Photo: Day 1 Pictures
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.
Donât miss the segment when Latosha Brown breaks into the Civil Rights anthem, âKeep Your Eye on the Prizeâ starting at 5:50.
OUR DISTINGUISHED GUESTS

Joy-Ann Reid is a political analyst for MSNBC and host of âAM Joy,â which airs Saturdays and Sundays from 10 A.M. ET to noon ET. She is also the author of the book âFracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons and the Racial Divideâ (William Morrow/Harper Collins 2015), co-editor of âWe Are The Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obamaâ (Bloomsbury USA), and a columnist at The Daily Beast.
Reid was previously the host of âThe Reid Report,â a daily program that offered Reidâs distinctive analysis and insight on the dayâs 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 âAmerica Coming Togetherâ initiative, and was a press aide in the final stretch of President Barack Obamaâs Florida campaign in 2008. Reidâs 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 âlikeâ 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 âThe Blackest Bus in Americaâ 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 Alabamaâs 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 is the President and Executive Director of the Lawyersâ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. 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 Lawyersâ Committee, he coordinated the organizationâs strategic, programmatic, and operational efforts to advance the fight for racial justice.
Prior to joining the national Lawyersâ Committee, Hewitt was the inaugural executive director of the Executivesâ Alliance for Boys and Men of Colorâa 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 nationâs 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 âcriminalâ suspects.
Hewitt appears frequently in broadcast media and is quoted in print publications. He is coâauthor of a book, The SchoolâtoâPrison 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 generationâs racial justice work.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS

LATOSHA BROWN
âPart of the reason why we use music is to change the atmosphere, to literally shift the atmosphere, to say that weâre not going to operate in fear. Weâre going to challenge this power, but weâre going to bring our Black joy in this process and hope, and some of yâall will be transformed in the processâĤ I think, we have to fight, but I think we also have to recognize that weâre all humans.â

CLIFF ALBRIGHT
âWeâve 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 donât do any of that, donât expect us to come out. Not only is it foolish for you to think that that would happen, itâs insulting.â

DAMON HEWITT
âSeveral years ago The Supreme Court decided that partisan gerrymandering is what [it] calls a non-justiciable issue. Thatâs fancy talk to say itâs out of reach of the court. So what that means is when partisan folks want to get advantage, they can trample on Black peopleâs backs and put on a mask and say, âHey, it wasnât racist. Itâs just partisan.â And so ironically, I believe that partisan gerrymanderingâs cousin is racist gerrymandering. They may even be conjoined twins.â

JOY REID
âThereâs a song in South Africa where they say, âThe higher you build your barriers, the taller I become, the further you take my rights away, the faster I will run.â But the problem is when you get taller and run faster, people say, âSee, thereâs no voter suppression.â 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, itâs like the curse of competency.â
FORUM GALLERY
Together we can ensure that voter suppression tactics do not destroy our Democracy. 100% of concert ticket revenue,
sponsorships, and donations go to Black Voters Matter.

JusticeAid is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity. Our mission is to leverage the community-building power of art and music to transform awareness into action in the fight against injustice. Since 2013 JusticeAid has granted over two million dollars to nonprofits that are protecting civil rights for all. Throughout 2023 JusticeAid is raising money for Black Voters Matter (BVM).