The Enid Social Justice Committee
When residents of Enid, Oklahoma (population: less than 50,00) learned that the city had elected a person rumored to be a white nationalist to the city council, they organized.
They formed the Enid Social Justice Committee (ESJC) and engaged in a campaign that shone a spotlight on the council member’s views and past actions. They researched Mr. Blevins's past. They discovered a photograph of him holding a tiki torch in Charlottesville; they found evidence that Mr. Blevins was serving in a leadership role in a statewide white nationalist group called Identity Europa. For months, through peaceful protest and sustained advocacy at city council meetings, their campaign garnered press attention for their revelations.
When the council member, Judd Blevins, would not explain or apologize for these actions, instead calling news reports “fake news,” the ESJC began a recall campaign. They read up on municipal law and got to work collecting petitions from neighbors and at community events. They helped recruit a candidate who had deep roots in the community: a longtime Republican and former teacher named Cheryl Patterson.
For their courage, members of the ESJC faced backlash. Blevins publicly called out the ESJC as “radicals”, and called Patterson their “puppet.” In the end, the ESJC collected more than enough signatures for a recall. And on April 2, 2024, Patterson won the recall vote by more than 20%. More people voted in the recall than in the initial election.
After the victory, the chair of the ESJC offered this lesson to others: “You can do this because we did this. We didn’t even know what we were doing, and we did this. This is possible.”