Thank you for continuing to share these messages with your friends, if you are not already on our mailing list, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, A Path Forward to November 3, 2020, every two weeks, which means there will be a total of 100 missives before the Presidential election of 2020, in which our country will select a whole new course.
Martin Luther King said that “the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” Enmeshed and sometimes overwhelmed in the world of 2018, we should find it comforting and healthy to understand that gains in justice and human rights over 5+ decades have been monumental.
Our trajectory toward justice has not been permanently altered by this President, but it is not wrong to see our collective response to Donald Trump as a battle over that arc. Certainly, one must be careful in assigning any U.S. political campaign of the past 50 years any place at all in the world of justice-seeking or justice-denying. However, if you were to choose a time to make such a judgement about when campaigns can turn into a movement for justice, today would be an excellent choice.
There have been plenty of presidential candidates over these decades whose election one could find disheartening. One could cite specific actions the newly elected officials subsequently took that were ruinous. For instance, George W. Bush made up an entire war. But, at least each of these past presidents took pride in leading the country, had expectations for themselves, read things, and subscribed to some core notions about democracy. This is a different time, but not because of destructive executive orders, bad legislation and scary appointments. It is because of Trump’s unrelenting, contemptuous approach to the nature and the dreams of the republic for which we stand.
That is what has concentrated opposition into the resistance. It is what has turned that which otherwise would be a political campaign into a movement. The extent to which it can maintain and sustain itself as a movement will determine the outcome in November. In terms of how to maintain and sustain this effort, it may be difficult to believe but there are lessons from the peace movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Closer examination reveals more than history's judgement that the focus of 1968 was on sex, drugs and dropping out. Instead, the most telling focus of 1968 was the movement to end the war, and to dramatically change the American politics of that time. There were two ways that this movement was uncommon, both lessons for us now.
First, the peace movement reached way beyond the rolls of people who would have been expected to participate in it. Like the Women’s Marches of January 2017 and January 2018, and the organization of Indivisible and other resistance cells, it activated into its ranks millions of people who had previously thought themselves to be non-political. In some cases, it caused people to change a political persuasion that had long been adhered to in their family. New questions were being asked around the kitchen table, and all of a sudden Ozzie and Harriet’s kids were in the streets. You knew you were not in ordinary times.
Second, this movement was able to achieve a relentlessness and a momentum that became a story unto itself. Elected officials knew that the movement wasn’t going away. Leaders avoided the pulling apart that inevitably visits movements that themselves are a coalition. As in the resistance of 2018, if you were a participant in the peace movement in 1968, there was always something to do, and you never stopped being engaged, and each month there were more people by your side. In 1968, all that without an internet! The resistance thus far already has demonstrated the capacity to translate outrage and dismay about Trump into electoral results. The current level of relentlessness and commitment is a gift that should not be squandered. If we keep it up, there will be a huge blue wave in November. As uneven as Democrats are in their performance, we will have attended to the arc of justice.
These missives have detailed several ways that each of us can heighten our engagement in 2018, including using Swing Left, Indivisible, or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to pick and support one or more candidates. Here are three fresh ways you can make to help increase the number of people who envelop themselves, and the extent of their new obsession.
| 1) Sharply Increase Latino Participation | |
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After Mitt Romney lost the presidency to Barack Obama, Republican leaders commissioned a report analyzing their political future. The subsequent “autopsy” report argued that because of the growth in the U.S. of the Latino population, Republicans pushing away Latino voters would seriously weaken their presidential prospects in 2016 and beyond. Donald Trump avoided that predicted fate in 2016, but he and his colleagues will not be so fortunate in 2018 and 2020. Nearly 40% of all newly registered voters since 2012 are of Hispanic origin, and the efforts to mobilize the Latino community are intensifying. The new voters will be especially key in Nevada and Arizona Senate races, as well as Beto O’Rourke’s longer shot challenge to Ted Cruz in Texas. Earlier missives have underscored the important role of Mi Familia Vota, which concentrates its efforts in six Southwestern and Western states. Another important organization which could use a boost this very moment is Voto Latino, which uses inventive digital methods (including their “text to register” campaign) and has registered more than 300,000 voters. |
2) Find an All New Path to Recruiting New Voters |
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Nonprofit organizations employ 13 million people across the country. They have 60 million volunteers. Their programs connect with and often serve communities whose voting levels are lower, and they are often seen as a trusted messenger. With this impact on our country, and with a huge interest in how government serves the people, why wouldn’t nonprofit organizations play a key role in voter registration? Some of the leaders of America’s nonprofit community, including Independent Sector, feel exactly that way. They have started an excellent campaign to persuade nonprofits to 1) help their staff and volunteers register, and 2) start registration campaigns to reach the broader community. Nonprofit Vote has done a meticulous job of showing nonprofits what can be done and how to do it. Time to send this link to several of your favorite nonprofits to make certain they fully consider this opportunity. |
3) Change the Law to make it Easier to Register |
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The Voting Rights and Elections program at NYU’s Wagner Center continues to do excellent work battling voter suppression. In addition to stopping the efforts to make registration and voting more difficult, how can we turn the issue around? In what ways can we make registration and voting easier? Here too there is an all new angle. The Brennan Center also has outlined the growing movement toward automatic registration of voters, which has now been enacted in nine states and the District of Columbia. These states will immediately register citizens when they seek government services such as receiving a Driver’s License. Some states are now guaranteeing that the automatic registration approach is also available to 16 and 17 year olds, so that they will be ready to vote immediately after their 18th birthday. It’s time to check the Brennan Center site to see where your state stands, and it’s time to write your legislator to make certain she or he is a proponent of new registration strategies. |
Robert Mueller will be increasingly watchable over the next several months. A few Republican Senators will continue to afford Mueller, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and FBI director Christopher Wray the protection they need from the attacks of Donald Trump. Washington is already so beset and askew with the upcoming elections that bi-partisan legislation on any subject at all is nearly impossible. So we will focus on the elections too, and prove that they were right to feel beset.
It is within our abilities to guarantee that the November 2018 election will have an unprecedented level of participation. Now is the time to do that indispensable core work. When volunteers work on phones on November 6 to get out the vote, let’s make sure right now that they have the biggest possible list from which to work. That would be the right thing to do.
David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
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