Cliff Albright, LaTosha Brown, Jude Afolake-Olubodun, from left to right
The “Black Voters Matter” campaign stopped at Miller Park on Thursday night, where they met up with Chattanooga’s Concerned Citizens for Justice group in order to reach voters before election day. CCJ’s representative Jude Afolake-Olubodun spoke at length about the proposed “Community Oversight Board,” which CCJ was collecting signatures for in the park. She contrasted that board with the city’s own “Police Advisory Review Committee.”
“The Community Oversight Board is populated by members of the community, grassroot organizers and volunteers,” Ms.
Olubodun said. “While the Police Advisory Committee is populated by members who are suggested by CPD’s internal affairs and voted in by City Council, and not members of the community.”
BVM organizer Cliff Albright expanded on why he believed Chattanooga’s PARC falls short of what it sets out to do.
For the COB to become a reality, the proposed referendum requires a petition with 4,719 signatures in support of the referendum. If the number of signatures is met, then the referendum will make it onto the March ballot.
“Some people will say the city already has that, or the city is already doing that and they’re taking a step in the right direction,” Mr. Albright said. “Some cities will co-opt that process and create something that falls way short. Just having a review board doesn’t mean it will serve the purpose it’s supposed to.
“Just having a civilian review board or oversight board isn’t a panacea, because they can be created in such a way that it makes the problem worse, rather than making the problem better.”
The bus tour has seen Mr. Albright and company pass through over a dozen states. He said that while registration is vital and a goal of the movement, it is all of naught if those registered voters never make it to the polls.
“The primary goal is to build power, and registering voters is part of that process,” Mr. Albright said. “Actually having voters turn out and vote is too, because it doesn’t do us much good if people are just registering and not coming out to vote. We also try to mobilize voters to turn out.”
He pushed against the idea that people who do not vote are apathetic or dispassionate. Rather, he contended those non-voters simply have not been engaged on topics they care about. He also said lessons have been learned from the last half-decade when it comes to balancing protests and voting when it comes to forcing change.
“How we do that is by talking about the issues people are very passionate about,” Mr. Albright said. “We don’t believe there is any voter apathy. When you see disengaged voters, they’re not apathetic. The fact is that people are very passionate about issues they care about.”
“It’s not protests to the exclusion of the electoral strategy, and Ferguson taught us that,” Mr. Albright said. “They had street protests right after Michael Brown, but they didn’t transfer that and merge that into an electoral strategy so they could elect a Kim Gardner, a progressive prosecutor, and get rid of the prosecutors who refused to get rid of the police officers in that case.”
Ms. Olubodun closed the press conference by emphasizing how important all elections are, and urged voters to participate in even the smaller and less publicized contests.
“One thing to remember is that in local elections, that’s where you vote in the district attorneys and the judges,” Ms. Olubodun said. “Part of police accountability happens when we turn it over to the courts and the people who rule on whether something actually happened.”