Everyday Election Activism

An Insider's Guide (#12) - January 23, 2025

When you are in a boat on rough seas, panicking is not an option. If the waves are higher than the sides of the boat, it is not a good idea to give up. If you want to stay alive, stay calm and keep your wits about you. Your entire focus must be on staying afloat and finding safe harbor.

These are hard times, and the boat of democracy is in rough seas. It takes resolve to take action calmly when the winds are blowing hard from all directions, and when there is no way to put an immediate end to the madness. Righting the boat requires grounding ourselves in the reality of the moment without being overwhelmed. It requires courage and steadiness. We all have these strengths. May we draw on them to get us through!

It will take collective effort to prevail. To push back on Project 2025 and the billionaires’ plans to steal our country from us, we will need to relentlessly protest and advocate for our rights and use every election to win back power. We already know how to do this. My hope is that we can scale up our actions to meet the moment.

Advocacy and Protest

There is so much to oppose, and our ability to have impact in the short run remains untested. The few wins we have had - the fall of Matt Gaetz and the release of the DOJ report about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election - might have happened without our advocacy. We do not know whether we can pressure any Republicans to reject Trump’s nominations or keep conservative Democrats in Congress from selling us out. It was troubling to see dozens of Democrats in Congress vote for an unconstitutional immigration bill that green lights the detention of undocumented immigrants, without bail or bond, regardless of whether charges are brought against them. I was dismayed. At least we have put Congress on notice that we are watching! We have just begun!

Sometimes advocacy works when you are least expecting it. In his final days in office President Biden commuted almost all the federal death penalty sentences, and Leonard Peltier was released! There was a strong coordinated advocacy effort that pushed for these, and by all accounts it made a difference. North Carolina scored a similar victory. Advocates against the death penalty pursued a five-year (yes, five year!) campaign to pressure our term-limited Governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, to commute all 136 state-level death sentences. As the end of his term neared, I wrote a few more postcards and phone calls. Nothing happened and I became discouraged. In mid-December, a member of the NC General Assembly told me she doubted that Governor Cooper would take action. Two weeks later he did. Fifteen people on Death Row had their sentences commuted, and the anti-death penalty movement is celebrating this seemingly small win as significant.

Reminder to self: Advocacy lays the groundwork for future success. We do it because it is the right thing to do, and because you never know when it will pay off!

Some resources for you to set yourself up for action to protect democracy:

• Be prepared for rapid response calls to action. Discover organizations that keep you informed about when and how to put pressure on government officials. Indivisible provides information about Trump’s nominees, with links that make taking action easy. I also get action alerts from Chop Wood, Carry Water and Declaration for American Democracy. Stateside in North Carolina I follow Down Home NC, Common Cause, Carolina Federation, the NC Budget and Tax Center, and local Indivisible groups. In you live in another state, find out which organizations are active there.

• Try 5Calls.org. It has scripts for important national issues, along with contact information for your elected officials. The easier it is to make a call, the better. Working America has a guide that may be of use. Remember, it’s nice to talk directly with a Legislative Assistant, because you can ask about the elected official’s position, but leaving messages (even after hours) is always an option. In the end it is the number of calls that makes a difference.

• Take it a step farther and set up a meeting with your member of Congress. Indivisible provides an online ‘How-To’ Guide. You can visit your representative along with a group of friends.

• Learn how to write Letters to the Editor. Sign up for a training with Common Cause on 1/30 at 6 pm.

• Join the Center for Common Ground and Workers Circle to hear how you can become an effective advocate. Their three-part program, starting 1/23 at 7 pm, offers an update on key federal legislation, model state legislation for rights protection, and skills training on advocacy.

• Keep up-to-date with ways to push back against the executive orders that President Trump releases. Check out Guidance for Executive Orders from the Research Collaborative, headed by Anat Shenker-Osorio. Democracy Forward has launched a Legal Response Center.

• Support litigation to fight back against unlawful and unconstitutional government action. Pay attention and donate if you can to Democracy Docket and the coalition of litigators at Democracy Forward, as well as ACLU. Robert Reich also recommends Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Common Cause.

Elections on My Mind

Pay attention to the special elections of 2025, even if not in the state where you live. The first ones have already concluded, with two wins in Virginia that preserve the Democratic majority in the state legislature. Some of the elections coming up are similarly critical for Democratic control. Others are small elections that can pave the way for greater turnout in the midterms.

And take heart when it comes to voter outreach! Although the public narrative tells us that America has shifted to the right, Michael Podhizer smartly debunks this claim, concluding that “the results are best understood as a vote of no confidence in Democrats, not an embrace of Trump or MAGA.” Give him a read.

The next special elections are on January 28.

• Hawks County, Iowa, a special election for County Supervisor

• Florida Congressional Districts 1 and 6, special election primary elections that give Democrats a chance to challenge MAGA and build power for Democrats.

This is just the start. In February there will be special elections for two state Senate seats in Louisiana, plus municipal elections in other states. Early voting for the April 1st Wisconsin race that determines which party controls the state Supreme Court begins in mid-March. The Wisconsin Supreme Court race has a strong Democratic candidate, but she does not (yet) have enough name recognition. Voter outreach is already underway.

Opportunities for turning out the vote with phone banks and postcards are popping up now, with more events to come in February. You can participate wherever you live. If you have given up on phone banking, consider trying it again. It can be frustratingly slow, but remember that it takes more postcard writing time than phone-banking time to have similar impact. Phone banking is time well spent.

• Phone bank with the Environmental Voter Project to turn out the vote in Iowa and Massachusetts (1/23, 1/29, with more dates in February for other upcoming elections). EVP identifies environmentalists who are not likely to vote, then uses a range of outreach methods to transform them into consistent voters.

• Make calls with the Wisconsin Democratic Party. They have a slew of phone bank opportunities (1/23, 1/28, 1/30, and also in February).

• Write with PostcardsToVoters.org. They do not have any current election campaigns, but will soon. It is one of my favorite postcard groups. Their messaging is good and they cover small elections, where postcards have the greatest impact.

• Write postcards for the Wisconsin elections, including the state Supreme Court race. Postcards to Swing States is the largest postcard group in the country supporting Democrats.

• Markers for Democracy has their own postcard campaigns and also publicize campaigns from all the other groups. They also create community for writers. You can sign up for their emails. Check them out for future calls for writers.

Other ways to help in 2025 elections:

• You can support disenfranchised voters by helping them get photo IDs. Learn more about the work of VoteRiders and consider volunteering. Regular volunteers commit as little as a few minutes per month. Having a photo ID not only gives people access to the polls but makes it possible to get housing, jobs, bank accounts, and more. It’s life-changing!

• And, of course, wherever you live, stay informed about whatever local and state elections are coming up this year (and next). Let’s get to work engaging voters. We need to persuade potential voters to give the Democratic party a vote of confidence and vote MAGA out of power!

Activism is Volunteering with an Edge

The calls to action are coming fast and furious. It is time for you to dip your toe into 2025 activism, and then wade into deeper water, experimenting with different approaches, becoming familiar with the organizations doing the work, learning the ropes, and finding what you can commit to and stick with.

We need to see ourselves as activists. Activists may be volunteers (and most of them are), but not all volunteers are activists. The aim of activism is to upset the status quo by taking on the social and political conditions that cause harm or keep people from thriving. I like to think of activism as volunteer service with an edge. We take on the problems of the world, and ride the edge between what is and what could be.

These days, supporting people who have become the targets of Project 2025 is also activism of course. It is part of our resistance. Assisting marginalized people who face threats to their survival - immigrants, the LGBTQ community, women, and all people of color - requires an activist stance, as we stand up for human rights and push back against the latest forms of cruelty and hatred.

Anything we do to protect our constitutional rights also requires an activist stance. Serving as a poll worker and helping voter navigate the electoral process used to be simple acts of volunteerism. No more! Now these roles are at the frontlines of the defense of democracy. Registering voters is activism as well, at least when it comes to communities of color, young voters, and other groups of voters who favor Democrats. Ordinary civic engagement is now extraordinary activism.

However you decide to take action this year, be clear that we need as many of us as possible to directly take on the forces of tyranny and oppression. We need people to take on the role of helping impacted people, but please do not forget that your voice and your energy are also needed to build a stronger democratic government. That is why I have emphasized advocacy and protest, and pointed us in the direction of building electoral power.

And so we soldier on! Our activist mission in 2025 is to keep democracy afloat and to create safe harbors for our rights. We aim to build our collective power and to replace the current tyrannical forces with a government that cares about us. We demand a government that protects our constitutional rights, our human rights, and the rule of law. This is a lofty call to action. I hope it continues to inspire all of us.