by Kiersten Hacker

After the killing of George Floyd by police on May 25, protests spread across the nation. The Black Lives Matter movement gained strength as demonstrations, caravans, virtual events, and many other actions took place to bring awareness to the issues of police reform and systemic racism. While protests occurred on the national level gaining widespread attention, many organizations and communities began organizing on the local level as well.

Krystal Oriadha and Amity Pope have been organizing grassroots movements in Prince George’s County, Maryland for years. They decided along with other organizers in the community to form a coalition called PG Change Makers. 

“PG Change Makers is proudly a coalition of various organizations and individuals throughout the county that have a collective goal of progress,” Ashanti Martinez, an organizer for the group, said.

In the wake of Floyd’s murder, Oriadha said she along with the other members felt it was necessary to come together in solidarity to say that Black lives matter, and they matter in Prince George’s County. Their coalition focuses on amplifying the voices of the community members and creating a positive, welcoming environment to fight for local change. While organizations in cities like D.C. or Baltimore may be easier to find or join, the members feel it is important to bring awareness to police violence in the local community because cases similar to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor occur in neighborhoods everywhere. 

“We felt like we needed to step into this movement and make sure that we don’t just amplify change somewhere else in this country, but we make sure that what was sparked in that moment leads into policy and change in our community as well,” Oriadha said.

Martinez, who represents the New Carrollton Civic Association, works to inform and civically engage people in the community through all of the governmental processes like legislation, voting and civil disobedience, among others. “We believe in ensuring that our communities are free,” he said.“We want to make sure that our communities are treated with the dignity and respect that we show every day to law enforcement that we want reciprocated to us.” 

PG Change Makers released a set of demands at the establishment of their coalition and have organized them into three categories: Answer Us, Empower Us and Protect Us. These demands are focused on police reform through legislation on the local and state level. Some goals include removing police officers from schools, not allowing officers with previous records of misbehavior to move between positions, banning no-knock warrants, transparency in the hiring process of the new PGPD police chief and passing Anton’s Law after the murder of another young Black man.

After the coalition continued to grow, the members decided to extend their work to focus on a variety of other issues. “It birthed out of a need at this moment but then we realized we didn’t want this to just be a moment, it really needed to be a movement that would last,” Oriadha said.

“We built out a mission statement about really just standing in solidarity to dismantle racist systems of oppression and to make sure we hold accountable anyone that props them up or benefits from those types of systems and really creating a space that strips away anti-blackness,” Oriadha said.

PG Change Makers recognizes that the anti-racism movement is more than just the interactions between community members and law enforcement. They now have issue areas focusing on housing, elections, policy, education and other areas that affect the quality of the human experience in Prince George’s County. Because PG Change Makers is a coalition, they want to collaborate with other organizations that are doing work in those specific areas, Oriadha said.“We’re all about amplifying the work that’s already being done not recreating work,” she said

Since its establishment, the coalition has held numerous in-person and virtual actions to mobilize, inform and empower the community. In-person events have served to inform the community about the upcoming election process and outreach through the census. Some events have even let members of the community come out to chalk their own demands in front of courthouses, police stations and the county council building.

“We’re focusing not only just on getting numbers and people out to show that we have strength and support for our ideals and our policy agenda, but we also are trying to make sure that we keep us safe,” Martinez said. The group understands that there is housing and food insecurity, especially during the pandemic, so their work centers around taking care of each other, uplifting the community and stepping up to be the leaders needed right now until there is policy change, he said.  

 In order to solidify change in legislation and politics, people need to vote. Organizers and core members of PG Change Makers came together to create a campaign called Get Out The Vote, forming another coalition with additional groups in the community. Residents saw what was happening in America and wanted to make change, so PG Change Makers decided to launch this campaign to help residents make the change they seek in their community. The coalition has held events where they have passed out meals and gift cards while registering voters and filling out the census on site. They created an information page to educate community members on the voting process including important changes like mail in ballots or new polling sites due to the circumstances of the pandemic. 

The coalition canvassed communities that lack engagement, setting up at shopping centers to spread voter information, census information, and to give underserved communities political power. “We’re just picking different key communities and demographics in the county and every other event that we are hosting, even if it’s not particularly around Get Out The Vote, we are making sure that we include our Get Out the Vote and census collaboration,” Oriadha said. PG Change Makers continues to hold events specifically for voting and census education to create a long lasting impact, especially in the most underserved communities. 

As PG Change Makers makes an effort to give the community voting power, TerpsVote does similar work on campus. TerpsVote is an organization of students, faculty and staff also working on informing students about voter registration, elections and other forms of civic engagement including the census. Alexandra Marquez, a senior journalism and anthropology double major, is the student co-chair of TerpsVote and she said the organization does a lot to bring the most information to the community. Recently, TerpsVote launched a new website with extensive resources, incorporating voting dates and deadlines of states outside of Maryland, and an email was sent out emphasizing Maryland voting dates and deadlines. TerpsVote also works with the office of community engagement to obtain a more complete count in the census at College Park and in Prince George’s County to maximize resources received since students use them throughout their time at UMD. 

Along with online resources, TerpsVote designed a module for a university course where students learned about how to vote and why voting is important, especially for college students. The course linked “prominent social issues like justice and policing and the racial unrest going on in our country right now and systemic and institutional racism with the positions that are actually on the ballot,” Marquez said. The module also included information about positions on the ballot other than the president, why those positions are important and why it is crucial to know who you are voting for. 

For young voters, “It is really important as a baseline to get the people that we want to represent us and to have our voices heard” Marquez said. 

Students who are not able to vote can still get involved with the election in different ways. Freshman psychology student Sanjana Kumar is not old enough to vote yet, but she registered to be a poll worker on election day. In Maryland, you must be 16 to become a poll worker, providing an opportunity for younger college students to get involved. Kumar created an infographic that she shared on Instagram to encourage other students to register as poll workers. “Being a poll worker is basically just making sure the election day process runs smoothly,” Kumar said. The job entails setting up, cleaning up, helping the elderly, checking voters in, sanitizing and other simple tasks. “It’s just really important because otherwise the lines are going to be really long and a lot of people may not be able to vote because of the long lines,” she said

“For young people, it doesn’t matter if you can’t register yourself to vote or put your name on the ballot, you have a seat at the table if you claim it,”  Martinez said. With the internet, young people have many tools at their disposal and it’s up to the youth to inherit the society we want to change, and work on the frontlines, as many students have, to see the change, he said.

“It’s up to us to create these tools and use these tools but to also create space for others. Your age is nothing but a number in this, a good idea is a good idea no matter how old you are,” he said.