FL: 'We're not telling people how to vote. We just want to educate people around what happened' [View all]
On a Saturday morning in April, dozens of participants gathered around small round tables on the second floor of the Mt. Zion Progressive Missionary Baptist Church Annex in South St. Petersburg to see and hear an important presentation.
Common Cause Florida was there to watch, the ACLU of Florida was there, the St. Petersburg Chapter of the League of Women Voters was there and Antonio Gilliam, the assistant police chief in St. Petersburg, was there. Overall, the focus was on Equal Ground, a statewide nonpartisan organization working to increase civic engagement among the Black electorate in Florida as the November election looms in 2024.
It was the first date of the group’s statewide voter education tour, in conjunction with the St. Petersburg chapter of the NAACP. The other events will take place in the coming weeks and across the state.
“We are in an age of conservatism,” said Trenia Cox of the St. Pete NAACP. “We are at a point where there is an ‘anti-woke agenda’ and never have we needed the advocacy and the engagement so that victories that have been won remain in place, and we can create some new ones.”
Blacks represent nearly 13% of Florida voting electorate, according to the latest records from the Florida Division of Elections, with 1,721,238 voters. Of those voters, 74% are Democrats, 23% are Republicans, and the remaining 3% are either non-party-affiliated or registered with third parties.
https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/04/24/were-not-telling-people-how-to-vote-we-just-want-to-educate-people-around-what-happened/
