Floridians are riding The Love Bus — to the polls

[babylonsister]

https://thinkprogress.org/love-bus-miami-c634b60f8f24#.h30xcml0b

Floridians are riding The Love Bus — to the polls
Kira Lerner

Painted by Miami-area immigrants, the creative GOTV effort is offering free rides to vote.
Pics at link~

MIAMI, FLORIDA — The seats of The Love Bus are draped with colorful fabric and pillows, and the windows are painted so onlookers can’t see inside. Beside the entrance, items scattered across the front seat provide everything you need for a good time: information about your rights as a voter.

The Love Bus, a converted school bus painted by Miami-area immigrants, is providing largely-minority voters with rides to the polls across South Florida. Dreamed up by a coalition of nonprofit organizations, the project is attempting to provide a bright spot in a year of divisive politics and toxic rhetoric.

“The campaign has had a negative message and we wanted to offer something different to people,” Ruth Moreno, regional coordinator for iAmerica Action, told ThinkProgress on board The Love Bus. “Miami is big on art, big on culture, big on merging the two… so we thought, why not get a school bus and commission Miami-based artists to paint it to take that message of unity and solidarity and community to the streets.”
The Love Bus stops at various GOTV events across South Florida. CREDIT: Kira Lerner

So far, the bus has driven roughly 100 people to their polling places and has informed countless others about the importance of voting. With early vote totals in Florida — especially among Latinos in South Florida — setting records, the bus is just one part of a large get-out-the-vote initiative being run by countless organizations.

But unlike traditional GOTV efforts, The Love Bus understands social media. At a rally in Homestead, Florida on Saturday, people snapped photos standing next to the brightly colored paintings and posted them with the project’s hashtag online.

The bus has focused on heavily-minority communities, like Homestead, which is majority Latino. On Saturday, it also stopped by an AFL-CIO rally and a block party in Little Haiti, a neighborhood home to many Haitian immigrants.

In each neighborhood, Moreno said that advocates are trying to mobilize voters around issues like immigration reform, which is foremost on many Floridians’ minds.


more...

https://thinkprogress.org/love-bus-miami-c634b60f8f24#.h30xcml0b

[lillypaddle]

1. Yes! GOTV! nt

[TonyPDX]

2. We're pulling for you, Sunshine State!

[misterhighwasted]

3. Wow Great story! Inspiring & ya gotta love that bus.

[judesedit]

11. Very cool. Thanks to all who make voting possible for all Americans

[smirkymonkey]

14. Brilliant!

Good for them!

[gademocrat7]

6. Wonderful!

GOTV!

[ffr]

7. Kick his ass!!!

[SunSeeker]

8. K & R

[elmac]

10. I know she's got Michigan

I live in a 99.9% repug community. Every election season the big businesses have huge banner signs proclaiming their love for whom ever the republican nut is running for president weeks before the election. This time, not a peep, not even a little sign for Trump, Their front space is bare. That tells me that he has no chance in MI or nation wide. We need to vote but lets make sure its a landslide vote for the first women president.

[NBachers]

13. Great - very well done!

[BumRushDaShow]

15. K&R and I accidently read it as

Here is a pic of the bus -

[AwakeAtLast]

16. Oh, how much do I love this?

It makes my eyes leak!