ATLANTA (AP) 鈥 Kamala Harris is going to church in Georgia on Sunday, where she will speak to the faithful and encourage Black congregants to vote as part of a nationwide campaign push known as 鈥渟ouls to the polls."
The Democratic nominee for president plans to attend services at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest and Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro, joined by singer Stevie Wonder, before taping an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton. Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is scheduled to go to church in Saginaw, Michigan, and his wife, Gwen, will be at a service in Las Vegas.
The mobilization effort that launched Oct. 20 is led by the 好色tv Advisory Board of Black Faith Leaders, which is sending representatives across battleground states as early voting begins in the Nov. 5 election.
鈥淢y father used to say, a 鈥榲oteless people is a powerless people鈥 and one of the most important steps we can take is that short step to the ballot box," Martin Luther King III said Friday. 鈥淲hen Black voters are organized and engaged, we have the power to shift the trajectory of this nation.鈥
Harris' schedule reflects her campaign's push to treat every voting group like a swing state voter, trying to appeal to them all in a tightly contested election with early voting in progress.
On Saturday, the vice president rallied supporters in Detroit with singer Lizzo before traveling to Atlanta to focus on abortion rights, highlighting the death of a Georgia mother amid the state's restrictive abortion laws that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court, with three justices nominated by Donald Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade.
And after her Sunday push, in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
refuses to take accountability, to take any accountability, for the pain and the suffering he has caused,鈥 Harris said.
Harris is a Baptist whose husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish. She has said she鈥檚 inspired by the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and influenced by the religious traditions of her mother鈥檚 native India as well as the Black Church. Harris sang in the choir as a child at Twenty Third Avenue Church of God in Oakland.
鈥淔aith is a verb. It is something we show in action and in service,鈥 she said on Instagram last week as she attended services at a church in Greenville, North Carolina.
鈥淪ouls to the polls鈥 as an idea traces back to the Civil Rights Movement. , a Black entrepreneur from Mississippi, was killed by white supremacists in 1955 after he helped nearly 100 Black residents register to vote in the town of Belzoni. The cemetery where Lee is buried has served as a polling place.
across the country have undertaken get-out-the-vote campaigns for years. In part to counteract voter suppression tactics that date back to the Jim Crow era, early voting in the Black community is stressed from pulpits nearly as much as it is by candidates.
In Georgia, people voted on that day, more than doubling the first-day total in 2020. A record 5 million people voted in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
