PA League featured in Post-Gazette

The PA League was recently featured in the series of Right Here columns about 20-something Pittsburghers who work at nonprofit organizations.

“Our goal is not only to engage [voters], but keep them engaged after this election. … I’ve never seen an election with this much enthusiasm,” Ms. Rincon said.

Read the full text of the article here

Tags: election, engagement, new voters, pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, post-gazette, registration, students, volunteers, vote

Standing up for America

Standing Up for America!

Terry and I spent the morning with our friends Jerry, Andy, and Kelly from the United Steelworkers at the US Steel Clairton Works making sure that everyone there was registered to vote before the registration deadline Monday. Thanks to the USW for bringing us in.

You may be wondering, why, standing up for America, is Terry crouching in this photo? I suggest spending a little time out talking to voters with him, and you will see that he does things his own way. Not that he is any less effective for it: there are a few people who will be out at the polls November 4 who would not have been able to vote this year without Terry’s dedication this morning!

Mac

Tags: 2008, canvassing, election, new voters, Pennsylvania, registration, steelworkers, voter

Registering Voters makes the News!

We got a spot in the Post-Gazette for our jail registration work in conjunction with Just Harvest; Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN; the Community Voters Project; Work for Progress; and Duquesne University nursing and political science students last week!

“Spearheaded by inmate program director Jack Pishke, it was the largest registration effort to date at the jail and the only one jail officials knew of statewide, in anticipation of the last registration day: Oct. 6.

In a dizzying two hours, the group helped to complete 456 new registrations and about 700 absentee ballot applications.

Unlike most of the younger volunteers, Ms. Rabinowitz, 67, of Park Place, had been in jail before. She was locked up with a group of organizers for two separate stretches in 1963, after the group was arrested for registering rural black voters in the south with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Those voters, she said, were scared because “they’d never had the right to vote before and we couldn’t tell them it wasn’t dangerous.”

The jail inmates today were just eager. And hopeful.”

Read the full article

Tags: allegheny county, Allegheny County Jail, disenfranchised, election, ex-offenders, inmates, pa league of young voters, pa league of young voters education fund, Pennsylvania, registration, unlock the vote, vote, voter, Voting