With the 2022 midterm elections looming 10 months away, faith leaders in the South are preparing a “revival” effort to reinvigorate voters around what they see as two crucial issues: climate change and voting rights.
The Southeast Faith Leaders Network kicked off its first-ever “climate revival” on Jan. 20. The yearlong campaign is targeted on four states — Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina — that organizers say are on the front lines of the impacts of climate change as well as efforts to suppress voting access.
“Those two issues are just interlocking,” Alecia Brewster, program director for South Carolina Interfaith Power & Light, told EarthBeat.
“The changes that are needed [on climate change] are able to be addressed when everyone has a voice. And so the vote is the way to provide everyone with a voice in the conversation,” she said.
The campaign has planned numerous state-based workshops in the coming months to examine both climate impacts and voting realities at the local level. It will also provide training on ways to educate, register and mobilize voters, as well as protect them. A summit on climate resiliency is scheduled for the fall.
Several organizers who spoke with EarthBeat said a main area of focus will be the U.S. Senate elections in the four states. The Cook Political Report ranks as toss-ups the open Senate seat in North Carolina and the race involving Sen. Rafael Warnock of Georgia, while the races for Alabama’s open seat and Sen. Tim Scott’s reelection in South Carolina rank as solidly Republican.
In addition to South Carolina Interfaith Power & Light, other groups that are part of the Southeast Faith Leaders Network include the Alabama and Georgia chapters of Interfaith Power & Light, the North Carolina Council of Churches, and Creation Justice Ministries, a D.C.-based national organization that is helping coordinate the campaign. Sojourners and the Poor People’s Campaign are also partnering with the climate revival campaign.
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