VOTE FOR THOSE WHO CAN’T BARRIERS TO VOTING

Criminal History

More than 6 million Americans can’t vote due to a past criminal conviction. 1 in every 13 voting-age African Americans has lost their right to vote which is four times more than all other Americans.

People with past convictions can’t vote in 34 states and 3 states permanently ban people with a felony conviction from voting — Kentucky, Florida, and Iowa. (Florida has a measure on their November 2018 ballot to change this.)

IN PENNSYLVANIA: You can vote if you are on probation or parole.

You can vote with an absentee ballot if you are: in jail or prison & convicted of misdemeanors. under house arrest. being held in jail while awaiting trial. on parole or probation and living in a halfway house or community corrections center: (You cannot use the halfway house address as your registration address. You MUST use a previous or future address.)

You can’t vote if you are: in jail or prison because of a felony conviction and won’t be released before the election. convicted of violating PA election laws within the past 4 years.

Get an absentee ballot by: Sending the application form to your county board of elections by 5pm on Tuesday, October 30, 2018. Then return the ballot to the county elections board by 5pm on Friday, November 2, 2018.

Already registered to vote? You don’t need to do anything to regain your rights. Need to update your address or register to vote? You must register to vote or change your address by Tuesday, October 9, 2018.

Trouble registering or voting? Contact the ACLU of Pennsylvania at 877-745-ACLU (2258).

Voter Id

34 states have voter ID laws enforced in 2018.

IN PENNSYLVANIA: You do not need to have or show an ID to vote (unless you are a first-time voter or new at your polling place).

PA Voter ID law is no longer in effect.

Commonwealth Court Judge Bernard McGinley deemed PA Voter ID law unconstitutional on January 17, 2014, entering a permanent injunction against the enforcement of Voter ID at the polls:

“[The in-person voting requirement in the Voter ID law] is invalid and unconstitutional on its face as the provision and issuance of compliant identification does not comport with liberal access and unreasonably burdens the right to vote.”

Voter Purges

A process of cleaning up voter rolls by deleting names from registration lists, can prevent eligible people from voting.

16 million voters were removed from the rolls by states between 2014 and 2016.

4 states engaged in illegal purges, and 4 more states have implemented unlawful purge rules.

Know your rights when it comes to voting. This election guide includes information from: Ballotpedia, The Brennen Center for Justice, the ACLU, the Committee of Seventy, VotesPA, and the City of Philadelphia. Visit votespa.com for all of your election needs.

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INSP.ngo

A weighted blanket, filled with evenly distributed weights, offers instant comfort — with research showing that such blankets can soothe people suffering from a wide range of ailments, from anxiety to PTSD and insomnia. Donna Durham, the company’s founder and president, first made a weighted blanket in 2014; now she has a staff of 30, which is largely made up of refugees and immigrants keen to work hard and integrate themselves into life in America.

Drive up to the headquarters of Weighting Comforts and you could be in Anytown, USA. The small corporate office complex in South Nashville is indistinguishable from neighboring buildings and its outer façade hides any hint as to the activity going on inside.

Now enter the office of Donna Durham, the founder and president of Weighting Comforts, and take a seat. Durham will arrange one of her signature weighted blankets around you, and sure enough, as the cool fabric shifts around you, you’ll feel like you’re home, wherever that may be: the bedroom you grew up in or the loft at your beloved grandmother’s house.

That feeling is what Donna, who has a master’s degree in marriage and family counseling, aims to bring to all who purchase a Weighting Comforts blanket. She wants to provide them with a night of peaceful sleep, free from anxiety.

But that’s just one part of her story.

In the beginning, there was Donna — a college home economics major and mother of four. The Durham family moved home to Nashville in 2011 after living in Iowa, where Donna’s husband, Jamie, was teaching.

While she was in her final semester of graduate school for counseling at Nashville’s Trevecca Nazarene University in 2014, her advisor asked her to make weighted blankets for all the student offices.

“She knew about my background in Home Ec.,” Donna says. “It was amazing to see someone who was very anxious and unable to sit still, and then to put a weighted blanket on them. It was part of a tool chest of self-care.”

Weighted blankets have recently become popular for people who have trouble sleeping, especially those with anxiety, PTSD, or autism. Medical writers say the blankets, which are filled with evenly distributed weights, provide users with the same tactile feeling as they would experience when getting a hug. Researchers also say that the blankets prompt the release of serotonin; a chemical that reduces anxiety and improves mood, as well as melatonin; which promotes sleep and regulates the sleep cycle.

Soon, friends were asking Donna for their own weighted blankets: “My son Josh said, ‘I think you have something here’ and he built our Facebook page and website.” She had two orders within the first minute of putting the site online.

She began the business by hand-sewing blankets and meeting customers at fabric stores where they could select the fabric they wanted. But demand became too much for one person to handle, and Donna enlisted the help of family members. She even paid the neighbors’ children to help her box and ship the blankets over the Christmas period.

Enter Rita Atkins and Sew For Hope. In early 2015, one of Donna’s friends suggested she reach out to Sew For Hope, a nonprofit started by Christ Presbyterian Church members to teach sewing skills to refugees and immigrants in the Middle Tennessee area.

On April 2, 2015, Donna met several Sew For Hope graduates at the Thrift Smart store where she taught them how to make her blankets. For two years, every week, Donna met her sewing group in the Thrift Smart parking lot, where they exchanged raw materials for finished products.

Weighting Comforts’ first employee was a woman named Anwar, an immigrant from Iraq who was a physics and mathematics major in her home country. Anwar, who remains the senior staff member in the Weighting Comforts manufacturing facility, spoke gently to Durham one day.

“I know ten women who need work,” said Anwar, a tall woman with a ready smile. “I know a widow from Syria with four children who doesn’t want to be on food stamps: she wants to be able to earn a living.”

Fast forward to June 2018. Weighting Comforts now has 30 full-time employees, many of whom are seamstresses who came to the company through Sew For Hope. They make more than 100 blankets per day, each one taking about 45 minutes to complete.

Employees come from all over — from besieged Myanmar, from Iraq and Iran, from South America, from Tennessee.

The Weighting Comforts’ office manager is a veteran of the Iraq War who graduated from Belmont University’s Entrepreneurship Program. He speaks a little bit of Arabic and has a cultural understanding of the women working in the sewing room.

Weighting Comforts also offers English as a Second Language classes one night a week to its employees, most of whom are women. A brightly colored map in the ESL room has push pins and thread that connect each country of origin to photographs of the company’s employees. “We want to provide a safe place to learn English; we want this to be a stepping stone,” Donna says, pointing out that religion prohibits many of the women from working side by side with men.

All segments of the manufacturing process are handled within the Weighting Comforts facility: measuring the PVC beads (blankets come in different weights and have a different colored measuring cup for the amount of beads needed for each); stitching the beads inside the quilted blankets; quality control; packaging and fulfillment.

Donna credits many people with the success of her stillnew company: her son, Josh, who is now Weighting Comforts’ CEO and marketing guru (“He’s a genius,” says his proud mother), Rita Atkins from Sew For Hope, Anwar, the women who sew, and finally, her own faith. “Faith is important,” she says simply. “This has been a life-changing experience.”

It has certainly been life-changing for Donna, but also for everyone touched by their interactions with the company, whether they be the women who learn English and find employment through Weighting Comforts or the blanket buyers who find peaceful rest.

For more information on Weighting Comforts’ blankets, go to weightingcomforts.com.