advocacy

Why Doesn’t Anyone Pay Attention to Local Government?

Day 3

For the past two and a half hours, I was doing some basic data entry for the NAACP records on county boards of election. These next few weeks are very big in terms of local government, as a congressional primary is being held on June 7th. I’m willing to bet a very small percentage of the North Carolina population even knew there was an election; an even smaller one that was informed about the issues/candidates. The general misconception is that people are only affected by national elections, that all the power rests in the executive office. But the issues of inequality starts from the bottom, as gerrymandering and voter ID laws threaten social and economic minorities and skew voter participation. This is the message that Meta was trying to convey to Durham and the rest of the state through the NAACP chapters, and why my busy work was important.

-Rosie

My Cold Calling Adventure

I hate talking on the phone.
Growing up in a world where my communication skills were honed by the written word–something that we have in common with the generation just before telephones–I’m often unsure of what to do or proper protocol in formal phone calls, especially with adults who don’t think twice about it. So having to read from a script I wrote myself was challenging for me and my social anxiety, though the task itself is obviously extraordinarily simple. But busy work like cold calling is integral to a multi-faceted organization like the NAACP, and it was at least informative to see how day to day operations like that work.


-Rosie