League members and supporters, sign up for the League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville’s Fall Meeting that will take place 6:30- 8 PM, NEXT THURSDAY, October 26th over Zoom. We are pleased to announce our featured guests that will include Alameda County Assessor Phong La, Alameda County Treasurer Hank Levy, and Berkeley City Auditor Jenny Wong. All will discuss their work to identify and/or address challenges that must be proactively managed to keep our needed public and community services as healthy and responsive as possible.See more!

On the local level, the LWVBAE’s efforts included supplying registration literature – such as National Voter Registration Day stickers and posters, and quarter cards with QR codes for online registration – to Berkeley City College for their voter registration drive. Volunteers also coordinated with UC Berkeley’s student union vote coalition on their work, which included giving voter registration presentations at Berkeley High School (BHS) and tabling with voter registration forms in order to get high school students pre-registered to vote. LWVBAE high school interns at BHS also helped the UC Berkeley students through their own campaign as well. See more!

The Albany Racial Inclusivity and Social Equity Commission met on October 3, 2023, to review several topics, such as updates to their work plan, subcommittees and to discuss important future meeting agendas

Members Jim Lindsey and Akinyi Ajwang’ updated the Commission on the read-along program subcommittee’s work. They said that in the last week, they met together to come up with a plan on how to start the program and came to the consensus that they want to contact Albany Reads, a read-along program already in place in Albany and join forces with them. See more!

Every day, the freedom to vote is under attack. Since the Supreme Court decision of Shelby County v. Holder that gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA), at least twenty-nine states have passed ninety-four laws that make it harder to vote, with the burden falling hardest on Black voters and other voters of color.

We need a fully restored VRA to defend our democracy and protect the freedom to vote. That is why the League is proud to support the reintroduction of HR14, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, vital legislation needed to fully restore and modernize the VRA and ensure that discriminatory voting policies are stopped in their tracks. See more!