Abstract

Just a T-Shirt Away

The article focuses on voter registration and mobilization of disengaged voters in the United States. Among the dozens of groups seeking to stir nonvoters to action this year, none have created quite the sensation that the nonpartisan November 2 Campaign has by reducing the whole of the political debate and the process surrounding it to a single message: the election date. November 2 T-shirts are showing up everywhere, from coffee shops in Santa Monica to black churches in Georgia to The Tonight Show, where singer Joss Stone sported one a month before the election. The November 2 Campaign, operating for the most part below the media radar, grew out of a decision by the NAACP National Voter Fund, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the People for the American Way Foundation, the USAction Education Fund, ACORN and 1,000 other nonpartisan groups to create a new kind of voter registration and mobilization effort. Step one was to pull together a coalition of nonpartisan groups working on innovative projects such as the drive by the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio to recruit voters at homeless shelters and public housing projects. Step two was to create a national media campaign. With money from foundations such as Arca, Beldon, HKH and Cedar Tree, the November 2 Campaign hired Weiden+ Kennedy, an ad agency with experience developing campaigns for Nike that arguably have been a lot more successful at reaching young people and minority communities than any recent political campaigns. In the final weeks, the group's materials will shout, "No more polls. No more ads. No more spin. We decide." But without polls, ads and spin, what will be left? T-shirts.