Kimiya Factory and Damon Hewitt talk about election protection during the Paint The Polls Black town hall.
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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,
00:17including a win against the Proud Boys. Y'all know the Proud Boys, who attacked the historic
00:23black church, getting 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
00:35on the Fearless Fund case. Kamiya Factory is an activist, author, and national organizer based in
00:43Texas. Currently, Factory is the senior national coordinator for election protection for the
00:49Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Factory is currently spearheading a national
00:54voting rights campaign, Ose Ase, Black Women Answering the Call, a campaign aimed at giving
01:03black women their flowers for their invaluable contribution to democracy, as well as recruit
01:08black women to become poll monitors for the 2024 general election. Thank you, Damon. Thank you,
01:16Kamiya, for joining us. We're really thrilled that you're here today. And welcome to Paint
01:21the Polls Black. My first question for you both is, can you explain the election protection
01:28initiative that we launched with you, the Global Black Economic Forum, along with the
01:33Lawyers Committee, launched this initiative? Talk to us a little bit about why is this initiative
01:38important, particularly in this election cycle? And, Damon, maybe we'll start with you.
01:43Sure. Well, and I'll turn quickly to Kamiya, who's really the heart and soul of it,
01:48of the effort on our end. But, you know, overall, election protection is about us. You know,
01:52the hotline number is 866-OUR-VOTE, and that's not by accident. You know, this whole thing started
01:58after the 2000 election debacle in Florida. So some of your audience may not have even been
02:04a voting age. Some people may not have been alive at that point. But that was a time when we had all
02:09kinds of confusion for days about who actually won the election. And the one thing everyone realized
02:14was nobody knew who to call. You know, lawyers don't typically lead movements, but when a movement
02:20needs a lawyer, you got to know who to call. And it's not just lawyers. It's also people,
02:24other advocates on the ground throughout communities. And so election protection
02:28in the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline and the website 866-OUR-VOTE.org are here as a resource for all
02:34people, but primarily for folks like us who are historically from communities that are disenfranchised,
02:40people who, in communities that are typically targets of intimidation, targets of voter
02:46suppression, targets of voter purges, which we're seeing all too common today. And so we know that
02:50Black women are the fastest growing part of the electorate, and we hear a lot in the news about
02:55Black men. And so the Ojo Ache effort that we're doing alongside Global Black Economic Forum
03:00is really an amazing effort. And we thank you, Alphonso, and your team for your leadership and
03:05your partnership in this. And I'll pitch it over to Kimye to talk about what Ojo Ache is all about.
03:10Absolutely. Thank you, Damon. Thank you, Global Black Economic Forum, for having us tonight.
03:17So Ojo Ache is actually a derivative of Yoruba dialect. Ache meaning the blessing of the
03:23ancestors, and Ojo meaning I, right? Together that means the watchful eye of the ancestors.
03:29And Ojo Ache, Black Women Answering the Call, is a multifaceted intergenerational campaign
03:35that focuses on Black women's invaluable contribution to American democracy. So we
03:40really have three major goals. The first goal is to recruit Black women to become nonpartisan
03:45poll monitors for the general election and for early voting, which is underway here in Texas.
03:50The second is to recognize Black women for everything that we do for this democracy via
03:56our 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.
04:08We want to amplify as many Black women who are answering the call as possible.
04:12And our third goal is to literally and figuratively give Black women our flowers.
04:17Black feminists taught me that, and that is something that I really wanted to bring
04:21into this campaign, is that Black women, we deserve our flowers while we're alive.
04:25We deserve our flowers while we work hard to put down the cobblestones of this democracy.
04:31But the reason that Ojo Ache is such an important initiative is because this is a historic election.
04:36Black women, we have always been very strong voters. We have been at the forefront of voting
04:41and engaging with elections. But better yet, Black culture is the blueprint of many things
04:46in this country. And Ojo Ache 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.
04:58So 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
05:08Committee came together to say, what can we do to harness that excitement and also help Black women,
05:14as well as the rest of the country, understand that our elections are sacred and that they
05:19deserve to be protected? So Ojo Ache, Black women answering the call, is a testament to all of that.
05:24But we really want people to get involved and visit our website tonight to sign up to become
05:32a poll monitor in these last couple of weeks before the big day. I love that. Ojo Ache,
05:38everybody put that in your spirit. I got it in mine. Forgive me for the mispronunciation.
05:45But no, but it's such a strong name. And so I love that. I want to ask about a lot of the
05:51recent reports that we've seen. We've seen a lot of reports of voter roll purges in states like
05:56North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Virginia. How does this initiative plan to address and even mitigate
06:02the impact of these purges on Black voters? Because I really don't think people, if you
06:07could paint the picture of how big it is and how many people are being affected,
06:14can you talk about the impact of that, especially on Black voters?
06:18Sure. Well, you know, it seems that the name of the game these days is, if we don't think you're
06:22going to vote for our person, then we don't want you to vote at all. And so it used to be that
06:27we worried about voter purges where there was the state or the government trying to suppress
06:32votes. And we saw a lot of voter suppression bills from 2021, in particular, after the summer of
06:38George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. But now what we have is this surge of not just state actors,
06:44but private actors. So individual organizations that make up tricky names or political party,
06:49like in the case of the Republican National Committee in North Carolina. In North Carolina,
06:54the RNC filed a lawsuit in state court trying to claim that 225,000 people should be kicked off
07:01the voter rolls because there was some defect, allegedly, with their registration. 22% of people
07:07who will be impacted are Black folks. And so they are really going after as many people as they can,
07:13but targeting particular communities as much as they possibly can as well. And so the numbers are
07:19massive and potentially huge. That lawsuit is being duked out in court right now. At the
07:24Lawyers' Committee, we file briefs in that case. And so we're taking calls from the hotline of
07:29people who are wondering, asking questions, hey, will I be impacted by this? But we're also
07:33litigating these cases in court as well, even as we're pushing in the halls of Congress and in state
07:39legislatures as well. So it takes all three facets, directly touching voters, fighting in the courts,
07:45and also fighting the policy battles as well, because you're seeing this in multiple states.
07:50We're litigating this in North Carolina, in Virginia, DOJ filed in, Department of Justice
07:55filed in Alabama. We're also litigating a similar issue in Texas as well. And what we can't do is
08:01leave it to these states to defend the voters, because this is an era where we see states at
08:06war with their own people, because they're willing to disenfranchise people, take away their
08:11fundamental rights, while partisan folks have a heyday. We can't have that. Not for our people,
08:16not for our community.