This bus tour will help communities ‘reimagine’ themselves through voting, vaccines
Pastors and community leaders gatherers at Bibb Mount Zion Baptist Church on Tuesday to announce a new initiative to educate communities across the East Coast.
The Rev. Fer-Rell Malone, CEO of F.R.E.S.H. Communities and senior pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church in Waycross, announced the Voters, Vaccines and Visions Liberation Tour, which will visit more than 40 communities to provide information about voting, vaccines and other community resources.
“What we need to do is educate the people on how to effectively continue to empower our community with the power of the ballot,” Malone said. “We don’t need you to throw money at us. We need you to work with us to create a plan that we can build equity and equality within our community.”
Malone came up with the idea of a bus tour while he was working with the U.S. Department of Commerce Census Bureau because he realized communities had access to so many resources of which they were not aware.
The places where people would traditionally receive information about these resources were symbols of injustice to the Black community, such as court houses and city halls, he said.
“The Lord gave me the vision, because our people are not as comfortable with those places, to get on a bus and take it to the heart of the community,” he said. “I think if people knew better, they would do better, and so that’s what the tour is about.”
Tour has several Middle GA stops planned
F.R.E.S.H. Communities, SOWEGA Rising, Fort Valley State University, Black Voters Matter and the Georgia State Senate’s Committee on Interstate Cooperation are leading the tour that plans to partner with other organizations to deliver information directly to people who need it.
Georgia Advancing Communities Together (A.C.T.), Faith in Public Life Centers, VECRA and the Georgia Black Chambers of Commerce are also partners for the tour, according to a news release.
Fort Valley State University is providing its Mobile Technology Unit to educate communities about community gardens and small farming. Black Voters Matter will provide voter information as well as register people to vote, and CORE will provide COVID-19 vaccinations on-site. People will also have the opportunity to receive information about health insurance and other resources.
The tour will begin June 1 and continue through the beginning of August. Here is a list of Middle Georgia stops.
June 9: Macon-Bibb County
June 10: Fort Valley, Peach County
July 24: Milldgeville, Baldwin County
July 31: Dublin, Laurens County
August 3: Jeffersonville, Twiggs County
August 4: Perry, Houston County
For more information, visit www.ourfreshcommunities.com/.
“This 3V Tour is an opportunity for Black Voters Matter to not only expand the work that we are doing to educate our community around policy… We are also actively engaged in making sure that our communities are healthy,” said Fenika Miller, Georgia state coordinator for Black Voters Matter. “We can do hard things when we try and when we work together, and the vision piece is for our communities to radically reimagine what our communities can look like, with the right investment, with the right people who are leading movements.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2021 at 5:00 AM.