No Bars on the Ballot Box!

Bottom half of my cover!

For our public meeting media assignment, I decided to focus on a meeting that I had planned to attend prior to finding out about the prompt. I've been trying to find ways to fill up my time (with non-school related activities!) since moving to Boston and have come across a lot of great social justice oriented organizations. I found SURJ Boston (Showing Up for Racial Justice) while event hunting on Facebook one night and was immediately drawn to the work they were doing. I was interested in their partnership with Mass POWER (Massachusetts Prisoners and Organizers Working for Enfranchisement and Restoration) to campaign to restore the right to vote to prisoners. While it was an issue that I hadn't thought about before, I believe that everyone should possess the right to vote and that our justice system negatively impacts communities of color at disproportionate rates. I was curious to learn more about the work the two organizations were doing, their philosophies on the issue, and how the campaign would be carried out. 

The meeting was held on Thursday, October 10th from 7 to 9pm. It was definitely a bit of a long day, but thankfully the meeting house was in Porter Square which wasn't too far from me. The home, belonging to a senior SURJ member, was beautiful and spacious. As I walked in I was met with a few slightly confused looks, and I couldn't help but notice that I was the only person of color in the room. I was a little perplexed about it at first, since SURJ is an organization dedicated to racial justice, but later learned that the organization is focused on educating and mobilizing white communities to use their privilege for social change. We all gathered in a circle in the living room and listened to the two main organizers, Eva and Sarah, provide a brief overview about SURJ, Mass POWER, and the history of voting rights for incarcerated people within Massachusetts. 

We were all provided with clipboards that had signature sheets to petition for a Constitutional amendment, a brief intro to Mass POWER, as well as instructions for collecting signatures. 

A quick sketch of Sarah (please disregard 'Amy', I got her name wrong)
going over the campaign and signature collection process.

While I figured Massachusetts didn't have the prettiest history in regards to attaining rights for all citizens, I was shocked to learn about how difficult it is to create any type of institutional change from the citizen level. We often think of petitioning as a straightforward method for maintaining democratic principles, but the town clerks of the government offices that will be collecting these petitions will showed me otherwise: they will apparently look for any reason to 
disregard them and throw them out. We were informed to not get any stray marks on the sheet (even a small line.. or a dot) and to not let signers cross out their name in the event that they make a mistake. We were also told to only collect 7 signatures per sheet (even though there's room for 25) because town clerks will stop reading about 7 and will most likely end up throwing it out. 

After the meeting I interviewed both Sarah and Eva to get a sense of why they joined SURJ and what they were hoping to achieve through the campaign. Their goal is to collect about 80,000 signatures by November 20th, so they truly need all hands on deck. I told them that I was planning on creating a zine about the meeting and campaign and they were really excited and enthusiastic about the prospect! We discussed a concern that a volunteer had (finding the best way to explain the issue and Mass POWER's aim to people while canvassing in public) and decided that the zine could work as a supplemental tool to get people on board. 

I initially wanted to create a handmade zine because the examples Ashley provided looked really artsy, intimate, and fun to make! I love the idea of getting crafty and challenging commonly practiced design principles. 

First iteration of my zine. Cute but way too tedious.

Over the weekend, I found this really cool set of paper alphabet tape at a little stationary store in Inman Square which I felt would be perfect for making my zine. That was until I realized how extremely tedious and time consuming it was to have to hunt for each individual letter, cut them out, and paste them onto the card stock I was using. The cover was as far as I got until I came to terms with the fact that this process would honestly take me an eternity. I decided to opt for a digitally designed zine instead. I also wanted to keep SURJ and Mass POWER in mind and create a beautifully designed, easy to read and access (handwritten items are often difficult for folks with visual disabilities to consume) zine that they could replicate and use. 

After studying Mass POWER and SURJ's branding, I opened up Adobe Illustrator and got to work! My creative energy really sprang forth as I began to think about the creative ways I could represent the information I had taken in during the meeting about the two organizations and their collective mission. I decided on a bright red color scheme as the hue typically forces you to really stop and read. I used a mix of bold and classic typefaces for the headers (Big John) and body (Courier New). 

First two pages of my zine: the table of contents and overview of SURJ.

I wanted to use Courier New as the primary body font for my zine because it has a typewriter-esque vibe and kind of made me feel like I was typing up an old-school account of the event. I included some digital vector illustrations throughout the zine to give it some visual interest, such as the little hand submitting a ballot illustration pictured above and the ballot layout pictured below. While it is a very heavy topic, I wanted to add some bright, engaging elements to encourage the reader to stay interested and want to know more. 

Pages 6 and 7, which provide an overview of the meeting itself and the goals of
both organizations in regards to this campaign. 

Illustrator gave me the most flexibility to present the information in a way that's clean, fun, and engaging. I love graphic design because I am not limited by the lack of physical materials (for example I was thinking about buying a new set of markers to make my zine... saved myself some $$$!) and can easily take dense topics and information and create visually appealing, digestible end products. I had a lot of fun with this assignment because I can also simultaneously add it to my design portfolio! It also felt great to create something that can also be of use to social justice-oriented organization vs. a business client. 

Pages 4 and 5, detailing the history of voting rotes for incarcerated folks in MA.

I'm including this last bit so you can all see how messed up MA history has been when it comes to protecting prisoner's rights. As you can see, the right to vote was only recently taken away. If you're a registered voter in MA and would like to sign a petition please reach out to me! If you're interested in learning more about the organizations and want to help out, please refer to the checklist below! I added it to the back cover of the zine to make it more interactive.

Back cover of my zine! Nothing like a good checklist.