Exclusive: Kamala Harris Is Teaming Up With the NAACP to Get Voters Ready for November

Kamala Harris is heading back into the community, and this time, the focus is on making sure voters understand what’s at stake before they head to the polls. The NAACP announced that its president and CEO, Derrick Johnson, will join the former vice president for community conversations in Milwaukee on Oct. 26 and Atlanta on Oct. 29. The events are part of the organization’s broader push to educate, engage and mobilize voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

For the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, this is about more than a couple of fireside chats and a few photo ops. It’s about connecting the issues affecting Black communities to the political decisions that shape everyday life.

“The NAACP has been at the forefront of protecting voting rights and ensuring our communities have a voice in our democracy,” Johnson said in a statement to The Root. “Our work doesn’t begin or end on Election Day. From voter education to grassroots organizing, we remain committed to building informed, engaged communities. We look forward to continuing that work alongside Vice President Harris in Milwaukee and Atlanta.”

For Black folks in Milwaukee and Atlanta, that means confronting questions about affordability, economic opportunity, health care access and voting rights — issues that can feel a whole lot more urgent than the political noise coming out of Washington.

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The NAACP is a non-partisan organization. Still, the latest collaboration with the former Democratic vice president comes at a critical time for Black Americans across the country, especially in the South.

In metro Atlanta, housing affordability topped the list of regional concerns in the Atlanta Regional Commission’s 2025 Metro Atlanta Speaks survey. Twenty-eight percent of respondents identified housing costs as the region’s biggest problem, followed by traffic at 24%. More than six in 10 said they couldn’t afford to move to another home or apartment in their current neighborhood. Those numbers reflect the wider region, not Black residents alone, but they underscore the economic pressures facing communities across metro Atlanta.

That’s exactly where civic engagement enters the conversation: Who gets elected can influence decisions on housing, jobs, public services and access to health care. Voting alone won’t solve those problems, but disengagement can leave communities with fewer opportunities to hold decision-makers accountable.

Harris laid out the stakes in a fundraising email this month. “For the past twenty months, the American people have struggled as a consequence of the cruelty and corruption of this current administration,” she wrote, according to the Associated Press. “Now is the time for us to be ruthless in delivering for the people: on affordability, on fighting corruption, and on making our voices heard.”

The NAACP is putting serious organizing muscle behind that message. Its multi-million-dollar Get Out the Vote campaign aims to mobilize more than 6.5 million voters across 14 states and 33 congressional districts. The organization says it has recruited more than 52,000 volunteers, who are helping with canvassing, phone banking, door-knocking and digital outreach.

The organization is also partnering with civil rights and community groups on National Black Man Voter Day, scheduled for Oct. 24, to mobilize 100,000 Black men ahead of early voting.