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Happy Monday!

In this week’s newsletter, we have a special feature on one of our Unstoppable Voters Fellows, Steve Alfaro; information about two awesome civic holidays: National Voter Registration Day and High School Voter Education Week; a special article about Unstoppable Voters Action Accelerator organization Young Black Lawyers’ Organization Coalition, and more ways for you to get involved in the U.S midterm elections.

Read on to learn about working differently and deeper, getting #VoteReady, empowering voters, and, as Steve explains, releasing perfectionism!

<3 The Center for Artistic Activism

Dear <<First Name>>,

My name is Steve Alfaro, I am a Guatemalan American and father of two. I’ve partnered with many orgs as a creative in the social justice space. In my free time, I like doing digital art and exploring using typography, in a way that resembles Guatemalan textiles.

I’m excited to be a Fellow at the Center for Artistic Activism. I’ve been stuck for a while doing the same thing, and this fellowship has helped me look at my work differently, but it also has challenged me to take my work a step deeper.

National Voter Registration Day is a special day for me; I was part of the original digital team that established the holiday in 2012. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have been able to design that logo. I didn’t like it at the time. I remember wanting to keep working on it and looking for more options, but I was unaware of the idea of releasing perfectionism. I was wrong in wanting to keep looking for more options because the one I designed works since it’s still being used today.

I’m currently working on Galería de Colores, a virtual exhibition for Latinx Heritage Month, where we feature artists from across the country and recently put a call for Latinx artists from Arizona, Georgia, and Florida and invite them to submit art and be selected to participate. You can check out the exhibit here (it works best on Firefox or Chrome)!

Steve Alfaro
Unstoppable Voters Fellow 2022

Unstoppable Voters Fellow 2022 Spotlight: STEVE ALFARO

In addition to Poder Latinx, he has worked at SiTV (now FUSE TV), Voto Latino, and founded Unique Shift Creative, where he has developed visual design systems, campaigns, public service announcements, and social media; and has provided creative and graphic design support for over 20 Latinx civic and social justice organizations.

Check your voter registration — right now!

Tomorrow is National Voter Registration Day! We’re proud to be partners with National Voter Registration Day and help our U.S. community get registered and ready to vote in our upcoming elections.

First celebrated in 2012, National Voter Registration Day is a nonpartisan holiday that involves thousands of organizations and volunteers working together to ensure their families, friends, and neighbors are registered to vote and ready to cast a ballot. You can celebrate by:

• Checking your registration or registering to vote online using National Voter Registration Day’s Online Voter Registration Portal: It’s simple, free, and secure. If online voter registration is not available in your state or if it doesn’t work for you, you can easily start the process online no matter where you live.

• Attending a National Voter Registration Day event: Find one near you, or search for an online event.

• Spreading the word: Once you make sure you’re registered to vote, forward this email or text a friend, ask them to join you and use #NationalVoterRegistrationDay and #VoteReady in all of your social media posts.

• Getting #VoteReady: Already registered? Even better! If you want to learn more about elections in your community, check out the #VoteReady resources page on National Voter Registration Day’s website

Read about another Unstoppable Voters member: the Young Black Lawyers’ Organizing Coalition (YBLOC)

Through our Unstoppable Voters Action Accelerator, we’re thrilled to be supporting YBLOC — a nonpartisan, community-centered movement of young Black lawyers, law students and organizers working to protect and empower Black voters. YBLOC works with grassroots Black communities to fight for full access to electoral democracy and to realize full electoral voice. Since its founding in 2019 by Abdul Dosunmu, YBLOC has led innovative, high-impact organizing campaigns for voter protection and civic empowerment across seven focus states: Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina and Arkansas.

YBLOC was recently featured in Gothamist:

“Our goal is to make sure that those Black voters are not only able to freely and fully vote themselves,” said Dosunmu, “but that they are also empowered to be ambassadors for voter protection information.”

Join Unstoppable Voters in your State

There’s still time to join our free Unstoppable Voters workshops in Wisconsin and Ohio! Don’t miss your chance to get artistic activism training and inspiration to support your community in crucial upcoming elections.

Need more to celebrate? It’s also High School Voter Registration Week!

Do you work in high school education? Are you a high school student, or have someone you love in high school? High School Voter Registration Week (HSVRW) is a national week of action for high schools around the country to organize nonpartisan voter registration efforts. Since launching in 2019, schools in 34 states have held drives during High School Voter Registration Week to empower students in their communities.

Put your school on the map! There are 3 ways to take part this week and in the weeks to come:

1. Train Up: Check out their programs to work with youth leaders who want to empower youth voices.

2. Sign Up: After you train, your school will be eligible to receive Democracy in a Box, with supplies needed to lead a successful voter registration drive.

3. Celebrate! All week, high schools around the country are hosting voter registration events. Follow along and share the fun at #HSVoterRegWeek and #HSVRWeek

Images: YBLOC image from Gothamist.