When I arrived at ASU as a freshman in the year of COVID shutdowns, my days were spent attending Zoom classes and deciding which mask to wear that day. Desperate to make some meaningful connections during a pandemic, I attended that year’s Zoom “Club Expo” and ended up with more than I bargained for.
Almost overnight I found myself signing on with the Watauga County Democratic Party and joining its non-partisan subcommittee, The Watauga County Voting Rights Taskforce (VRTF). Every day I prowled the ASU campus looking to register other lost souls to vote, all the while wearing plastic gloves and sinking my writing pens into some kind of anti-COVID solution after each registration.
I was simultaneously thrown into intense training on everything from knocking doors during a pandemic to strategic persuasion tactics. I was taught to embrace new challenges, and how to take decisive action at the drop of a hat.
I’ll be honest, this kind of work was not on my bucket list.
Then some woman I had never met challenged my 2022 ballot as invalid all because the poll worker had made a clerical error on my mailing address. The Taskforce walked me through my rights and prepared to represent me at the challenge hearing.
My ballot survived, but even as I was taught by the Party to always up my game, the NC Legislature then upped its own, and passed a statewide law to automatically deep-six ballots just like mine without any opportunity whatsoever to defend those legal ballots.
Before I could come up for air, the VRTF had persuaded the largest litigation Voting Rights law firm in the US (the Elias Law Group) to sue the state legislature for violating the constitutional due process rights of all NC voters. And I had to call my Mom and tell her I had signed on as a lead Plaintiff in a Federal lawsuit.
I soon found myself sitting eye to eye in a sworn deposition under intense questioning and trying to stare down mad-as-hell attorneys from the State Legislature and a slow-drawl Texas lawyer from the Republican National Committee.
Against all odds, we won, all because the Party had trained me that when an adversary ups their game, I have to up mine too. The fact that when things go sideways and all seems lost, a small County Party refuses to submit is to me an incredible and beautiful thing to be a part of.
But I am only one successful story of The Little County Party That Could. The Party’s trained young people go on to export a light of hope with skills and seasoned talent across the county, state and nationwide.
One former staffer now works as an elite data expert with the DNC. Several are now seasoned lawyers working for voter rights. Others are upping the game for struggling nonprofits nationally. Others still live their lives on the ground managing and organizing door to door for statewide and candidate efforts in North Carolina, Chicago, Oregon, Washington and beyond.
Yeah. That’s the way they roll. And I’m hoping you’ll help me prove to them that this is the easiest thing they’ve ever asked me to do.
I figure it this way. If just ten of you would donate $500 to thank me for surviving and winning that “rare opportunity,” I’d consider it a personal badge of honor. Or if 20 of you would donate just $250, I can call it a day and go knock some more doors of persuadable voters. Or if just 50 of you could chuck in $100, we can make it possible for some eager young person to quit the dishwashing job they’re currently working to help pay their rent to come and work and train 24/7 with us instead.
The courts are now where the political action is. Witness a US Supreme Court that is itself a unique threat to our Constitutional rights and protections, including granting their preferred Presidential candidate immunity from prosecution for crimes he has already committed as well as those he plans to commit in the future.
I have learned it’s not time to freak out. It’s time to fight back. And I’m going to thank you in advance because I just know you’ll all come through. Because we can, and we have to.
~ Sophie Mead
Thank you for reading!
Please check out the article about me in The Appalachian here.