Events

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and Report for America have joined together once again to present a timely discussion on the power of our vote!

Panel: “When We Vote: Why It Matters” 

Free event. Open to the public.

When: August 7, 2024, 5:30 – 7 p.m., local time

Where: Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, Mass. (Martha’s Vineyard)

Why: There is an assault on voters’ rights, particularly when it comes to the voting rights of African Americans. A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice details the growing racial voter gap as Black voter participation has gone down since the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the Voting Rights Act in 2013. For decades after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, there was a steady trend toward voting equality, but since the decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted protections for voters in states with a history of discrimination, that positive trend has reversed.

Our esteemed panel will talk about the consequences of the increasing racial voter gap. They will report on some of the acts across the country that are having an impact on our right to vote and share some of the solutions being initiated to ensure that there is equal access to the polls. They will also let the audience know what they can do to strengthen the laws to reverse the trend.

Presented In Association With the Union Chapel Education & Cultural Institute Charles Ogletree Forums

Featuring:

• Paula Williams Madison – Chairman & CEO of Madison Media Management LLC & Principal Owner of The Africa Channel

• Errin Haines – Founding Mother and Editor at Large for The 19th & MSNBC Contributor

• Wesley Lowery – Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop & Journalist-in-Residence at
  Newmark Graduate School of Journalism

• Michele Norris – Columnist for The Washington Post Opinion Section,  Author & Host of “Your Mama’s Kitchen”

• Trymaine Lee – Correspondent for MSNBC, Host of “Into America”  & Contributing Writer to the
  “1619 Project”

Panelist Bios

Paula Williams Madison is Chairman and CEO of Madison Media Management LLC, a Los Angeles-based media consulting company with global reach. She is the Principal Owner of The Africa Channel and previously served as a Founding Partner with The Group LLC. In 2011, Madison retired from NBCUniversal, where she was President and General Manager of NBC4 Los Angeles. She was also Los Angeles Regional General Manager for NBCU’s Telemundo TV stations, and Vice President and News Director of NBC4 New York. Under Madison’s watch, WNBC4 Los Angeles earned numerous Emmy, Golden Mike and Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards. Her concurrent career as a writer and journalist also led to a 1996 Peabody Award for NBC4 New York’s investigation, “A License to Kill.”

Errin Haines is a Founding Mother and Editor at Large for The 19th, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom covering the intersection of women, politics, and policy, and an MSNBC Contributor. An award-winning political journalist focused on issues of race, gender and politics, Errin was previously the Associated Press’ National Writer on Race and Ethnicity. She has also worked at The Washington Post, The Orlando Sentinel, and The Los Angeles Times. Errin was a Fall 2019 Ferris Professor at Princeton University, teaching a class on Black women and the 2020 election. She joins Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics as a fellow in their fifth anniversary class in fall 2020.

Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and one of the nation’s leading reporters on issues of race and justice. He is the executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop, an innovative “training hospital” journalism non-profit based at American University in Washington, D.C. that trains a rising generation of journalists by partnering them with professional newsrooms to work on projects that fill crucial gaps in media coverage. He is also a Journalist-in-Residence at CUNY Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and a contributing editor at The Marshall Project.

Michele Norris is one of America’s most trusted voices in journalism, earning several honors over a long career, including
Peabody, Emmy, Dupont, and Goldsmith awards. She is a columnist for The Washington Post Opinion Section, the host of the Audible Original Podcast, Your Mama’s Kitchen, and from 2002 to 2012 she was a cohost of NPR’s All Things Considered. Norris is also the founding director of The Race Card Project, a Peabody Award–winning narrative archive where people around the world share their reflections on identity—in just six words. Her first book, The Grace of Silence, was named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Kansas City Star. Before joining NPR, Norris spent almost ten years as a reporter for ABC News, covering politics, policy, and the dynamics of social change. Early in her career, she also worked as a staff writer for The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.

Trymaine Lee is a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning journalist and correspondent for MSNBC and the host of the “Into America” podcast, where he explores the intersection of politics, race and justice through the lens of the Black experience in America. Trymaine is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” and has reported for a host of local and national news outlets, including The New York Times, the Huffington Post, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Trentonian and the Philadelphia Tribune. He was a 2016/2017 New America Foundation fellow and has been named to Ebony magazine’s “Power 100” and The Root’s “Root 100” lists of influential African Americans. Trymaine is also a past recipient of the National Association of Black Journalists Emerging Journalist of the Year award.

Become an event partner! Email: fsigers@nabj.org.