LOS ANGELES, Calif.–The African American Voter Registration, Education and Participation (AAVREP) project will close out its general election 2010 campaign activities with a get-out-the-vote (GOTV) rally on Saturday, at 10 a.m. at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, 3650 Martin Luther King Blvd., Los Angeles.
The GOTV rally will feature KJLH and KDAY radio stations as well as special guests and refreshments. It is the final push for AAVREP’s campaign to get more African American’s out to vote this November.
“We have made remarkable strides towards getting more African American’s engaged in the midterm election,” said Laphonza Butler, president of SEIU-ULTCW and co-chair of AAVREP’s November campaign. “We have registered new voters, reached out to existing voters through aggressive phone, mail and radio campaigns, held tele-townhall meetings with voters and potential voters, and we will be on the ground to fire people up for the final stretch this weekend.”
In addition to AAVREP’s general get-out-the vote activities, the organization has focused on the increasing African American turnout for Jerry Brown for Governor and Kamala Harris as the state’s first African American female attorney general.
To date, AAVREP has registered 135,000 voters throughout Los Angeles County. Their general election campaign has the goal of moving African Americans to the polls at the level reached in the 2008 general election when, in California, African Americans as a whole turned out a higher rate than the state’s overall electorate (65.2 percent vs. 63.4 percent).
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Among the participants scheduled for the Saturday rally AAVREP’s founder, L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who has dedicated considerable effort during his time in office to ensuring that African Americans are educated and empowered with respect to civic and electoral participation. He co-founded AAVREP with business, labor, clergy and community leaders nearly a decade ago.
“At the forefront of our minds, should be the fact that African Americans have a profound ability to be the decisive factor in electing candidates like Brown and Harris this year,” said Ridley-Thomas. “In the races for governor and attorney general, African American, working and middle class communities have the most at stake–job creation, health care, public safety.
“These are issues that impact us, and we need to be engaged. We proved in 2008 that, when motivated, we can influence the outcome of an election. As we head to the polls on Tuesday, we need to keep that in mind.”
The GOTV rally, which is open to the public, will culminate in precinct walking, phone banking and a barbershop/beauty shop tour along Crenshaw Boulevard.
