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#Election2020 may be most remembered for its presidential showdown or the election of the first woman VP.
For April Fournier, it will also be the year she made history as the first Indigenous person elected to serve on Portland, Maine's city council.https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv
2/ @PortlandFor remembers the moment she decided to run for Portland, Maine's city council.
It was this summer and she was watching a virtual council meeting on homelessness. A person who was logged in said they were sleeping outside of the building.https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv
3/ A council member instructed the person to email officials, noting it wasn’t time for public testimony. (At the time, protesters had created an encampment outside of city hall to highlight the rising number of people w/o shelter during the pandemic.) https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv pic.twitter.com/NO6NJDCC5u
4/ The exchange struck Fournier. “Just the lack of empathy, the lack of just being able to see outside of your own bubble.” She announced her candidacy for an at-large seat on the nine-member city council shortly after.https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv
5/ Fournier, a member of the Diné (Navajo) Nation, is among the women of color who won historic “firsts” in local races around the country. The candidates will serve in spaces like city councils, county government and school boards. https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv pic.twitter.com/H6dOntvU6I
6/ There is no comprehensive data available on the racial and gender demographics of the people who serve on nearly 40,000 township, municipal and county governments in the country.https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv
7/ Some preliminary data on the gender of local officeholders suggest shortcomings that mirror dynamics in federal and state offices. https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv pic.twitter.com/CtzeQsQmeA
8/ The pandemic and a national reckoning on race laid bare just how much issues over policing, education and health care are decided on the local level.
Women of color sought to be key decision makers on issues impacting their communities, said @RunforSomething's Kandice Harris.pic.twitter.com/ay0nwyimLp
9/ Many of the women of color who made headlines for their local office wins are Democrats.
Although Republican women of color made gains in congressional races, the scope of their wins on a local level is more muted, according to @khilldavis.https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv
10/ And while the gains made by Republican women of color in Congress are promising, it hides an underlying problem for the party if they’re not building below, @khilldavis added.https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv
11/ Erin Vilardi of @VoteRunLead, a training program for women of all political backgrounds to run for office, said of the 221 alumni of their training on the November ballot, 87 were women of color; at least 71% won their local, state and federal races.https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv
12/12 “We’re still going to see ‘firsts’ because it hasn’t been an equal playing field for us,” @AshantiGholar said.
More from @bcrodriguez:https://bit.ly/2KsqMlv
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