For the past few months, Shaundra Jones has gone to the county clerk’s office in Memphis, Tennessee, to help people get identification. She goes at least once a week, and has become such a regular fixture that Department of Motor Vehicles employees often refer people to her if they need help getting an ID.
On Tuesday, Jones, a 42-year-old organizer with Spread the Vote, a group that works to get people IDs for free, was kicked out of the office. Wanda Halbert, the county clerk, accused her of soliciting business on government property.
Jones told HuffPost that’s not what she was doing. She says she showed up early Tuesday morning with 10 people who had made an appointment with her to get ID. Once inside the DMV, the people Jones was assisting started telling other people in line who Jones was and how she was helping them. Jones said some of those people then approached her with questions about Spread the Vote, and asked if they could have a flyer with more information. Jones said she gave it to them.
Jones knew she couldn’t solicit on government property, so she invited the eight new people who approached her to step outside the DMV and sign a waiver authorizing her to help them. According to Jones, as she was talking to a potential new client, Halbert approached her and demanded to speak with her in a back conference room with other employees.
Jones told HuffPost that Halbert, a Democrat, was upset and accused her of soliciting business on government property. Halbert, Jones said, had never heard of Spread the Vote and demanded to speak with her supervisor. Jones says Halbert wanted to know how Spread the Vote benefited from getting people IDs. She says she gave Halbert her supervisor’s contact information, and Halbert eventually asked another employee to escort Jones from the building.
“I was upset. It was very disturbing, especially since I’ve been coming down there since December,” Jones said, adding that she has personally helped more than 150 people get IDs. “The way that she was talking to me, I just felt if someone higher than me could explained a little more, I guess, maybe she would have felt a little better and changed her mind or something.”
The incident drew attention after Kat Calvin, the founder of Spread the Vote, tweeted Tuesday that she was “livid” over Jones’ expulsion.
“Spread The Vote is shocked and deeply disturbed by the way the Shelby County Motor Vehicle Division has reacted to this situation,” Calvin said in a separate statement. “We are surprised that the Shelby County Motor Vehicle Division felt the need to ban us for simply passing out a sheet of paper. Spread The Vote’s main goal is to help better the lives of anyone and everyone by getting them a government issued ID at no cost so they can have access to opportunity.”
Andrew Feldman, a spokesman for Spread the Vote, said the group has received more than 300 donations since the incident and raised over $20,000 ― a sum that could help the group pay for 500 IDs.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Halbert praised the work of Spread the Vote but showed surveillance footage of Jones passing out flyers, claiming this was evidence that Jones was soliciting business on government property.
Halbert did not respond to a request for comment for this story, but on Thursday she sent a tweet saying “EVERYONE is welcomed at the Shelby County Clerk’s office but, we must unapolegetically [sic] obey the laws, rules, regulations, policies and procedures.” Feldman said Spread the Vote has taken Halbert’s tweet to mean the group is not banned from the DMV.
Jones, for her part, acknowledged she made a mistake when she passed out a flyer in a government building. But she said Halbert could have simply told her to stop instead of kicking her out of the facility.
Jones said she was motivated to help people get IDs not only because it can be a crucial first step toward getting a job, but also because it gives people a sense of dignity.
“There’s so many homeless people that pass away outside,” she said. “They take them to the morgue, they keep them there for three to six months in a cold refrigerator until someone comes and identifies who they are. If no one comes to identify their loved ones, they cremate them. That’s it. That’s terrible.”
“You live on this earth for however many years,” she said, “and then to die and your loved ones don’t even know that you’re deceased because you don’t have an ID.”