Events
August 7, 2024 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Panel: “When We Vote: Why it Matters”
Free event. Open to the public.
When: August 7, 2024, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
Where: Union Chapel in Oak Bluff
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. A book signing with Michele Norris will also be featured.
Registration Info: TBA
Featuring:
-
Paula Williams Madison – Chairman & CEO of Madison Media Management LLC & Founding
Partner with The Group LLC -
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 -
Michelle 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”
Paula Williams Madison is Chairman and CEO of Madison Media
Management LLC, a Los Angeles-based media consultancy
company with global reach. She also serves as a Founding
Partner with The Group LLC, a high-level strategy, marketing and
communications consultancy also headquartered in Los
Angeles.’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 the 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 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.