A sure sign of a Philadelphia Citizen event: a strong showing of smart, civically engaged guests. A sure sign that you’re at a Philly event: a guy selling t-shirts outside the venue. Tuesday night’s civic fair and book launch at the Fitler Club was, therefore, both classic Philadelphia Citizen and classic Philly.

The event featured:

• Local get-out-the-vote and civic organizations at a civic engagement fair
• Representatives from Penn’s Political Empathy Lab
• Authors Michael Eric Dyson and Marc Favreau in a live-on-the-air conversation with WURD’s James Peterson about their new book, Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote
• A full crowd of enthusiastic and engaged audience members
• A civic-minded entrepreneur outside selling t-shirts featuring a black-and-white, circa 1956 photo of women demonstrating for voting rights

Those get-out-the-vote groups included PA Youth Vote, a Philly-founded group to encourage young voters to register and vote; the deep canvassing org Changing the Conversation Together; and Committee of 70, a good government advocacy group that encourages and trains poll watchers. The Citizen also offered guests the chance to write postcards to Mayor Parker, post wishes for Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, and get info on how to talk about voting with their friends.

“The greatest trick of white supremacy is making you believe you aint got nothing to vote for.” — Michael Eric Dyson

Evening WURD host James Peterson interviewed Dyson and Favreau live on the radio about their new book, Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote, which Dyson described as “a historical genealogy of the evolution and development of the fight for the vote … As the book says, it’s an ongoing fight.”

Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote

As such, they dug into the political disinformation (including around voter fraud), the possibility of disenfranchisement (Philadelphia’s own Robert Purvis offers cautionary context), voter intimidation (including the terror of the 1876 election), the importance of teaching youth the brutal truth about Americans who died for the right to vote, the need to eliminate the electoral college, the dangerous history behind voter apathy and … Taylor Swift.

“The greatest trick of white supremacy is making you believe you aint got nothing to vote for,” said Dyson, “Voting is like an on-off switch: If you don’t use the vote, other peoples’ voices get amplified … One way or another, you’re being counted.”

Before the authors took the stage, Peterson interviewed Penn Professor Lia Howard and three of her students at the Political Empathy Lab about their summer travels across Pennsylvania to “strengthen their empathy muscles” by, Howard said, “listening and connecting — deeply listening — to people with whom we don’t agree.”

Learn more about the book, the Political Empathy Lab — and Dyson’s and Favreau’s prescriptions for getting more Americans to vote — below.

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