SIXTEEN

BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER

WHEN I FIRST STARTED becoming aware of felon disenfranchisement, it was in the context of the impact that it had on the African American and Latinx community. When you talk about felon disenfranchisement, you’re talking about criminal justice. And when you’re talking about criminal justice, the image that comes to your mind is an African American or maybe a Latinx person, because we’ve been paraded on television in that role far more frequently than anyone else. Because a lot of the attention was put on the disproportionate impact mass incarceration has had on African Americans and Latinx populations, it was natural to start thinking of felon disenfranchisement as a Black or Brown issue.

From my own previous experience, I would have been inclined to agree. In Dade County, when I looked at the people that were in the jails, there weren’t a lot of white people in there. It was mostly Black and Brown people. Besides the over-policing of these communities, one of the reasons for this is the bail system. When someone is arrested, they have to post bail in order to get out. When you can’t afford to do that, you have to stay in jail to fight your case from the inside. But the conditions in prison make it almost impossible to successfully fight your case while you’re incarcerated. Your access to knowledge is limited. You don’t have the money for investigators and can’t move around to get the information you need. You’re in a situation where you’re basically forced to take a plea agreement. There were times when I wasn’t guilty, but I took the plea because I couldn’t see myself living in that jail for years at a time to make sure that my case went to trial.

When I traveled around the state talking about felon disenfranchisement, however, I met a lot of white people with felony convictions. That shifted my perspective, understanding that even though Black and Brown folks may be treated differently by the criminal justice system, that did not exclude white people from being impacted. We were the ones who were locked up, but even though they might not have been locked up, or were for far less time, they still had that felony conviction. They still couldn’t vote.

Seeing the breadth of the impact let me know we had to get everybody on board if this thing was going to be successful. That was the angle that I knew we had to take in the campaign. I knew that if this issue was only seen as a Black and Brown issue, it would have not succeeded. I am unaware of any instances when this country rallied around people of color without any motive other than wanting to do the right, just, or humane thing. I had never heard or seen it before, and I didn’t expect to see it now, so this had to be more than just about Black and Brown folks.

I was very intentional in going to places that were predominantly white or predominantly conservative to talk about felon disenfranchisement, because I really did believe that if I was able to break down the barriers that naturally separate us, our skin color, our political preferences, then I’d be able to connect to more people and bring more people along.

I WAS INVITED TO SPEAK AT A COLLEGE IN SOUTHWEST FLORIDA, IN THE NAPLES AREA. At the end of my presentation, there were a bunch of people coming up to shake my hand and take pictures. I saw this white guy standing patiently waiting to speak to me. His name was Neil Volz, and he approached me and introduced himself. He told me that he was a conservative, and he also told me that he was a returning citizen. Once I heard that, I thought, I’ve got to connect with this guy. I’ve got to form a relationship with him.

When we don’t talk to people who we are told don’t agree with us, then how do we get a chance to understand why they feel the way they feel or what they’re actually thinking? Then we’re judging people only by the labels we see in front of us. We don’t take the opportunity to go beyond the labels and get to know the person. I wanted to know the person, whoever it was I was talking to. I wanted to know their story.

Neil’s story involved coming from a small town in Ohio to becoming a high-flying lobbyist. He ended up as chief of staff for Bob Ney, one of the most powerful Republican congressmen in the nation. He got caught up in some practices that breached ethical and legal boundaries and in 2006 was convicted of conspiracy as part of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Both Neil Volz and Ney pleaded guilty to accepting lavish gifts for political favors. Ney went to prison. Volz was fined and put on probation.

When I met Neil, this guy who had been a powerful politico, he was working as a janitor because of his felony conviction. He was also working at a drug treatment shelter called Saint Matthew’s House, similar, in many ways, to my experiences working at the three-quarter-way house. Right then and there, we had a common bond, not only because he was a returning citizen but also because we both worked with people who were recovering from drugs, people who had been to prison, people who had been homeless. What I know about that is when you’re in proximity to those types of people, you have to have a heart. If you didn’t have a heart before that, you develop one. Now, instead of looking down on people with felony convictions or with drug habits, you get to understand them more as people—another example of why breaking barriers is so important.

I wanted Neil to get involved with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. I felt he would bring a perspective and a voice that we needed. If we were going to really address the issues that impact people with felony convictions, we needed a cross-section of voices that have been impacted by the system, of voices that couldn’t vote because of a prior felony conviction. His voice needed to be heard just like everyone else’s. His perspective needed to be given consideration just like every other person’s.

Neil helped create a chapter of FRRC in the area that he lived in, in southwest Florida. I got him involved in petition collection, and then, when I was putting together the advisory board and steering committee—a select group of people who would weigh in on the strategies of the campaign—it only made sense to me that Neil’s voice was present in that space. He had even more relevant experience. Ironically, as a lobbyist, Neil was very influential in passing a major piece of legislation called the Help America Vote Act, getting states and localities to upgrade voting machines, registration processes, and poll-worker training after the issues of the 2000 presidential election.

Neil served as a strong voice in our campaign, especially when we were looking at how we were saying things to people, how we were engaging folks. Neil was able to find different inroads to the conservative community that we hadn’t thought about. The conservative crowd had always been those other people we don’t typically socialize with. When you don’t interact with folks, you don’t necessarily know what they do or where they do it. But Neil did. He would go to their meetings and certain events.

One time he went to a biker event and ended up meeting a guy we knew as “Rogue.” Rogue was a returning citizen as well. Neil struck up a conversation with him, and they developed a relationship and, as it turned out, Rogue was the vice president of Bikers for Trump. When I heard the story, I was like, “Man, that’s perfect.” The power of our campaign was the fact that felon disenfranchisement impacted people from all walks of life.

For a white person to be able to look at somebody like Rogue and see that he couldn’t vote because of a felony conviction totally went against their perception that disenfranchisement was a Black issue. Rogue was, to me, an amazing find, because he spoke not only to the breadth of impact that felon disenfranchisement has had but even more deeply to how we view democracy, how we view voting. It really challenged me to think through that process and realize that if we’re talking about democracy and how every American citizen should have the right to vote, that means even people that I may not agree with. That means even people who may not look like me. What Rogue spoke to was the fact that we were fighting just as hard for that person who wanted to vote for Donald Trump as we were for the person who wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton. At the end of the day, if we’re basing our advocacy around voting only to empower the people we believe may think like us, then we’re not engaging with what democracy is all about.

I WAS NOW AWARE THAT WHEN I WENT OUT TO SPEAK ABOUT FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT, a lot of people processed that immediately by saying: African American people are in prison. African Americans are disenfranchised. African Americans generally vote for Democrats. Through these quick, barely conscious processes that go on in people’s heads, the conclusion was formed that our ballot initiative was for Democrats.

That line of thinking was based on all the misconceptions I have outlined already, but you can’t grab people with that. How could I get Republicans or independents to instantly consider that we were talking about something beyond simply wanting to empower the Democratic Party, something deeper than even politics or race? So my approach to people, my initial question, was always: “Do you know someone who you love who ever made a mistake?”

Everybody knows somebody who has made a mistake, or they themselves have made a mistake. I’ve never had someone say no to that question. When they said yes, we would talk about it.

I would say, “You know what? That’s the same thing with me. I’ve made a mistake. Right now, I’m here with these petitions . . .” and I’d talk about the Voting Rights Amendment. (It wasn’t called Amendment 4 until later; a proposed constitutional amendment doesn’t get a number until after a ballot initiative is fully approved and placed on the ballot.) I’d talk about the current policies in Florida. I’d say, “You know, in Florida, if you’ve ever been convicted of a felony, you lose the right to vote for life.”

Almost every person I spoke to was surprised by that, that American citizens would lose their right to vote for life. People always assumed there was some kind of mechanism in place that would allow a person to gain back the right to vote once they served their time. To hear there was no such system in place in Florida and that, in fact, Florida was the worst state in the country as it relates to felon disenfranchisement, the majority of the folks I talked to expressed a range of emotions from confusion to shame.

Talking about making a mistake allowed us to start from someplace personal, not political. Even before we consulted with experts, I knew you wanted people to fight for a cause that was impacting them or people that they loved. I wanted them to see that they might have a personal stake in it. When it became about someone they loved, we were already past their partisan differences or whatever racial or other existing biases they might have. If you think about a proposed amendment as relating to faceless other people, it’s easy to discard it or not put forth much effort. It’s easy not to care. But when it’s about you or someone you love, there’s a level of care and commitment and support that significantly increases.

Once we connected our proposed amendment to someone they loved, and once we educated them about the system in place in Florida, folks readily signed the petition. Blood is thicker than water. It was the same line of thinking I had been working with since I had people sign those pledge cards I printed up with PICO’s help. Then I was thinking that if those 1.4 million disenfranchised returning citizens could each get just five of their friends and family members who loved them to pledge to vote on behalf, maybe we could convince the governor to change the clemency policies. I could imagine that each of those individuals had at least one loved one who was a registered voter and could cast a ballot.

By now we had progressed beyond trying to sway the governor, but the core logic of the effort remained: if people are going to the polls on behalf of their family members, or they’re going to the polls on behalf of someone they love, chances are they’re going to vote in that direction, rather than for what a policymaker is trying to convince them to vote for. I figured that if someone has a chance to do something on behalf of a family member, it’s going to be hard to stop them from doing that. If a mother in the voting booth, for instance, has a moral dilemma between deciding to vote for something because of a slick-sounding politician or voting for something that will give her son or her husband a better way of life, it’s not much of a dilemma in the end.

And this was what kept coming back to me about our amendment: blood is thicker than water. I can organize people along bloodlines as opposed to political lines or racial lines. We were going to win based on love and not on hate or fear. And that was going to make victory taste twice as sweet.

IMAGINE YOURSELF DRIVING DOWN THE MAJOR EXPRESSWAY IN YOUR COMMUNITY AND you come across an accident. There’s someone lying on the ground and you decide to stop your car. You get out and you run up to that person.

Your first question is not going to be, “Who did you vote for, for president?” Your first question is not going to be, “How much money do you make?” Or, “What’s your immigration status?” Or, “What’s your sexual identity?” Your first question is going to be, “Are you okay? How can I help?”

Those moments right there are when humanity is great, when our community and our country are great. Those are moments when we can look up and be proud of who we are as Americans. Why do we have to wait for accidents to bring forth our essential humanity? Why can’t we strive to act that way every moment of the day?

As the campaign wore on, I saw a spirit emerging that was similar to the spirit of communities after natural disasters.

After a hurricane goes through Florida, you see people coming together, trying to help out their neighbors. One of the images that stuck with me was from around the time Hurricane Harvey ripped through Houston. Derrick Lewis, a top-ranked UFC heavyweight who is African American, was out in his truck trying to rescue as many people as he could, as the police and firefighters were critically overloaded. One guy he was able to help had lost all of his possessions . . . except for his Confederate flag.

The flag and a few of his clothes were all he had been able to salvage. The man kept apologizing to Lewis, saying he would sit in the back of the truck and not bring the flag inside the cab, while his wife kept hitting him in the arm saying he should have just left it behind. Lewis told him, “Man, I’m not worried about that. I’ve been living in the South all my life, and it’s nothing I haven’t seen before or discussed. I just want to help.”

For Lewis, like many others, the tragedy was bigger than a flag or what it represented. He was able to see beyond that symbol and beyond the skin color of that guy to see a human being in need. That is how real change happens. And that was the spirit we were embracing with the campaign. Why do we have to wait for natural disasters to show our greatness? Though our ballot initiative I thought we had the potential to elevate people over politics like that. We could come to understand how valuable and important it is for us to see each other as human beings, all just trying to overcome obstacles and deal with the challenges of life.

WHEN GOVERNOR RICK SCOTT WON HIS ELECTION IN 2010 BY JUST OVER SIXTY THOUSAND votes and was able to roll back the clemency policies that Charlie Crist had implemented, I kept thinking about the 1.4 million people in Florida who could not vote because of a felony conviction. This is not to say they would all vote in one direction, Republican or Democrat or independent or what have you. It just meant that their needs and interests were easy to overlook, because they weren’t a group that politicians had to pay any attention to since they didn’t have the power to vote. And even if half of returning citizens voted in a particular election, that would make a voting bloc ten times the size of the margin of victory for an election as important as one for governor of the state.

The mere sixty-thousand-vote margin in the election might have done us a favor because it energized a group of people that could actually be the catalyst to bring about change. If all it takes is sixty thousand votes to swing such an important election and the potential pool of re-enfranchised citizens is 1.4 million, that’s enormous—especially in a state that has often played an outsize role in national elections. This was another major reason why restoring the power to vote felt like the first civil right to go about restoring. How powerful would it be if the very same people who were told that they don’t deserve to have their voices heard could come together and create a situation in which they could be treated with dignity? Inevitably that kind of voting bloc would be able to draw attention to whatever issues it felt most strongly about.

There has been a complaint in minority communities since time immemorial that politicians don’t care about the intimate issues that impact low-income families. If some members of that community have also lost their right to vote, and that is coupled with remaining folks who can vote but don’t, it leads to a situation where a politician doesn’t even see that community. It is very easy for a politician to ignore someone who doesn’t vote. And it is a no-brainer for a politician to ignore someone who can’t vote. They may not always even consciously know they’re doing it, but they are just naturally drawn to pay attention to other voting blocs.

I firmly believed that a lot of our elected officials knew that the state’s criminal justice policies were outdated. They knew they didn’t work. But politicians don’t always listen to common sense. They are scared to actually do anything to change these policies, choosing instead to feed off of a false narrative than to do the right thing, because they think it’s politically safe to do so. Their decision on whether or not to revise criminal justice policies or re-entry policies is not based on data. It’s not based on research. It’s not based on common sense or common decency. It’s based on their desire to stay in office. That is their framework of thinking.

In the case of Florida, there was a stronger force at play: private prisons. For the private prison industry, it is in their interest to create environments where more people go to prison, to fill their beds, because they are a bottom-line business and want to make profits for their stakeholders. This industry can be very influential in political campaigns. It has money and influence, and here we were battling against these people. Even if I am talking common sense as to why felon re-enfranchisement is effective, or why policies around mass incarceration are deleterious to the common good, elected officials are going to ask themselves: Do I listen to Desmond, who is talking some common sense? Or do I listen to the donors to my campaign? I need money to get re-elected . . . And at the end of the day, who do you think wins?

So if a lot of politicians are not guided by principles, by doing the right thing, what are they guided by? Political analysis. They are guided by their desire to remain in office. They’re not hearing the cries of people in communities who are suffering. But they will listen to votes. Having a person regain that ability to vote will allow them the opportunity to have their issues paid attention to by politicians. Having an impact on elections means that politicians will pay closer attention to people’s needs.

And so I thought, Maybe we need to have a conversation with them along the lines that they understand. Maybe I had to go over to the politicians and say, “I may not be able to influence you with money, but I can influence you with votes.” And so that’s what I set out to do: create a constituency group that, if we could actually organize it, would be one of the most powerful groups in the state of Florida.