- Julius Irving leads Community Spring's Community Power Building initiative to educate residents on local government and civic engagement beyond voting.
- Community Spring focuses on empowering disenfranchised people, especially those affected by the justice system, to advocate for local changes.
- The nonprofit plans a webinar featuring civic rights leaders to promote education and leadership in community-driven policy reforms.
Julius Irving helped register around 8,000 Floridians ahead of elections in 2019, but he realized civic engagement means more than voting. Those in his community needed education on how local governments work and how individuals can get involved on the other 364 days outside of Election Day.
Irving is an outreach coordinator with Community Spring, a Gainesville economic justice organization, and he’s spearheading the nonprofit’s new Community Power Building initiative.
The goal is to use existing relationships to learn and to push for change at the community, city and county level. Mobilize change on what? Well, that’s up to the network of friends, family and acquaintances that Irving ties together, with each person involved pulling in more relationships.
At a March workshop at Sweetwater Square Apartments, Irving told attendees about the changes, like free phone calls, made at the Alachua County Jail that he and Community Spring pushed toward. But the group could pursue other areas like economic development or policing policies.
Lindsay Kallman, executive director, said Community Spring wants to leave the initiative to the people. She said it’s a relational model that seeks to educate everyone about civic engagement and find those passionate enough to lead their own workshops, pull in more individuals and push for change in whatever aspect of their lives.
Community Springs will hold a webinar at 6 p.m. on Thursday about the Community Power Building initiative. Registration is available here. The webinar will include Irving, Kallman and Bob Libal — a guest speaker and civic rights leader working for The Sentencing Project.
Kallman said a lot of funding for civic engagement goes to voter registration drives before elections. The education portion is missing.
Community Spring wrote a concept paper for the initiative. The paper and Irving note the disenfranchisement among people who’ve experienced the justice system. Even after Amendment 4 restored felon voting rights in 2018, government barriers since then have largely prevented the amendment’s enactment, the concept paper said.
“Without political education that connects personal experience to systemic injustice, people remain disengaged from a system that has never been responsive to their needs,” the paper said.
Irving said in the paper that he’s not sure how many people he’s registered have actually shown up to vote and if they’ll know about the ballot items that they’ll be voting on.
Irving asked attendees who the state attorney and public defender for Alachua County are and when was the last time they voted in a local election. The workshop included a video about how cities operate.
Irving said he wants people to understand the power of voting and the real power in the educated, collective vote. He told workshop attendees that he needs them to keep showing up, bringing more people and working to help each other as the initiative gets underway.