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Friend,
Sometimes making change means playing the long game. And Jasmine Burney-Clark, founder of the Florida advocacy organization Equal Ground, knows this well.
As a young girl, Burney-Clark grew up in Orlando, in a congressional district so gerrymandered that it jigsawed unevenly across Central Florida, and was represented by one of the few women of color in Congress. As a young leader, she founded Equal Ground in 2019 to ramp up the political voice of underrepresented communities of color.
Right now, even as the immediate battle for representation plays out with the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature convening to redraw the boundaries of legislative and congressional districts, she is keeping her focus on the future.
The result? A brand-new Redistricting Fellowship program that engages Black college students and young professionals about the crucial redistricting process that is taking place this year. Funded in part by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the program is giving a new generation the tools to monitor the redistricting process, and to fight back against a system that, if history is any guide, is skewed against communities of color.
“As the founder of Equal Ground, this work is tied deeply and closely to how I was raised in a gerrymandered district the majority of my life,” Burney-Clark said. “That defined my political existence. I saw from a young age how it kept my community from having a proper voice. And I saw that affected everything. It meant a lack of opportunity for housing, for community development, for education. It meant more often than not that Black people were laborers in the places they occupied, rather than leaders. It meant that had to change.”
Energizing young leaders
To learn how to direct such opportunities to communities who need them, seven fellows from the northern, central and southern areas of Florida are meeting virtually now through November with advocacy leaders, legislators, local and state policymakers and others. They are undergraduate and graduate students from historically Black colleges and universities, and some are young professionals. They have each demonstrated leadership on various levels, and they come seeking equal representation with a level of energy that inspires.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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