its
endowment to help fund such groups through 2022.

Massey, supervisor of the Choctaw Band's Vote Your Voice
committee, said the program has helped identify tribe members who
aren't registered to vote and to reach out to tribal members,
many of whom live in remote, hard-to-reach areas. They discovered that
of the 6,500 voting-age members, only about one-quarter were
registered.

As with all voter engagement groups, the COVID-19 pandemic
drastically altered outreach activities. But the group found creative
ways to educate and mobilize members.

As Election Day approached in 2020, the tribe - which also
operates manufacturing, service, retail and tourism
enterprises - hosted "drive-through"
dinners during which they handed out face masks and literature. They
participated in a trick-or-treat event on Halloween. They hosted a
live trivia show on their Facebook channel on the eve of Election Day,
with the opportunity for viewers to win prizes.

"For our Tribal members who are fluent speakers and readers, we
translated phrases from English into Choctaw and utilized it in
announcements, newspaper ads, T-shirts, banners, yard signs and
flyers," Massey said. "We also sponsored a Facebook
challenge for Tribal members to post selfies with a message of why
voting is important."

READ MORE

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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center

 

The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,
working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
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