WASHINGTON – Amid the coronavirus outbreak, grassroots groups, faith leaders and national voting rights organizations have shifted gears in their census outreach campaigns, abandoning plans to host block parties, leave pamphlets at front doors and set up information tables at community colleges.

Instead, they hosted Zoom parties and teleconferences and posted videos featuring celebrities such as Tom Hanks and Kerry Washington on Wednesday to mark national Census Day.

Community leaders said responding to the census, even during the middle of a pandemic, is important, and they hope people hear the message and fill out the forms while confined to their homes. The decennial count is used to distribute federal funds for schools, roads, bridges and lunch programs. It’s also used to determine the number of House seats a state has in Congress.

“We still need to remind folks that we have $1 trillion” in federal funds at stake, said Trupania Bonner, founder of Crescent City Media/Center for Civic Action, a New Orleans-area group spearheading the #SouthCounts2020 Census Campaign. “We’re going to get people counted.”

For When We All Vote, a nonprofit civic engagement group launched in 2018 by Michelle Obama, Hanks, Lin-Manuel Miranda and others, and media company ATTN, that effort meant turning to famous co-chairs to help make the pitch in a video released Wednesday.

“We can all take care of our communities – from the comfort of our couches!” Hanks, who himself had the coronavirus, said in a statement. “Participate in the 2020 Census online, over the phone or by mail. These few minutes will make a difference and impact our democracy for years to come. Come on, everyone! Let's do it!”

Stephanie Young, When We All Vote's managing director for culture, communication and media partnerships, said the goal is to get more young people and people of color – communities often underrepresented in the census – more politically engaged. Advocates said as many as 3 million African Americans weren't counted in the 2010 census.

Young said Obama has repeatedly said throughout the group's get-out-the-vote effort that there's power in voting and participating in the census.

“That is why we really want to make sure that people are counted and represented,” Young said.

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The coronavirus outbreak has had a major impact on census operations. Invitations to respond to the census by phone, online or mail arrived in most households by mid-March, when many states began announcing stay-at-home restrictions. Officials pushed back plans to send census takers to knock on doors, as well as the deadline for people to respond to the survey from July 31 to Aug. 14. They twice delayed the start of some field operations. This weekend, they pushed that start back again to April 15.

“We have a little more time with this quarantine,” Bonner said.

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Partying with the census at home

Initially, the community groups behind the #SouthCounts2020 Census Campaign planned to host events across the South featuring music, food and, of course, plenty of census materials, in big and smaller cities, including Dallas; New Orleans; Utica, Mississippi; New Market, Tennessee; Mobile, Alabama; Atlanta; and Durham, North Carolina. There would have been a table with voter registration information.

Instead, the groups hosted two census Zoom parties Wednesday – one from 10 a.m. to noon CST and another planned for 5 to 7 p.m. – where census officials could answer questions and offer help filling out the survey. Some community leaders will fill out their own forms while deejay CiseHD plays music during the breaks.

“It is Plan B,” Bonner said.

Louisiana is one of the hardest-hit states in the country, with 5,237 coronavirus cases and 239 related deaths, most of them in New Orleans. Bonner said Oliver Stokes Jr., also known as DJ Black N Mild, a deejay who helped promote the census in 2010, died last month from the coronavirus.

“This thing is hitting close to home,” he said.

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Celebrities help spread the message of Census Day

Census Day is the latest effort from community leaders to get people to fill out the population survey as the coronavirus takes up government resources. Last week, a coalition of national civil rights and voting rights groups hosted a series of virtual events during what they called "Black Census Week."

"The reality is people are at home, so this is the opportunity to really encourage folks via social media,” said Melanie Campbell, head of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

Many community groups hope to soon return to traditional outreach efforts because they're worried about limited internet access, particularly in rural areas and in some low-income communities. Bonner said the groups will encourage people to fill out the census by phone.

Young said the celebrities featured in the group's video, including Selena Gomez and Janelle Monae, will share their message this week via their social media pages to help promote the census.

“This is a captive audience and I think an opportunity to literally reach people where they are – at home,’’ Young said.