Virginia Civic Engagement

At African Communities Together (ACT), one of our main goals is to empower African immigrant communities to engage civically. We believe that our communities have a desire to be more civically active, but are often not the focus of outreach efforts or even seen as an important voting block.

Since 2019, ACT has been building political representation for African immigrant voters. Through voter education and registration, ACT has helped increase African immigrant participation in some of the most critical elections.

Our first voter registration drive in Northern Virginia, we signed up 750 first-time voters. Since then our work has only grown. By 2022, we reached over 6,000 voters in Virginia and the following year, we were able to engage nearly 24,000 voters.

Data and African Immigrants

One challenge we have faced is that traditional databases don’t specifically categorize African voters, making targeted outreach tough. But we’ve taken matters into our own hands, creating a list of 50,000 African voters in Virginia and 17,000 in Pennsylvania using creative techniques to identify African immigrants. Our goal isn’t just to get people registered—it is to keep connecting them to nonpartisan education, help them make voting plans, and remind them to cast their ballots.

2020 Census

The 2020 Census could not have come at a more difficult time: the administration had shown open animosity towards immigrants of color, especially immigrants from Africa and other Black countries, like Haiti. The negative anti-immigrant and anti-Black rhetoric was coming from across the country and directly from the White House, made our community feel unsafe and fearful of the government. The last thing that they want to do is to give all their information to the government census workers, with all their pertinent information, willingly.

From January 6, 2020, to March 7, 2020, a multilingual census outreach team of African immigrant canvassers knocked and leafleted a total of 5,400 doors for nine weeks in heavily African immigrant neighborhoods in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax counties, in Virginia. Then, the team had to stop the door-to-door outreach at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting to phoneoutreach to community members and print and digital media ads.

That year, the City of Alexandria achieved a 100% census count and ACT was recognized by the City for its contribution to the success. 

2024 Election

In 2024 ACT launched a national effort to ensure African voters in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia are mobilized and ready to cast their ballot in this year’s elections.  As eligible African and African immigrant voters we make up an untapped voting bloc of over 250,000 identified African voters across our 3 target states.  

Our goal is to build power & increase civic participation among our African communities.  

Through a nonpartisan canvass and phone bank Voter Engagement Program African Communities Together aims to raise awareness, educate, prepare, turnout and protect access to the ballot for African and African immigrant voters.    

MARYLAND: 90,000+ registered African voters, will have the opportunity to cast a ballot for municipal, state and federal elections during this year’s Primary, Special, and General Elections.  

VIRGINIA: 85,000+ registered African voters, will have the opportunity to cast a ballot for municipal, state and federal elections during this year’s Special, Primary and General Elections.