Voting Now: Turning Rights into Reality

Kathleen Saadat has been called the conscience of Portland, Oregon. Here, Saadat talks about organizing Portland’s first gay pride parade, as well as the campaign to beat Measure 9 in 1992, a homophobic amendment to the Oregon Constitution. Kathleen also discussed coalition building and intersectional organizing as well as her work with the Portland Police Bureau and her thoughts on Black Lives Matter.

Cliff Jones, a Portland activi...

Women makeup 51% of the US population and yet account for only 24% of the Senate and 27% of the House of Representatives. How can women start to change that landscape? Jillian Schoene, Emerge Oregon’s departing Executive Director, joins us to discuss how her organization trains and empowers Democratic women to run for public office.

Highlights and soundbites from the interview

No one runs and wins alone.

4:26-What I love about our pro...

While the 2020 Presidential Election saw an unprecedented voter turnout, the fight to end voter suppression and discrimination rages on. 

 We’re joined by Leigh Chapman, Senior Director of the Voting Rights Program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, to discuss today’s barriers to the ballot box, legislative efforts combating them such as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act(HR4), and the For People Act A...

Attorney Molly Washington discusses the Native American vote with Amanda WhiteEagle and journalist, Anna V. Smith who covers indigenous affairs for High Country News.  In 2020 WhiteEagle ran to represent District 92 in the Wisconsin State Assembly, in this interview she discusses the hurdles she faced and the lessons she learned. The three of them discuss the role the Native American vote played in the 2020 election and the signifi...

Mary Beatty should be a well-known figure in women's history: she was one of the first Black women (west of the Mississippi) to publicly advocate for woman suffrage. Decades before women won the right to vote, Mary Beatty and 3 other white women attempted to vote. When asked why they voted, each responded: “I am an American citizen, and have the right to vote.” The next year, she participated in the first convention of the Ore...

Is there even such a thing as the Latinx vote? It’s not the monolith some may think. So says Jessica Vega Pederson, Commissioner for Multnomah County, Oregon and the state’s first Latina House Representative.  

In this episode, Jessica touches on why Latinx voters should be appreciated for their diversity, the importance of Latinx representation at the local and national level, how to dismantle barriers that prevent women and people...

Albert Lee was born in South Korea to an African-American soldier father and a Korean mother.  When he was five years old; he moved to the states. He grew up working-class. His background drove him to public service: In 2020 he ran for Congress; before his bid for election he graduated from law school and was the academic Dean at Portland Oregon’s Community College. “My background is that of folks who are often not heard or seen an...

“Vote Like Your Life Depends on It!” is a short, emotional sermon to vote by the inimitable Dr. Willie Jolley, a best-selling author, media personality and motivational speaker. This is a departure from our typical guests, but we were blown away by Dr. Jolley’s video of the same name.

He also hosts a regular show, Willie Jolley Show on SiriusXM, as well as the podcast, Dr. Willie Jolley's Wealthy Ways which is availab...

One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote—but even as the 19th Amendment passed to grant universal suffrage, many were left out. One century on,  and the fight for suffrage is far from over. In this episode, Lori Erickson, Curator of Exhibitions and Special Projects at the Oregon Historical Society, and Eliza Canty-Jones, editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly, discuss how the movement’s past has been whitewashed, shari...

“There are populations and segments of populations that don’t vote because they are disengaged, they are demobilized, and don’t really understand the important impact one vote can make,” said Dr. Yvette Alex-Assensoh. “But when you look at the South, in general, the South has actually taught the rest of the country the importance of the vote. And, in fact, the Black vote in the South has actually turned the tides in terms of shifti...

“The best message to get people to vote is the parade effect. Hey, everybody's voting! Your neighborhood is going to have incredible turnout,” said Kevin Looper, one of two guests on this episode along with Dan Lavey. Looper and Lavey are A-list political operatives with often opposing opinions and decades of experience working on candidate and ballot measure campaigns in Oregon. In this episode they had a lot of great stuff t...

“The contributions of thousands of black women are being discovered. It’s not just Ida B Wells, it’s not just Mary Church Terrell — it’s women in every city, in every state,” said Elaine Weiss in our interview. Weiss is the author of, “The Women’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote,” an award-winning book that re-frames the 19th amendment. 
 
2020 is the centennial of ratification of the 19th amendment and of...

Professor Gilda Daniels is a nationally recognized voting rights and election law expert and a hero among attorneys, see her full bio here.

  We were lucky enough to speak to her 72 hours after she showcased some of those heroics. On October 13th, Virginia’s online voter registration system broke down.... just hours before the deadline to register. Three days later, on Oct 16th, Daniels, along with two organizations successfully pet...

Everyday working parents face all kinds of roadblocks when they set out to participate in civic life. Childcare is expensive, making any kind of impactful and sustained civic engagement, including voting, difficult for parents.

Our guest for this episode, Rachel Sowray, is an attorney and mom that works on and finds solutions to this problem. She started the non-profit, non-partisan group Politisit (babysit + politics = Politisit) t...

Are all states ready for election day? What's the deal after November 3rd? How will Covid 19 affect our elections? Election expert Ben Hovland gives us all the answers.

Hovland is the current Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The EAC is an independent, bipartisan commission that serves as a national clearinghouse of information on election administration and much much more. As part of their effort the EAC has...

Lowering the voting age to16 and restoring voting rights for Oregonians in prison are just a couple getting-the-youth-vote-counted ideas that, Samantha Gladu, executive director of Next Up, proposes in our premiere episode of Voting Now: Turning Rights Into Reality.  Next Up is a Portland non-profit that encourages leadership and amplifies the voices of diverse young people to help achieve a more just and equitable Oregon. 

 This ep...

This year marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States.  As we have seen over the past century and in even in recent months, many battles have been and remain to be fought to guarantee full and equitable access to the ballot.  Women showed heroism and courage fighting in the front lines for suffrage a century ago, and Black, Indigenous, and people of color have continued to lead the fight since that time to ...