Kadida Kenner is the founding Chief Executive Officer of the New Pennsylvania Project. She has led efforts to stop the passage of a judicial gerrymandering constitutional amendment, raise the minimum wage, fairly fund public education, protect federal courts from problematic judicial nominees, and protect the state courts from extremist attempts to undermine their independence. Kadida also serves as co-chair of Why Courts Matter – Pennsylvania, an advocacy campaign of the New Pennsylvania Project, seeking to protect the independence of our state and federal courts and educate the electorate about their importance.
I first spoke to Kadida Kennar 3.5 years ago when I was writing a progressive column for the conservative Bucks County Courier Times when her voting rights organization the New Pennsylvania Project had just launched. Since then her group has grown to 65 full- and part-time staffers across the commonwealth, and Kadida and her colleagues tireless advocacy in defense of democracy and voting rights is needed now more than ever. She joins us today on The Signal to talk about her lifelong journey in civil rights activism and what the New Pennsylvania Project is currently working on in order to defend, expand, and strengthen voting rights and voter engagement across the state.
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TRANSCRIPT
How did you first get involved in civil rights, voting rights, and social and economic justice advocacy and organizing?
I’ve been involved in this type of work since the 2nd grade. I’m a Black woman and my life is political, and advocating for myself and my community has been something I’ve been involved in since the second grade on the playground. I can recall opportunities in which I was ensuring that our rights and our freedoms were being protected there on the playground. So this is a lifelong journey for me. But I guess the true answer to that is
I really got involved in this work in 2017 when I moved back to Pennsylvania after living in North Carolina for some time and wanting to come back home to Pennsylvania and defend democracy. And it’s always been very important to me that our voting rights in particular are intact. I know that watching my parents vote on election day, primary and general election, was always very important to our household. And so I can recall being very young and witnessing my mom cast a ballot. And so that is something that has been very important to me and our household to ensure that we are protecting our civil and human rights.
In addition to your parents, were there any kind of civil rights role models that you had growing up?
Absolutely. I was lucky enough to meet Rosa Parks before, in my teens, she came to West Chester, Pennsylvania, for Black History Month. And my dad volunteered to chauffer her around while she was in Westchester. And that gave me the opportunity to meet her and hug her as a young child. This is before we had selfies. This is before camera phones, right? So I had the opportunity to talk to her as a 12 year old and engage her and get a hug from her. And I think that really sparked my love for civil rights icons or my admiration for civil rights icons, I should say. And I just remember the hug was a solid hug. It wasn’t just a half-one hug. It was a solid hug. And Rosa Parks is one of the few people you learn about in grade schools. You learn about Martin Luther King. You learn about Rosa Parks. But you don’t learn about the others who go unnamed. So she was the first person that I met that was a civil rights icon, and that stuck with me.
March 7th marks the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights movement’s Bloody Sunday, when police & Alabama State troopers – assisted by white racist posses, violently attacked nonviolent civil rights protesters attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery. The march was organized to draw attention to civil and voting rights violations in Alabama and the rest of the Jim Crow South. The media attention of this march, as well as the two follow-up marches – first Turnaround Tuesday, which was also bloody and violently rebuffed – and then finally the successful march which finished in Montgomery at the end of the month, helped galvanized the movement and helped push Congressional lawmakers’ hands – with a nudge from President Lyndon Johnson – to finally push meaningful legislation with teeth that culminated in the Voting Rights Act which was signed into law in August 1965.
Looking back at this, how does this history speak to you today – 60 years later?
As an organization, we make it a point to share colorized pictures of the movement. We don’t want to share black and white pictures of the movement because we want to remind people that this was not that long ago. Martin Luther King Day, we ensured that we shared colorized photos of him and a reminder that he was 39-years-old the day of his assassination. When I think about Selma and Bloody Sunday, people can’t see me today, but Cyril, you can and you see behind me, I have a picture of John Lewis on my back wall. It stays with me. It’s a reminder that the battle for civil rights and human rights can get bloody. And I think about how far we’ve come is that we’ve had to do similar activities here in the 21st Century to ensure that we are having our rights and our freedoms protected.
I think about as an organization, not too many years ago, I organized some activities, some civil disobedience protests in DC, reminiscent of or in honor of the work of my ancestors and iconic heroes that have been doing this work. And I think that current generations, you know, we’re not maybe it’s apt to put our lives, our bodies on the line for our voting rights. Activity that I organized to get folks to go down to DC to talk about the importance of our federal courts and make sure only the most qualified jurors were being placed on federal benches came out of a meeting that I had at the NAACP. And at that meeting, a gentleman stood up, an older gentleman than I stood up and he said, you know, that’s great that we’re learning about the process of how a judge becomes a judge, but when are we gonna actually do something about this? When are we gonna get up and get bloody? Is what he said. When are we gonna get bloody about situations like this? And that really sparked something in me and within the organization to do something about it. It’s just not lip service. Sometimes you do have to put yourself on the line, your body on the line to advocate for what is right and what is just. And here we are 60 years later still in the midst of having our voting rights under attack, our human rights under attack. We’re not that far off from where we were 60 years ago. Yeah, true. Maybe the water hoses aren’t being sprayed and the dogs aren’t being sent. And there’s new ways to carry out those activities. So yeah, 60 years ago, it’s not ancient history. And there’s folks that are alive today that were there during that time. My mom was 17-years-old. And so this is a double mark on her memories of what it was like to grow up. And here in the North, right? In Chester County as a 17 year old. So it’s not that far ago. It’s not that long ago. And we shouldn’t treat it as if it is such.
It really reminds us how young our democracy is because we can’t really say we were a democracy until everyone in the country had full voting rights. So we’re really only 60 years old right now. But from there, can you explain to listeners your work as the head of the New Pennsylvania Project and how your organization carries on these civil rights struggles to protect our rights and freedoms?
First and foremost, the New Pennsylvania Project is a voting rights organization. And we are a voting rights organization because the protection of our voting rights will always be a thing. There will always be attempts by some to take the rights and freedoms away from the masses. Particularly here in Pennsylvania, the New Pennsylvania Project was founded to expand the electorate.
There are 1.2 million Pennsylvanians who are eligible to vote but not registered. And there’s a reason why 1.2 million people have stayed out of the political process. And so the biggest role that we have as an organization is to ensure people understand their rights to vote, how accessible it is to them, particularly folks who are formerly incarcerated, who have no idea, or those who have been led to believe that they’re ineligible from voting. It’s to get all these folks involved. It doesn’t matter what political party they choose to register with. As an organization, we have assisted more than 50,000 Pennsylvanians in completing voter registration applications in three years. That’s a lot of people. And the majority of which were never registered to vote. So it’s not just people changing voter registration status or updating their party, or maybe they had a name change or a dress change, but these are folks that have never cast a ballot before.
As an organization, we have registered three women over the age of 90 to vote for the first time in their lives, which tells us that there are people out here who have been left out of the democratic process for a very long time. And when we ask these older women why they haven’t cast a ballot, why they never voted, two of the answers were no one ever asked me. The process of getting registered to vote is not the easiest in the Commonwealth. It can be very tricky if you are lacking literacy skills. If you do not have access to the internet, if you are not going to the DMV to get a driver’s license, it’ll be very difficult for you to get registered to vote. And so the core principles of our organization is that we are centering communities who are historically disenfranchised to get registered to vote and build power in their neighborhoods and in their communities and have their voices heard at the ballot box. And we, as an organization, we actually reach out to the people we registered to vote and within a few days after getting them registered to ask them how their experience was of getting registered to vote by our organization, and then ask them would they have ever registered to vote had they not seen our folks on the ground, outside of their grocery store, outside of their Walmart, outside of their library. And the majority of which say, we would have never registered to vote had we not seen your people on the ground. Which just tells us that we have work to do in the Commonwealth to have better access to the ballot. I think about Southern states who have better access to the ballot than Pennsylvanians do. North Carolina, Georgia, we’re talking about same day voter registration, true early voting on machines. We’re still lacking that in the Commonwealth. And this is why we have 1.2 million people unregistered to vote. I think about the incredible work of organizations like New Georgia Project, in which we’re named an homage of, who are now at 95 % voter registration rates because they’re making it easier for folks to actually get registered to vote and not harder. So until we have true automatic voter registration, in which the day we turn 18, we are registered to vote, there’s gonna be a need for organizations like ours to exist, to get into communities nobody wants to go into and have conversations people aren’t prepared to have.
So you’ve just talked about some of the barriers that citizens face today. Are there any other threats on the horizon, via legislatio,n that look to kind of keep people out of the democratic process and keep them away from voting?
Federally, there’s been talk about the SAVE Act and how that could disrupt people’s ability to register to vote or actually cast a ballot. The SAVE Act, if passed, would cause tremendous harm on, in particular, married women who may not have updated their married last name. That could cause a problem for women. I think about organizations like ours, third-party organizations who do voter registration, engagement work on the ground, how it could impact us if they don’t allow organizations like ours, nonprofits, to do this type of work in a nonpartisan way. I think about those that don’t have access to their birth certificate or have a passport. And what is the type of ID that is acceptable for these folks? I think about Miss Vivian Applewhite here from Philadelphia, who was the face of the 2012 voter ID law that was sparked in the Pennsylvania legislature in Harrisburg where they wanted to have more restrictive voter ID. She was an older Black woman and older black folks for the most part may not have access to a birth certificate, not born in a hospital, not of record. And so she is someone, if anyone recalls this case in 2012, this was a case in which she said she would be denied the franchise if there was more restrictive voter ID laws in the Commonwealth. And the courts agreed with her and they shot down that legislation in Harrisburg about more restrictive voter IDs. So, you know, there’s a lot of talk, a lot of misinformation and disinformation that circles of people saying that we’re not having free and fair elections and that there are bad actors and others who are trying to cause harm to our election systems and we just know that to not be the case and that Pennsylvania is having free and fair elections and a more restrictive voter ID would not be the answer.
You’re also the chair of Why Courts Matter. Why do courts matter? And what is this New Pennsylvania Project campaign working on right now? What types of reforms are you advocating for?
Yeah, Why Courts Matter Pennsylvania is a, now it’s a campaign of the new PA Project Education Fund. And it’s the project that brought me back to Pennsylvania from North Carolina in 2017. There was opportunity to work on providing civic education to folks about the federal courts in 2017 and talking about the problematic judicial nominees that were being confirmed under the first Trump administration and the concerns that many had that folks that were qualified to do the job were not being placed on these benches for a lifetime. And so I spent the good portion of five years traveling around the Commonwealth from Wayne County to Clarion County to talk about the importance of federal courts and how courts matter to our daily lives. And the only way you can do that is if you talk to folks on a level in which we understand. You have to avoid the legalese, right? We have to talk about the importance of the courts in a way people understand and make it real and talk about the Miss Vivian Applewhite’s and show a picture of Miss Vivian Applewhite. So people see that this is a human being behind these cases. That was part of the work of Why Courts Matter because all the issues we care about and in 2017, this was the height of like the women’s movement, women’s march that was happening, all the pink hat ladies that were out there in 2017. And it was at that time, there were so many who wanted to fight for various rights and freedoms. If it was LGBTQ protections, if it was the environment, if it was abortion access. All I asked as chair and the person traveling across the Commonwealth was that they add the courts on top. You care about all these issues? Well, all these issues you care about will eventually be arbitrated in a courtroom.
And so we have to make sure that our courts is that place that people go for justice, remain fair, independent, and what the people believe is with integrity. Otherwise, what do we have? When the legislative branch and when the executive branch are usurping their authorities and doing things that are not for the good of the people, it is the courts, it is the judicial branch that people historically have gone to to receive justice if it is overturning Plessy B. Ferguson and ensuring that all folks have access to facilities, Brown v. Board of Education. If it is the overturning of Roe v. Wade with this Dobbs decision, these are all things that impact our daily lives. And the courts are an abstract figure for most. Maybe it’s the best day of your life. Maybe you went in there and you received custody of your child. Or maybe it’s the worst day of your life because maybe you lost custody of your child. What people associate with the courts, if it’s state courts or federal courts, you know, it varies. And so, Why Courts Matter Pennsylvania really is about ensuring people understand how important the courts are to our daily lives and how they’re protecting our rights and freedoms. So that’s the good work of Why Courts Matter Pennsylvania. And now we’re really getting into state courts and protecting the independence of our state courts as there’s been many attempts over the last several years to try to remove our Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices from benches.
How were they doing that?
Yeah, well, I’m glad you asked this one, Cyril. This is one of my favorite topics. You know, I think about in 2018 where we had Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices who were making decisions about our constitutional, I’m sorry, our congressional maps, that our congressional maps were gerrymandered, that they were created by legislators to maintain their power and not in favor of the voters and ensuring that everybody has an equal voice in this democracy. And so it was the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that ruled that our congressional maps were unconstitutional. Well, that didn’t make some folks happy. And what they wanted to do was then impeach the democratically-elected Supreme Court justices from the bench. And when that didn’t work, then they tried to move forward with something that we termed judicial gerrymandering in which they changed the way in which we as Pennsylvanians get to elect all of our appellate court judges, that we would no longer vote for all of our appellate court judges, but that we’d only be able to vote for them within districts. And who would create these districts? Legislators, the same ones that we couldn’t trust to actually create congressional maps that were fair. So that took two years of hard work and advocacy to defeat before it became a constitutional amendment here in Pennsylvania to make sure that as a Pennsylvania voter who was very powerful, if I’m able to vote for 31 appellate court judges, I want to vote for all 31, not just three that a legislator tells me I’m allowed to. And so judicial gerrymander was the second attempt to disrupt our Pennsylvania Supreme Court. And now here we come in 2025, a very important election year. We have municipal, local, and judicial election here in 25. And three Supreme Court justices who were elected as Democrats are now up for retention voting. So they’ve already served a 10 year term. And now we, as the voters who are very powerful here in the Commonwealth, we’re going to go into the ballot box in November and we’re not going to see the D or the R after their name, and we have to decide whether or not they deserve to have another 10 years on the bench. And at that point, that makes it a nonpartisan election, right? Because we’re not knowing political parties in which they belong to. And if we’re taking the politics out of the judiciary branch, which most people are in favor of, that just allows you to say, you know, for these 10 years, these justices were making the right decisions and they deserve another 10 years on the bench or until they age out as they can do here in Pennsylvania. So it’s very important that people come out and vote in 2025 in these judicial elections. It is the biggest drop off on a ballot happens when you get down to the courts. Most people have no idea who these folks are. They’ve never met a judge. Some of them are probably pretty happy about that, right? And they get in there and they have no idea whether or not to retain or if I should vote for this person for the first time to be a judge. So it’s really important that we provide civic education around who it is, what are the qualifications. People might be very interested in hearing that Magisterial judges in Pennsylvania don’t need to be lawyers. You don’t need to be a lawyer to run to be a Magisterial Judge in the Commonwealth.
So, you know, I think about how important this upcoming election will be and why these courts matter to our daily lives because our lives are political whether we like it or not. And the things that we care about, there will be decisions made about them in the courts.
Are there any obstacles you face to civic education about these elections and candidates? Because I just look to the local daily newspaper here, they haven’t published one article about [Congressman] Brian Fitzpatrick since January 1st. And so that on top of news deserts, or places where some of these newspapers are just mirages, given their lack of political and democracy coverage, what are you doing to try to overcome them?
The bulk of 2024 was trying to overcome misinformation and disinformation. The way people get their news, how they get their media has completely changed. I’m a journalist by trade, Temple University graduate, journalism degree, right? So this is my baby here. I enjoy this opportunity to provide civic education and the truth to the people. And I’ll say that in 2024, we spent a lot of time overcoming misinformation and disinformation. So much so we couldn’t even speak to being proactive about the things that we would want to see in our state governments or our federal governments. And so it’s a shame that we are not able to receive the news and feel that we’re getting the news from a trusted source. I’ll tell you when we do town halls, community conversations, one of the first questions that always comes out is, who should I trust for this information? Who should I go to? And that’s always been a question that’s hard to answer for folks, you know, because they are getting their news in different ways, particularly young people. It has changed the way that we operate as an organization, that we have so much of our civic engagement is done digitally. You know, if it is on social media and who and where on social media, or if it is weekly newsletters that people may or may not be opening up and reading, or if it is actually just going into a neighborhood that nobody touches, knocking on doors and talking about issues. And I think that that has been one of the top ways to engage communities in this time where unfortunately, lots of the mainstream media are just not seen as being reliable sources of information.
Kadida, are there any other issues or topics that we haven’t talked about that should be on Pennsylvania’s voters minds?
I’ll reiterate how many people are not registered to vote in this time. And I’ll add on top of that, those that haven’t voted in quite some time. I can’t tell you how many people we come across, in younger communities, college campuses and other places, that think that we only vote every four years. They think the presidential election is it. And there are some people who have not cast a ballot in more than eight years and they’re no longer registered to vote. And they need to get re-registered to vote because they’ve been purged from the voter rolls. So I think about the people out here who have no idea that we have elections twice a year every year. And in 2025, this judicial election will be critical as these will be the justices that will sit on the bench when we have our 2030 census. And our 2030 census will determine how districts are drawn. If we maybe gain a U.S. representative or lose a U.S. representative, it’ll determine how much money is spent in a certain community based upon who lives or how many people live in a certain community. So I just want people to recognize how important these judicial elections are and how powerful Pennsylvania voters are. We’re one of only seven states in the entire country that we get to elect all of our judges and justices in partisan elections. And that makes Pennsylvania voters very powerful. And so the last thing I’ll say is those that are still
disillusioned by the political process, those that have no intention of coming out in 2025 and voting, and they’re going to wait until 2028. I encourage you to get involved in your local municipal judicial elections because they have the biggest impact on your daily life, much greater than even the president of United States has on your life. What happens in school board elections? What happens in county commissioner elections? What happens to your local mayor and your small town or city?
They all matter. And if we allow ourselves to fall asleep and let the next four years happen, it’s going to be very difficult for our kids to catch up and for us to ensure that our rights and freedoms remain intact. And Pennsylvania voters, again, very powerful. We need to come out and make our voices heard and make sure elected officials fear our vote or not our vote. And that is the best thing that we can do in this moment is to not give in to the urge to let things happen to us. Voting is just the first step. After you vote for somebody, then you got to hold them accountable. You got to hold them accountable to the promises that they make to us when we elect them. And that’s really important in this moment. Now it’s about accountability and holding elected officials accountable for the promises that they made to us to get us to actually vote for them.
Well, democracy is a verb and it’s one that needs to be acted on every day. So for the listeners who want to do something beyond the voting, how can they get involved with the New Pennsylvania Project?
New Pennsylvania Project, are, we’re growing, you know, just three years ago we were a staff of two and now we are 65 full and part-time staff members across the Commonwealth, paid staff, to do this work. And if anyone wants to get involved with the New Pennsylvania Project, I encourage you to attend our town halls and community conversations as we’re inviting some really spectacular guests to speak to you all about what is happening in our communities. I encourage you to follow us on social media. Go to our website, www.newpaproject.org. Go to our website and find out what events we have coming up in your local communities or what’s happening virtually so you can watch that from the comfort of your home. And just pay attention to the work that is being done and knowing that there are 65 Pennsylvanians that are out there almost on a daily basis, ensuring that we are closing that voter registration gap and increasing the educational levels about civics as civics have really truly been taken out of most public schools in this moment and it’s really needed.
