00:00Joining us now to talk about their on-the-ground work protecting our vote are Damon Hewitt and
00:07Kamiya Factory. Damon is the president and executive director of Lawyers Committee for
00:13Civil Rights Under Law. He has led the organization to many critical victories, including a win
00:19against the Proud Boys, y'all know the Proud Boys, who attacked the historic Black church,
00:24getting rid of gerrymandered legislative maps in Mississippi, and so much more.
00:29Damon has also been a collaborator with the Global Black Economic Forum, working together on
00:35the Fearless Fund case. Kamiya Factory is an activist, author, and national organizer based in Texas.
00:44Currently, Factory is the senior national coordinator for election protection for the Lawyers Committee
00:50for Civil Rights Under Law. Factory is currently spearheading a national voting rights campaign.
00:56Ose Ase, Black Women Answering the Call, a campaign aimed at giving Black women their flowers for their
01:05invaluable contribution to democracy, as well as recruit Black women to become poll monitors for the
01:112024 general election. Thank you, Damon. Thank you, Kamiya, for joining us. We're really thrilled that
01:18you're here today. And welcome to Paint the Polls Black. My first question for you both is, can you
01:25explain the election protection initiative that we launched with you, the Global Black Economic Forum,
01:32along with the Lawyers Committee, launched this initiative? Talk to us a little bit about why is
01:37this initiative important, particularly in this election cycle? And Damon, maybe we'll start with you.
01:42Sure. Well, and I'll turn quickly to Kamiya, who's really the heart and soul of it, of the effort on
01:49our end. But, you know, overall election protection is about us. You know, the hotline number is 866,
01:54our vote. And that's not by accident. You know, this whole thing started after the 2000 election
02:00debacle in Florida. So some of your audience may not have even been a voting age. Some people may not
02:06have been alive at that point. But there was a time when we had all kinds of confusion for days
02:11about who actually won the election. And the one thing everyone realized was nobody knew who to
02:16call. And, you know, lawyers don't typically lead movements, but when movement needs a lawyer,
02:21you got to know who to call. And it's not just lawyers, it's also people, other advocates on the
02:25ground throughout communities. And so election protection in the 866, our vote hotline and the
02:30website 866, our vote.org are here as a resource for all people, but primarily for folks like us who
02:38historically from communities that are disenfranchised, people who in communities
02:42that are typically targets of intimidation, targets of voter suppression, targets of voter purges,
02:48which we've seen all too common today. And so we know that Black women are the fastest growing part
02:52of the electorate. And we hear a lot in the news about Black men. And so the Oahuashe effort
02:57that we're doing alongside Global Black Economic Forum is really an amazing effort. And we thank you,
03:02Alfonso, and your team for your leadership and your partnership in this. And I'll pitch it over to
03:07Kimia to talk about what Oahuashe is all about. Absolutely. Thank you, Damon. Thank you,
03:15Global Black Economic Forum for having us tonight. So Oahuashe is actually a derivative of Yoruba
03:20dialect. Ashe meaning the blessing of the ancestors and Oahu meaning I, right? Together that means the
03:27watchful I of the ancestors. And Oahuashe, Black Women Answering the Call, is a multifaceted
03:33intergenerational campaign that focuses on Black women's invaluable contribution to American
03:39democracy. So we really have three major goals. The first goal is to recruit Black women to become
03:44nonpartisan poll monitors for the general election and for early voting, which is underway here in
03:49Texas. The second is to recognize Black women who, for everything that we do for this democracy,
03:55via our national nomination process, where we're asking America to weigh in on Black women who
04:03answer the call in their local communities, in their states, in their municipalities. We want to
04:08amplify as many Black women who are answering the call as possible. And our third goal is to literally
04:14and figuratively give Black women our flowers. Black feminists taught me that, and that is something
04:20that I really wanted to bring into this campaign, is that Black women, we deserve our flowers while we're
04:25alive. We deserve our flowers while we work hard to put down the cobblestones of this democracy.
04:31But the reason that Oahuashe is such an important initiative is because this is a historic election.
04:37Black women, we have always been very strong voters. We have been at the forefront of voting and engaging
04:41with elections. But better yet, Black culture is the blueprint of many things in this country.
04:47And Oahuashe is a campaign that just reaffirms what we already know to be true,
04:51that Black women show up. And every time we bring our essence and our beauty to the table.
04:57So further, we also know that this, with this general election, that there is renewed excitement.
05:04People are wanting to be a part of the process. So Global Black Economic Forum and Lawyers Committee
05:09came together to say, what can we do to harness that excitement and also help Black women as well
05:14as the rest of the country understand that our elections are sacred and that they deserve to be
05:19protected? So Oahuashe, Black women answering the call, is a testament to all of that. But we really
05:25want people to get involved and visit our website tonight to sign up to become a poll monitor in these
05:33last couple of weeks before the big day. I love that. Oahuashe, let everybody put that in your spirit.
05:40I got it in my, forgive me for the misrepresentation.
05:41But no, but it's such a strong name. And so I love that. I want to ask about a lot of the recent
05:51reports that we've seen. We've seen a lot of reports of voter roll purges in states like North
05:56Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Virginia. How does this initiative plan to address and even mitigate the
06:02impact of these purges on Black voters? Because I really don't think people, if you could paint the
06:07picture of how big it is and how many people are being affected, can you talk about the impact of
06:16that, especially on Black voters? Sure. Well, you know, it seems that the name of the game these days
06:21is if we don't think you're going to vote for our person, then we don't want you to vote at all.
06:26And so it used to be that we worried about voter purges where there was the state or the government
06:31trying to suppress votes. And we saw a lot of voter suppression bills from 2021 in particular.
06:37After the summer of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. But now what we have is this surge of
06:42not just state actors, but private actors. So individual organizations that make up tricky names
06:48or political party, like in the case of the Republican National Committee in North Carolina.
06:53In North Carolina, the RNC filed a lawsuit in state court trying to claim that 225,000 people
07:00should be kicked off the voter rolls because there was some defect, allegedly,
07:04with their registration. 22% of the people who will be impacted are Black folks. And so they are
07:10really going after as many people as they can, but targeting particular communities as much as they
07:16possibly can as well. And so the numbers are massive and potentially huge. That lawsuit is
07:22being duked out in court right now. At the lawyers' committee, we filed briefs in that case.
07:27And so we take in calls from the hotline of people who are wondering, asking questions,
07:31hey, will I be impacted by this? But we're also litigating these cases in court as well,
07:36even as we're pushing in the halls of Congress and in state legislatures as well. So it takes all
07:41three facets, directly touching voters, fighting in the courts, and also fighting the policy battles
07:47as well, because you're seeing this in multiple states. We're litigating this in North Carolina,
07:52in Virginia, DOJ filed in, Department of Justice filed in Alabama. We're also litigating a similar
07:58issue in Texas as well. And what we can't do is leave it to these states to defend the voters,
08:04because this is an area where we see states at war with their own people, because they're willing
08:09to disenfranchise people, take away their fundamental rights, while partisan folks have a heyday.
08:15We can't have that, not for our people and not for our community.
08:18Yeah.
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