EXCLUSIVE
CHAVIS PUSHING FOR
ELECTION
YEAR YOUTH
INVOLVEMENT
By Cash Michaels
Editor
The Rev.
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. says he’s coming back “home” to North Carolina to
help jumpstart a voter empowerment movement for young people during this election
year. And according to Chavis, the activist community of Durham is best suited
to lead the charge.
Dr. Chavis
made his remarks Sunday , April 27th during a “Get Out To Vote
Rally, sponsored by the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People at
Covenant Presbyterian Church, where activist Rev. Jimmy Hawkins is the pastor.
Chavis said
it was crucial that the power of young voters be harnessed in order to combat
the Republican drive to build on their iron grip on state government, and the
“negative” policies, like voter ID that have ultimately resulted.
“These are
some rough times,” Chavis told those gathered. “[But] I’m here today to remind us that we’ve
had rough times before.”
“What’s
going in the state Legislature, what’s going on in the Governor’s Mansion
represents not just those Republicans? It represents a larger reality…somebody
voted to put them in power. All of these bad things they have done to hurt
people [in North Carolina]…just didn’t happen by themselves,” Dr. Chavis
continued.
In the face
of Republican domination, the “challenge” is to reach out to the hundreds of
thousands of blacks, Latinos and youth people who currently are not registered
to vote, or are orientated to understand what freedoms they have lost since the
GOP takeover in North Carolina, and what more could they lose.
After
saying that he would “love to see” the Democrats take back the NC General
Assembly in the 2014 midterms, or the Governor’s Mansion in 2016, Chavis added,
“…and I don’t think that’s an impossible dream.”
“We not
only have to pray for what is right, but allow ourselves to be GOD’s
instruments for further change,” Chavis said, adding that all right-thing
people of good will, no matter what their color, must come together to work for
change.
“If you work
to make life better for black people in America, you work to make life better
for all people in America,” the former leader of the Wilmington Ten said. “But
we have to keep pushin’.”
Chavis
pointed to how One Stop – Early Voting numbers for the May 6th primary
are slack, and how something must be done to improve those numbers by Election
Day.
“Driving up
here I saw a lot of students…a lot of young people on the street. And I’m not
so sure how conscious they are that not only can they early vote, but what’s at
stake in this election.”
Dr. Chavis,
who was recently nominated to be interim executive director of the NC
Democratic Party before moderate Democrats led a smear campaign to kill the
effort, called Election Day “payback day,” saying that it is the day that
voters kick elected officials out of office who have not served in the public
interest.
“I think
the people in the Legislature and the Governor’s Mansion need to be paid back
for what they’ve done,” Chavis said to applause. “So who is going to pay them
back? I’m not so sure if the people of North Carolina are fighting ready.”
Chavis said
he is willing to come back, at his own expense, to help take part in “turning
North Carolina around,” but it has to happen county-by-county. He suggested
that Durham County lead the way in that effort because historically it produced
“intellectual giants and forward thinking.”
Young people, Dr. Chavis said, are
essential to that turnaround.
“Young
people voted in record numbers in 2008 because they got inspired. So what is it
on the short term, between now and May 6th, that we can do in North
Carolina to inspire and make our young people vote again?’
Chavis said
there must be outreach to the youth, using social media and the modern
communications vehicles.
“There are
one million more Democrats than there are Republicans in North Carolina,” Dr.
Chavis said. “What kind of calculus is that? How is that mathematically
possible? You have one million more Democrats than Republicans, but the
Republicans win the elections. That’s a mathematical impossibility, unless we
and our allies have let go of not only our enthusiasm, but our sense of calling
every day.”
“There’s no
better feeling when you go to sleep at night than knowing that when you wake
up, you’re going to help somebody, because when you do, you also help
yourself,” Chavis said.
“Sometimes
you have to hit rock bottom before you can get right back up, he continued.
“We’ve hit rock bottom. I don’t think it’s possible to go lower.”
The former
executive director of the NAACP called for a “democracy revival” in North
Carolina, saying that the people’s spirituality, politics and economic outlook
must all come together to move forward.
“We have to
reassert ourselves. We’ve made so much progress politically, but I think we
have to make more progress economically, because one of the reasons why we’re
politically weak today is because we’re also weak economically.”
Dr. Chavis
says the African-American community needs to start an economic “war chest” so that it no longer has to take
money from figures like disgraced
Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who was banned
from the NBA this week after a recording of his racist rantings was made public
last weekend. Sterling had received a “life achievement award” from the Los
Angeles NAACP chapter in 2009 despite reports of his being a racist slumlord,
and was set to receive another on May 15th at the L.A. NAACP’s
Freedom Fund banquet.
That award,
which published reports say was the result of Sterling contributing thousands
of dollars to that branch, has since been withdrawn.
Chavis said
with the US Supreme Court rollback on voting rights and affirmative action, in
addition to the North Carolina Republican rollback on voting rights, social
programming and their assault on the poor and unemployed, are more than enough
reasons for people across the state to band together, and vote not just in the
May 6th primaries, but November midterm elections in
the fall.
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