Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2) is about to make its first mark in the conversation concerning the 2016 presidential election. With the launch of a new nonpartisan event, “Voices for Votes,” SP2 is helping pinpoint what kinds of social themes, issues, and concerns voters should be animated by when they vet and ultimately choose the next president of the United States.

Voices for Votes will take place on Saturday, Sept. 19, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Fitts Auditorium in Golkin Hall at Penn Law School, 3501 Sansom St. It will feature a panel moderated by Sara Lomax-Reese, president and general manager of 900AM-WURD. The discussion will include experts such as Byron Cotter, the director of alternative sentencing at the Defender Association of Philadelphia; Nikki Adeli, TEDx speaker and youth commissioner to Mayor Michael Nutter; Amy Castro Baker, SP2 assistant professor and founder of Parents as Leaders;  and Charles Ellison, political strategist and Washington correspondent for the Philadelphia Tribune.

“We’ll have journalists, activists, politicians, educators, and organizers, different kinds of folks in the same venue, so they can speak to people who they wouldn’t necessarily be in conversation with day in and day out,” says John Jackson, SP2’s dean. “That’s one part of it, to create a kind of context where we could really be talking across different kinds of social sectors about the issues that affect us all, even if sometimes in very different ways.”

The radio host will open up the discussion with a couple of questions to set the tone, but Jackson says “we’re going to make sure we carve out a lot of time for folks in attendance to express themselves, and what they imagine to be important issues.”

Jackson insists it will be a venue where people won’t feel frustrated over conversations talking only in the abstract, but that it’s going to be linking important themes and concepts to what’s happening in people’s every day lives.

“That, I think, is going to be a really powerful way to get people invested,” Jackson says. “I’m hoping it’s going to be a nice venue for demonstrating the value of toggling back-and-forth between policy and theory and practice, fieldwork, and experience.”

The event is a prelude to the release of “SP2’s Penn Top Ten Social Justice Issues for the 2016 Presidential Election,” a publication and multimedia package in which about a dozen SP2 faculty members address social justice issues, such as homelessness, education policy, the digital divide, mass incarceration, and mental health policy. The physical “workbook” is slated to be released in early 2016, but, Jackson says, some essays will be released on a comprehensive website on a rolling basis, along with animated videos.

“It’s really our attempt to reach a lot of different audiences about the value of being well-informed civic participants,” Jackson says. “It means reaching voters, but also means reaching young people who should be interested in these topics and would be affected by them and be responsible for them in a few years. That’s why we’re using various platforms.”

When asked about the timing of the Voices for Votes event, Jackson says he and his team wanted to “start as soon as possible.”

Sure, the November election is a year away, Jackson says, “but if you recognize nothing else from what’s been happening over this summer with respect to both the Republican and
Democratic candidates who are trying to vie for the presidency, we’ve pushed up the start date for serious politicking around this stuff.

“I think part of what we’re recognizing is it’s not too early to be getting people to start to focus,” Jackson adds. “The idea now is we’re going to be spending the next 14 months really being part of this ongoing discussion about what voters, what citizens should be thinking about, what they should be debating and discussing as they begin to figure out who they imagine is going to be the best leader of the nation after President Obama.”

To register for the free Voices for Votes event, visit https://voicesforvotes.eventbrite.com.