Thursday, June 2nd, Khadijah and I got a chance to speak to some senior citizens at Independent Living Center off of Akron Drive in Winston. The citizens that attended expressed a lot of concern about the new legislation being introduced. They also expressed other fears, such as community centers not getting the necessary funding, less [...]
So far the internship has been a blur and pretty fast paced. Khadijah and I have been trying to find contacts, get organized, get numbers, set up events, all while preparing for speaking events and one-on-one meetings. Because our office is not equipped with internet service, making these conn Around lunch time on Wednesday we [...]
This week was all about some Youth Voter Pledge cards. We hit the ground running on Monday and Tuesday by going to local recreation centers and talking to kids about voting. We were looking especially for high school students but when the "big kids" started signing the cards all the little ones wanted [...]
Another busy week has flown by, and it’s incredible that there are only two weeks remaining in our Democracy Summer experience. We had some great events occur this week which will go a long way to help our strategies for increased voter participation, youth civic engagement, and electoral reforms. On Monday we traveled [...]
This week, despite being shortened due to the Independence Day Holiday, has been jam-packed with activities. Ray and I settled back into our office on Tuesday and began implementing our plans for our many events coming up this month. On Wednesday we had some meetings with community activists in both Forsyth and Guilford [...]
After last week’s disappointing results in the NC Senate, we got back to work this week on Voter-Owned Elections and other initiatives like felon re-enfranchisement and youth voter education. In some good news, the NC House is currently considering expanding public financing to the statewide Treasurer’s race and allowing an additional municipality to implement their [...]
This week’s highlight was attending our Lobby Day on Tuesday at the General Assembly in Raleigh. All day Monday we made last-minute phone calls to our confirmed attendees and rented a 12 passenger van to make the trip. We also put together information packets with bill descriptions, factsheets about Voter-Owned Elections, and the day’s agenda. [...]
Lobby Day approaches with full force! And that means lots of events and phone calls for the Dem Summer interns. Getting the word out has been relatively easy. But getting commitments out of people for a whole day has been tough, especially since many of the involved and most likely attendees are already volunteering on [...]
This first week has been all I hoped for and more. Working with politics has always been my dream and now it’s happening. With great advising from Ms. Sutton and our other Democracy NC mentors I know we will be fine. The Winston-Salem team is off to a good start. This week Sean Maxwell and [...]
The Winston Mutual building rises from the parking lot and distinguishes itself from the surrounding residential areas and the shopping center to the rear. I arrived at my new work location in downtown Winston-Salem trying to remember everything I had been taught in training. The previous week, I and nine other newly hired interns from [...]