Reeb Project for Voting Rights
Get into “Good Trouble” with Reeb Voting Rights Project
We need you – the hundreds of members and friends of All Souls, who have powered us over the past seven years – to mobilize and equip voters with the information they need to ensure their votes count and their voices are heard.
Join us as we work in solidarity with other UU congregations and community partner organizations that center the leadership of people of color, work in communities with historically low voter participation, and advocate for changes to oppressive voting laws.
Our 5th UU Principle, “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large,” compels us to advocate for a healthy inclusive democratic process.
Current Actions
Last Sunday of Voter Drive #2 for 2024: Pick-Up Post Cards to Suffolk City, VA, after Service in the Reeb Lobby
As promised, our Get-Out-The-Vote campaigns are quickly rolling along this year. This Sunday is the last chance to pick up postcards for voters in Suffolk City, Va. Next week, we’ll distribute cards for another community in Southeast Virginia.
In both voter drives, The Reeb Project is writing postcards to registered, BIPOC/community-of-color voters in Virginia Congressional Districts 1, 2, 5, 7 and 10, where there are hotly contested, open U.S. House seats in the important Virginia Congressional primary.
We are focusing on primary elections because primary voting promotes consistent voting habits, and greatly increases the likelihood of voting in the fall.
Click here and sign up for Suffolk, Va. postcarding.
The postcards we send will inform voters of where and when to vote, and the key issues at stake – Reproductive & Voting Rights, Medicare & Social Security.
Reeb now offers four stations where you can pick up postcards:
- After service, at our table in the Reeb Lobby (while there, check out information about the Voter Mobilization Organizing School, April 27)
- Any time, in Takoma Park
- Any time, in Northern Virginia, and
- At the Front Desk in the Reeb Lobby, during working hours at All Souls.
Stay current with upcoming voter events at All Souls: Click here to join the Reeb email list.
For questions – or if you have picked up postcarding supplies and have not yet heard from your team Captain – contact us at: ReebVotingRights@allsouls.ws.
Voter Mobilization Organizing School: Sat April 27
Are You Ready To Get Into Good Trouble? Plan to Attend Voter Mobilization Organizing School!
Saturday, April 27, 10:00 to 3:00 PM at All Souls Church
Whether you have a long history of voting rights advocacy or you’re just starting to think about it, please join with other UUs from DC, MD, and VA – and from your All Souls Geogroup – for Organizing School!
We are all more effective when we gather together in our power.
Organizing School is a chance to gather in person for spiritual grounding, relationship building, and concrete skills training – all towards the goal of engaging as many people as possible in the 2024 election.
The Reeb Project for Voting Rights is organizing the program in collaboration with our event partners – UUs for Social Justice (UUSJ) and UU the Vote, with experts from The League of Women Voters. We are inviting teams from 50 UU congregations from around the DMV – and from groups throughout All Souls.
Teams Forming Now
Come yourself. Or come as a member of a group that’s part of the All Souls community – whether Mindful Souls, Silver Souls, Reproductive Justice, or your local Geogroup.
The program will emphasize a team orientation to voter mobilization, and we’ll make sure everyone is part of a team.
- Perhaps your team will organize your Geogroup for a postcarding, phone-banking, digital media or text-banking event.
- Perhaps your group will hold a series of events between now and the November election.
- Perhaps you’ll find that organizing your group’s get-out-the-vote efforts is a way to build relationships with members of your group and the entire congregation.
Click here for the agenda and to register for Organizing School.
If you’d like to find out more about joining a 2 or 3 person Voter Team from your group or Geogroup, attending Organizing School, and starting to plan voter mobilization activities for your group, contact: ReebVotingRights@allsouls.ws.
You can also stop by the Organizing School table in the Reeb Lobby after Sunday service. Look for the poster that says: “Ready to Get Into Good Trouble?”
Join the Leadership Team
We have general organizing meetings every other Wednesday to build our beloved community and organize our efforts to support voting rights, assist voter registration, and get out the vote for critical primaries and elections at the local, State, and Federal level. All are welcome at all meetings. We are united through love in action.
Send us an email at ascvotingrights@gmail.com and we can tell you more about what we are doing and how you might get involved. We are looking for postcard writers, callers, texters, data crunchers, leaders, and organizers to help us build another world.
You can also sign up for our mailing list.
About
The Reeb Project for Voting Rights is named in honor of former All Souls associate minister James Reeb – beaten to death in 1965 when he went to Selma, Alabama, to march for voting rights. The project has four goals:
- Building a beloved community dedicated to ensuring equal representation in the democratic process that reflects the inherent worth and dignity of every human being.
- Engaging in targeted efforts to mobilize voter turnout in historically marginalized constituencies by working in solidarity with grassroots partners that center the leadership of BIPOC communities and other underrepresented groups (LIGBTIQ+, disability, migrants etc.).
- Conducting ongoing public education and awareness campaigns focused on voter suppression, disenfranchisement of DC residents, and the rights of the formerly incarcerated, and work in the service of impacted communities to develop remedies to these human rights violations.
- Integrating an intentional racial and intersectional justice lens across all our voter mobilization efforts from the very outset to ensure racial, gender, and social equity.
Since our launch in 2013 (at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington), we have called, sent postcards, texted, met, and mobilized thousands of voters in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arizona. We provide voters with helpful, non-partisan information about registering to vote and exercising their right to vote. We have also supported DC Statehood and national voting rights legislation.
We do this work in solidarity with other UU congregations and community partner organizations that center the leadership of people of color, such as Reclaim Our Vote, Center for Common Ground, Side with Love Action Center, New Virginia Majority, and Washington Interfaith Network.