NAACP Town Halls Aim To Mobilize Black Voters For Midterms
The NAACP launched a series of town halls this week to mobilize Black voters ahead of the 2026 midterms.
According to CBS News, the first town hall took place on Tuesday in New Jersey with Mayor Ras Baraka, Rep. Monica McIver, and several other local leaders in attendance. Baraka and McIver were both arrested earlier this year at a protest outside of a Newark ICE detention center. Baraka had his charges dropped, but McIver was charged with assaulting a federal law enforcement officer.
“It may still seem far away, but the 2026 midterm elections will determine whether our democracy still holds on or whether the people surrender their power to a king,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement to CBS News. “So, from our perspective, as the NAACP, it’s clear: we’ve got to start organizing early.”
Johnson’s warning of democracy being at risk is far from hyperbole. The NAACP’s town halls come as Texas Republicans have begun a redistricting process critics have called blatant gerrymandering. Texas Democrats have stood their ground, fleeing the state to prevent a vote on a new map that would add five new seats in Republican-controlled districts. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered the arrest of the Texas Democrats and filed a lawsuit to have the lawmakers removed from office. The Texas redistricting effort has inspired several Democrat-led states to consider a redistricting attempt of their own to counterpunch Texas.
These aren’t things that happen in a healthy, well-functioning democracy.
In the coming months, the NAACP plans to have town halls in Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, New York, and Maryland. The town halls will focus on Trump’s policies and the adverse effect they’ve had on Black communities. This includes the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in schools and workplaces, as well as examining how cuts to SNAP benefits and Medicaid will disproportionately affect Black communities.
“Our neighbors are being illegally kidnapped by ICE, Trump’s budget is taking away our health care and access to food stamps, and our civil rights are being stripped away at every turn – all while costs, from housing to groceries, continue to rise, and the billionaire class get richer,” Johnson said in the statement.
The town halls will also encourage civic engagement with information on how to help with voter recruitment, grassroots organizing, and old-fashioned door-to-door campaigning. “We’ve got to strengthen community, recruit volunteers, inform each other about Donald Trump’s oppressive policies, and map out local strategies that will ensure everybody gets out to vote,” Johnson said in the statement.
“As we build toward the 2026 midterm election, our campaign will focus on connecting past liberation struggles to the urgent demands of the present,” Wisdom Cole, the NAACP’s Senior National Director of Advocacy, told CBS.
The NAACP spent $20 million on voter mobilization efforts during the 2024 election, which helped get 14.5 million Black voters to the polls. While Black voters overwhelmingly went for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, 21% of Black men voted for Donald Trump. Given how much contempt the Trump administration has shown to Black and brown communities over the last year, one only hopes that number goes down significantly in the midterms.
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NAACP Create Pro-DEI ‘Black Consumer Advisory’
NAACP Town Halls Aim To Mobilize Black Voters For Midterms was originally published on newsone.com
