Voter Empowerment
Roots and Heritage a big success for voter empowerment
This past weekend, Lexington held its annual Roots and Heritage Festival, which is a celebration of African-American heritage, culture and achievement. Many members from the Central Kentucky chapter of KFTC ran a booth on Saturday where they registered 58 voters.
We also had great conversations with festival goers about KFTC's work to restore voting rights to former felons who’ve paid their debt to society and got an incredible 427 postcards signed in support of voting rights.
Louisville weekend update
Today, two KFTC electoral organizers went to St. Stephen's Baptist Church in Louisville to register voters and give out information about voting rights. We registered 30 voters and gave a lot of registration cards for people to take home to family members but they will be returning those cards to the church and they will contact us to pick them up.
Knott County Gingerbread Festival quick report
KFTC volunteers and organizers worked all three days of the Knott County Gingerbread Festival and registered almost 50 new voters this weekend !
Fern Nafziger, a local KFTC member, is pictured helping someone to register.
UK KFTC registers 142 voters in just over three hours!
Student members of UK KFTC held a voter registration table on campus today and managed to register 142 voters in just over 3 hours. We also passed out handbills inviting people to come out to the weekly meeting on campus which are at 6pm every Wednesday night in Student Center room 111.
Sometimes, students had to wait for a free clipboard (we only brought 15) and we even had to make a run to the County Clerk's office to get more voter registration cards halfway through the day.
KFTC meets with international youth leaders
Jefferson County KFTC Electoral Organizers had a unique opportunity this past Saturday to visit with youth leaders from around the world and discuss organizing. Beth Bissmeyer and Linda Stettenbenz met with a delegation comprising youth from Cambodia, Suriname, India, and Bulgaria in a meeting arranged through the U.S. Department of States' International Visitor Leadership Program. The group's aim: tour the U.S. to learn about youth political engagement in the U.S. and how groups foster sustainable involvement.
Everyone in the room shared a little about their homes and what moved them to become active politically. Sophorn Meas, member of the Prey Veng Youth Working Group in Cambodia, said that many people in his country are afraid to participate in politics as a lasting fall-out from the Cambodian Genocide in the 1970s. "I want to encourage people to not be afraid," said Sophorn. "When I participate, I feel free. I feel I can do what I want to do."
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