Photography by Day 1 Pictures
2023 Fall Public Forum for Black Voters Matter
October 16, 2023, True Reformer Building, Washington, DC
At Boots to the Ballot Box, experts discussed the challenges and barriers to voting and the power of music and joy in mobilizing communities and creating a sense of belonging. They stressed the importance of voting at all levels, from local elections to the presidency, and confirmed that face to face engagement with voters creates community and drives action. This kind of grassroots ground game goes hand in hand with litigation and long-haul lawsuits in the fight to bring justice and self-determination to all Americans.
Don’t miss the segment when Latosha Brown breaks into the Civil Rights anthem, “Keep Your Eye on the Prize” starting at 5:50.
OUR DISTINGUISHED GUESTS
Joy-Ann Reid is a political analyst for MSNBC and host of “AM Joy,” which airs Saturdays and Sundays from 10 A.M. ET to noon ET. She is also the author of the book “Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons and the Racial Divide” (William Morrow/Harper Collins 2015), co-editor of “We Are The Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obama” (Bloomsbury USA), and a columnist at The Daily Beast.
Reid was previously the host of “The Reid Report,” a daily program that offered Reid’s distinctive analysis and insight on the day’s news. Before that, Reid was the Managing Editor of theGrio.com, a daily online news and opinion platform devoted to delivering stories and perspectives that reflect and affect African-American audiences. Reid joined theGrio.com with experience as a freelance columnist for the Miami Herald and as editor of the political blog The Reid Report. She is a former talk radio producer and host for Radio One, and previously served as an online news editor for the NBC affiliate WTVJ in Miramar, FL.
During the 2004 presidential campaign, Reid served as the Florida deputy communications director for the 527 “America Coming Together” initiative, and was a press aide in the final stretch of President Barack Obama’s Florida campaign in 2008. Reid’s columns and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, New York magazine, The Guardian, the Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, South Florida Times and Salon.com.
Reid graduated from Harvard University in 1991 with a concentration in film, and is a 2003 Knight Center for Specialized Journalism fellow. She currently resides in Brooklyn with her husband and family. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @JoyAnnReid and “like” her on Facebook at Joy Reid Official.
Cliff Albright is a 2020 Soros Equality Fellow and co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund (and BVM Capacity Building Institute) which builds community and organizational capacity related to Black voting power.
BVM received national attention in 2017 when they helped mobilize Black voters during the U.S. Senate race between Doug Jones and Roy Moore. Since then, Cliff and the BVM team have traveled throughout thirteen primarily southern states in “The Blackest Bus in America” energizing voters and exposing voter suppression.
Cliff serves as an instructor of African-American Studies at several universities. Cliff previously lived in historic Selma, Alabama, where he focused on bringing financial resources to Alabama’s blackbelt region. Cliff attended Cornell University, where he obtained his B.S. in Applied Economics and an M.P.S. in Africana Studies. He also has an M.B.A. from the University of Alabama.
Cliff has contributed articles to and been featured on MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Blavity, The Guardian, and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
LaTosha Brown is an award-winning organizer, philanthropic consultant, political strategist and jazz singer with over twenty years of experience working in the non-profit and philanthropy sectors on a wide variety of issues related to political empowerment, social justice, economic development, leadership development, wealth creation and civil rights.
She is the co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, a power building southern based civic engagement organization that played an instrumental role in the 2017 Alabama U.S. Senate race. Ms. Brown is principal owner of TruthSpeaks Consulting, Inc., a philanthropy advisory consulting firm in Atlanta, GA. For more than 25 years, she has served as a consultant and advisor for individual donors, government, public foundations and private donors.
Throughout her career, Ms. Brown has distinguished herself as a trusted expert and resource in political strategy, rural development and special programming for a number of national and regional philanthropies. She is the founding project director of Grantmakers for Southern Progress.
Damon T. Hewitt has more than 20 years of civil rights litigation and policy experience, including prior leadership roles in the nonprofit, philanthropic, and public sectors. Formerly, as executive vice president at the national Lawyers’ Committee, he coordinated the organization’s strategic, programmatic, and operational efforts to advance the fight for racial justice.
Prior to joining the national Lawyers’ Committee, Hewitt was the inaugural executive director of the Executives’ Alliance for Boys and Men of Color—a philanthropic network of more than three dozen national and local foundation presidents focused on shifting policies, structures, and the false narratives that negatively impact our nation’s sons and brothers.
Hewitt previously worked as a Senior Advisor at the Open Society Foundations, where he coordinated special projects, including philanthropic responses to the uprisings following police killings of unarmed Black people in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland.
He worked for more than a decade as an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he was lead counsel on a variety of litigation and policy matters and supervised teams of lawyers and policy experts. He started his career as a Skadden Fellow. He also coordinated organization-wide litigation and advocacy efforts in response to Hurricane Katrina, establishing a satellite office in his hometown of New Orleans. In this capacity, he developed advocacy efforts on education, policing, and fair housing. One of his most important cases, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center v. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, catalyzed nearly $500M in new relief for Louisiana homeowners.
Hewitt also served as executive director of the New York Task Force on Police-on-Police Shootings, an entity created to analyze police practices after off-duty African American and Latino police officers were killed by fellow officers after being mistaken for “criminal” suspects.
Hewitt appears frequently in broadcast media and is quoted in print publications. He is co‐author of a book, The School‐to‐Prison Pipeline: Structuring Legal Reform, and has published numerous articles in law journals and popular media on issues ranging from affirmative action, school discipline, and progressive education reform to voting rights, police accountability, and juvenile justice policy. Hewitt holds a B.A. in Political Science from Louisiana State University and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Eric L. Clay on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He currently resides in suburban Maryland where he and his partner are raising their three young children to take on the next generation’s racial justice work.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
LATOSHA BROWN
“Part of the reason why we use music is to change the atmosphere, to literally shift the atmosphere, to say that we’re not going to operate in fear. We’re going to challenge this power, but we’re going to bring our Black joy in this process and hope, and some of y’all will be transformed in the process… I think, we have to fight, but I think we also have to recognize that we’re all humans.”
CLIFF ALBRIGHT
“We’ve got this crazy notion. We believe folks come out when you talk to them. That seems crazy, right? We believe that folks will come out if you actually have a conversation with them, if you knock on the door, if you send a text message, if you have an event in their community. But if you don’t do any of that, don’t expect us to come out. Not only is it foolish for you to think that that would happen, it’s insulting.“
DAMON HEWITT
“Several years ago The Supreme Court decided that partisan gerrymandering is what [it] calls a non-justiciable issue. That’s fancy talk to say it’s out of reach of the court. So what that means is when partisan folks want to get advantage, they can trample on Black people’s backs and put on a mask and say, “Hey, it wasn’t racist. It’s just partisan.” And so ironically, I believe that partisan gerrymandering’s cousin is racist gerrymandering. They may even be conjoined twins.“
JOY REID
“There’s a song in South Africa where they say, “The higher you build your barriers, the taller I become, the further you take my rights away, the faster I will run.” But the problem is when you get taller and run faster, people say, “See, there’s no voter suppression.” Even though I voted and it took me two minutes and it took you four hours, you voted. And so the fact that you clear the bar, it’s like the curse of competency.”
FORUM GALLERY
Black Voters Matter works with grassroots organizations, specifically in key states in the South, to increase voter registration and turnout, advocate for policies to expand voting rights/access, and support a power-building movement that keeps Black voters and their issues at the forefront of our election process. If you have not already contributed, please give generously. Many thanks.
Follow JusticeAid on Instagram for updates on future concerts and other programs.