Vote Everywhere is an initiative of The Andrew Goodman Foundation (AGF). The AGF is a national organization that empowers young people to initiate and sustain creative, effective social actions that advance civic engagement and develop issue-based coalitions in local communities. The AGF is named for Andrew Goodman, and its work honors his legacy. At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Andrew
Goodman (a 20 year-old college student from Queens College in NYC) decided to spend his summer as a student volunteer for Freedom Summer 1964. Freedom Summer was a movement coordinated by local Civil Rights activists to register as many African-Americans to vote in Mississippi as possible. On Andrew’s first day in Mississippi, he and two other young civil rights workers, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan and officers of the Philadelphia, MS Police Department. The story of these three young men struck a public chord that galvanized support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now a historic figure and role model to many, Andrew Goodman was first a student and a friend to those seeking equality. Vote Everywhere continues in the tradition of Andrew Goodman by training college students to register, educate, and mobilize voters. Vote Everywhere believes in the power and importance of civic engagement, and it recognizes the important historical role that young people have played in moving our society toward justice at and beyond the ballot box. We operate on 40 college campuses across 19 states, and we have registered nearly 16,000 students to vote in the last year alone. The University of Alabama chapter of Vote Everywhere began in January of 2016, and in that first semester, we were successful in lobbying the university to change its Campus Mail policies to allow for easy access to absentee ballots for all students. We look forward to engaging and activating students our campus in the semesters ahead. For more information on the Andrew Goodman Foundation, you can visit: https://andrewgoodman.org/who-we-are/
For more information about the nature and impact of Vote Everywhere, you can visit: https://andrewgoodman.org/vote-everywhere/
