SPLC Action Fund Partner Spotlight: Alabama Forward

This week we celebrate one of the SPLC Action Fund’s newest partners in civic and electoral engagement work in Alabama – Alabama Forward. The organization’s executive director, Evan Milligan, provided the following responses about their work, reflections on the last year and vision for the future.

What is the mission and vision of Alabama Forward?

Alabama Forward is a state-based 501(c)(3) civic engagement coordinating table committed to advancing movement towards greater freedom and progressive, solution-oriented policy among a diverse coalition of Alabama-based partner organizations, so that every Alabamian can engage in the democratic process. In pursuit of this mission Alabama Forward prioritizes race and gender equity to engage every Alabamian in all aspects of our democracy.

The vision of the Alabama Forward 501(c)3 Network is to boost civic and political participation through collaborative voter engagement and election reform efforts while building the capacity of participating organizations to more effectively communicate about and engage in their work. Alabama Forward also prioritizes supporting compelling emerging leaders and organizations who have not historically received more traditional forms of support.

What kind of work did Alabama Forward partners do during the 2020 election cycle? What were some lessons learned?

Between September and December 2020, Alabama Forward distributed over $300,000 in technical assistance and grants to member groups and allies who were engaged in voter engagement and voter protection work. Between late September and Nov. 3, those groups collectively reported performing over 1,470,000 voter engagement acts throughout Alabama, including 1.3 million text interactions, 10,000 doors knocked on, 23,000 voter registration attempts, 26,000 absentee ballot applications and 41,000 phone calls.

During this same time, Alabama Forward also launched our Statewide Asset Mapping Project (STAMP), provided a series of publicly accessible [Voter Activation Network (VAN) database] trainings, and facilitated a series of public-facing events, including a biweekly virtual speaker series called The Weekly Tune-Up and a legislative summit focusing on redistricting, coalition building and the connection between identity and movement building.

A huge lesson learned was the importance of clear and consistent communication across a variety of styles.  Some members are email people. Some are face-to-face or phone-call people. Relying solely on one communication style is a detriment and leaves the door open for unchecked bias and assumptions about commitment levels. 

Another lesson was that the entire world of canvassing has converged with the data and tech world. Field and Data are not separate departments anymore. … For the business side of our work, fluency on data tracking, VAN usage and other tools is almost as critical to effective statewide coverage as knowing how to effectively knock on a door. It’s not as important at a community/human-to-human trust level, but that fluency and those skills are essential when seeking to build collective work that operates at a larger scale. Education and reinforcement are required to help advocates develop this fluency and skill set. So, it’s important for the state table to embrace this role wholeheartedly. 

What is your vision for the future of Alabama Forward’s work?

We want to build a state that features democratic institutions that are accessible to all Alabamians, where core institutions are responsive and just, and where our culture is one defined by deeply engaged people. To get there, we need a more involved electorate. We will work over the next 10 years to register and move to deeper levels of civic engagement 1 million voting-eligible Alabamians. We have about a million people who didn’t participate in the last election, and we want to move people from the sidelines, particularly 18- to 45-year-olds, women, and Black, Latinx, [Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders] and Indigenous community members. 

People aren’t just going to come off the sidelines, though. People who have left the state and disassociated from their Alabama identities aren’t going to suddenly find passion for a just society they’ve never experienced. They have to be inspired. So, we’re leaning into a holistic definition of civic engagement, narrative campaigns and fundamental field canvassing to create a space that inspires new people to begin voting and routine voters to grow into other leadership development roles. We’re starting that work through our table working groups, along with the following programs:

• Shine a Light Alabama, a program that works to acknowledge the toll of grief and support collective healing, resilience, connection and empathy;
   
• Build the Block Parties, which will combine creative expression, interactive games, door prizes and local storytelling alongside recruitment of neighbors into ongoing advocacy efforts;
   
• Shake the Field, which is a digital space and event series created to energize 18- to 45-year-old Alabamians living in the state or the Alabama diaspora to get off the sidelines and engage in some aspect of their civic and cultural institutions;
   
• And an oral history, narrative documentation and sharing program that will document member stories and train community members in narrative collection and story production.

Finally, tell us a little bit about the work you and Alabama Forward’s partners are doing on redistricting.

We currently hold biweekly briefings for partners and members on the upcoming Alabama redistricting and reapportionment process. We are also hosting CROWD [Community Redistricting Organizations Working for Democracy] Fellows focusing on Central Alabama counties, who are coordinating a collective assessment of state-level map drafts. As part of this work, we’re also issuing [requests for proposals] to distribute sub-grants to member groups committed to community districting work. Going forward, we’re producing Build the Block Party content that accompanies tools developed by member groups and allies so that canvassers and advocates can have a wide array of easily accessible tools to utilize when providing mapping trainings.

Katie Glenn is a policy associate for the SPLC Action Fund.

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