Connecting with Communities of Voters

We will be electing leadership at every level of government in 2018. With so many races in both May and November, how can civic organizations engage with a diverse range of voters—people of color, rural residents, seniors, and independents? What outreach strategies do they use? What messages resonate? And what new opportunities or challenges do they anticipate?

Join us for a panel discussion on how to inform, connect, and engage today's voters.

Doors open at 11:30.

Panelists

Ana del Rocío, State Director of Color PAC, is a first-generation Chicana/Peruana based in Portland, Oregon. She is a mother of two young boys and is the past policy director to Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson. Ana was elected to Director for Position 1 in the David Douglas School District in East Portland and joined Color PAC as its first State Director, January 2018.  

Jess Campbell, Co-Director of Rural Organizing Project, has more than 15 years of rural organizing experience and has been involved with the Rural Organizing Project since 2005. She is a co-author of Up in Arms: A Guide to Oregon’s Patriot Movement and has worked with some of the most rural communities in Oregon organizing to advance experimental campaigns at the intersections of racial, economic, gender, and climate justice. 

Jerry Cohen has been AARP’s State Director in Oregon for the last 21 years, working with local, state, and national staff, volunteers, members, and businesses and community organizations. He previously managed legislative and regulatory advocacy for AARP in a five-state region. Hailing from Wisconsin, Jerry holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a law degree from Washington University-St. Louis, and a graduate degree (MPA) from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Moderator

Caitlin Baggott Davis is the founding executive director of the North Star Civic Foundation, a private entrepreneurial foundation focused on crisis-level wealth inequality in our region. Her career in public service began as a 24-year-old founding member of the Oregon Bus Project, a youth-led nonprofit with a mission to engage the next generation in democracy. The Washington Spectator described Caitlin as a "universal suffrage absolutist” in 2011, when she and the Bus Project helped spearhead the initiative to bring automatic voter registration to Oregon.