From Get Out the Vote to Running Candidates: Sistahs Are Doing It for Themselves

• In Event: Modes of Representation

Abstract

Over the last four presidential election cycles, pundits and scholars alike point to these elections as evidence of a changing American electorate. The electorate has become more diverse than ever in the country’s history. In particular, the electoral power of women, African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans showed the political parties that these groups are considerable forces in American politics.
In this paper, we focus on women of color-centered mobilizations, civic organizations, and training initiatives that are extending democratic inclusion, in particular for women of color. We argue that this work of both mobilizing voters and identifying candidates for office in the U.S. is largely considered the work of political parties, yet for communities of color women of color are adopting these democratic inclusion tasks.
These organizations are simultaneously engaged in continuously sustaining voter engagement and transforming these voters from reliable voters to political candidates. Most of these organizations are underfunded and overly taxed by the monumental task of converting low propensity voters into habitual voters; yet, they are also pushing beyond GOTV campaigns to engage voters in more sustained democratic practices, including running for office. This project establishes the landscape of these women of color-centered organizations, civic groups, collaborations and projects engaged in mobilizing women of color as voters and political candidates. We explore the political moment and structural arrangements that necessitate their existence.
We establish the landscape of women of color political organizations in the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin during the 2020 election cycle providing a typology of political activism based upon types of labor these women of color groups contribute to the democratic process. In doing so, we offer a systematic review of the groups and seek to understand the range of efforts they use based on a set of distinct assets and factors.
Our approach and analysis engages a type of comparative intersectional analysis that allows us to critically examine the moniker “women of color” by resisting the flattening of these groups by remaining attentive to the differences among WOC groups in their political engagement and mobilization efforts in the 2020 election cycle. In doing so, we offer a way forward that speaks to more precise ways of understanding “women of color” as a political identity.

Authors

• Christina Elizabeth Bejarano, Texas Woman's University

• Wendy G. Smooth, The Ohio State University