Yesterday’s Fighting the Trump Takeover/Redistricting Resistance turned out differently from what I expected but in a good way

Black Voters Matter speakers at the Wyndham Houston, August 16, 2025.

I was planning on attending a rally earlier in the week at the SHAPE Center on Almeda off Wheeler in Houston. I envisioned a significant crowd of people chanting, rallying and marching. Then, checking back online to verify links, I found the venue had changed to the Wyndham Houston near NRG stadium and to a conference room, at that.

The sponsors were listed as Black Voters Matter which seemed to have switched, as well, but my thinking was that even if the rally out on Almeda was cancelled, I owed it to myself to check out this new development. The schedule had changed from 2 to 4 in the afternoon to 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Again, I figured this must be okay; likely a good couple of hours of speakers and ideas for moving forward. Unfortunately, I was running late, almost by an hour, and arrived at the venue around ten till noon. 

I was given a swag bag and once inside the conference room, realized this was a good bit smaller than I’d thought. There were fifty, sixty people, plus a line up of speakers that seemed to have just wrapped up, but the emphasis was on everyone in that room getting out and getting people signed up and registered to vote. The speaker, whose name I did not get, emphasized the importance of the Black community coming together and turning out to stem the tide of the redistricting that the Texas government seems hell-bent on initiating.

“Things can’t go on the way they’ve been going.” He’s right, of course, and the plan of action is direct: each person attending sets a target of ten people to register. In turn, those people are encouraged to find ten more people, and so on. The folks present were the ones who would be called to account, to follow up on their charges between registering and getting to the polls. 

Optimistically, the speaker wondered aloud what it would like if everyone in the room began a successful chain of events that would branch out through the community. Then it was over and since I was pretty much blocking the door, got out of the way, chatted with a couple of people and decided I’d still check out the other event, just in case it was still happening. 

Black Voters Matter rally/organizing meeting at the SHAPE Center, Houston, August 16, 2025.

It was! But/and it was a more sparsely attended but no less inspiring planning group. I met Anza Becknell, an organizer for Black Voters Matter and I couldn’t agree more that the groundwork they were laying was critical, plus it was rooted in practical steps with benchmarks.

The idea of people present committing to registering ten people and following their progress from registration to voting was expressed, along with the additional understanding that on voting day, there would be spaces for people to drop off their children if they couldn’t afford day-care, ride shares and car-pooling to drive people to the polls and just someone to go with first-time young voters who are often intimidated by the actual polling locations.

I’ve got my own schedule laid out in the coming weeks and months, but I think Black Voters Matter’s approach is the most simple and direct I’ve found yet. Plus, it’s already proven effective. Since 2016, when BVM was founded, they’ve done outstanding work in getting people out to the polls, getting Doug Jones elected in Alabama (the first Democrat to fill the US Senate seat from that state since 1992). Afterward, BVM shifted focus from urban areas to Black communities in the rural South, joining a coalition to increase voter turnout in 2018.

They have maintained bus tours in rural areas across states like North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas, not only for state and national elections, but for local elections, as well, enabling BVM to support individuals who may come to run for state and national offices later.

Additionally, BVM provided humanitarian aid to communities hit by COVID and raised just under $400,000 to serve high-risk communities, pressuring governors to not reopen states until it was safe to do so. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, BVM donated $250,000 to bail funds for people arrested while protesting Floyd’s murder and police brutality in this country. They donated $50,000 to a snow and water emergency fund for Texas communities when the grid failed in 2021.

I could go on, but I’ll leave that for you to explore in the additional reading following.

Saturday turned out to be surprising and enlightening day. I got a close-up look at one of the most effective groups in the country serving underserved communities and this only served to reinforce that we all need to double-down on our efforts to fight the fascists in power. 

As the Reverend Deloit said at the second BVM event, “so what do you do after your rally? What do you do after your protest?” Many of us do go on to do more organizing, to knocking on doors, hitting phone banks, writing op-eds, and speaking out at chambers of commerce, but after each thing we do, the question should be “cool, did this, what else can I do?”

To learn more or get involved directly, go to blackvotersmatterfund.org. There is a wealth of information available and plenty of ways to contact and stay in touch.

Additional Reading 

Asmelash, Leah. “Why this bus tours the South to get disenfranchised voters to the polls”. CNN. November 2, 2020. https://archive.ph/20210424234158/https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/01/us/black-voters-matter-latosha-brown-trnd/index.html. Retrieved August 17, 2025.

Epstein, Rachel. “LaTosha Brown Says a New South Is Rising”. Marie Claire. November 10, 2020. https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a34621522/latosha-brown-black-voters-matter-interview-2020/. Retrieved August 17, 2025.

McGinnis, Cory. “Chauvin trial used as motivation to register Black voters”. ABC 12 (Houston TX affiliate). March 31, 2021. https://archive.ph/20210502013052/https://abc13.com/black-voters-matter-george-floyd-derek-chauvin-trial-we-got-the-power-campaign/10460722/. Retrieved August 17, 2025.