After a spate of efforts to roll back citizens’ voting rights, ReThink is working with local, state, and national voting rights experts and advocates to drive pro-voter policies across the country. This includes building a whole new cadre of local and state spokespeople. So far that has included local spokesperson trainings in Texas, Georgia, Nebraska, Wisconsin, New York, North Carolina, and Mississippi.
In 2011, Rep. Peter King, then-chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, held a highly politicized hearing on the “radicalization of the American Muslim community.” He cited recent domestic terrorism cases linked to American Muslims, such as a shooting on a military base in Fort Hood, TX, and an attempted bombing in Times Square (which was thwarted by a Muslim man, a New York cab driver).
In the lead-up to the 2016 election, anti-Muslim rhetoric was at an all-time high, driven by then-candidate Trump. To counter this anti-Muslim prejudice, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton invited Gold Star parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan to the Democratic National Convention to speak about their son, Humayun, an Army officer who was killed in Iraq.
When working to ratify the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (or New START Treaty) in 2010, ReThink worked with the arms control and disarmament community to adopt a shared messaging strategy that defined why the treaty was critical. We identified national security validators and other key spokespeople to convey those messages, and we helped them write and place op-eds in the outlets that were most critical to influencing lawmakers.
