New Jersey residents discuss policy priorities as part of Voting Block
Education and quality of life issues were top of mind during dialogue journalism initiative in Paterson, Newark and Camden
One gentleman drove straight from the soup kitchen where he volunteered every Sunday night. Another came from the hospital emergency room where he had accompanied a teen shot by someone from a rival gang. Both men joined a Muslim mother of eight, a professor at Columbia University, and a grandmother pursuing her GED.
None of these Paterson, New Jersey, neighbors had ever met. Had it not been for Voting Block, a local journalism initiative hosted by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, it’s unlikely their paths would have ever crossed.
“There’s so much diversity in Paterson, people break up into splinter groups and don’t really work together,” said Faatimah Hanes, the mother of eight who came to learn more about Paterson politics. “I was happy about meeting different people from different paths of life. We need more of those smaller circles and efforts to bring in people who are antagonistic toward each other just to talk.”
Background about Voting Block
This is the second time the Center helped to facilitate Voting Block. This time around, the project intended to amplify underrepresented voices in three New Jersey cities: Paterson, Newark and Camden. Residents and journalists gathered in each city over three meals and engaged in civil dialogue about the issues that mattered to them. The goal was to connect people of diverse ages, ethnicities, religions, political leanings and priorities — people who otherwise might never connect or know one another. A local policy maker, chosen by the participants in each cohort, attended the final gathering in each city to listen, answer questions and make sure people knew how to engage with their local government.
Voting Block was supported by a grant from the New Jersey Community News + Information Fund of the Community Foundation of New Jersey, a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Voting Block was originally created by a group of New Jersey newsrooms after the 2016 presidential election. In addition to isolating many Americans into their separate corners, the 2016 election highlighted gaps in media coverage. Studies have shown that the dearth of local news has further polarized communities, and it’s also true that media outlets do not present the concerns of the entire electorate. These and other trends have exacerbated the lack of respect for journalism as a profession and the role it plays in community and democracy.
The bottom line is that relationships needed to be repaired. Voting Block aimed to address that by inviting journalists to listen and help facilitate a civil dialogue in each community about the wide range of concerns among neighbors.
To find the right mix of neighbors to invite, the Center relied on community partners who serve local residents, including Paterson Alliance, Project Ready, Free Press, Camden Fireworks, Office of Civic Engagement at Rutgers University and houses of worship. The Center also tapped facilitators who had already gained the trust of the community. Rosie Grant, leader of the Paterson Education Fund and a professional facilitator trained in restorative practice, guided the conversations in Paterson. Brit Harley, a community organizer and reporter at WBGO, moderated the conversation in Newark. And Phaedra Trethan, a Camden native and longtime local journalist for the Courier-Post, led the discussion there.
As noted above, the participants also chose a policy maker to invite to the last of the three meals in each city to participate in a discussion. Paterson City Councilwoman Lilisa Mimms, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, U.S. Congressman Donald Payne Jr., and Camden City Councilwomen Shaneka Boucher and Sheila Davis readily accepted and attended.
Creation of the People’s Agendas
After the dinners, the Center created People’s Agendas for each city, aggregating the top issues that participants said they wanted their local politicians to prioritize. You can find those agendas at the links below; they are being sent to councilmembers, county freeholders and members of Congress on behalf of Voting Block participants.
Issues related to education, quality of life, employment opportunities, and public safety were common across all three cities. For example, in Paterson, fifth-grade teacher Tanya White insisted that children need to learn about their city’s history and how it runs now.
“The purpose is for the students to understand heritage so they can change the narrative from negative to positive,” White said. “Reform is important as it relates to students understanding the connections between their existence and their environment.”
A similar refrain emerged in Newark and Camden. Rashaan Hornsby, a Camden entrepreneur and coach, said unwelcome policies get pushed through because people don’t know they can and should show up to city council and school board meetings.
“A lot of people probably don’t know what city council is for and what it does, not just our kids, but adults as well,” he said.
Longtime Newark resident Aaron Frazier said a solid civics education must also find a way to bring together disparate communities and build a healthy respect for everyone’s experience.
“Young people don’t respect the history of the city and the disenfranchised people already here who are striving to do better with what they have,” he said. “How do you mesh the two and get them to understand we’ve got to co-exist?”
How journalists participated in Voting Block
The Center invited other journalists to attend the dinners as guests and produce content. In each city, a reporter from the hyperlocal TAP Into digital news outlet came to the table, in addition to at least one other journalist. For them, this series of dinners was an opportunity to discover issues that had not yet been fully reported but were important to residents.
The Voting Block model was also based on a core tenet of beat reporting: cultivating empathy, which always improves news coverage. The second iteration of Voting Block offered opportunities for journalists to put down their pens and put that precept into practice. Conversations were not transactions. They were investments in relationships intended to yield better stories down the road. In Paterson, for example, Steve Lenox, a reporter for TAPinto Paterson, offered advice and guidance. In return, Patersonians reached out to him later and introduced him to stories off his beaten path.
The journalists also discovered opportunities to help each other and collaborate. In Camden, Pulitzer Prize-winning freelancer April Saul offered advice and shared stories with TAPinto Camden reporter Steve Rodas, who was relatively new to the Camden beat. In Newark, Patrick Wall, an education reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, has been in discussion with Brit Harley of WBGO about a multimedia project that would explore the perspectives of Newark’s students during the pandemic.
Voting Block was an experiment in dialogue journalism, a term coined by Spaceship Media, a California firm founded by former journalist Eve Pearlman. To help the facilitators, journalists and participants turn difficult exchanges into productive and eye-opening conversations, the Center utilized materials produced by Spaceship Media, which provides resources to coach facilitators and journalists through its seven-step method.
The Center asked participating journalist to publish at least one piece based on the discussions, and asked them to follow up with their new neighborhood sources to maintain ongoing relationships, a not just reach out when a story was brewing. Voting Block participants were asked to do the same: stay in touch with the journalists.
Newark participant Stacy Raheem said meeting Harley gave her a fresh perspective on journalists. Prior to the dinners, Raheem said, “I had something to say and I wasn’t sure I was being heard.” She believes Harley did hear what she had to say. Not only has Raheem tried to keep in touch, she’s hoping to introduce her high school age daughter to Harley, “a journalist and mentor” who models what it looks like to be truly engaged in the community.
Helping residents tell their own stories
But Voting Block didn’t stop at connecting residents to journalists. The Center aimed to empower participants to tell their own stories as well. In Camden, for example, community engagement editors Chris Norris from WHYY and Tammy Paolino of the Courier-Post attended a dinner and explained the process for submitting content.
In Paterson, poet and professor Elizabeth Valverde and community organizer Darryl Jackson recorded themselves interviewing each other, which Jackson is producing for his own podcast. White is drafting an op-ed about the importance of revamping the social studies curriculum and in Camden, Hornsby is drafting an op-ed about the need for citizens to kick-start their own initiatives to improve Camden, then present them to the city for funding. Voting Block helps participants with the writing, editing, and placement process.
Impact measurement
The Center commissioned Impact Architects to help gauge whether or not Voting Block had any positive impact on the participants, and to help assess what could be improved if the project were to continue or be replicated.
According to pre/post survey results from community participants and one-on-one interviews with journalist participants, Voting Block effectively engaged and connected participants, while also increasing trust with local media and tangibly increasing community involvement. It should be noted, many participants already perceived themselves as largely civically engaged. But after Voting Block, they reported feeling more informed about policing, pollution, the digital divide, prison reform, resources for change, local activism and other community perspectives.
Voting Block also fostered relationships and trust between community members and journalists. Camden participants noted the journalists’ display of genuine compassion and concern for the city and at least one expressed less reluctance about reaching out to media in the future.
“The people were invested and that’s a start,” one Camden resident said. “They took the time to listen and that’s a major part that’s missing.”
Though Voting Block 2020 didn’t necessarily engage the indifferent, more than 71% of the participants came away with at least one new relationship and a greater degree of civic mindedness.
You can read the full impact report here.
Project challenges
While community partners were tremendously helpful in launching recruitment efforts, many struggled to grasp the goal of the project and therefore identify the right target audience. Without a specific tangible benefit aside from a thank-you gift card incentive and possible inclusion in a news article, the Center at times struggled to explain the benefits of participation.
The Impact Architects report recommended using more discreet networks to ensure Voting Block cohorts are less insular and participants don’t know each other prior to the dinners. Future iterations might also benefit from more direct, on-the-street recruitment by the Center, including in-person appeals and invitations to find participants with a lower level of engagement and less familiarity with each other. Being absolutely clear from the start about the benefit of participating is also important.
Of course, having been held in 2020, the project suffered logistical hiccups. After the successful pilot in Paterson, the project rolled out in Newark with an in-person dinner. Soon after, however, the pandemic forced the cancellation of all in-person gatherings. After a brief hiatus, the remaining two dinners were delivered to participants’ doorsteps and everyone joined via Zoom. The entirety of the Voting Block in Camden was conducted virtually.
Without a doubt, the inability to meet face-to-face hampered the ability of the participants to establish meaningful connections; the group in Paterson was much closer and engaged by the end than the groups in Newark or Camden.
The Center had also set aside money to encourage New Jersey residents to host their own Voting Block dinners. However, in the midst of the pandemic, it was clear it would be difficult for an organizer to host a virtual gathering that involved food delivery to all participants. The Center therefore shrunk that part of the program and promoted it only among Voting Block participants.
A handful of Voting Block participants took the Center up on the invitation to host a virtual event after the presidential inauguration. Individual grants will specifically cover the cost of food and delivery. Organizers also received a toolkit, including a How-To Guide for Conducting a Virtual Voting Block, a facilitator’s guide, and an introduction to journalists.
Manya Brachear Pashman is the Voting Block project coordinator at the Center for Cooperative Media. She can be reached at mbrachear@gmail.com.
About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, and in doing so serve New Jersey residents. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Local News Lab (a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, and Community Foundation of New Jersey), and the Abrams Foundation. For more information, visit CenterforCooperativeMedia.org.
