VOP going door to door to talk to voters

Photos by Jill Nance/The News & Advance

Norman Brown speaks to Virginia Organizing Project intern Kisha Johnson who went door-to-door on Wadsworth Street in Lynchburg on Tuesday taking notice of issues that residents feel are important during this election year. VOP interns are also trying to register as many voters as possible.

By Ray Reed

Published: July 17, 2008

A Virginia group is knocking on doors in Lynchburg neighborhoods, looking for a few people willing to get involved with their government leaders.

Four paid intern workers for the Virginia Organizing Project say they are finding people who say that crime and safety are the primary issues in some neighborhoods, while in others the residents’ top concerns are about economic matters like housing.

“We’re going door to door in a nonpartisan way,” said Barry Butler, Lynchburg coordinator of the Virginia Organizing Project. Butler said the effort is a “civic engagement project,” and is being conducted in cities across Virginia.

Its primary targets are people who are in “marginalized constituency groups,” Butler said.

In Lynchburg, the group’s goal is to knock on 13,000 doors. That’s the task facing Kisha Johnson, Zach Barrett, Joshua Davis and Becky Eades, all young Lynchburg residents themselves.

The interns usually ask people three questions, one of which is: “On a scale of one to five, how important do you think it is for everyone to have health care?”

They also urge people to attend a meeting to discuss health-care issues with the city’s state legislators, Sen. Steve Newman and Del. Shannon Valentine.

In Lynchburg, the group asks people to name an issue that concerns them most, and also to say whether residents are aware of the city’s efforts to promote dialogue about race relations.

About 40 to 50 percent of people tell the interns they were not aware of the race dialogue, Butler said, although the program has been heavily publicized.

Working out of a union hall on Campbell Avenue in Lynchburg, the four interns fan out daily with clipboards to record people’s responses, and a handful of voter-guide booklets that tell people how to register to vote.

Although voter registration isn’t the project’s primary goal, Butler said, it has led between 50 and 60 people to fill out registration forms.

The booklet takes a stand on several issues, none of which is specifically on the ballot this year.

Among the issues are racial profiling by police officers, child care for workers, and immigration rights. Environmental issues and workers’ rights are key elements in the 32-page guide.

It urges people to support energy independence, and to oppose uranium mining in Virginia.

One page focuses on civil rights, with an anti-discrimination message that quotes the Rev. Jerry Falwell as saying in 2005 that rights for everyone, including people who are gay, are “an American value that I would think we pretty much all agree on.”

That page of the guide urges people to write letters to legislators and newspapers expressing their opinions about discrimination based on sexual orientation.

While the Virginia Organizing Project serves as a conduit for wages paid to 50 interns around the state, VOP lists 12 organizations that support it:
The ACLU, Democracy South, Equality Virginia, Tenants and Workers United, AFL-CIO, Association of Personal Care Assistants, Virginia Conservation Network, Virginia Education Association, Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, Virginia League of Conservation Voters, NAACP, and the Sierra Club.

Kisha Johnson (right) speaks with Nancy Fitzgerald and her husband, Dewey, on Tuesday as Johnson went door-to-door on Wadsworth Street. The group’s goal is to knock on 13,000 doors.