4.6 Million Ohioans Showed Up Tuesday. Here’s Who Did the Work.

News / Commentary — REAL POWER.TV

In September the word in Black Cleveland was sit this one out. Kenn Dowell on the breakfasts, the phone banks and the people who turned tired into turnout.

In September, the word on the street in Black Cleveland was simple. Sit this one out.

Folks were tired. Tired of voting and watching nothing change on their block. And the election was two months out.

So we did what we know how to do. We cooked breakfast.

Rev. C.J. Matthews opened his church on Woodland Avenue. Council President Blaine Griffin, Councilman Richard Starr, State Rep. Terrence Upchurch, the Cleveland Clergy Coalition and the Fraternal Orders stood behind it. No candidate on the program. No endorsement.

Could a plate of eggs and a phone list beat a whole city’s worth of tired?

We were about to find out.

The Drumbeat

Truth is, the work didn’t start at a breakfast table. It started on the radio.

Every Tuesday at noon on WOVU 95.9 FM, Dr. Heather E. Burton, Judge Michael Nelson and I pounded the same drum, for more than a year before the first plate of eggs. Vote. Black empowerment. Community engagement. Why your voice is worth the trip.

Congresswoman Shontel Brown came on once a month to break down what Washington was doing and what it meant on our streets, holding us together through the chaos. Shayla Davis, president of the OLBC Foundation, came on as a contributor, sometimes more than once a month, getting us ready for this moment.

Every show lives on YouTube. You want receipts? They’re there.

The breakfasts were where the drumbeat finally walked in the door.

The Room Fills Up

Every other Saturday, we came back. On Woodland, then at the Warrensville Heights Civic and Senior Center. People ate, got trained, and started calling voters before they left their chairs.

By October, Secretary Marcia Fudge was standing in that room, and she hadn’t come empty-handed. When the Congressional Black Caucus Institute launched So Vote, she made sure Ohio was in it. Callers, canvassers, literature and events followed, in Cleveland, Toledo and Akron. Garrett McDaniel and the So Vote team kept it moving every week.

In Toledo, Tina Butts and her team worked the Lucas County Board of Elections during early vote in So Vote shirts. In Akron, former Councilwoman Tara Sample Mosley ran canvassing and put young voters on camera. On the So Vote lists in those two cities, live callers completed 25,503 conversations with voters, reaching 84% of every working number.

Back home, Rev. David Cobb opened Emmanuel Baptist Church on Quincy Avenue, and Pastor Kenneth Keith ran the floor shift after shift. Callers worked four-hour shifts, and we paid them, because organizing is work.

Standing behind all of it, statewide, was a woman most of Cleveland had never heard of.

The Philly Girl

Her name is Brittany Smalls. She’s the Ohio State Organizing Manager for Black Voters Matter, a Philly girl who landed in Ohio on May 1.

Through Black Voters Matter’s We Got Us, We Got ID campaign, Brittany and her team backed more than 65 partner organizations across this state. Early-vote outreach. Rides to the polls. Help with voter ID. When the Toledo and Akron teams needed literature at the door, Black Voters Matter put it in their hands. When we needed people to work the polls, Brittany went and found them.

She understood that telling somebody to vote isn’t enough. You have to help them get past whatever is standing in their way.

On October 6, the first day of early vote, we put a stage on East 18th Street. The Divine Nine stood on it in their colors. 1,908 people walked into the Board of Elections and voted that day.

So it was working. Wasn’t it?

The Problem in the Room

Here’s what I didn’t want to say out loud.

Look around those breakfast rooms and you saw folks my age and older. Faithful voters. God bless every one of them. But the young people weren’t in those chairs.

And then Brittany came back with a story.

Students from Warrensville High School had walked in and voted early. First-timers, owning their power. She called it one of the most monumental moments of her work.

They didn’t come to our breakfast. They came to the ballot box anyway. Somebody had reached them. That’s the lesson I’m still sitting with.

Four Days Out

On October 30, four days out, the organizations from those breakfasts filled one room in Richmond Heights. Mayor Kim Thomas was there. My son, Anthony Simmons, ran the program.

Fred Ward stood up for returning citizens, the people who’ve been told a record means they can’t vote. He had spent that same day with the families of three young men killed within five days. “Difficult don’t mean impossible,” he told the room.

Pastor Keith asked the phone bankers to stand, and the room clapped for them. Brittany closed her remarks with a call, and the whole place answered. “Who got us?” “We got us.”

Then Congresswoman Shontel Brown gave us the number. Early voting in the county was running at nearly twice the pace of the last midterm.

Then she took the celebration right out of our mouths. “Momentum is not victory,” she said. “Votes are victory.”

Pastor Jamal Bryant spoke next. That speech gets its own story.

Tuesday

At 7:30 on Tuesday night, the polls closed.

By Wednesday morning, the count was in. 4,658,250 Ohioans cast a ballot, 58% of every registered voter in this state. In Cuyahoga County, 482,011 people voted.

Remember September? Sit this one out?

They didn’t.

Not everything went our way. Annette Blackwell’s race still stings, and we’ll give it a hard look. And we still have to put young people at the center of this work.

But today isn’t for that. Today is for saying thank you. To every pastor who opened a door. To every caller who worked a shift. To every voter who stood in that line.

Now we make sure everyone who holds office in this state, whoever they are and whatever party they belong to, remembers who showed up.

Rest a minute. Then let’s get back to it.