New Project Organized to Energize Black Men Voters

With little more than a year remaining until the 2020 Presidential election, a new organization is focused on an often-overlooked segment of the voting population: Black men. It’s called the Black Men Voting Project and is founded by national political consultant Mondale Robinson (also a contributor to TheVillageCelebration). In an interview with TVC, Robinson explained his mission for the Black Male Voting Project.

TheVillage: What is the Black Men Voting Project?

BMVP: The Black Men Voting Project is an entity that, at is root, is designed to address the systematic harms intrinsic in the way this country currently courts [or not] black voters, and black men more specifically. For decades, we’ve watched black men be excluded from anyone’s voter modeling or target priorities in a significant way. The net result of these malpractices is lower voter turnout among a demographic (black men) that votes for Democratic candidates more than any other segment of the population with only one exception, black women. By using years of experience and data, we’ve created a program that not only activates black men, but it does wonders to counter the miseducation campaigns used by those who wish to suppress the black man enfranchisement.

TheVillage: How has your experience as a political consultant and strategist informed the goals of the project?

BMVP: For years I’ve watched white consultants with no connection to black communities dictate what messaging and political strategies would be employed to “get out the vote” and all of these efforts either fell short of what was necessary to activate the black vote because of the consultants ethnocentric approach to our communities or they simply made top level decisions that did not include resources to target black men. And after all the votes were counted, these same consultants ran to the nearest news camera and blamed black voters for not participating, but the the failure belonged to the consultants because they convinced candidates, the party and other auxiliaries to prioritize conservative leaning voters and white women, two demographics the Democrats haven’t won in decades. These are the very reasons the Black Men Voting Project is a necessary part of our political conversation.

TheVillage: Given the number of Black men incarcerated, how will efforts to reinstate the voting rights of felons change the political landscape?

BMVP: While black men are over-represented in the prison population and are definitely deserving of enfranchisement, it isn’t enough. This, too, is another reason we launched the Black Men Voting Project. Voter registration is actually a tactic that we must reevaluate. When the data is studied, we see that large scale voter registration actually depresses black voter turnout, especially black men. This is something that must be considered especially when we have enough voters already on the voting rolls to win every election that Democrats lost in 2016 and 2018 (in areas where the new American majority is at play). Giving black men the right to vote everywhere definitely makes sense, but there is also more effort require to realize the full potential.

TheVillage: What are your plans for engaging and energizing this lion-sized share of the electorate?

BMVP: The plans for Black Men Voting Project is the secret sauce. But a short the short answer is that we plan to engage black men early, often and with efforts and messaging designed by us with us in mind…an intra-community approach to voting.

TheVillage: There are politically-active organizations for Black women gearing up for 2020. How do you see the Black Men Voting Project collaborating with those outreach efforts?

BMVP: I’m blessed to know a lot of the sisters doing the work to engage and activate black women voters and I can honestly say that I am proud to be in support of anything they have going on. I also think that they are one-hundred percent capable of carrying out their task with no input from me and I’m looking, not to be a burden to their efforts, but to further the impact of black voters on the electorate. I think these lanes are not siloed but are paralleled in a way that it’s important enough to have individual efforts designed to address each specifically.

For more information on the Black Men Voting Project, contact mondale@freebornblacks.com or call (252) 592-1002.