'Voting feels like a battle': A group of Black women reimagines voter turnout
What Welchlin saw that August morning were the faces of Black women — and a lot of them. Their interests, varied and historically overlooked, are at the center of a new kind of intentional voter engagement training.
“Black women mobilize their communities,” she told The 19th. “They are the catalyst.”
Welchlin is executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, a civic engagement and policy advocacy organization whose members, all of them Black women, have traveled the state for months to host trainings called the “Power of the Sister Vote Boot Camp.”
On paper, their goal with the boot camps is an increase in voter turnout among Black women in the Mississippi counties where they visit. They also want to create a years-in-the-making pipeline to better mobilize Black women, whom Welchin views as the glue holding together democracy, especially in a state and region that continues to be impacted by policies that have historically suppressed Black voters.
https://lailluminator.com/2024/09/17/black-women-vote/