Meet The Florida Activists Making Sure Serving Time In Prison Won't Stop Folks From Voting

Rodnika Cockroft is sick of working within a system that led to one in four people she is aware unable to vote — so she’s changing it.


Four years prior, as soon as the 25-year-old Miami, Florida, local was in college, she started working with Dream Defenders, a black and brown youth-led agency serious about making a multiracial voting block and, as Cockroft put it, “putting the power in the hands of the people and centering people over corporations.” She worked with the order for two years as soon as she attended school in Gainesville; whenever she was set to graduate, a member of the Defenders leadership instructed her they had a chapter in her hometown of Opa-locka, Florida.


“I was like, ‘I certainly don't desire to leave my city without seeing and creating change in it,’” Cockroft, a recipient of the 2019 MTV Leaders for Change grant, told MTV News. So she started leading organizing efforts in Northwest Miami-Dade to educate and empower people to vote for Amendment 4, which would restore voting rights to returning citizens that have served time in the prison system.


The amendment allowed all free Floridians, except those convicted of murder or sex offenses, to cast their ballot. Yet it didn’t go into effect smoothly: soon after voters passed the amendment in November 2018, the Republican-controlled state Legislature signed into law a stipulation that meant anyone who was freed would have to pay off all of their court fines, fees, and restitution before they could vote.


“We're talking about over a million people who have gone to jail,” Cockroft told MTV News. “They're out in the street and so they can't vote. They had their rights stripped away from them and Florida, especially under Rick Scott's tenure, just resisted to restore people's votes or their voting rights.”


While working on passing the Amendment, Cockroft discovered something about her companions and family: “I didn't realize how several people in my life could not vote because of those nonviolent offenses,” she said.


So she fought specifically for them, also. MTV News sat down with Cockroft to talk about the difficulties of fighting against a system that has spent years garnering strength, the significance of voting in local and national elections, and how Florida will be such a critical state in the upcoming 2020 election.


MTV News: What does Dream Defenders do?


Rodnika Cockroft: We just wish to prepare ensure that we are building power both on the local level and the electoral level because just talking about it in our communities isn't insufficient and our state and our respective counties have the funds to create ensure that our communities are safe in a way that is transformative. Not putting more police on the streets, although actually investing in infrastructure and schools, making sure that we have genuine programming and things.


MTV News: within the past four years that you’ve been working with Dream Defenders, you spent a lot of time working on Amendment 4. Why was that so essential to you?


Cockroft: We're talking about over a million people who have gone to jail. They're out in the street and so they can't vote. They had their rights stripped away from them and Florida, especially under Rick Scott's tenure, just declined to restore people's votes or their voting rights.


That is also something that affects one in four black males across the state. It looked like giving them the rights back was the hugest thing that we may do. Also, we're still fighting this because our legislature's terrible and so they don't hope to give us things even as soon as we win them. Any time we voted on Amendment 4, [we were] voting to restore the correct for folks who have nonviolent felony offenses to vote. That was the end of it.


MTV News: However was it?


Cockroft: Overwhelmingly, [voters] mentioned, "Okay, this is something I'd back." … Then we [heard] from legislative session and they're like, "Actually, it was also broad. It was also broad. Let's add some conditions, making sure fines and fees are in there so you must pay before you could have your rights restored." Again, that's another way to disenfranchise poor people who already don't have it.


MTV News: Is that what you're spending a lot of time fighting for right now?


Cockroft: We're still doing that work and every chapter has their individual campaign that they aspire to work for. All of those are ways that we will support end mass incarceration in the state of Florida since Florida is the prison state.


MTV News: how come do you suggest dismantling that and making sure that folks do have voting access is imperative to protecting our democracy?


Cockroft: Everyone should be allowed the correct to vote. Period. All of our lives are affected by who is in office and the legislation they push and what they determine to put the financial range cash into. It all affects our lives and no one should be barred from voting in the opening place. That's first.


Second, Florida [is] such a key state any time we talk about elections overall, whether it be gubernatorial or national elections throughout the presidential elections. To have a million-plus people who have just been working towards getting their rights restored for decades on end, we have the power to… bring them into our agencies and fight for the things that we want and require because they know what it's like to be disenfranchised… We're certainly about to flip this state back blue.


MTV News: do you suggest that Florida being such a purple state is one of the reasons it's so essential for young Florida voters, in particular youth voters, to get involved in voting and not just for presidential candidates however also for these local candidates?


Cockroft: That's something that we certainly aspire to put emphasis on. We'll be registering 15,000 folks to vote and we're targeting young folks so that we can increase the percentage of young folks that are turning out because our futures are on the line, right? We don't want these old people in power making decisions for a global that will not phase them one way or another.


We proved this past election that we care about elections outdoors of the presidential cycle. Florida had its largest turnout in a gubernatorial election ever last year, so we certainly wish to put emphasis on bringing the youth out. I think we know more right now more than ever how pivotal it is to vote in all elections.


MTV News: Can you tell me a little more about your efforts to register young people to vote?


Cockroft: On National Voter Registration Day, we'll be walking our first set of folks that are going to be registering folks to vote. They'll be in Miami-Dade and Broward County.


In Miami, we're going to be doing a registration/presidential forum where we'll be discussing where different candidates stand on race, immigration, prisons, and police. This is the opening of a series of conversations that we're going to have with our community, with young people about the people who are attempting to get our votes and pushing them into voting in the primaries.


In 2016, I think a lot of young people learned, especially in certain states, "Whoa, we don't really know much about how this voting process works. We thought that it was just, 'Oh, I'm going to go vote. This is what it is, I show up. I vote.'" It's like, no. You’ve got to create ensure — especially in places where voter suppression happens, like in Florida — that you have all your statistics on your voter registration card on point, making sure that the address is on point, making sure you're in the right party, especially if they're talking about voting in the primary. That's what we'll be doing over the next couple of... Well, up until 2020, really.


MTV News: What are you looking forward to that’s getting you excited about this fight?


Cockroft: I'm really looking forward to the voting drive that we're going to do. I'm really looking forward to our voting guide, especially on the local level because those are a few of the things that are going to affect us the most. Then outdoors of that, certainly looking forward to seeing these Democratic [presidential] candidates move a little more to the left because we don't want anyone who's going to go in and preserve the status quo. We really want someone who is going to challenge Donald Trump.


This is a nerve-wracking time although it's also exhilarating because I know that we're going to prepare ensure that we get the outcome that we need and deserve as people.


MTV News: How do you suggest securing this grant from MTV News can assist you, and Dream Defenders as a whole, accomplish those goals?


Cockroft: I think that this grant is going to support us get folks involved who are not able to get jobs, as an example. Once we're talking about going out and registering folks to vote, the people who we aspire to lead the way are the people who are affected the most. We desire to center the most different franchise people.


I think that this grant would certainly help us with making sure that we are having people who are still actively fighting to get their rights restored back get the work… I think this may help us give them some jobs and push them into registering folks to vote while we attempt to get them their rights as well. We're going to win. Just know that we're going to win.


This interview has been lightly edited for length.


Leaders for Change is a MTV grant program that invests in young people doing extraordinary work at the local level to advance voting access. From getting polling places on college campuses across Michigan to registering voters in Chicago jails to distributing rides to the polls in Georgia, these young leaders are breaking down the barriers that make it hard to vote in their communities.