A stirring speech on voting rights launched Delaware’s Equity Action Summit

That was Black Voters Matter cofounder LaTosha Brown’s challenge during her keynote address at the Moving Delaware Forward Equity Action Summit on Thursday, April 18

Brown regularly appears on MSNBC and CNN when the topic of voting rights comes up. She and cofounder Cliff Albright started Black Voters Matter in 2016, an election year when 14 states implemented new voting restrictions.

Fighting voter suppression and anti-DEI activism hasn’t been easy, she said. But it’s moments like the last eight years when action is most needed.

“You don’t retreat,” Brown she said. “You actually go deeper.”

The summit was a free event for people already doing equity work through nonprofits, government agencies, education, enterprise, healthcare and media. Over the course of the two-day convening, hundreds of attendees spoke and heard about challenges like education access, migrant rights, healthcare inequity, employment for returning citizens, environmental justice, the housing crisis and generational trauma.

Imagining the country with a different status quo can make those inequities stand out and seem too normalized to change. But, Brown said, you can’t achieve something that you can’t even imagine.

If you haven’t yet registered to vote, you can do it here.

The next election in Delaware is the school board election on May 14.

Delaware’s statewide primary election is on Sept. 10.

The general election, including the presidential election, is Nov. 5.