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Though we’re just settling into the new year, our forever first lady Michelle Obama already has her sights set out on having a big impact in the 2022 midterm elections.
In an open letter in The New York Times that was published on Jan. 9, Obama’s goal is to register one million new voters across the country through her organization When We All Vote and with the help of 31 other organizations nationwide. According to the letter’s message, the organizations’ solidarity represents the millions of Americans with voter rights who should never be silenced.
As Obama detailed, many Americans continue to personally suffer from voter suppression in their communities, whether the result of the problematic legislature passed into law and or discriminatory practices at the polls.
“This type of voter suppression is not new,” Obama wrote in the letter. “Generations of Americans have persevered through poll taxes, literacy tests, and laws designed to strip away their power — and they’ve done it by organizing, by protesting, and most importantly, by overcoming the barriers in front of them in order to vote. And now, we’ve got to do the same. We’ve got to vote like the future of our democracy depends on it.”
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Collectively, the group of organizations also has several other goals. They plan on recruiting and training at least 100,000 volunteers, recruiting thousands of lawyers to protect voters whose freedoms are threatened, and educating voters on how to vote safely in their state. They plan to organize a minimum of 100,000 Americans to contact their Senators and ask them to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
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