Labor, faith, community, and civil rights leaders gathered on the front steps of San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday, October. 22, to encourage people to learn their rights, as well as exercise their voice and their vote. Voting is how the working class can secure money, power, and respect for all of us and demand billionaires and large corporations pay their fair share. 

The event came as communities face increasing barriers to vote across the country with threats to the integrity of our elections.

“The enemies of democracy are at our doorstep,” said SEIU 1021 President Theresa Rutherford. “The attacks take many forms but there is a consistent strategy to silence the voices of people of color and working class communities. Exercise your constitutional right because it is not guaranteed.”

The right to vote was a long, hard fought battle, for some of us in our lifetime. It wasn’t so long ago that the civil rights movement of the 1960s came to be. 

“The Mississippi Summer Project, was met with unrelenting violence, 1,000 arrests, 35 shootings, 30 Bombed buildings, 35 burned churches, 80 beatings, and at least 6 murders. That’s what my ancestors had to endure for the right to vote,” said SEIU 1021 Social and Economic Justice Committee Chair Phelicia Jones. 

As we have seen from recent events, San Francisco is not immune from attempts by powerful forces to intimidate and scare our communities. That is why the SEIU Local 1021’s Social and Economic Justice Committee along with community partners and elected officials stand united in protecting our democracy and calling on people to fill out their ballot and head to the polls this election before Tuesday, Nov. 3.