|
DEI Chairperson needed! Take the DEI survey! Join the DEI Roundtable!  LWV ABC seeks a Chair for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) Committee In April 2021, LWV ABC membership added a commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) to our bylaws in keeping with the updated LWVUS bylaws. Following our annual membership meeting, the LWV ABC Board created a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. (See Duties of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee in our online Member Handbook). The LWV ABC Board appointed new member Shalonda Gordon as DEI chair. Shalonda brought a wealth of DEI experience and training to the position. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for Shalonda, she was offered a great career opportunity in North Carolina in August and has since moved to there. Therefore, LWV ABC is seeking a new chair for our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee. If you are interested in chairing this vital committee or want more information about this opportunity, send an email to [email protected].  DEI Membership Survey (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion)
Prior to her move to North Carolina, Shalonda had begun work on a DEI survey. DEI surveys help organizations benchmark the current status of DEI within the organization and develop a DEI program. Please complete our DEI survey at https://forms.gle/mEgAYk8C5HmfFVHR6 DEI Roundtable (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) Membership Chair Pat Kennedy has begun attending the DEI Roundtable sponsored by LWV Crystal New Hope East Plymouth Robbinsdale (CNHEPR) on the 3rd Monday of every month at 6:30pm. The meeting is open to all LWV members to start the conversation about what it means to implement a DEI policy and how to turn those words into action. The purpose of the roundtable is to have a candid conversation in order to exchange ideas, talk about what has worked in reaching underserved communities, discuss the challenges, and even get some ideas for "homework". If you are interested in attending the DEI roundtable, please contact Michelle Jayne at [email protected]. Helping people register to vote is a primary mission of the League of Women Voters. LWV ABC is fortunate to have two new leaders stepping forward to help us build our work in this area as we come out of pandemic-mode.
munity service, like National Honor Society and Key Club, and working with them to find ways to reach students in their schools who will be eligible to vote in the next election. Julie’s shown that this will be an effective way to reach students. By working with a student at Coon Rapids High School, she was able to identify that there would be an opportunity to register students when the graduating seniors came in to pick up their caps and gowns. In two hours they reached 54 seniors to either register on their phones using the posted QR code, or complete a paper form. This is a fantastic success! Voter Registration – Get out into the Community and help register voters! LWV-ABC has a new vice-chair for voter registration—Cindy Wetzell (under the Voter Services Committee chaired by Linda Rodgers). What follows is a preview of what volunteering for voter registration might look like going forward. Thanks to Cindy for this submission to the LWV ABC Newsletter and Blog!  Photo from Sept 2019 LWV ABC Voter Because the next national election is 18 months away, we have a terrific opportunity to build on our current voter registration outreach before the next huge voter registration push in 2022. This year, in our county, there are currently only three elections on the calendar in November—all for school board seats. However, that shouldn’t stop us from building our network of contacts now in all of the cities that we serve. Our goal is to interact with more of our citizens through community events, church programs, festivals, art fairs and even concerts. And there are likely dozens more ways we can be a presence in the community to register residents to vote.
That’s where you all come in. We need to share our ideas and our energy. Because not only do we need to find places to go to register voters, we also need to actually go and do that work—to staff a table; to hand out flyers; to help people fill-out their forms either on paper or online; to answer their questions about registering. To help you do that, we will be providing voter registration training later this month. In conjunction with the Minneapolis voter registration coordinator we have put together a training focused on our communities. That training (on Zoom) is scheduled for Saturday, June 12th from 10:30-11:45. The training is less than 90 minutes and will answer all the questions you have about voter registration. The invitation to the training was sent to your email on June 5 through Signup Genius. We are currently working to request tables at several community events that are occurring over the summer. An email with the Signup Genius link will be sent periodically as more events are available to us. If you know of a festival, an art fair, or a community celebration that might be a good opportunity for voter registration, either find out about the possibility of having a table there or forward the information to me and I can check with the organizer. Sometimes, we can staff a table with another organization such as the Chamber of Commerce, the Lions, or another non-profit. I just ask that you keep me in the loop ([email protected]) so that we can keep track of all the events we participate in. When you volunteer to staff a table we will provide you with all of the materials you will need. Usually, there are two volunteers per table. Eventually, we will have at least two (and preferably three) complete kits of materials available in different locations around the county. These kits will include voter registration forms, absentee ballot applications, tablecloth, poster and easel, sanitizing tips, individually wrapped face masks, “I Will Vote” stickers, candy, pens and a 3-ring binder packed with information on voter registration. Please consider volunteering at one (or more!!) events to help register voters in our county! Remember, we will be having a voter registration training on Saturday, June 12th from 10:30-11:45. Watch your email for more information!  This study update was authorized in 2019 at the LWVMN Convention. The study’s purpose is to update the LWV MN Firearms study from 1990. The study will be a consensus-type study to update the 1990 position on firearms, to come out around September 2021. (What is a position or a study? Review this page on the LWV website.) Several positions recommended in the 1990 study have not been implemented, so the study committee thought it would be a good idea to learn the views of our local police and sheriffs. Local Leagues like LWV ABC are asked to interview their local police chiefs and sheriffs in the month of January, reporting data to the study committee. The interviews will provide the committee a broad view of the possible impacts of proposed firearms legislation. The 'top cops' who participate in the interviews give the study committee great insight on the pros and cons of firearms safety issues. Through this work, League is engaging in our communities and through police interviews are learning what’s going on in their community, and whether firearms are an issue or not. The help being requested is for members throughout our service area to contact the police chief or sheriff who serves their city, interview them using the 20 questions provided by the study committee, and then relay written notes from the discussion to the study committee. The total project would be 1-1.5 hour commitment; scripts are provided for making initial contact and setting up the interview as well as the twenty questions for the interview. It would be wonderful if we had two volunteers from each of our jurisdictions - see the list of cities below. If this is a topic that really interests you, the study committee welcomes additional committee members. The study committee is headed by Marti Micks of LWV Golden Valley, an articulate and organized leader. Contact us at [email protected] and we'll help you make the connections.  In the LWV ABC service area, we have police departments in Anoka, Blaine, Champlin, Columbia Heights, Coon Rapids, Fridley, Spring Lake Park and Ramsey. The Anoka County Sheriff serves the rest of the communities in which our members live. We have members in all these except Spring Lake Park.
Ideally we will have a team of two interviewers for each police department. LWV ABC will provide a Zoom meeting space and or conference call capabilities for the meeting. Written results from the interview are to be sent to the Study Committee by Jan 31. |
| LWV Upper Mississippi River Region | LWV ABC Blog |
