As early voting approaches, Third Act and other voting rights groups are taking action across the country to ensure that no American has to walk past armed federal agents to cast a ballot, or is otherwise impeded from voting.
About this event
This effort is part of a broader, people-powered movement spanning all 50 states to protect the fundamental principle that voters choose their leaders. Workshop participants will learn to keep messaging nonpartisan, maintain a calm and resolute tone, and to focus on shared values in plain, accessible language while avoiding the spread of fear or confusion.
Authoritarian thrives when people feel isolated, full of despair, and like the situation is hopeless. Third Actors and Americans of all stripes are refusing that narrative, from neighbors banding together to keep communities safe, to states passing new laws to protect elections, to election officials refusing to hand over private voter data.
To prepare Third Actors and our communities for potential election threats and disruptions, this 60-minute workshop featuring Kenia Morales from the Election Safeguards Response Network, Bill McKibben, founder of Third Act, Mike Johnson, Third Act Democracy Campaigns Manager and Third Act volunteer leaders will cover voter rights, threat assessment, and immediate action steps.
Kenia Morales, Las Vegas Organizer
Kenia is a long-time organizer based out of Las Vegas, NV, with 20 years of experience as a strategist and practitioner overseeing complex organizations, leading successful programs and coalitions, and winning campaigns in battleground states. Her work focuses on strengthening leaders, strategies, and systems. She currently supports the Election Safeguards Response Network, a national and multistate coalition with the goal of: (1) detecting election threats early, (2) deterring attacks before they become red lines, and (3) executing rapid coordinated responses to counter election sabotage.
Most recently, she served as the Chief of Staff at Equis, a set of organizations working to create a better understanding and engagement of Latinos, where she led the team during an exponential period of rapid growth. During the 2020 cycle, she served as the National Director for Win Justice, a cross-movement collaboration between Community Change Action, Color of Change PAC, SEIU, and Planned Parenthood Votes that mobilized over 5.3M million voters across battleground states. Before that, she served as the Nevada Director for America Votes, where she grew the coalition’s footprint and played a key role in electing Democratic leaders up and down the ballot. Kenia has worked at the local, state, and national levels. In her career, she has defeated harmful reproductive health ballot measures, worked to elect pro-police reform mayors, advanced healthcare access for communities of color, and defeated state senate recalls. She brings deep experience in building out programs from the bottom up.
Mike Johnson, Democracy Campaigns Manager
Mike Johnson is Third Act’s Democracy Campaigns Manager, focusing on mobilizing Third Actors to engage in our political process through coalition building, advocacy, and elections. With a background in municipal politics and public policy, Mike spent his career working with grassroots groups, organized labor, and independent political movements to build power from city hall to state legislatures and win elections. A student of social movements, he is inspired to fight for a better world every day, building on the promise of the leaders and elders who came before him.
Liz Evans, Third Act Upstate New York Co-Facilitator
Bill McKibben, co-founder of Third Act
Bill McKibben is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. He founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament. He’s also won the Gandhi Peace Award, and honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written more than twenty books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature, published in 1989, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened, and his latest book is Here Comes The Sun.
