THE STORY OF AMENDMENT 4
BY MILA AL-AYOUBI
In 2012, I began working with Desmond Meade, the leader of the Second Chances grassroots movement in Florida. When I first met him, he was sharing his story. He had served in the military, gotten addicted to drugs, lost his home and was convicted of drug-related felony charges, for which he served time in prison. Upon his release, he sought treatment for addiction, got his bachelor’s degree, was completing his Juris Doctorate, and was also working with PICO National Network (PICO), a faith-based, community organizing group, while serving as the President of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC). We were partnered up at PICO to work on voting restoration and he schooled me on felon disenfranchisement in Florida.
Here is what I learned: In Florida, if you had a felony conviction, you lost your eligibility to vote for life, even after completing your full sentence. Florida was one of only four states that did this, and at the time, 1.69 million people in the state were denied voting rights, as a result. That was 10% of Florida’s voting population, with a disparate impact of 23% on Florida’s Black voting population. Florida’s Constitution granted the Governor and his or her 3-person cabinet sole authority to restore civil rights on a case-by-case basis. The way the system was set up, it would take decades to get through the clemency process and get a hearing date. Even then, less than 1% of cases resulted in voting restoration. The Clemency Board could approve or deny applicants arbitrarily. They did not have to provide any reasons for decisions and the decisions were not subject to legislative oversight or judicial review.
Later, I discovered that this law was enshrined in Florida’s Constitution, in 1869, in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, when former Confederate states had to amend their constitution to extend the right to vote to newly freed slaves in order to be reinstated to the Union. In response, Florida (and other southern states) created laws barring people with felony convictions from voting, while also expanding felony crimes in the penal code targeting black citizens, to sustain slave labor through mass incarceration. All of this was possible because of the loophole that exists in the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that leaves allowances for involuntary servitude as punishment for crime. As a result, generations of black and brown communities disproportionately suffer devastating collateral consequences that decimate families, destroy economic growth, restrict or eliminate access to vital public services (like housing, health care, employment and education) and snuff out the spirit of civic engagement, not only in Florida, but across the country.
Between 2000 and 2012 the Florida civil rights community fought to change the State’s policy for voting restoration, exhausting recourse via litigation, executive order, and legislative action. The only option left was to initiate a citizen-led constitutional amendment, which would take over 1 million signatures to get on the ballot, 60% approval of Florida voters and over $20 million dollars in resources. Thus, began the grassroots movement, centered on and led by directly impacted people and their allies, taking matters into their own hands to put voting rights for people with felony convictions into the Florida Constitution - a feat most believed was impossible, especially in the South.
By late 2013, Desmond and I were given an opportunity to advance the work for voting restoration and underwent a 12-month process to 1) develop strategies and a campaign plan that would produce a win, but would also lift-up directly impacted people and create lasting grassroots infrastructure in the state; 2) craft sound policy in collaboration with diverse stakeholders (50+ organizations) that would pass judicial scrutiny, produce intended impact and protect implementation; and 3) drive participatory research for values-based messaging, to establish a viable path to victory. We achieved all three objectives by the end of 2014.
After that our world began to crumble – I had to step back from the work, partners left and funding dried-up. For all of 2015, Desmond was the lone man standing for voting restoration. His only support was from the grassroots volunteers who continued to collect petitions for over two years to reach the 78K signatures required to trigger the legal review by the Florida Supreme Court to determine if the ballot language was deemed constitutional. During that time, Desmond single-handedly drove across the state dropping off blank petitions, picking up signed petitions and delivering them to the 68 county supervisors of elections offices across the state - and Florida is a big a$$ state and in many parts, a dangerously racist state. The courage and sacrifice demonstrated by him, and his wife, Sheena Meade - a highly-skilled social justice warrior in her own right - is beyond human, it was divinely gifted.
Another act of providence, was the connection made between Desmond and Neil Volz in 2015. One Black, one white. One liberal, the other conservative. Both convicted felons. Desmond’s conviction was drug related and he served time in prison, while Neil’s conviction was connected to a lobbying corruption scandal and he was not incarcerated. Their relationship was an instant media success and their continued partnership brought together people from all walks of life. Not only did they humanize the issue, but they humanized their “opposition.” This enabled the message to transcend party politics and racial divides and paved a way for us to grow a coalition with many unlikely allies.
In September 2015, I created The Wheelhouse Project, LLC. In early 2016, Desmond secured funding to hire me as a consultant to set-up the infrastructure and governing systems for the ballot initiative committees. In October 2016, Desmond submitted the 100K signatures collected by volunteers to trigger the Florida Supreme Court review. In April 2017, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously approved the ballot language and new polling confirmed a 10% increase in public opinion about the issue in Florida. Between the volunteers on the ground and returning citizens stories amplified through media coverage, we had successfully shifted the culture around Second Chances and Voting Restoration in the state – we were ready to launch the campaign to get on the 2018 ballot.
With these pivotal benchmarks achieved, Desmond received funding to build out the FRRC to position directly impacted people as the central driving force of the 2018 Second Chances Florida Campaign, guaranteeing that returned citizens would lead the charge in an authentic and powerful way. Desmond hired me, then Neil, Jessica Younts (an FRRC board member who advocated with Desmond from the very beginning) and Sheena to help lay the groundwork. Here is what we accomplished:
We built a foundation, setting-up systems for fiscal sponsorship, securing office space and hiring core staff.
We pulled together the coalition with a Statewide Convening, bringing together 400 volunteers and dozens of national partners and funders to unveil a streamlined system for collective action around grassroots petition collection.
We shaped the dominant narrative, working with our media firm, pollster and the grassroots communications committee to develop values-based messaging tools, then launched a full-scale effort to train partner organizations and volunteers on messaging discipline.
We wrote a comprehensive grassroots plan, which anchored 200 organizations and 13,700 volunteers around a shared strategy and centralized infrastructure to harness and unleash the power of the grassroots movement.
We brought in resources that we could control, aligning the funding community around investing in 1) cross-organizational capacity-building projects and early fieldwork; 2) engagement of infrequent voters and non-voters in hardest-hit communities and communities of color; 3) innovation projects that leveraged technology and volunteer power to scale; and 4) substantial operational funds to ensure the long-term sustainability of the FRRC.
We did all of this in 9 months and achieved ballot placement (Amendment 4) after submitting to the State 1.1 million petition signatures from Florida voters.
After we qualified in January 2018, I transitioned to the Second Chances Florida Campaign as Voter Engagement Director, to build and lead the organizing team. Together, with grassroots coalition partners and volunteers, we made 11.2 million attempts to reach Florida voters and engaged 1.1 million of them in one-on-one conversations about Amendment 4. Our grasstops consulting team launched a massive paid media campaign targeting conservative voters, and through this layered approach, we won with 64% of the vote. On November 6, 2018, we enfranchised more people at once than any single initiative since women’s suffrage in 1920.
