The Arkansas Public Policy Panel celebrated its 60th anniversary in December with Sulma Arias from People’s Action, in a two-day symposium and gala to celebrate the organization’s founding in 1963 by a multiracial group of mothers who traveled the state, speaking in churches and to civic organizations, to help build acceptance for school integration and promote understanding among ethnic and religious groups.
As part of the gathering, AKPPP members practiced role-playing talking to strangers in a deep canvass, just as their forebears in the civil rights movement did decades earlier.
” I watched Panel members role-play to practice talking to strangers – the foundation of People’s Action’s deep canvassing methodology – in the same way as their forebears in the Civil Rights movement, like Diane Nash and John Lewis, did as they prepared to meet racist mobs nonviolently to end segregation,” Sulma wrote in her appreciation of the event on the People’s Action blog.
AKPPP organizers also spent a week in January with People’s Action’s Kellon Patey, Marta Popadiak and Jessica Carter to discuss their ballot measure campaign and movement politics work.
Janice El-Ameen and Bill Kopsky then also attended a gathering of People’s Action affiliate organizers who are using the deep canvassing methodology to combat disinformation in rural areas.
