Attendees will have the opportunity to move into a Breakout Room in the Zoom meeting to select their session.
Breakout E: Driving Results: Our Postcard and Letter-writing Research
Breakout F: Love and Elbow Grease: Building a Successful Coalition in Georgia
Breakout G: Deep Canvassing and Talking to Voters
Session Description: Organizers and grassroots groups across the country hosted Swing Left Greater Boston’s Florida postcard-writing events in 2020. Over 1.5 million Vote by Mail and GOTV postcards were sent by volunteers to registered Democrats in five counties in Florida. John Loewenstein will discuss the results of this effort in two of the Florida counties and implications for our work going forward.
John Loewenstein is a retired physician. He lives in Brookline with his wife Louise. They have 2 sons, 2 daughters in law, and 4 granddaughters. John has worked on research with SLGB since February 2020.
Sam Polk is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at Tufts University, where he studies unsupervised machine learning. This summer, he is a researcher at MIT Lincoln Labs, where he works with the Advanced Sensor Systems and Test Beds research group
Session Description: Love and elbow grease. That’s what organizers Kimberlyn Carter, Alex Ames and Martha Shockey used to win elections in Georgia and overcome the hurdles created by Republicans’ voter suppression tactics. Learn how they and others are working to build powerful coalition infrastructure in a state that national Democrats had written off, and why it’s important for all of us to do what we can to help.
Kimberlyn Carter is a nonprofit executive, political strategist, opposition researcher and organizer. As a political strategist, Kimberlyn has worked in nearly every capacity of political campaigns. She has served as a Super Volunteer to a Chief Campaign Strategist. She has worked in campaigns at all levels from local to state, congressional and presidential. Currently, Kimberlyn is highly engaged with legacy work by leading Rep GA Institute, Inc., a statewide nonpartisan leadership development program and Represent GA Action Network, Inc., an organization founded to support and amplify Georgia’s progressive civic agenda.
Alex Ames (she/her) is an organizer in Atlanta and a freshman studying housing law/social justice at Georgia Tech. She built powerful youth and voter protection programs in 2020 for the Georgia Democrats – engaging thousands of Georgia students to cure ballots, work on dozens of legislative races, and flip the Senate. This year, Alex is organizing with College Democrats to train and empower youth, with Housing Justice League and DSA for affordable housing policy, and with GA Youth Justice Coalition to fight for fair districts and justice in Georgia’s General Assembly.
Martha Shockey, a native Georgian, became an activist against the Vietnam War in middle school. She grew up to become a union organizer and then around issues of reproductive freedom, then on to organize around nuclear disarmament, education, and mental health parity. Currently she co-convenes the Indivisible Georgia Coalition and her home group, Indivisible Ga 04.
Session Description: Talking to voters – some people love having intimate conversations with strangers; for others, it’s not as easy. But what if we could find a group of voters who we believe are persuadable and then talk to them in a way that is convincing? Paula J will talk us through this recipe for persuasive canvassing success.
Paula J has organized field work in Maine with Swing Blue Alliance/Swing Left Greater Boston since 2018, when she and other dedicated New England and Maine volunteers helped flip the second congressional district blue. In 2020, working with the Maine Dems and the Gideon for Senate campaign, Paula co-led Swing Left Maine and was the co-Regional Organizing Coordinator for Swing Left National in Maine.