Events to feature Barbara Arnwine, national voting rights experts, and elections officials
As the United States prepares for the 2022 elections, voting rights are under threat. What can be done to protect access to the ballot?
Civil rights leader Barbara Arnwine of the Transformative Justice Coalition, Elizabeth Hira of the Brennan Center for Justice and Denise Lieberman of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition will take up this question on March 30.
The event, Voting Rights: What’s It All About? is part of the Empowering Voting and Democracy series organized by the Center for Social Development (CSD) and partners across the United States.Several additional events are scheduled for the spring and autumn of 2022.
“Our goal for this series is to lift up the work of leaders who are fighting to strengthen democratic institutions,” said Gena Gunn McClendon, director of the Center’s Voter Access and Engagement initiative. “In doing so, we hope people will join in the work of strengthening democracy and ensuring that every eligible voter can exercise their right to vote and have that vote counted.”
“We also hope to give them strategies for engaging in this important work,” she said.
The Center for Social Development’s research on civic engagement began over two decades ago. Founding Director Michael Sherraden, whose doctoral dissertation focused on national service in the Civilian Conservation Corps, was instrumental in the creation of AmeriCorps in 1993, and established the Global Service Institute in 2001. The Center hosted several international conferences on service, and numerous publications followed.
In 2017, Sherraden launched the Voter Access and Engagement initiative and appointed McClendon as its director. “In volunteering at the polls,” she said in a 2018 interview, “I noticed that equipment malfunctions and other issues seemed relatively common at some sites. I wanted to know whether those conditions are more common at some locations than at others.”
The initiative’s researchers conducted a study of St. Louis area polling sites in 2018, finding that polls in communities with higher percentages of Black residents and lower income had fewer election judges, longer lines in the evening and more interference with the free passage of voters – for example, crowded doorways and electioneering.
They also found that these conditions were associated with voter turnout in communities where registration and turnout were already low.
Sherraden and McClendon began to develop strategy for engaging the public about voting and voting barriers. The research led them to focus especially on residents in marginalized communities.
The initiative collaborated with regional partners in organizing a series of events to educate the public about voting and voter-suppression tactics. They hosted several film screenings and panel discussions with leaders from the Black community, registered voters, and held public-education events, including a teach-in. Voter Access and Engagement also hosted election-protection trainings led by the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition’s Lieberman, who is a faculty director at CSD. Working with the Brown School, McClendon recruited students, faculty, and staff to serve as poll monitors in the November 2020 election.
The March 30 voting rights event continues the Center’s voter education efforts in advance of 2022 elections. Arnwine, president and founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition, will discuss recent voting legislation and her efforts to protect voting rights. Hira, Spitzer Fellow and senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice, will assess state developments on voting and voting rights. Lieberman, director and general counsel of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, will report on voting-related developments in Missouri.
“Through this series, CSD aims to act upon the findings from our research and to engage the public in strengthening democratic institutions,” said Sherraden. “We see increasingly grave threats in attempts to block ballot access and deny voting rights. Of course, such attempts to rig the voting system have a long and deeply racist history in the United States. They fail when citizens join together as one nation to protect democratic institutions.”
The event is cosponsored by the Center for Social Development; the Transformative Justice Coalition; the Brennan Center for Justice; Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Gamma Omega Chapter; the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition; In Every Generation; the League of Women Voters of Metro St. Louis; the Grand Challenges for Social Work; the St. Louis Area Voting Initiative; and the St. Louis Area Voter Protection Coalition.
The March 30 event is free, but registration is required. For more information and to register, visit Voting Rights: What’s It All About?
Events in This Series
March 9 & 10, 2022
Social Work Day on the Hill
On March 9, join the Congressional Research Institute for Social Work & Policy for the 2022 Social Work Day on the Hill events, including the launch of the Social Work Democracy Project. Convened annually, Social Work Day on the Hill and Student Advocacy Day offer opportunities to engage policy makers in the nation’s capital. Social Work Day on the Hill is scheduled for March 9, and Student Advocacy Day is scheduled for March 10.
The Center for Social Development is cosponsoring the 2022 Social Work Day on the Hill events, which are organized by the Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy. Additional cosponsors include the Council on Social Work Education; the Association of Social Work Boards; the Columbia University School of Social Work; the Boston University School of Social Work’s Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health; the University of Washington School of Social Work; the Clark-Fox Policy Institute in the Brown School at Washington University; the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Social Work; the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice; and the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
March 30, 2022
Voting Rights: What’s It All About?
Barbara Arnwine, Transformative Justice Coalition
Elizabeth Hira, Brennan Center for Justice
Denise Lieberman, Missouri Voter Protection Coalition
Moderator: Gena Gunn McClendon, Center for Social Development
April 13, 2022
Connecting Voting and Social Work
Tanya Rhodes Smith, Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work, University of Connecticut; Voting Is Social Work
Moderator: Gena Gunn McClendon, Center for Social Development
September 7, 2022
Voting, Misinformation, Disinformation, and Manipulation
Shireen Mitchell, Stop Online Violence Against Women
Jennifer Lohman, St. Louis Area Voter Protection Coalition
Moderator: Gena Gunn McClendon, Center for Social Development
September 13, 2022
Voting Is Social Work: Researchers Speak Out
The Center for Social Development is cosponsoring this event, which is part of the series The Power of Macro Social Work: Forging Pathways, to be hosted by the Open Classroom at the Brown School at Washington University, in collaboration with Influencing Social Policy.
Mimi Abramovitz, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
Cheryl Aguilar, Hope Center for Wellness
Gena Gunn McClendon, Center for Social Development
Shannon Lane, Yeshiva University
Gary Parker, Clark-Fox Policy Institute
Jenna Powers, University of Connecticut School of Social Work
Adelaide Sandler, Marist College
Moderator: Jason Ostrander, Sacred Heart University
September 28, 2022
Voting in Missouri, Civic Education, and Engagement: Local Voting, Community Action, and Impact
Louis Damani Jones, Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement
Gena McClendon, Center for Social Development
Eric Frey, St. Louis County Board of Election Commissioners
D. Benjamin Borgmeyer, St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners