The Barbershop Ballot, from Woody Beale's Sharp Insight
Barbershop Election
Abrupt Insight uses barbers to go out the black vote
January. 27, 2016
To Woody Beale, a trip to his barbershop is as much about community as haircut. He has gone to the same Olney hairdresser for years, a identify where he shares updates about his mom and offers advice for his barber's son, where men of his community bond over the great and small issues of the day. This social convening, Beale notes, is why some refer to barbershops every bit "the blackness man's state club."
A barbershop tin also be a identify of powerful alter. As director of the Youth Outreach Adolescent Customs Sensation Program, Beale has used barbershops to spread the word among men of colour about getting tested for STDs, through a combination of outreach and flyers. Now, Beale is hoping to harness that aforementioned power to deport on 1 of the core bug keeping men of color from accessing systems of power in Philadelphia—voting.
"Men are there," says Beale. "They're non going anywhere; they take to await. It'due south a captive audience."
Through his work with YOACAP, Beale is dedicated to addressing issues facing black men and teens in Philadelphia. And he has long been troubled by the fact that they vote in rates lower than white men and almost 3 times lower than black women.
"Barbershops are trusted spaces in the African American community, where black men talk near everything from sports and entertainment to union and politics," Beale wrote in a proposal for the program that would get known every bit Sharp Insight. "Some researchers refer to them as the 'black human's land club.'"
Beale had insight into why: Black men distrust elected officials and a political system in which they are disproportionately incarcerated, and many are under the false impression that you lot are ineligible to vote if y'all accept a felony conviction. (In Pennsylvania, fifty-fifty with a felony conviction, voting rights are restored to you upon release and those serving time for misdemeanor offenses may vote by absentee election from prison house).
Furthermore, as City Lab put information technology, "local government agencies have done…a lousy job of ensuring that disadvantaged and disenfranchised populations have what they need to vote." This is why a coalition of voting rights groups successfully sued the state of Pennsylvania in 2022 for declining to provide data about elections and registration materials to low income and largely minority residents.
Simply what to exercise about it, Beale wasn't sure.
One twenty-four hour period in 2000, he was sitting in his barbershop and listening to all the conversations going on effectually him, which ranged from the personal to the political, when the answer came to him: He could tap into the tradition of barber shops being a hub of communication and knowledge sharing for men of color.
"Barbershops are trusted spaces in the African American community, where black men talk about everything from sports and amusement to marriage and politics," Beale wrote in a proposal for the program that would become known as Sharp Insight. Indeed, the role of hairdresser shops in black male person public life is widely acknowledged and written nearly ; even the Obama entrada used them to galvanize voters.
Beale started Sharp Insight with a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, to train barbers to become "information disseminators" in their communities, cartoon on the informal ways they already fill this part and offering them formal tools to channel that energy towards targeted issues like cognition of elected officials, nether what conditions felons can all the same vote and the positions of different candidates.
"They volition exist disseminating information in a not-partisan mode," says Beale. "The betoken is not to persuade for any particular candidate but rather to simply get them more than engaged and assistance men connect the dots between the issues and challenges in their lives and their elected officials."
With the help of outreach worker Latasha Rock and several others, Beale has been recruiting barbers for the plan since October. They identified neighborhoods around the city in which voter turnout among men of colour was specially low, sent out 300 letters to barber shops in those areas, used radio and social media, and then hit the streets.
Stone says they accept about 45 barbers currently signed on, and promise to recruit between five and 30 more.
Stone says at first she was trepidatious about asking barbers to bring together the program considering politics tin can be so controversial. Merely once barbers realized that they could practise what they already do but for a broader purpose, Rock says they jumped on board. She says many were excited to be trained in how to talk to people almost important political issues, rather than merely listening while customers talk at them.
"In that location has been overwhelming support," Stone says. "They say, 'Wow, somebody finally realized what barbers really do and why barbers are important to the community.'"
"Nosotros're looking at having men who are more than engaged and men who are more informed," says Beale. "But nosotros're trying to see these things in their deportment as well, not but their knowledge. We're trying to get men to change their beliefs."
Beale hopes to take recruited all interested barbers by the finish of the month. They will then start a three-part preparation that will focus on how to talk and share information in a neutral way; how not to get frustrated; how to become out of situations where clients are talking almost specific candidates; how to deflect; how to listen; and more. And so going forrad, each month volition have a theme and talking points on that theme—in the grade of an issue or question and several activeness steps—volition be sent to each barber to spread to his customers.
Themes might range from voter indecision with accompanying resource most places to get to notice out information nearly candidates, or the question of who is eligible to vote if they've been incarcerated and a number to call to check their status, or a month on knowing your urban center and state officials. Beale says all these themes are drawn from information nerveless both formally and informally during the recruitment procedure, during which barbers helped Sharp Insight staff identify important areas of confusion, misinformation, and disengagement. Once barbers are trained, they will as well be supported to have these hard conversations past 4 outreach workers who will rotate through participating barbershops on unlike days of the week offering support and further resources.
Beale estimates that the barbers in the program could reach six,000 potential voters, who in turn will talk with some other 12,000. Ultimately, he wants to change not but how men of color call back about voting and civic date, just how they act more broadly in their communities.
He hopes they volition begin non just to vote more, but also to participate more in community and political meetings, to be visible and powerful. Philadelphia has the third highest number of "missing" black men —black men taken abroad from their communities by incarceration or early death. The causes of this are systemic and deep; solutions must begin holistically from inside communities of color.
"We're looking at having men who are more engaged and men who are more informed," says Beale. "Merely we're trying to see these things in their actions equally well, not just their knowledge. We're trying to get men to change their behavior."
Header Photo: Flickr/Riza Nugraha
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/wody-beale-sharp-insight-barbershop-ballot/
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