Engaging New American Voters and Voters of Color
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Saturday, Jun. 22 4:30 PM (Eastern)
Ends: Saturday, Jun. 22 5:45 PM (Eastern)
The 2012 general election clearly demonstrated the unleashed potential of new American voters and voters of color to win significant progressive policies and races at state and national levels. The demographics of our country are changing, and we need to be proactive to engage our communities—ones often ignored by mainstream campaigns. This last December a coalition of diverse Electoral Data Campaigners joined together to conduct an ongoing case-study to analyze tactics, strategies and tools that are most effective in engaging new American voters and voters of color. This panel will walk through tools used by experts in the field and how you can use them in your own campaigns.
Moderator
Ludovic Blain
Ludovic directs the Progressive Era Project and the Color of Democracy Fund. Both are alliances of several of California’s leading progressive political donors focused on building a second Progressive Era by investing in progressive infrastructure in and allied with communities of color. His previous positions include program manager of the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative of the Insight Center, founding national campaign coordinator for the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s Equal Voice for America’s Families Campaign and associate director of the Democracy Program at Demos. He has led campaigns inserting racial justice into the fields of voting rights, environmental advocacy, communications strategy and media accountability, campaign finance, and a variety of other fields domestically and abroad.
Panelists
Tanzila Ahmed
Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is a political strategist, storyteller, and artist based in Los Angeles. She creates at the intersection of counternarratives and culture-shifting as a South Asian American Muslim 2nd-gen woman. She’s turned out over 500,000 Asian American voters, recorded her #GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast at the White House and makes #MuslimVDay cards annually. Her essays are published in the anthologies Pretty Bitches, Whiter, Good Girls Marry Doctors, Love Inshallah, and numerous online publications. In Spring 2019 she was UCLA’s Activist-in-Residence at the Institute on Inequality and Democracy and in 2016 received an award from President Obama’s White House as a Champion of Change in Art and Storytelling.
Other sessions: Islamophobia: A Tool of the Right
Rebecca Apostol
Rebecca Concepcion Apostol is the Strategic Communications Director for Mobilize the Immigrant Vote Action Fund (MIV AF), a 501(c)4, multi-ethnic coalition of grassroots organizations that builds power and capacity of immigrants, their families and communities of color through electoral engagement.
Rebecca dedicates her work to her parents, Philippine immigrant activists who shared their commitment to social justice, equality, and empowerment, with their daughter by taking her to her first demonstrations while still in the womb and on her first of many precinct walks at the age of nine. Beyond the world of political campaigns and political data, Rebecca’s dedication to her community has led to work on a variety of issues over the years including youth leadership development, diversity and affordability of higher education, women’s and LGBTQ issues. Rebecca is a proud alumnus of UCLA and the New Leaders Council Fellowship.
Lisa García Bedolla
Lisa García Bedolla is Professor of Social and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and Chair of Berkeley’s Center for Latino Policy Research. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University and her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Fluid Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and Politics in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) and Latino Politics (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009). She is co-author of Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). Professor García Bedolla’s research focuses on how inequality structures the political opportunities available to members of ethnoracial groups, with a particular emphasis on the intersections of race, class, and gender. She has expertise in survey research, qualitative methods, and experimental methods, and has served as a consultant for John Kerry’s presidential campaign, state ballot initiatives, and local races.
Michael Gomez Daly
Michael Gomez Daly is the Special Projects Director for PowerPAC.org. Michael leads a coalition in the Inland Empire whose work focuses around engaging impoverished communities and people of color. Michael has been on the forefront progressing voting rights and electing progressive candidates in positions to ensure marginalized communities have a local voice. Michael’s focus on data-driven field and in-language outreach has created deep inroads to progressive efforts in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.