On Saturday, March 23, Sussex LWV President Martha Rothenberg and Candidate Forums Lead Lisa Welle Malone traveled to Albany, NY, to attend an all-day training workshop put on by the LWV of NY State (LWVNY).
LWVSCDE member Carol McNally, formerly of the Long Island chapter of LWVNY, made the connection for us. The workshop was a great opportunity to meet up with League members from the state where it all began in 1848. (Side note from Martha: My mother was a member of the LWV of Syracuse, about 50 miles from Seneca Falls.)
LWVNY offers these workshops to local Leagues in four different regions of the states. While NY State is enormous compared with our Small Wonder, the NY local Leagues deal with many of the same issues: attracting younger members; expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their membership; increasing membership; dealing with constant shifts in technology; functioning with limited budgets; etc. Martha and Lisa also learned about New York State’s very different political structure and processes and the kinds of advocacy in which the LWVNY engages. An important issue facing the NY Assembly is passage of a state-level Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would consolidate many individual civil rights statutes into a single constitutional amendment.
One training module focused on how LWVNY is using the state ERA issue as a springboard to engage and recruit college-age voters. A session on how to build an effective DEI program focused on policies, processes, people, and practices that can help us productively engage with diverse communities at the Board, Committee, and general membership levels. “Making your Voice Heard: Citizens and the Local Leagues” offered a refresher on the difference between advocacy and lobbying and covered the importance of adhering to LWVUS policy to effectively use both methods to engage and educate with legislators.
We all are inundated with information from multiple news sources; sorting fact from fiction can be daunting and mentally exhausting. The LWVNY workshop offered tactics for recognizing mis- and disinformation to give attendees tools for educating the public on the facts. This session tied in with the recent LWVDE League Day panel discussion on the same topic.
All in attendance left with new ideas ranging from using election and voter registration data to determine voter registration events, to adding LinkedIn to our online communication tools, to using music to connect with young voters and Instagram to reach the 30-40 year olds. The heavy snow that met us as we left the workshop might have softened the sound of our footsteps but did not diminish our resolve to motivate, create, and maintain momentum as we work together to Get Out the Vote and defend democracy.
Submitted by: Martha Rothenberg, LWVSCDE President
