our mission
Rationale: The Alliance for Bl ack Equality (ABE) is a 527 independent expenditure committee (or Super PAC). The rationale for establishing the committee is that the Black community cannot risk Donald Trump regaining control of the White House and achieving a unified government with a Republican-controlled Congress. The Republican Party’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in Alabama, Florida, and other Red States are just extensions of policies that Donald Trump initiated in the waning days of his presidency. Moreover, Trump’s transition plan, as spelled out in Project 2025, signals that he intends to continue anti-Black policies by overturning the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If Trump recaptures the White House and implements these policies, Black Americans will have no protections against discrimination in American workplaces, public accommodations, and service provision.
While the majority of the Black electorate is clear-eyed about the potential threat that Trump poses to their well-being, polls consistently point to three warning signs around Black mobilization that could potentially sink the Harris-Walz campaign. First, as aggregate polling from the 2040 Strategy Group shows, low-propensity Black voters who turned out heavily for the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020 do not believe that the administration has delivered on enough of its promises to the Black community to reward them with another vote. Second, more of these low-propensity Black voters are identifying with Trump or one of the third-party candidates than they did in either 2016 or 2020. Statistical models show that just a 5 to 7 percent swing of Black voters in the direction of Donald Trump or one of the third-party candidates could be enough to hinder the Harris-Walz campaign’s chances to win the election. Finally, despite the great enthusiasm that has swept the Democratic Party since Vice-President Harris moved to the top of the ticket, the share of Black swing voters who are continuing to indicate support for Trump and the third-party candidates remains too high.
With such high stakes, the legacy civil rights organizations are heavily investing in efforts to mobilize Black voters. Unfortunately, the 501C(3) status of the legacy organizations means that they are unable to engage in the kinds of aggressive messaging grounded in negative partisanship that will necessary to shape the attitudes of low-propensity Black voters. The Alliance for Black Equality will fill this void by raising a fund to pursue data-driven messaging campaigns to educate Black voters in the 2024 battleground states about Donald Trump’s commitment to anti-Black policies and the disastrous consequences for Black America if he can fulfill his wish to overturn the Civil Rights Act. The campaign will also work hold Donald Trump and the broader Republican Party for racialized attacks against Vice President Harris by correcting the record and highlighting how these attacks are rooted in anti-Blackness.
Digital Ads Strategy: The Alliance for Black Equality’s campaign in the 2024 cycle will focus on mobilizing Black voters through two digital ad campaigns. Using the insights generated from our message testing operation, we will target low-propensity Black voters with two types of digital content on the social media platforms X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and Instagram. The first campaign will highlight how Donald Trump overturning the Civil Rights Act will make racial discrimination in American workplaces legal again. The second campaign will focus on public accommodations and service provision by illustrating how nullification of the Civil Rights Act will allow stores to exclude Black consumers just as they did in the Jim Crow era. While our ad placement strategy will focus on the crucial swing states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, our goal is to push the campaigns to virality so they will have an impact well beyond our initial distributions of the content.
“if they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
— Representative Shirley Chisholm (D-NY)
FOUNDING STORY
Meet Dr. Alvin Tillery:
The Alliance for Black Equality is a volunteer effort initiated by Dr. Alvin B. Tillery, Jr., one of the nation's leading academic experts on Black voter mobilization and a Democratic pollster. He is the founding direct of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University and the CEO of the 2040 Strategy Group, a boutique consulting firm that specializes in communications, message-testing, and polling directed at America’s diverse communities. Alvin, who is a lynching survivor, was motivated to launch this campaign because he worries that Donald Trump returning to power would take the country backwards to the dark days when a formal racial caste system negatively shaped every aspect of life for people of color in this country.
