Mobilizing environmental justice voters through the CAMPAIGN FOR COMMUNITIES

For two decades, Earth Day Network (EDN), Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (SVREP), and other coalition organizations have partnered to diversify and activate the environmental movement through the voting process and via year-round environmental justice projects.

As partners, we have registered more than 1.5 million voters and turned out 2.9 million voters, helping pass environmental/health voter initiatives and solving high visibility local environmental problems.

Campaign for Communities’ partners focus primarily on the under-represented: low income, people of color, and youth. In addition to educating and mobilizing communities, each of our major partners also works to train and promote new community leaders. We often work directly with our community-based partners on leadership training at the local level and organizing around local community development issues.

While we build long-term community infrastructure, we educate, train, and register voters. Our goal is to make sure that people who would not otherwise vote are registered and mobilized – to help traditionally underrepresented voting constituencies participate.

This year, EDN and SVREP will register and turnout voters in several key states (AZ, CO, FL, GA, MI, NC, PA, TX, and WI). We target college-age voters, faith voters, women voters, and young, Latinx voters for the general elections in 2020. EDN and SVREP’s primary focus and objective is to target those who are unregistered and who will be voting for the first time in a presidential election as well as mobilizing existing registrants from these same demographics. Campaign For Communities’ plans of action includes 4 major elements:

1. Community-based voter registration;
2. Educational-institution-focused voter registration;
3. A robust vote by mail and early voting program; and
4. Digital media and communications activations that will support and expand these activities and those of other organizations

20 years of working together, turning out voices

EDN and SVREP have worked together for close to 20 years to register, educate and turnout voters. In 2003, EDN, SVREP, the NAACP, and other Latino and African American organizations created Campaign for Communities, a non-partisan coalition focused on education, registering and turning out a new universe of environmental voters with the overall goals of building a more diverse environmental community, one that connects civic engagement with issues of equity, health, the economy and the environment. Since then, we have helped to register more than 1.5 million voters and turned out 2.7 million voters. We also have worked together for close to two decades on dozens of community environmental issues ranging from environmental/health voter initiatives to solving local environmental problems.

Each partner brings unique and valuable skills and abilities to this campaign. SVREP’s long history of registering and mobilizing the Latino voters gives it credibility and standing among communities and community leaders. SVREP is the largest civic engagement nonpartisan organization in the United States focused on registering and mobilizing the Latinx vote. Founded in 1974 and based in San Antonio and Los Angeles, SVREP has registered 2.7 million Latinos, trained more than 150,000 Latino elected and civic leaders, and won 210 voting rights lawsuits.

EDN enjoys the same credibility with local communities. For the past 50 years, EDN has worked in 10s of thousands of communities on Earth Day and year round campaigns, and particularly over the last four years, EDN has built a nationwide U.S. community and college infrastructure in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and the 2020 national elections.

Together we are using our long history, credibility, and deep and broad infrastructure to register and turnout very targeted voters around a broad set of climate, environment, and health issues for the November election.

Visit Earth Day Network’s VOTE EARTH for more information on voting early, election dates, and other ways you can get involved and be heard.