The black church remains at the forefront of voter registration, education and participation in the Nov. 4 presidential election.
The days to register before the Oct. 8 deadline have dwindled to a precious few, and the Wayman AME Church’s seventh annual Church on Cabanne worship service at 10:30 a.m. Sunday will emphasize the importance of voting and include on-site voter registration.
“We will not only reach out to all of St. Louis through our worship service, but we also will begin the process of making sure that we, our community, exercises the right to vote that many people died for not too very long ago,” said the Rev. Timothy E. Tyler, Wayman AME Church senior pastor.
The service, entitled “Watch, Fight, Pray, VOTE,” will also kick off the church’s get-out-the-vote effort for Election Day.
“The community is invited to come and worship the Lord, celebrate the Spirit, and make sure their voices are heard during the upcoming election by registering to vote,” said Tyler.
Last week, A Call to Oneness announced its plan to recruit 10,000 volunteers to work on election day to insure voter participation in North St. Louis and North St. Louis County.
Public planning and education meetings are being held at 7 p.m. Thursdays at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, 2411 Belle Glade, as Nov. 4 approaches.
“We are rolling out the next step to galvanize our community,” the Rev. James Freddy Clark, an A Call to Oneness founder, said during a City Hall rotunda press conference.
“We have assembled an all-star team to make sure our people get out and vote.”
Ethel Byndum, A Call to Oneness executive committee member and minister, said the organization “is putting out a powerful non-partisan call to participate.”
Attorney Leslie Tolliver Rogers, representing the Mound City Bar Association and a part of the Call’s legal team, said they will work to “make sure no one is disenfranchised.”
“We are calling on attorneys to volunteer,” Rogers said.
Truth be told
Speaking of attorneys, many of the state’s most powerful barristers are volunteering in a partisan effort to make sure Missourians don’t fall for “lies and smears” by the McCain campaign and its operatives.
The Heartland Truth Squad, anchored by U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, includes St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch.
McCaskill and the prosecutors are joined by former Sen. Jean Carnahan and state Auditor Susan Montee on the truth squad and will be “deployed regularly over these final six weeks,” says McCaskill.
“I hope we could focus our time talking about what matters most to Missourians, but if the McCain campaign tries to run a campaign of distractions, we’ll be ready for them,” McCaskill said.
Other members of the squad are Sheriff Glenn Boyer (Jefferson County), Prosecuting Attorney Steve Sokoloff (Dunklin County), Prosecuting Attorney Page Bellamy (Lafayette County), Prosecuting Attorney Teresa Henlsey (Cass County), Prosecuting Attorney Dan White (Clay County), Prosecuting Attorney Chris Miller (Ripley County), Prosecuting Attorney Jason Lamb (Audrain County) and Prosecuting Attorney Jim Kanatzar (Jackson County).
The Missouri Democratic Party issued an alert this week that the American Issues Project, led by St. Louis-based Republican Ed Martin, will be rolling out more Swift Boat-like attack ads against Obama. Martin, former chief of staff for Gov. Matt Blunt, resigned amid a scandal over the deletion of staff emails, which may constitute the destruction of public records by a public official, which is illegal.
Not conceding a vote or voter
Be it Southwest Missouri or Southwest St. Charles County, the Obama Campaign is not conceding a single vote.
There are 210 Neighborhood Team Leaders in St. Charles and Buffy Wicks, Obama Campaign Missouri state director, said, “We are seeing a high level of enthusiasm across the state.”
Saying that the campaign has “a superior ground game,” Wicks added, “We have been on the ground building capacity for months. An effective ground operation takes months to build and you cannot make it up in the last six weeks of the campaign.”
Nationally, the NAACP has launched Upload to Uplift, an online initiative that uses Web 2.0 technology to encourage visitors to register and upload the email addresses of family and friends that are not registered. Upload to Uplift also uses a text message feature to remind registered voters to go to the polls on Election Day.
“As an organization, our goal is to make the promise of this country real for all families,” said Ben Jealous, NAACP executive director.
“Online voter registration is a natural extension of the NAACP voter empowerment programs. While we will continue to employ successful strategies, like door-to-door canvassing and phone banking, however, this tool adds the power of viral voter registration to our mix,” he said.
Individuals interested in registering can visit www.naacp.org to complete, print and mail the registration form before the October 8 deadline.
Corporate and community partners interested in offering the online registration widget to their site can download it from www.naacp.org. For more information, contact Carla Sims at carlasims@verizon.net, or (202) 547-8313.
