During the ESSENCE 'Paint The Polls Black' town hall, the panelist speak on voter registration, voter suppression and the need for election protection.
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00:00We're continuing our conversation, and this is going to get even better, you all. We have Couture
00:04Tops, and we also have the Honorable Lorraine Birabel and Reverend Dr. Susan K. Smith. They
00:11are joining us to share their knowledge. Couture is a civil rights lawyer who recently appeared
00:17and was a finalist on CBS Survivor. Her advocacy is shaped by her experience escaping an extreme
00:26and sheltered religious society, and she now uses her perspective as a cult and child bride survivor
00:33to speak out for others who are experiencing injustice. Lorraine Birabel is a legal volunteer
00:41in Texas. Her passion for helping to shape legislation and policy has helped protect
00:47elections throughout a court-ordered Texas redistricting map and preventing the state
00:52of Texas from implementing voter ID as drafted. She has been appointed and served on the Citizen
00:59Election Advisory Committee in Dallas and is a co-founder of the Barbara Jordan Leadership
01:04Institute, a civil rights and social action organization. Reverend Dr. Susan K. Smith is a
01:10poll monitor and peacekeeper. She is the founder of Crazy Fake Ministries in Columbus, Ohio.
01:18Since 2016, Reverend Smith has co-coordinated the Ohio Election Protection Peacekeeper Program,
01:26which activates a network of faith leaders and social workers to de-escalate tense situations
01:33and keep everyone safe at the polls. Thank you all for joining us.
01:38Yes, thank you indeed for joining us, and I know Dr. Smith is running a little late,
01:42so we're going to start with you, Lorraine, because I know that you have to drop off in
01:46a few minutes. And just give us a sense of what you do in Texas, what the challenges are that
01:52you're seeing on the ground for folks to know. Absolutely. So I'm very proud to be one of the
01:59people who's an attorney who's actually successfully sued Greg Abbott, which I would
02:05say is voter suppressor in chief in the state of Texas. And frankly, I would say that Texas
02:13in many ways is a petri dish for some of the tactics that we see across the South
02:18in places where VRA, you know, ideally is being enforced. So I will say in real life, you know,
02:26some of the things that I've seen, we've seen situations where voters have had to make four
02:31trips just to make sure that their vote counted. We've seen things such as state troopers peering
02:36through the home of a senior citizen who is simply supporting seniors in her community vote by mail.
02:41I have been in Beaumont, Texas last election cycle, when voters were told that they were
02:47not eligible to vote, when in fact they were eligible to vote. So these are things that we
02:51see in Texas, unfortunately, on a daily basis in real time that we are actively on the front lines
02:56fighting against. And I can tell you in every single one of these examples, we have fought
03:00back and won. Now, when you talk to people about the work that you're doing, because I think some
03:07folks who don't live in Texas, or they may not live in other states where we're seeing voter
03:12suppression efforts escalate, what do you want to communicate to them? And what can they do?
03:17So if I live in New York, or if I live in New Jersey, or if I live in another part of California,
03:23maybe, and I want to help, I want to provide support to you and others that are doing this
03:30work, what can I do? Well, I would say for sure, if you're an attorney, and you want to volunteer
03:35for the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline, please do that. I've worked in the hotline. I've also obviously
03:41been at the polling locations, and I've worked in boiler rooms. So if you are a legal professional,
03:47you don't have to be an attorney to help with this. But if you are some sort of legal professional,
03:51and you want to help in places like Texas, and other states that are really seeing this in real
03:57life, please contact the Lawyers Committee, like Camille brought up. You can sign up to volunteer
04:03for 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Also, you can report situations that you see in real life.
04:11If you are in a position to volunteer, such as being a poll watcher, you can volunteer to be
04:17a poll watcher. I've seen many things happen at the ballot board, which is the place where
04:23vote-by-mail applications are reviewed, verified, and in fact counted. So there are lots of ways
04:30that you can participate beyond being a legal monitor that are impactful and meaningful.
04:35But really just getting out there, being accessible, being available to help,
04:39all hands on deck are truly needed at this time.
04:42And I have one last question for you, because I know you have to run.
04:46Give us a sense of why you have to run tonight, because I think it's important for people to
04:53understand this work. We're doing this work at almost 9 p.m. Eastern time. We're doing this work
05:02at all hours of the night. Why are you dropping off? Why is this important?
05:06I'll just give you an example of something that happened today. We had a polling location here
05:11in Dallas County, which Dallas is considered a progressive island in a Red Sea. We've got a few
05:16of those islands in Harris County, which is where Houston's located, Austin, Texas, and some
05:20battleground places like Fort Worth, Texas. So I'll give you an example. Today we had a polling
05:25location in a predominantly Black precinct where, one, the polls did not open on time. Number two,
05:33we had poll workers telling people that the documents that they presented were not valid
05:37when we do have a court order. For example, in the case I brought up earlier, VCB Abbott,
05:42where we did successfully litigate that, we have a standing court order that allows voter
05:47registration cards to be accepted as validated vacations so long as they present and sign the
05:53reasonable impediment form. So we have election workers that, unfortunately, they're following
06:00the training that's been promulgated from the Secretary of State that, in real time, de-emphasizes
06:06some of the documentation that voters are allowed to bring to prove that they are eligible to vote.
06:12We have polling locations that are telling people only five people are being allowed to vote
06:17in any given time when we know that the equipment and the staff supports a greater number of voters.
06:23So these are the things that we're having to deal with, and so that is the reason why I'm not able
06:28to stay on as long as I'd like. We are actually working to address these things in real time in
06:32places like Texas. Well, I want to thank you for all of the work that you do. We have a number
06:38of questions for Keturah, but thank you for everything that you do, because she also does
06:42similar work, but again, we know that you have to run off, and thank you for joining us. Thank you.
06:50Ebony? I don't know about you, even though we know the information, I get so angry. Alfonso,
06:55I'm over here like ruined because I'm burnt up, and I can only imagine Keturah
07:04day in, even you too, Alfonso, right? I'm talking to two attorneys day in, day out,
07:09you're hearing, you're seeing, and you've got this bullhorn that you're trying to tell people
07:14in Spike Lee movie, like, wake up. I need you to wake up about what's happening around you.
07:20I'm looking at the comments that are coming through, and I saw someone say,
07:24people need to know about this. Yeah, yeah. And you know what's really frustrating,
07:30Ebony, and I'm just so excited to be here with everyone, so thank you all so much for having me.
07:35I just want to emphasize, so I've been doing this work for quite some time. I've been a civil rights
07:40lawyer for nearly a decade. I've worked in all of the different realms. I've been an election
07:45protection lawyer. I've been a poll worker, poll monitor, all those spaces, and the most infuriating
07:51part of what everything everybody has said is these are the exact same issues every single
07:56election cycle. Not only the primaries, midterms, we see this repeatedly all the time, and it's
08:01specifically targeted towards our communities. So I'm really excited to answer some questions,
08:06but I just want to highlight for anybody listening, these are not new. This is not going
08:11to stop. This will continue to happen, and that's why we have to be collectively as diligent as
08:16possible. What was the very first time, and Ebony will probably tease this out, but when was the
08:25very first time that you did this work and it surprised you? Because I've been practicing
08:32now for close to 25 years, and there have been a few surprises with some cases that I've taken where
08:38you sort of realize that things are happening in a way that maybe you didn't fully anticipate. You
08:44knew that these things happened in the past. You just didn't think that they were still happening.
08:48Maybe you can give us a sense of when did you first see that happening in this work for you?
08:53Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, there's countless examples, and I mean, I will just say I was
08:58excited to say I've been practicing for nearly a decade, and then you just put me to shame
09:03with that 25 years, Alphonso. But I think one of the most jarring encounters that I have,
09:10I was doing election protection work in Missouri, my home state, and I remember specifically that
09:16someone had called the police because there was a line of Black voters. Some people started
09:21arguing, and people called the police. And it seemed kind of routine. There was a disagreement.
09:26Still didn't seem like it needed to be escalated to that level, but there it was.
09:31And what happened is, actually, we had a large slew of police officers just kind of post up in
09:38front of the polling location. Now, mind you, we're in a predominantly Black area at a predominantly
09:42Black polling site. I think we were actually at a Black church. And we had a large group of police
09:49officers just standing in front of the polling site with their arms crossed, fully armed. And
09:55I would watch as people would drive up to the location, circle around, and then leave. And we
10:02saw it happening over and over again. And basically what was happening is we had all of these people
10:06who were coming up and were nervous about why the police were standing in front. And so people have
10:10legitimate concerns. Are the police going to be there? I might have warrants. Could I possibly
10:16risk getting arrested? And ultimately, we have to be realistic. No one is going to say,
10:21let me risk my liberty and not going to jail over casting my vote at this moment. And so that's just
10:26like one example of how shockingly blatant these efforts are to make sure that we don't actually
10:33access the polls. Now, as many of you know, police and law enforcement are not supposed to be at the
10:39polling sites. It is a form of voter intimidation, especially when you have a large group of officers.
10:44But yet that's something we see happen very often. And you could see people in real time
10:50literally deciding, I'm not going to do it. I want you to slow down because a lot of people
10:55don't know that. A lot of people don't know that police or officers are not supposed to be there.
11:02And so someone may think, someone may get intimidated. Someone may think, well,
11:07they're there to protect. But I want you to just kind of go over that a little bit more because
11:12no one really goes down and reads rules about what is and what is not supposed to happen at
11:17polling locations. They just don't. So they don't know whether to report that or to call and say,
11:23hey, you out of bounds on this one. Well, I would first say what I tell everybody,
11:29and I'm talking about people in my personal life. And when I'm speaking about this publicly on
11:32social media is report everything. Absolutely everything. The first time I worked for election
11:39protection as an attorney was back in 2016, I think my first year out of law school. And I
11:45quickly realized while being on the receiving end of getting all of those calls of people reporting
11:50stuff, nothing is too small. I think someone mentioned it earlier, but it is the most
11:56important thing for collecting data in real time to see which polling locations are having specific
12:01issues and why, where those issues are coming from. And even if you aren't able to have it
12:05fully rectified in that moment, it can be helpful to protect others at that polling location later
12:11on down the line or have other remedies addressed. So always report everything. I always say that.
12:16And then two polling locations have very strict guidelines. Actually, there are limits on how
12:21many feet people can be if they're not nonpartisan poll workers, poll monitorings, how many feet away
12:27from the polling location they can be. And specifically in relation to law enforcement,
12:31I believe it is 100 feet away from the polling location. So I can't speak to every single
12:37state and every single location. For most of the places that I've worked at, law enforcement is not
12:42supposed to be within 100 feet of the location unless there are some emergency or extenuating
12:47circumstances. But in the example that I witnessed back in Missouri, there was an extenuating
12:53circumstance. Law enforcement was called for some semi-valid reason, and then they just stayed
12:58for hours. And that's how we started to see voter intimidation happen.
13:02And I just want to also highlight to people, it's not an accident when you have a governmental
13:09presence that's armed with weapons, that's historically been tied to our harm and our pain,
13:15being posted up in a predominantly Black polling location. It's not accidental.
13:22So anytime you see anything and you're not sure about it or you have to question it,
13:26I would say call. There's nonpartisan poll monitors at every location, and they're there
13:31to answer your questions. But as we heard from examples earlier, even the polling workers may
13:36not always be advantageous for us or always on our side. So I literally tell everybody,
13:41call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. You can text them. All the time, that hotline is available,
13:47and there is a lawyer on the other side waiting to answer your call.
13:49And I just want to highlight this point that you mentioned, because I think sometimes people think,
13:55I can't really report anything unless it happens to me, right? Unless I was asked for another form
14:03of ID, unless I was harassed, I can't really report. Talk a little bit about the context of
14:12with the context of people reporting, not only things that are voter suppression tactics that
14:19are directed to them, but voter suppression tactics that they see.
14:25I think that's a crazy important point, Alphonso. Speaking as a lawyer that practiced primarily
14:31here in New York, I think we often have this view that a lot of these voter suppression efforts,
14:37voter disenfranchisement efforts, all of these things are happening in the South, right? That's
14:41what we're hearing about it a lot, but that's just frankly not true. These issues are happening
14:46across the country in every state. There may be different levels to it, but it is consistent in
14:52every single state in this country. And so what's most important is for people to be able to speak
14:57up, because a lot of the times when you are the subject of that, it's embarrassing. It's scary.
15:03You don't know what to do. You don't know the rules. You're not walking into your polling
15:07location having read all the guidelines for your polling location. And quite frankly, you don't
15:12have to, and you shouldn't have to. And so if you're experiencing something, I've seen people
15:16be told, I'm sorry, you have to leave. You don't have a proper ID, or you don't have an exact
15:22signature here, all of these things. And that moment when that happens, you are more likely to
15:28say, okay, I have to trust the person that's here that's telling me that information. And you may
15:32not always call, but if you call, if the person who's seeing that and experiencing that as well
15:37call, now that's two reports. Now that's multiple reports. And that puts a flashlight, a highlight
15:44on that particular polling location. So I would say there is no such thing as over-reporting.
15:50There is no such thing as how dare you report something that didn't turn out to be something
15:55that you thought it was. Report every single thing. What we have to reiterate, and I was really
16:00glad that Reverend Al Sharpton mentioned this, this has been the plan in our country for decades.
16:07This has always been, the goal has always been to target Black voters and make sure that our
16:14votes do not count, that we have less access to gaining political power. It's not by accident,
16:20and it's not occasional. It's rampant, and it's increasing. People feel that we're in 2024 and
16:25things are getting so much better. They're actually getting worse. We're seeing a reduction
16:30in rights and access of protections of Black and Brown voters from our federal government.
16:35We're literally seeing a rollback of the Voting Rights Act in our lifetime. And so I just want
16:41to highlight how serious this is. It's not a light thing. It's incredibly dangerous,
16:46and it affects all of our lives. Thank you so much for that. Now that
16:52we've talked about this from the legal perspective, we want to spend a little bit more
16:57time talking to poll monitors who are doing the work on the ground when you walk into a polling
17:03station. We're very, very pleased to have with us the Reverend Dr. Susan Smith, who is a poll
17:08monitor and a peacemaker. She's the co-founder of Crazy Faith Ministries in Columbus, Ohio,
17:15and she's going to talk to us a little bit about her experience serving as a poll monitor,
17:20and I'll turn it over to Ebony, who's going to ask her a few questions.
17:24Thank you so much for joining us. Look, Reverend Smith, with all we just said and heard,
17:31we don't want to scare people. What made you want to become a poll watcher?
17:35You are very important in this conversation, but what is your drive? After knowing all that,
17:41I want to be a poll watcher. Well, you know, I'm actually more of a
17:44peacekeeper than a poll watcher, and that's a whole different thing. I don't know if I wanted
17:53to do it. I think I just kind of fell into it, but with all the craziness that's going on,
18:02it just seemed like it was a necessary thing to do because there's so much anger and
18:07misinformation, disinformation, male information, people wanting to jump down each other's throats,
18:13and actually, you know, for us, the goal is to make sure that everybody in line
18:18gets to cast their vote, so we really don't have a lot of room for foolishness,
18:24and so what we do as peacekeepers, and I hope I'm not taking us too far from the question you asked,
18:31but what we do as peacekeepers is train people how to handle contentious situations
18:40so that if somebody is, you know, acting a fool, I'm sorry, you know, just acting a fool,
18:49we are trained to, and we use principles that were practiced during the civil rights movement
18:55of the 60s, but this nonviolent thing where you de-escalate a situation with your voice,
19:04you know, so you're not showing any type of resistance or violence or challenging,
19:11what you're trying to do is listen to somebody who you really don't really want to listen to,
19:14but you're trying to calm them down, and we call it a ministry of presence,
19:20and what we do is we have, we first started off just having clergy persons be peacekeepers,
19:27but then as we train people, we've had social workers and psychologists and stuff who had also
19:33good training in de-escalation, and so we use them as well, but if you're not a clergy person,
19:39you wear these bright yellow hats and these buttons so that you're readily identifiable,
19:43but a clergy person wears either the collar or the stole or something or the yarmulke or something,
19:49depending on their religion, and we find that even the most obnoxious people,
19:57when they are approached by a clergy person, they tend to calm down. You know what I think it is?
20:03I think it's because everybody remembers going to church with their grandmama, and I think that
20:09they remember Sunday school lessons, and I think they remember somebody talking about heaven and
20:14hell, and I think that even though they are doing and sharing and shouting and everything that
20:23they've been taught, they also had a little bit of Sunday school somewhere in their lives,
20:29and they remember it. That's what I think. So when we walk over, and we're trained to talk very
20:35softly and very calmly, and we have to know our own triggers, because if somebody is doing
20:43something that hits all of our own triggers, then we know that's not the place for us to be,
20:47so we call a partner over and let them take care of it, but the goal, and I was very adamant about
20:52this, I'm one of the coordinators of the program here in Ohio, the goal is to not call the police,
21:00not call the police, and I said that from the standpoint of being an African-American woman
21:07who knows that police officers are not always our friends, they're not always our enemies,
21:11but they're definitely not always our friends. I said we have to be able to do this peacefully,
21:17and so we have found that it works. We also say in the training that if this is not for you,
21:24you know, because we kind of fashion it after some of the training in the Civil Rights Movement,
21:31and you can, you know, people found that when they were being trained, when they
21:34were like getting ready to go over the Edmund Pettus Bridge or something, and they said,
21:38oh no, this, you know, the training was brutal. It was very brutal. Reverend Bill Lawson was,
21:44he was a good teacher, but it was brutal, and some people found that that wasn't their ministry,
21:48and so, and it's okay, because there are poll workers that are out there. Then you
21:53could do something else, you know, be a poll worker, but if this is not your ministry,
21:57then you pull away from it. It looks like we've lost her, and it was so good as she talked about,
22:07I like how she turned my question around and talked about the power of being a poll worker,
22:13like the power that's in it, and the peace that they bring, and the comfort. I think, like,
22:21after we talked about the police officers in some locations being there, but to walk inside
22:25and see someone like Reverend Smith there, I think my heart would just be happy. Like,
22:30that was an amazing story she told us. Yeah, and I mean, as I think about,
22:34because I've had the privilege and an opportunity to vote in multiple elections,
22:39and I can tell you the folks who are volunteering their time, in some cases, others, of course,
22:44they're being paid to be there. The folks that are deciding to do this work should be applauded
22:50in so many ways, because yes, you may live in a part of the country where you don't see these
22:55contingent challenges, but unfortunately, we're seeing them in other parts of the country, and
23:01unfortunately, we lost the Reverend, but hopefully, she's able to join us.
23:06Oh, she's back in. She's back, so we're going to have her join in. We lost you a little bit,
23:13and we have to close out this section of the program, but we do want to ask you, before
23:18we turn over to some additional legal experts, including the one and only Jenea Nelson,
23:25want to talk to you about, you've done this for a while. Are you seeing that it's getting worse?
23:31Are you seeing that it's getting better?
23:33I think what's actually getting worse is the anticipation of it being worse,
23:42because the more the rhetoric flies, and the closer the presidential race becomes,
23:50the more people are nervous about what's happening, so like here in Ohio, of course,
23:55we had the former president talking about Haitians eating cats and dogs, and so
24:00people are nervous, because in Springfield, people were driving through the streets
24:06openly during the day with the KKK thingies and the Confederate flags and all that,
24:13being intimidated, so people are nervous, and they anticipate things, so we train people
24:18to understand that Ohio is an open carry state. We are not going to be afraid. We are not going
24:24to be afraid, but they are anticipating it, so we anticipate their anticipation,
24:30and that's how we approach it. It is spooky. It really is spooky. What I tell people, though,
24:40is that in terms of all this, I call it sophisticated voter suppression. This is not
24:46our first rodeo as Black people. It ain't our first rodeo, and it's always been a part of our
24:50history, so I tell people, let's call them the ancestors, because they've been here, done that,
24:57and even though they're gone, their spirits are with us. I feel that. I just feel it. I feel like
25:02John Lewis and all of them are just saying, it's going to be all right. It's going to be all right,
25:06so I call on them, because this is not our first rodeo. We have had to deal with this
25:11a long time, and we can get through it now.