Montclair Activists Mail Thousands Of ‘Please Vote’ Letters

MONTCLAIR, NJ — The following news release comes courtesy of Bnai Keshet in Montclair. Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site.

As part of Vote Forward’s “Big Send” of 16 million letters to voters Saturday, social justice activists at Bnai Keshet in Montclair mailed 6,355 “Please vote!” letters written by more than 120 of its members and friends to infrequent voters in Florida just before the most consequential election of our lives.

Organizers delivered more than 6,000 letters to the Glenridge Avenue Post Office in Montclair Saturday morning, where the postal agent promised to send them out promptly. The mass mailing culminated a successful effort that began in late spring with a series of letter-writing parties via Zoom that produced more than 3,000 letters by mid-August and cruised past 6,000 letters by the time it culminated on Oct. 4. Participants included volunteers from Bnai Keshet, the Universalist Unitarian (UU) of Montclair and Shomrei Emunah in Montclair.

The effort’s organizers, Lisa Auslander and Jessica Brater, founding co-chairs of Bnai Keshet Tikkun Olam’s Civic Engagement Committee, launched the virtual letter-writing parties in June, in conjunction with Vote Forward’s national effort; they added co-facilitators this fall, Marian Golan, Maritza Guzman and Deb Levy of Bnai Keshet, to help run parties. All five met for the “Big Send” on Saturday.

The organizers joined more than 163,000 Big Senders nationally who collectively mailed more than 17 million letters to infrequent voters in swing states like Florida, the state Bnai Keshet chose to “adopt.”

Dozen of activists who participated in Bnai Keshet’s letter-writing effort expressed deep gratitude to its organizers after Saturday’s mail drop-off. “Thanks for spearheading this fabulous effort,” said one participant Bnai Keshet’s Elise Aronov, who mailed an additional 20 letters Saturday.

Now that Bnai Keshet’s organizers wrapped writing letters to voters, they’ve turned to texting them. They’ll be joining Faith in Action in New Jersey, a partner organization of BK, to participate in nonpartisan GOTV texting* parties over the next 3 weeks before the election. The effort will be online tomorrow, Tuesday, Oct. 20th and Tuesday, Oct. 27th from 5 to 9 p.m. View this link to sign up to join.

For more information on Vote Forward’s national letter writing campaign, please reach out to https://votefwd.org/ For information on how to abstain a Mail-in Ballot, how to register to vote and all other questions about voting in New Jersey, visit, https://www.nj.gov/state/elections/

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