METRO IAF NON-PARTISAN GOTV EFFORTS
Metro IAF sister organizations Common Ground, Greater Cleveland Congregations, NC Congress of Latino Oranizations and ONE Wake are inviting us to help them in their strictly non-partisan efforts to Get Out The Vote!
WHAT YOU CAN DO
- Ask any family, friends & colleagues who live in North Carolina, Ohio & Wisconsin to vote - document your commits & follow up information on our Voter Turn-Out Form. You can find the VOTER TURN-OUT FORM HERE Short video of How-To fill out VOTER TURN-OUT FORM HERE and Conversation Guide HERE;
- Ask your family, friends & colleagues if they can ask 3-5 of their family or friends to vote (have them fill out the Voter Turn-Out Form);
- Sign your congregation and/or organization up to do the same;
- Join Metro IAF organizations CG, GCC, NCCLO & ONE Wake virtually and help them directly with their non-partisan phone banking needs (see how you can help directly HERE).
Metro IAF is a 501(c)(3). Metro IAF and its affiliates are strictly non-partisan and are not aligned explicitly or implicitly with any candidate or party. We do not endorse or support candidates for office.
We are leaders and organizers who use the power we build to improve the lives of our families, communities, regions, and nations.
We marshal the two universal sources of power -- organized people and organized money -- so that our organizations can collaborate with or confront powerful institutions in the governmental and private sectors.
We are non-ideological and pragmatic -- building working relationships, based on shared interests, across many of the lines that divide individuals and institutions. We are also strictly non-partisan, not favoring or supporting any party, but fiercely favoring and supporting those issues and strategies that bring more dignity and greater opportunity to an every-widening circle of society.
We challenge people to imagine the change they can accomplish, connect individuals and organizations to multiply their power, and organize people by the thousands to make their voices heard. We set high goals, design innovative strategies, and stick with issues until they are fully addressed. Our time frame is not the market cycle or the news cycle or the election cycle, but the generational cycle of families and institutions.
We are part of the Industrial Areas Foundation, the nation’s first and largest network of multi-faith power organizations; and we have more than 75 years of experience starting and winning battles that others often claim can't be won.
Metro IAF Statement on Police Killing of George Floyd
June 5, 2020
The last minutes of George Floyd’s life evoke the 22nd Psalm:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
And are so far from my cry
And from the words of my distress?
O my God, I cry in the daytime but you do not answer;
By night as well, but I find no rest.
So, too, do our thoughts go to our own memories of Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray--sons of our cities: New York, Cleveland, and Baltimore--black men murdered by police brutally, callously. Our anger and rage rise again.
The white officers’ knee on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes while he pleads for his mother evokes 400 years of kidnappings, lynchings, rapes, family separations, slavery and forced labor, share cropping, equity stripping, unjust imprisonment, medical experiments, job discrimination that denies the humanity and full citizenship of black Americans.
As we watch protesters in Minneapolis and other cities across the country, we know their lamentations must be shouted, must be heard, must not be silenced. For it is only in giving voice to the pain and suffering of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and the thousands of other black people killed in our cities and millions scarred by racism that we might ever begin to imagine a new future.
The shouts must be louder, broader and much longer before this can come to pass though. And we must listen; we must take account. We must relate to the many people who are suffering. In so doing, we must ask: How is God speaking in the streets? What new message, what good news do we hear?
More information...
VOICE working to halt evictions - Gov. Northam's announcement
NORTHERN VIRGINIA – After months of hard-fought work to prevent mass evictions in Virginia during the COVID-19 pandemic, VOICE is reacting with cautious optimism to Gov. Northam’s announcement on August 14th, 2020 about action he plans to take on evictions during the August special session.
According Rev. Dr. Keith Savage, Senior Servant at First Baptist Church Manassas and VOICE Co-Chair, “VOICE is encouraged by the news that Gov. Northam is focusing on a long-term eviction moratorium and a robust rental relief program. We are glad he is hearing the cries of the hundreds of thousands of people in the Commonwealth who stand on the brink of homelessness. We know that nothing is certain in politics until the ink is dry on the bill. VOICE is working this weekend and over the next 10 days to send 25,000 prayer letters to the Governor and General Assembly to create the political space for the strongest bill possible coupled with $200 million for the Governor’s rental relief program.”
A description of the Governor’s plan may be found here. Highlights include new dollars to combat evictions and a “pause on evictions until at least April 30, 2021, tied to the requirement that landlords and tenants work together on a payment plan and seek out financial assistance, including through Virginia’s statewide Rent and Mortgage Relief Program.”
VOICE’s prayer campaign, which had already hundreds of letters in its first six hours, will include prayers sent to the Governor via email, snail mail, and text, both individually by renters and VOICE leaders and collectively during Friday, Saturday, and Sunday services of VOICE member institutions. Also part of the campaign will be a video of VOICE clergy of different faiths praying together that the Governor exercise leadership starting with the General Assembly session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLQc_Pa0x9c&feature=youtu.be
More information...
CONECT Wins Police Accountability
On June 2nd, 153 CONECT leaders gathered for a night of prayer, reflection & dialogue after the murder of George Floyd. By June 15th, 453 leaders gathered for a virtual Assembly to take action for racial and economic justice with our federal and state legislators. A key item on the agenda at that virtual Assembly was leaders of our Criminal Justice team for a substantive police reform and accountability bill to be taken up and passed in the legislature's July special session. The Connecticut Senate President, Senate Majority Leader, and House and Senate co-chairs of the Judiciary Committee all committed to CONECT to do just that.
On July 17th, the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the proposed bill via zoom. Fr. Jim Manship, a key leader in CONECT, testified about the fruitless and frustrating experience of seeking help from state police and prosecutors in the face of a corrupt, abusive, and racist police department in East Haven and endorsed the bill's plan for an independent Inspector General to investigate police use of force and abuse cases.
GCC Launches COVID-19 Testing Campaign and Finds Major Pharmacies Redlining Access to Testing
Walgreens and Rite Aid offer testing at only one store each in the city of Cleveland while CVS offers none.
Greater Cleveland Congregations (GCC), the largest community power organization in Northeast Ohio, has called out CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens on their failure to provide broader COVID-19 testing within the city of Cleveland.
GCC members visited their local neighborhood drugstores to assess the availability of COVID-19 testing within their communities. “We visited ten Rite-Aid stores in Greater Cleveland and discovered it is offering only one testing site within the city of Cleveland while offering several testing sites in suburbs surrounding Cleveland,” says DeAnna DeForest, member of Elizabeth Baptist Church. GCC visited nine Walgreens stores in Cleveland and surrounding suburbs and found it only offered testing in one store within Cleveland.
“We visited 27 CVS sites in the Greater Cleveland area and were dismayed to have discovered that while CVS offers testing in several suburbs, it is not offering any testing site within the Cleveland city limits,” says DeForest.
GCC recently announced its Color of Health Initiative, which has recruited 17 congregations as sites for free testing through Cuyahoga County. The initiative will bring testing into less affluent urban neighborhoods in a focused and sustained effort.
“We are pleased with our efforts, but realize that if testing is going to be effective, we must increase both capacity and availability,” says Rev. James Quincy of Lee Road Baptist Church. “It is an affront that these stores have made testing readily available in the suburbs, but not in the city, where the virus is having a devastating and deadly impact.”
“This is the definition of structural racism – bias built into the systems and institutions of our society to the detriment of particular racial groups,” says Rev. Ronald Maxwell of Affinity Missionary Baptist Church in Cleveland. “These structures have too long resulted in the loss of life, whether from inequality within our justice system, toxic environmental conditions, the lack of access to healthy foods or, in this case, available health care.”
GCC is asking CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens to meet with GCC and do the following to create access for people living in urban areas to accessible and available testing:
- Increase testing sites in urban neighborhoods that are predominantly Black, Brown and lower income.
- Give $5M to Cuyahoga County to pay for more tests until there is a vaccine
- Hand out free PPE (personal protective equipment) to people that come into the store for testing
NCCLO Holds Governor & Attorney General Accountable
North Carolina Governor and Attorney General accountable to leaders of the NC Congress of Latino Organizations at a public meeting attended by close to 1,000 Latinos
The North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and the Attorney General Josh Stein provided an accountability report to close to 1,000 Latinos on the promises made as candidates in 2016 [Article Spanish] before reacting to the NC Congress of Latino Organizations Priority Agenda that was developed with input of over 3,500 Latinos who participated in listening sessions this year.
Governor Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein announced they kept their promises to:
Governor:
- Improve access to health care for Latino families by holding insurance companies accountable for delivering culturally and linguistically appropriate services as part of the $30 billion medicaid transformation.
- The Governor shared he vetoed harmful legislation that would deputize all Sheriffs across the state to act as ICE agents.
Attorney General:
- Participated in the successful legal action in defense of DACA
- Represented hundreds of Latino families living at mobile home parks in negotiations with abusive landlords.
The highlight of the evening was a public pledge made by Governor Roy Cooper to protect essential workers by focusing on social distancing, proper sanitation and other necessary measures in their homes and transportation, in addition to providing testing in migrant agricultural worker camps. Latinos represent 44 percent of all documented cases of Covid-19 in the state. “I am going to prepare an executive order to protect [essential] workers, agricultural workers, workers in meat and poultry processing plants and in other areas, and I am going to be looking for the best way that that order can be applied,” Cooper said.
Other pledges from the Governor and Attorney General to the NC Congress of Latino Organizations include:
More information...Opportunities
Support Metro IAF
Subscribe
Metro IAF in the News
Recent Victories
