By Kirsten Pruitt
Chair, Young Democrats of Greenville County
The past few months have been a crazy blur for the Young Democrats of Greenville County. I was appointed Interim Chair back in February, and officially elected on April 7. We’ve been busy since then. At the April 7 election Derrick Quarles was elected 1st Vice Chair, Jonah Simmons as 2nd Vice Chair, and Shadae Boakye-Yiadom as Secretary & Treasurer.
Right away we registered with the state as an official organization, which allowed us to open a bank account and start fundraising. You can donate to us via ActBlue. We created a website, visit us at www.youngdemsgvl.com! We’re getting our own t-shirts as well. All of this is to create visibility for our chapter so that we can recruit new members and continue to grow as an organization. We attended the Juneteenth Freedom Day Celebration at the Peace Center, where we set up a table and spoke with attendees.
It’s also been an exciting time for us as things continue to open back up. We held a social soon after I became Chair, we then did a postcard drive about a month later. We held our first in person meeting in over a year in June. It was a great opportunity for us to get to know each other beyond Zoom. It was also great to showcase the remodel of GCDP headquarters. We will continue to use HQ for our meetings the first Wednesday of every month at 6:30 p.m.
We’ve been working with Register 46 as well. At the beginning of June we attended the kickoff event at the Phyllis Wheatley Center, several of our members came and we were able to go out into the community and register voters. On July 31st we are having a Day of Action with Register 46 where we’ll be canvassing neighborhoods.
We are partnering with the Young Democrats of Spartanburg-Cherokee for our Day of Action, working together for a better Upstate. We believe partnerships are part of the key to our success and a goal of ours is to grow existing partnerships and create new ones. Our July monthly meeting is a joint one with the Young Democrats of Anderson, Oconee and Pickens.
Upcoming elections have us fired up as well. Our 1st Vice Chair is running for SC House District 25 and we’re looking forward to getting involved in that race. We’ve also been attending some of Joe Cunningham for Governor’s local events, and on July 17 we’re hosting a meet and greet with Joe for people who sign up to volunteer on his campaign. We’re excited to start to work on other campaigns as well so we can turn SC blue!
Our board is heading to Cincinnati, OH, in August for the Young Democrats of America’s Convention. We’ll be there for four days and we’ll have the opportunity to network with other Democrats from across the country, learn from training and speakers, and come back as a better board ready to serve Greenville County.
In the coming months we’re looking forward to continuing to register voters, working with local elections and recruiting more members to our organization. We’re also looking forward to working with all of you!
To connect with Young Dems, email Kirsten at youngdems@greenvilledemocrats.com