Whitman College Magazine Winter 2021

Class Notes
Kali Brewster
November 3 at 4:21 AM •
I’m a poll worker in Sheepshead Bay. We arrived at 5AM abs we have
no coordinator. 200 people waiting to vote and we are not set up. Just
elected a new coordinator amongst ourselves. Please someone send
help I can’t be on my phone. People are angry and cold and leaving.
BO141 William E Grady High School.
106 37 Comments 26 Shares
Like
Share
Images courtesy of Kaliswa Brewster, at left, pictured with Graham Ashcraft.
‘Hello, American! Come and Vote!’
Prior to the 2020 election, the U.S. faced not only a pandemic, but a shortage of poll
workers, threatening people’s access to a safe and fair election. More than 700,000
people stepped up to meet that challenge. One of those thousands was Whitman
alum and actor Kaliswa Brewster ’05.
An Election Day Drama Unfolds
On the big day, Brewster woke up at 3:30 a.m. to make sure she’d be on time for her
poll station shift in Brooklyn, New York. Sporting her Whitman College face mask,
she was surprised at what she found when she arrived.
“I got there at 5:01 a.m., panicking that I was late,” Brewster says. “But when I
showed up, there were a bunch of people sitting around. No one knew what was
going on.”
The polling site’s coordinator was nowhere to be found. What Brewster and
her fellow poll workers didn’t know at that early hour was that the designated
coordinator for their site had been in a car accident and wouldn’t make it to open the
building that day. As the line outside the polling station grew with no sign of opening,
frustrated and cold voters began to leave. Brewster decided to make an urgent plea
for help on social media.
“I tweeted. I put it on my Instagram. I posted on Facebook. I made calls … But the fact
is, we didn’t know what we were doing or how to open the polls.” By that time, Brewster
estimated over 200 people were waiting outside in near-freezing temperatures.
It wasn’t long before area churches and organizations showed up with hot
coffee and donuts for those waiting to vote. And Brewster got to work doing
everything she could to encourage people to continue waiting and not miss their
opportunity to vote.
Taking care of people is one of Brewster’s strong suits. While a student at Whitman,
she was a campus tour guide. “I love making people feel welcome. It felt good to be
like, ‘Hello, American! Come and vote!’”
Eventually, the group was able to open the site with direction from the New York
Board of Elections. It was 7:40 a.m. when the first voter entered the building.
Brewster and the poll workers made it happen and it felt like democracy, she says.
“We are the government. It’s for the people, by the people.”
Read more about Kaliswa Brewster’s work with the nonpartisan organization Power the
Polls—and see her fashion statement on voting day—at whitman.edu/magazine.
Now Streaming
Brewster appears in “Paint,” a dark comedy film about recent art school graduates trying to find their way in the New York City art world. The film was released in December
2020 and is available on many video-on-demand platforms.
40 / WHITMAN MAGAZINE