One last time…
Maiysa Mesbah & Joyce Lutu

Maiysa Mesbah & Joyce Lutu

Friday the 15th marked our first official screening adventure. The YWCA had permitted us to show the “Inside Job” film and it was a great success! Overall, we were extremely pleased because we obtained approximately 30 petition signatures and were able to get people steamed up about the issue of bad money in politics. Greenpeace also co-sponsored the event with us and passed a petition of their own pertaining to the environments unclean air issue. Thank you to our wonderful organizing director, Adam Sotak, who also attended in our favor to help sign people in and explain the importance of why people need to sign and become active in trying to fight and eliminate bad money in politics. After the film, the audience helped themselves to the snacks provided and opened their minds to a heart welcoming discussion. They were pleased with the results of the event and were willing to help us reach our goals in dealing with the horrible topic. We were thrilled with the turn out and would like to thank everyone who helped out and attended our screening.

Maiysa Mesbah and Joyce Lutu

Maiysa Mesbeh and Joyce Lutu

Maiysa Mesbah and Joyce Lutu

Maiysa Mesbah and Joyce Lutu

On a lovely Saturday morning, we attended the infamous Black Berry Brunch with its galore of summer hats; pastel colored suits and finely dressed escorts. The event was hosted by the Black Women Caucus to discuss the ignored efforts the state has on Education and to celebrate the recognized awardees for their hard work over the past year. There were words of honesty, encouragement and wisdom. There was singing to commemorate those who gave their time to attend the brunch and there was great food to rave the space with elegance and to warm-heartedly allow us to appreciate our stomachs. It was a celebration in which we took advantage of in getting some petitions signed because many and more were happy to abide. It was greatly informative and made us feel inspired to work and refreshed our passion to have our voices listened to.

Mayisa Mesbah and Joyce Lutu

This week the Charlotte team made another trip to the beautiful city of Asheville, North Carolina. This trip was primarily to follow up on one-on-ones we had on our last trip, finalize details for our tour stop on the July 16th, and attend an event to get petition signatures for the “Cut the Strings” Campaign. On our previous visit, the team had grown to adore Asheville with all its wondrous customs. We had found that the culture itself was very different from the one we had grown accustomed to in Charlotte, thus we had had to adjust our speaking points and figure out different ways to relay our ideas and strategies to the groups we were dealing with. We had learned that when organizing you have to understand the crowd that you are dealing with and then amend your thoughts likewise. Thus, because Asheville is a place where people lay emphasis on the environment, our biggest companion when getting word out about our issues would be such organizations. What this meant was that though in Charlotte a farmers market may not seem to be an ideal spot to get petition signatures or distribute flyers, in Asheville this was the perfect opportunity. At our event later that night, we used what we had learned to attain signatures for our “Cut the Strings” petition. It seemed to work magnificently, and though at first we were a bit nervous because it was our first tabling assignment, we grew more comfortable with the crowd as the night went on. We also distributed 1250 “Respect Our Vote” and “Cut the Strings” flyers to several different churches. By the end of the day, we were exhausted but content with the outcomes of the trip.

This week we are also looking forward to working with Homeless Helping Homeless, as well the League of Women Voters this coming weekend.

Maiysa Mesbah and Joyce Lutu

Our week started with a planning day. We went to the office and set our goals on the table then later we made phone calls to prepare for our tour stop that was to begin the next day.
Tuesday morning called for our full and undivided attention as we made our way to Asheville, North Carolina. We met each other at 7:45am to leave for the city and reached there by 9:30. We immediately started speaking with people because from the way we planned the day, we were to meet with eight different people back-to-back. Surprisingly, we were able to fit a media sitting in the day which cost us a little more time than we budgeted for. We were featured in an Asheville radio show on WREC 100.7 FM and were pleased with our new accomplishment. We spoke briefly on being stripped of the right to vote and swiftly shifted our focus back to our planned one-on-ones. Later that evening, we met with about 16 concerned people in a chocolate & coffee lounge. The meeting was beneficial in our planning of the research aspect of our internship. We are to hold a large meeting on what we hope to establish and work on depending on what we assume the results of the bad bills would be.

Wednesday was just as filled as the last. We woke up even earlier and headed to Raleigh, North Carolina, met with the other Democracy Summer teams and watched the state’s General Assembly work. We also had the pleasure of hearing some of the representatives of the house and senate speak and explain to us the importance of being involved. Overall, we found the trip both fascinating and exhilarating.

On Thursday we went into the office and started working on an event we plan on having in Asheville on the 16th of July. We have defined the prescribed outcomes for our research assignment as a well thoroughly planned out an event complimenting the faith, cause and community based organizations to find a way to protect voting rights on a larger scale.

Today, Friday we are researching and further planning the structure for our overall goals for Asheville.

Tune in next week…

It’s been another eventful week! Monday started off with scrupulous amounts of planning for meetings that were to be held in the upcoming days. In the evening, we also met with Mary Klenz from Legal Women Voters along with Advocate Tom Bowers, in order to discuss the details of our scheduled meeting with Governor Bev Purdue’s Assistant Budd Berro the next morning. Roles were assigned and we all parted ways to rehearse our parts for the next day. It was interesting to see how different types of advocacy organization could come together to strengthen their platform and get their voices heard. The meeting was supposed to be about the budget, yet because we were there show our support, we were invited to speak about our issues as well. The group was mainly speaking about how education and environmental factors were several affected by the budget. A man named Mr. Greene made a remarkable observation that really stuck out to us; “It’s scary to me how many things are being affected by one budget. It’s like their using the budget to get away with all these things.”

The next morning, we found ourselves downtown at the government building yawning and entering a welcoming room in the government building at 8:15am. We met with about 6 others who were to accompany us in the meeting and discuss other issues that they felt needed to be addressed. Our first meeting was with Governor’s Assistant Budd Berro. We listened as he explained that he was in charge of the piedmont regional office under Governor Perdu and then introduced ourselves. The meeting began with our group mentioning its strong concern for the environment. About 15 minutes later, we went into education and then ended off with voting rights. Joyce was unable to speak at the engagement because she had laryngitis thus the weight fell on Maiysa and Robert. We think that the meeting went well because we spent a good amount of time expressing how we felt about the current issues that are being overlooked. Next we headed down the hall to a meeting on redistricting. We were attentive yet we were victims to boredom. There were two men on the end that really irked our nerves because we felt that they were either being very obnoxious and not understanding or we felt that they were being too vague to understand. We learned plenty on redistricting that day, and came to appreciate the intricate process involved in redistricting and the time the volunteer appointed committee puts into it.

Wednesday came with anticipation of our very first one-on-one. We had set up a meeting with Monica Embrey of Green Peace. We really enjoyed speaking with her because she was so understanding and alive.  We gave her several contacts and in exchange, she told us that she wanted to help support our efforts. We could really see how organization could jump to each other’s professional aid. Next, we found ourselves heading to the homeland security building to help the League of Women Voters with the voter registrations. It was amazing. We had the privilege of witnessing about 98 people, from 52 different nations, become US citizens and pledge into our country. During the ceremony, we prepared the documents of voter registry and after we made sure everyone had them. Not many were interested in hearing about extra information that would help them to vote so we just stood at the door, ready and available to inform. We expected people to be itching to know all the details about their new right but they didn’t seem as excited. Though we weren’t bombarded with questions as we had predicted, it was still an exquisite experience seeing the lives of so many change, before our eyes, within minutes.

On Thursday, we had our 1st media appearance. We were really excited when we walked in the studio and yet a little nervous. Upon our wait, a woman named Joyce Waddell entered the room and graced us with her loving, warm presence. She smiled very vividly and asked us some questions about ourselves. At the time, Joyce’s voice was not yet 100% so against Dr. Waddell’s it sounded quite rough. Her aura reminded us of someone very calmly sitting on the couch of a welcoming home and her voice matched her graciously. When the camera finally got rolling we began to relax as we spoke with her. We still remember the beautiful light blue sequence dress that lit up the set while we fed her the answers that she anticipated hearing. She gently glanced from the camera to us in increments of 30-40 seconds while we asked each other with our eyes who was ready to answer the next question. About an hour and a half of this, we left the room swiftly and mentally satisfied with our accomplishment. For the most part we felt prepared but then again we hadn’t had all the answers to all the questions. We couldn’t help but to feel responsible even though we knew it wasn’t our fault. Some of the questions she asked us, on and off the camera were ones that just hadn’t crossed our minds. Briefly after, Robert went to fidget in Dr. Waddell’s hot seat while we talked about our performance and waited in a different room. Overall, it was a learning experience and we decided that we did not like having to answer unexpected questions on the spot but we could do it fairly well. The episode will air on the 28th of this month on channel 21, “Public Access” at 9:30pm. Be watching.

Friday was our most hectic day yet. Unfortunately because of all the excitement from our television appearance from the day before, we had been unable to check our email to realize that the Team Conference call was scheduled for the following day. In frenzy, we received calls from Robert Friday morning informing us of the mishap and we quickly got on our phones and dialed away. It was nice to hear about the different things the Greenville and Winston-Salem teams had already accomplished this summer and comforting to learn that we were all encountering as well as overcoming similar struggles. After this, we arrived at the office to arrange last minute details for our event that night. We were asked to contact several news stations to ensure that they had received our press release and guarantee that they would be in attendance. At first it seemed that not one of the news stations would be coming. To make matters worse our office printer seemed to not cooperate and would not print any of the needed materials. 4 o’clock was approaching fast. Alas, in the last half hour, everything seemed to fall into place. One of the organizers, Hector, for Action NC (with whom we share the office) helped us by allowing us to print our materials from his printer. He also gave us contacts to different Hispanic news papers that would want to be informed of the Racial Justice Event. With everything finally accounted for, we packed up our cars and headed to the event – but little did we know the worst was yet to come….

When we arrived to the event, it was a pleasure to find that the Hispanic news papers had in fact shown up. But the projector and the film that was to be shown later that night had not. The press conference started within minutes entailing that we had a mere half hour before the crowd made its way down stairs for the film showing. When the film finally did arrive, we found ourselves in another set of turmoil. As it turned out, the laptop we had planned to use was not adaptable to the DVD we were using. As the crowd filled the room, we found a DVD player that could play the film, but of course the wiring for the video player was missing. The only thing left to do was too look for another laptop. As luck would have it, one of the speakers had a laptop in his car that he allowed us to borrow. We held our breaths as we inserted the DVD and waited for Windows Media Player to start up. Alas, the film was finally playing. We now turned our attention to the projector, which had been working fine all this time. To our dismay, the projector shut off and would not turn back on. While we were having our technical difficulties, the coordinators of the event had been running a Q&A session with the audience but they were running out of topics to discuss. Thus, they turned to us to speak to the group. We informed them of our views on the voting rights bill and why we were so passionate about it while passing out 60 or so flyers. We also spoke to the crowd about the Cut the Strings campaign and asked them to sign our petition. We were at a loss of what to do about the film. As we stood there flabbergasted, a man in a black suit entered the room dragging a trolley bag behind him. He approached us and asked if we needed a projector. We stared at him. It was music to our ears. We helped him set his equipment and smiled joyfully as the film, At Death House Door, finally began playing. We sat down to enjoy the film. Everything had finally worked out. The event lasted roughly three hours and in the end we were exhausted! As we said our farewells to everyone there, we looked at each other with looks of relief and finally went off for the weekend…

Coming up this week… a tour of Ashville…and a much anticipated trip to Raleigh with the rest of the Democracy Summer teams!

Maiysa Mesbah and Joyce Lutu

We’ve had quite a busy week, but a fairly exciting one as well. It seems as if this week has passed within a blink of an eye, yet we have already gained many valuable contacts and experiences. To begin with, our first day started with a speaking engagement at 8:30 AM. We arrived at a community center to a meeting called the Tuesday Morning Breakfast. This is a group of retired government officials who gather to learn about new issues they can use their experiences to leverage. We spoke to the members about the Respect Our Vote campaign and explained the implications if such bills were to be passed. We were received by an eager and friendly audience. They asked lots of detailed question and even came to congratulate us after the meeting had come to a close. We were both caught up with a bit of jitters, as this was our very first hour on the job and we were to present. Yet, when we took our place at the front of the room, a sense of comfort resided within us and we had a wonderful time speaking to the group. Check us out on tr website (http://www.tueforumclt.org/)!!The rest of our day consisted of visiting the office, figure out the details of our summer plans and listing supplies that were needed.

Day Two, started at the office. This day we created a Twitter account to make sure that we are able to keep in contact with the Winston-Salem and Greenville groups. (@dnCharlotteteam) We completed the first draft of our letters to the editor and organized how we were to conduct our first phone bank that night. Later that afternoon, we went downtown to attend a Press Conference for the County Commission Budget Hearing. The room was buzzing with people from several different advocacy groups that were there to observe how the new budget would affect them. We suddenly had to leave so that we could begin our 1st phone canvassing assignment scheduled for that night. We had the privilege of contacting 70 individuals to remind them about the Democracy Charlotte meeting taking place the following day, Thursday, June 2.

On day three, we arrived at the office and were greeted with an array of tasks that were to be completed. We began by arranging 1000 fliers for Organizing for America and another 500 for Advocate Patricia Burns. We then began to contact theaters to find the venue for the one-stop tour film showing in Charlotte. We contacted several theaters and were able to narrow down prospective places. We then had the task of finding organizations that would want us to host speaking engagements. We found a couple possibilities that included some local scout groups as well as some youth organizations. The time for our next event, the Democracy Charlotte meeting had arrived, thus we headed to Amalie’s to get prepared. We had a turnout of 21 people which is a little more than we were expecting. Among the topics covered were redistricting, bills currently in the electorate, and church bulletins. The meeting began at 6pm and lasted approximately two hours. The group showed a lot of enthusiasm towards the agenda and ideas. All-in-all, the meeting was a great success!!

Today is day four and we have finished our last draft of the letters to the editor, continued to work on finding one-on-ones and speaking engagements. We have also finished our weekly reports and are currently finalizing our one-stop-tour plans for Ashville. We are so excited about all that we have planned next week.

…Tune in next week for our visit to the department of Homeland Security for voter registration and a special television appearance from yours truly

Joyce Lutu and Maiysa Mesbah

We are in the final stretch before our July 24th event and all the colleges but one have accepted our invitation to participate! We are making the final preparations to film the Public Service Announcement, arrange seating and speakers, and arrange food to be ordered. We have three days of phonebanking this week but I feel like we have met so many of our summer goals already! There is always something new for us to do, some new obstacle to overcome and in the end I feel our all our work this summer will be worth it!

Alannah & Erica– Charlotte!!

Tomorrow kicks off our 2nd month with Homeland Security. I feel like we’re a big part of their becoming naturalized citizens now.

We’re down to the wire now we it comes to our July 24th Can You Hear Us Now? event. It looks like there might be 5 out of 6 schools participating and that’s a really good number for something like this.

Oh, last night I was at work and my coworkers were saying nothing will ever be fixed in politics because policians are always funded by some company. It made me think of VOE. Pretty cool & random.

Well that’s it for now… Talk to you next blog.

Sending up prayers…

Much love, peace, & happiness <3

Erica