Nonprofits leverage community roots-bases in attempt to register voters and get them to the polls
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally appeared in October 2018 issue of The Reader (www.thereader.com)
From left to right: Arlenne Rodriguez, Karina Hernandez, Angie Remington, Zack Burgin, Aracely Rodriguez, Brett Andres, and Kinzie Mabon
With American civil discourse and liberties under assail, nonprofits are doing civic engagement around voting to get people’s voices heard.
Heartland Workers Center runs a large Get Out the Vote (GOTV) machine. Center Executive Director Sergio Sosa senses great urgency from HWC’s Latino base for the Nov. 6 midterm general elections.
“The current political climate is causing fear among those most vulnerable,” he said. “This climate has also motivated many to be- come more engaged in the voting process as a way to combat that fear. Immigration has recently become more important for Latinos, especially after DACA being under threat and the termination of Temporary Protected Status.
“The recent separation of families at the border and raids in O’Neill, Nebraska, only made this issue more urgent.”
Perennial issues – healthcare, education and the economy – have voters’ attention, too, he added.
The same holds true in the African-Amer-ican community. It’s where Barry Thomas. an organizer with Omega Psi Phi fraternity’s Omaha chapter, Beta Upsilon, became a GOTV activist in response to proposed voter ID laws in Nebraska.
“Knowing the challenges and obstacles African-Americans faced to get the right to vote, when things start happening to take the franchise away it’s a red flag or warning call to say we’re going backward instead of for- ward,” said Thomas, social studies curriculum director for Omaha Public Schools. “That’s awakened a lot of people to get active to en- sure we don’t let things slip back.”
Collective outreach, advocacy and impact are by-words in this age of connectivity and networking as energized groups try turn- ing apathy into social action.
Longtime local players in the election arena use various means to reach voters.
Civic Nebraska educates folks about voting rights.
The similarly named Nebraska Civic Engagement Table (NCET) acts as facilitator, ex- pert and support for many nonprofits doing the grassroots work.
Heartland and League of Women Voters Nebraska helped form NCET to foster a civic collaborative.
“When we launched in 2016 there were only a few nonprofits here that had ever done civic engagement with nonpartisan voter registration–voter turnout,” said NCET Executive Director Zack Burgin.
The Table began with 16 founding members and now has 50-plus. It supports organizations serving historically underrepresented communities or, in voting par- lance, the Rising American Electorate:
Young adults.
Single women.
People of color.
Low-income earners.
Returning citizens.
Thomas’ fraternity partners with groups focused on activating more African-American voters.
“We align our efforts to have a wider net of individuals we can capture, so it’s not just an organization doing a separate, isolated event but all of us collaborating to have a broader outreach with multiple events.”
Fraternity brothers and other partners assist Black Votes Matter in getting voters to the polls on Election Day.
Last April’s North Omaha Political Convention showcased this collective strategy in the lead up to the May primary. Since then, the network’s been at schools, churches and events such as A Taste of North Omaha.
“We’re going to where people are at to try to make sure they are aware,” Thomas said. “More than anything, it’s being present in the same proximity as people to make sure they are presented with opportunities to learn and to be engaged.”
“Our entire theory of change is that non- profit messengers are the most effective voices for civic engagement,” said Burgin.
His organization provides capacity build- ing training, grant funding and how-to tool kits that include, he said, “language tested and effective at increasing voter participation, such as reminding folks to be a voter instead of telling them to vote.”
Resources also instruct how to stay compliant with state voter registration rules and laws. Members reach out to voters in myriad ways:
Door-to-door canvassing.
Manning information-registration tables at block parties, inside lobbies, outside stadiums or gyms.
Direct mail.
Peer-to-peer social influence via email, phone or text.
“We make it so organizations can adapt tools for their own work and message.” said Burgin.
The Table also provides members ac-cess to the Voter Activation Network (VAN), whose public data base allows organizations to strategically target by voting patterns and demographics.
Heartland’s staff of community organizers provides experience and expertise tor nonprofits interested in GOTV work. Its organizers have worked with One World Community Health Centers, Latino Center of the Midlands, Intercultural Senior Center, South High School, Bryan High School, small businesses, educators and community leaders.
Meanwhile, the Douglas County Election Commission (DCEC) serves as convener and clearinghouse for all things voting and election related. It works closely with The Table and its most active members.
Deputy Commissioner Chris Carithers welcomes all the help his office can get in sharing registration-election deadlines, dates and procedures.
He’s seeing increased engagement.
“This year I’ve seen more requests from people to become deputy registrars – the folks authorized to go out and represent our office to register voters – than in 2016, which was a presidential year.”
He said the number of early ballot re- quests is nearly four times that of the last gubernatorial race in 2014.
“Also, our voter registration has topped 350,000 for the first time ever. It tells me a lot of people are interested in voting.”
Barry Thomas reads the same signs. “I’m definitely encouraged by it,” he said. “I’m just hoping no matter what happens in November the people who’ve become engaged, excited, motivated will remain so and not leave this civic engagement on the table. We want to make sure people stay aligned and in tune, so that we can let our voices be heard moving forward.
“I would love to see more young people being a little more attentive and better represented.”
His fraternity partners with its local college-based chapters and with the Black Excellence program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha to reach Gen Z.
“We want to make sure more young people are aware
and active to bring about change for their future. What’s happening today is going to have a longer impact on them than it will on anybody else.”
In his role with Omaha Public Schools, Thomas facilitates a partnership between OPS and the League to register seniors in all American Government classes on Constitution Day.
“We provided American Government teachers voter registration packets resulting in pledges from students to vote and to encourage their friends and family to vote,” said the League’s Joanna Lindberg. “These students will receive postcard and text remind- ers to vote and utilize our nonpartisan voters guide.”
Krystal Fox, a millennial who does GOTV work through the League and her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, also wants more young people participating.
“Trying to change that culture is going to be long-term. I think we’re at a good point to do it because a lot of young people are up- set with what happened in the last election.
I definitely feel that pain as well.”
Fox said she’s learned it’s best to keep things simple.
“As soon as I can get you to agree voting is important, then we can go deeper about how you make your decisions and where you can go to find
more information about candidates and is- sues.”
Chris Carithers supports diverse GOTV efforts, he said, “because you’re talking to people all across the spectrum about how their vote matters and counts.”
“Some of the groups are left leaning, some are right leaning and some straight down the middle,” he said.
“The more information groups can pro- vide their constituents, then the smoother the election’s going to go, and the more people are going to understand the safety and security of the election.”
Regardless of their leanings, nonprofits conduct very different GOTV efforts than do political parties.
“Nonprofits are doing it for their community,” said NCET’s Zack Burgin. “They’re saying vote for yourself, vote for your family, vote to empower your community – not vote for this agenda or for this specific candidate. These nonprofits are just saying what’s important is your voice regardless of who you vote for.”
Since 2012 Heartland Worker Center has conducted its I Vote for My Family campaign.
“It started in South Omaha and now it’s active in North Omaha, Bellevue, Nebraska City, Schuyler, Columbus Norfolk and Grand Island,” said HWC’s Sergio Sosa. “Our efforts are heavily focused on door to door. We also call people. We’re trying a new strategy called relational organizing that asks a person to list their network of relationships. We contact them several times to remind them to vote. We do also provide information via email and on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We’ve partnered with newspapers and radio stations to disseminate our message.
“But canvassing is the most effective strategy.”
Burgin said the strength of nonprofits do- ing GOTV is their “roots and relationships in the communities in which they are experts.”
“They’re there year-round and are going to continue engaging these communities,” he said. “Political campaigns come and go. Non- profits stay – and that’s central to our mission.”
Joanna Lind- berg, who heads the local League of Women Voters GOTV committee, said, “In 2018 we have registered 657 individuals at 84 events with our priority focus on low voter turnout areas of the city.”
The League is also focused on educating prisoners and ex-offenders about their voting rights.
“We try to hit communities less likely to be targeted by the campaigns,” said League member Krystal Fox.
The League publishes an annual voters guide and it conducts weekly candidate forums on KPAO-TV. It’s also produced videos and handouts in the languages of several Omaha refugee and immigrant communities.
Heartland also translates election materials.
Nonprofits provide captive audiences for the Douglas Country Commission to impart election information as well as pools of potential precinct poll workers.
When Chris Carithers talks to groups or neighborhood associations, he often corrects misinformation.
“There’s a perception we don’t count certain ballots. Actually, every ballot that’s cast does get counted if at all possible. There are legal issues that prevent some ballots from being counted but those are very small num- bers. We do everything we can to accept bal- lots. We don’t look for reasons to reject – we look for every reason possible to accept.
“If there are early ballots we can’t accept, Civic Nebraska is one of the groups that helps chase down those voters and explains to them why their ballot wasn’t accepted and what they can do to get it accepted so that we can count it for the election.”
Keeping GOTV players on the same page is part of his job.
“We have a monthly meeting with the stakeholder
groups to take care of any questions or foreseen problems and to help coordinate any election activities, so that people know the rules – what they can and can’t do. We also address how to get a hold of us in case they run into any problems so we can get anything remedied as quickly as possible.”
Visit votedouglascounty.com or call 402-444-VOTE (8683)
Read more of Leo Adam Biga’s work at leoadambiga.com.
by Leo Adam Biga
Spend even a little while with Evie Zysman, as I did, and she will leave an impression on you with her intelligence and passion and commitment. I wrote this story for the New Horizons, a publication of the Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging. We profile dynamic seniors in its pages, and if there’s ever been anyone to overturn outmoded ideas of older individuals being out of touch or all used up, Evie is the one. She is more vital than most people half or a third her age. I believe you will be as struck by her and her story as I was, and as I continue to be.
A force of nature named Evie:
Still a maverick social justice advocate at 100
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally published in the New Horizons
When 100-year-old maverick social activist, children’s advocate and force of nature Evelyn “Evie” Adler Zysman recalls her early years as a social worker back East, she remembers, “as if it were yesterday,” coming upon a foster care nightmare.
It was the 1930s, and the former Evie Adler was pursuing her graduate degree from Columbia University’s New York School of Social Work. As part of her training, Zysman, a Jew, handled Jewish family cases.
“I went to a very nice little home in Queens,” she said from her art-filled Dundee neighborhood residence. “A woman came to the door with a 6-year-old boy. She said, ‘Would you like to see his room?’ and I said, ‘I’d love to.’ We go in, and it’s a nice little room with no bed. Then the woman excuses herself for a minute, and the kid says to me, ‘Would you like to see where I sleep?’ I said, ‘Sure, honey.’ He took me to the head of the basement stairs. There was no light. We walked down in the dark and over in a corner was an old cot. He said, ‘This is where I sleep.’ Then he held out his hand and says, ‘A bee could sting me, and I wouldn’t cry.’
“I knew right then no child should be born into a living hell. We got him out of that house very fast and got her off the list of foster mothers. That was one of the experiences that said to me: Kids are important, their lives are important, they need our help.”
Evie Zysman
Imbued with an undying zeal to make a difference in people’s lives, especially children’s lives, Evie threw herself into her work. Even now, at an age when most of her contemporaries are dead or retired, she remains committed to doing good works and supporting good causes.
Consistent with her belief that children need protection, she spent much of her first 50 years as a licensed social worker, making the rounds among welfare, foster care and single-parent families. True to her conviction that all laborers deserve a decent wage and safe work spaces, she fought for workers’ rights as an organized union leader. Acting on her belief in early childhood education, she helped start a project that opened day care centers in low income areas long before Head Start got off the ground; and she co-founded, with her late husband, Jack Zysman, Playtime Equipment Co., which sold quality early childhood education supplies.
Evie developed her keen social consciousness during one of the greatest eras of need in this country — the Great Depression. The youngest of eight children born to Jacob and Lizzie Adler, she grew up in a caring family that encouraged her to heed her own mind and go her own way but to always have an open heart.
“Mama raised seven daughters as different as night and day and as close as you could possibly get,” she said. “Mama said to us, ‘Each of you is pretty good, but together you are much better. Remember girls: Shoulder to shoulder.’ That was our slogan. And then, to each one of us she would say, ‘Don’t look to your sister — be yourself.’ It was taken for granted each one of us would be ourselves and do something. We loved each other and accepted the fact each one of us had our own lives to live. That was great.”
Even though her European immigrant parents had limited formal education, they encouraged their offspring to appreciate the finer things, including music and reading.
“Papa was a scholar in the Talmud and the Torah. People would come and consult him. My mother couldn’t read or write English but she had a profound respect for education. She would put us girls on the streetcar to go to the library. How can you live without books? Our home was filled with music, too. My sister Bessie played the piano and played it very well. My sister Marie played the violin, something she did professionally at the Loyal Hotel. My sister Mamie sang. We would always be having these concerts in our house and my father would run around opening the windows so the neighbors could also enjoy.”
Then there was the example set by her parents. Jacob brought home crates filled with produce from the wholesale fruit and vegetable stand he ran in the Old Market and often shared the bounty with neighbors. One wintry day Lizzie was about to fetch Evie’s older siblings from school, lest they be lost in a mounting snowstorm, when, according to Evie, the family’s black maid intervened, saying, “You’re not going — you’re staying right here. I’ll bring the children.’ Mama said, ‘You can go, but my coat around you,’ and draped her coat over her. You see, we cared about things. We grew up in a home in which it was taken for granted you had a responsibility for the world around you. There was no question about it.”
Along with the avowed obligation she felt to make the world a better place, came a profound sense of citizenship. She proudly recalls the first time she was old enough to exercise her voting right.
“I will always remember walking into that booth and writing on the ballot and feeling like I am making a difference. If only kids today could have that feeling when it comes to voting,” said Evie, a lifelong Democrat who was an ardent supporter of FDR and his New Deal. When it comes to politics, she’s more than a bystander — she actively campaigns for candidates. She’ll be happy with either Obama or Clinton in the White House.
When it came time to choose a career path, young Evie simply assumed it would be in an arena helping people.
“I was supposed to, somehow,” is how she sums it up all these years later. “I believed, and I still believe, that to take responsibility as a citizen, you must give. You must be active.”
For her, it was inconceivable one would not be socially or politically active in an era filled with defining human events — from millions losing their savings and jobs in the wake of the stock market crash to World War I veterans marching in the streets for relief to unions agitating for workers’ rights to a resurgence of Ku Klux Klan terror to America’s growing isolationism to the stirrings of Fascism at home and abroad. All of this, she said, “got me interested in politics and in keeping my eyes open to what was going on around me. It was a very telling time.”
Unless you were there, it’s difficult to grasp just how devastating the Depression was to countless people’s pocketbooks and psyches.
“It’s so hard for you younger generations to understand” she told a young visitor to her house. “You have never lived in a time of need in this country.” Unfortunately, she added, the disparity “between rich and poor” in America only seems to widen as the years go by.
With her feisty I-want-to-change-the-world spirit, Evie, an Omaha Central High School graduate, would not be deterred from furthering her formal education and, despite meager finances, became the first member of her family to attend college. Because her family could not afford to send her there, she found other means of support via scholarships from the League of Women Voters and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where the Phi Betta Kappa earned her bachelor’s degree.
“I knew that for me to go to college, I had to find a way to go. I had to find work, I had to find scholarships. Nothing came easy economically.”
To help pay her own way, she held a job in the stocking department at Gold’s Department store in downtown Lincoln. An incident she overhead there brought into sharp relief for her the classism that divides America. “
One day, a woman with a little poodle under her arm came over to a water fountain in the back of the store and let her dog drink from it. Well, the floorwalker came running over and said, ‘Madam, that fountain is for people,’ and the woman said, ‘I’m so sorry, I thought it was for the employees.’ That’s an absolutely true story and it tells you where my politics come from and why I care about the world around me and I want to do something about it.”
Her undergraduate studies focused on economics. “I was concerned I should understand how to make a living,” she said. “That was important.” Her understanding of hard times was not just of the at-arms-length, ivory-tower variety. She got a taste of what it was like to struggle when, while still an undergrad, she was befriended by the Lincoln YWCA’s then-director who arranged for Evie to participate in internships that offered a glimpse into how “the other half lived.” Evie worked in blue collar jobs marked by hot, dark, close work spaces.
“She thought it was important for me to have these kind of experiences and so she got me to go do these projects. One, when I was a sophomore, took me in the summer to Chicago, where I worked as a folder in a laundry and lived in a working girls’ rooming house. There was no air conditioning in that factory. And then, between my junior and senior years, I went to New York City, where I worked in a garment factory. I was supposed to be the ‘do-it’ girl — get somebody coffee if they wanted it or give them thread if they needed it, and so forth.
“The workers in our factory were making some rich woman a beautiful dress. They asked me to get a certain thread. And being already socially conscious, I thought, ‘I’ll fix her,’ and I gave them the wrong thread,” a laughing Evie recalled, still delighted at the thought of tweaking the nose of that unknown social maven.
Upon graduating with honors from UNL she set her sights on a master’s degree. First, however, she confronted misogyny and bigotry in the figure of the economics department chairman.
“He said to me, ‘Well, Evelyn, you’re entitled to a graduate fellowship at Berkeley but, you know, you’re a woman and you are a Jew, so what would you possibly do with your graduate degree when you complete it?’ Well, today, you’d sue him if he ever dared say that.”
Instead of letting discrimination stop her, the indomitable Evie carried-on and searched for a fellowship from another source. She found it, too, from the Jewish School of Social Work in New York.
“It was a lot of money, so I took it,” she said. “I had my ethic courses with the Jewish School and my technical courses with Columbia,” where she completed her master’s in 1932.
As her thesis subject she chose the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, one of whose New York factories she worked in. There was a strike on at the time and she interviewed scores of unemployed union members who told her just how difficult it was feeding a family on the dole and how agonizing it was waking-up each morning only to wonder — How are we going to get by? and When am I ever going to work again?
As a social worker she saw many disturbing things — from bad working conditions to child endangerment cases to families struggling to survive on scarce resources. She witnessed enough misery, she said, “that I became free choice long before there was such a phrase.”
Her passion for the job was great but as she became “deeply involved” in the United Social Service Employees Union, she put her first career aside to assume the presidency of the New York chapter.
“I could do even more for people, like getting them decent wages, than I could in social work.” Among the union’s accomplishments during her tenure as president, she said, was helping “guarantee social workers were qualified and paid fairly. You had to pay enough in order to get qualified people. We felt if you, as social workers, were going to make decisions impacting people’s lives, you better be qualified to do it.”
Feeling she’d done all she could as union head, she returned to the social work field. While working for a Jewish Federation agency in New York, she was given the task of interviewing Jewish refugees who had escaped growing Nazi persecution in Germany and neighboring countries. Her job was to place new arrivals with the appropriate state social service departments that could best meet their needs. Her conversations with emigres revealed a sense of relief for having escaped but an even greater worry for their loved ones back home.
“They expressed deep, deep concern and deep, deep sadness and fear about what was going on over there,” she said, “and anxiety about what would happen to their family members that remained over there. They worried too about themselves — about how they would make it here in this country.”
A desire to help others was not the only passion stoked in Evie during those ”wonderful” New York years. She met her future husband there while still a grad student. Dashing Jack Zysman, an athletic New York native, had recently completed his master’s in American history from New York University. One day, Evie went to some office to retrieve data she needed on the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, when she met Jack, who was doing research in the very same office. Sharing similar interests and backgrounds, the two struck up a dialogue and before long they were chums.
The only hitch was that Evie was engaged to “a nice Jewish boy in Omaha.” During a break from her studies, she returned home to sort things out. One day, she was playing tennis at Miller Park when she looked across the green and there stood Jack. “He drove from New York to tell me I was definitely coming back and that I was not to marry anybody but him.” Swept off her feet, she broke off her engagement and promised Jack she would be his.
After their marriage, the couple worked and resided in New York, where she pursued union and social work activities and he taught and coached at a high school. Their only child, John, today a political science professor at Cal-Berkeley, was born in New York. Evie has two grandchildren by John and his wife.
Along the way, Evie became a New Yorker at heart. “I loved that city,” she said. Her small family “lived all over the place,” including the Village, Chelsea and Harlem. As painful as it was to leave, the Zysmans decided Omaha was better suited for raising John and, so, the family moved here shortly after World War II.
Soon the couple began Playtime Equipment, their early childhood education supply company. The genesis for Playtime grew out of Evie’s own curiosity and concern about the educational value of play materials she found at the day care John attended. When the day care’s staff asked her to “help us know what to do,” she rolled up her sleeves and went to work.
She called on experts in New York, including children’s authors, day care managers and educators. When she sought a play equipment manufacturer’s advice, she got a surprise when the rep said, “Why don’t you start a company and supply kids with the right stuff?” It was not what she planned, but she and Jack ran with the idea, forming and operating Playtime right from their home. The company distributed everything from books, games and puzzles to blocks and tinker toys to arts and crafts to playground apparatus to teaching aids. The Zysmans’ main customers were schools and day cares, but parents also sought them out.
“I helped raise half the kids in Omaha,” Evie said.
The Zysman residence became a magnet for state and public education officials, who came to rely on Evie as an early childhood education proponent and catalyst. She began forming coalitions among social service, education and legislative leaders to address the early childhood education gap. A major initiative in that effort was Project AID, a program she helped organize that set-up preschools at black churches in Omaha to boost impoverished children’s development. She said the success of the project helped convince state legislators to make kindergarten a legal requirement and played a role in Nebraska being selected as one of the first states to receive the federal government’s Head Start program.
Gay McTate, an Omaha social worker and close friend of Zysman’s, said, “Evie’s genius lay in her willingness to do something about problems and her capacity to bring together and inspire people who could make a difference.”
Evie immersed herself in many more efforts to improve the lives of children, including helping form the Council for Children’s Services and the Coordinated Childcare Project, clearinghouses geared to meeting at-risk children’s needs.
The welfare of children remains such a passion of hers that she still gets mad when she thinks about the “miserable salaries” early childhood educators make and how state budget cuts adversely impact kids’ programs.
“Everybody agrees today the future of our country depends on educating our children. So, what do we do about it? We cut the budgets. Don’t get me started…” she said, visibly upset at the idea.
Besides children, she has worked with such organizations as the United Way, the Urban League, the League of Women Voters, the Jewish Council of Women, Hadassah and the local social action group Omaha Together One Community.
In her nearly century of living, she’s seen America make “lots of progress” in the area of social justice, but feels “we have a long way to go. I worry about the future of this country.”
Calling herself “a good secular Jew,” she eschews attending services and instead trusts her conscience to “tell me what’s right and wrong. I don’t see how you can call yourself a good Jew and not be a social activist.” Even today, she continues working for a better community by participating in Benchmark, a National Council of Jewish Women initiative to raise awareness and discussion about court appointments and by organizing a Temple Israel Synagogue Mitzvah (Hebrew, for good deed) that staffs library summer reading programs with volunteers.
Her good deeds have won her numerous awards, most recently the D.J.’s Hero Award from the Salvation Army and Temple Israel’s Tikkun Olam (Hebrew, for repairing the world) Social Justice Award.
She’s outlived Jack and her siblings, yet her days remain rich in love and life. “I play bridge. I get my New York Times every day. I have my books (she is a regular at the Sorenson Library branch). I’ve got friends. I have my son and daughter-in-law. I have my grandchild. What else do you need? It’s been a very full life.”
As she nears a century of living Evie knows the fight for social justice is a never-ending struggle she can still shine a light on.
“How would I define social justice?” she said at an Omaha event honoring her. “You know, it’s silly to try to put a name to realizing that everybody should have the same rights as you. There is no name for it. It’s just being human…it’s being Jewish. There’s no name for it. Give a name to my mother who couldn’t read or write but thought that you should do for each other.”