Friend,
The ground was still warm from the summer sun on the 2020 day when
Shon Holsey planted collard greens on his farm in Leesburg, Georgia.
But as he was laying down the rows, Holsey had a premonition he would
need to plant more than usual.
When the Black farmer got a call several months later from a group
called Black Voters Matter Fund asking if he had any collard greens
they could use as part of a novel get-out-the-vote effort for crucial
runoff Senate elections, Holsey wasn't surprised.
Sure, the Collard Green Caucus, as the organization dubbed its effort,
was a wildly inventive idea, a cheeky nod to the Southern New
Year's tradition of feasting on collard greens and black-eyed
peas as a way to motivate Black voters to cast ballots in the January
2021 election in Georgia that would determine two U.S. Senate seats.
Holsey was ready for it.
The 500 bunches of collards the farmer sold to the organization helped
him find a buyer for his produce. And by providing the literal raw
material for the get-out-the-vote effort, Holsey and dozens of
small-farm owners like him helped Black Voters Matter plant the seeds
of Black power at the voting booth and beyond.
"He's a farmer and whatever he has in his heart just goes
to his planting," Chiquita Holsey said of her husband. "I
saw what he planted and I said, 'What are we gonna do with all
these greens?' And he said, 'I just know that somehow
they'll be needed.' And it worked out with the caucus that
we were able to be a good help."
The sort of innovative approach that paired the organization with the
Holseys has earned Black Voters Matter Capacity Building
Institute
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, a division of Black Voters Matter Fund
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, an additional $180,000 Vote Your Voice grant from the Southern
Poverty Law Center, adding to its earlier grant of $600,000 in 2021.
Formed in Alabama in 2017 and now with offices in 11 states, Black
Voters Matter is one of 39 voter outreach groups - four of them
organizations with multistate operations - that will receive a
combined total of more than $4.6 million in funding as part of the
latest round of Vote Your Voice grants.
Spotlighting community needs
The Vote Your Voice
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grants, announced in late August, are a partnership between the
SPLC and the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta
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to support voter education and increase voter registration,
participation and civic engagement among communities of color across
the Deep South. The initiative also is strengthening the field
capacity of grassroots organizations through data and fundraising
support and the testing of effective voter engagement strategies. The
grants add to an earlier investment of more than $11 million awarded
last year and more than $12 million awarded in 2020.
The SPLC has pledged $100 million
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to support Vote Your Voice through 2032.
Black Voters Matter calls itself a power building organization. Its
goal is to plant the seeds of voting power by connecting the power of
the ballot with the impact of policies on Black lives. So the Collard
Green Caucus was about more than getting out the vote. It was about
helping struggling Black farmers and about putting a spotlight on the
lack of access to healthy foods in many Black neighborhoods.
With all its initiatives, the organization digs deep into Black
communities, sharing resources, capacity and fundraising experience.
But it seeks to learn as much as teach. The group understands that the
small community groups it partners with are the experts in their
communities.
READ MORE HERE
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
DONATE
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