Welcome to The Revolution Report – the weekly e-newsletter of our national grassroots organizing network!
_____________________________________________________________
★ ★ ★
Join our Monday Night GOTV Call on October 19th at 8:30p ET, with special guest star Jim Hightower who’s going to be talking about the new issue of The Hightower Lowdown which focuses on the importance of electing down-ballot candidates like Charmaine McGuffey (Sherriff), Eli Savit (DA), Scott Feuless (Drainage Commissioner) and David Zuckerman (Governor) – who’ll all be on the call!
★ ★ ★
★ ★ ★
As America votes, Our Revolution members are carrying out our 4-POINT PLAN to fight for a progressive future by #1) Defeating Trump; #2) Electing more progressives to Congress; #3) Building a down-ballot bench; and most critically, #4) Organizing a powerful grassroots movement to win transformative change after the election!
★ ★ ★
#1 – We must go all out to defeat Donald Trump by winning back working-class voters in the Midwest.
★ ★ ★
OUR MIDWEST STRATEGY: As Trump campaigns in the heartland, he’s using the slogan “Promises Made, Promises Kept” to lie about delivering on his promises to deliver “more jobs and better wages” and “stop the offshoring” of manufacturing jobs abroad. That’s why Our Revolution is organizing laid-off workers to set the record straight – especially in the “pivot counties” that voted twice for Obama-Biden before going for Trump in 2016. Read below to learn more about the deep grassroots organizing our members are doing in battleground states to expose Trump’s betrayal of working class voters!
★ ★ ★
Our Revolution Ohio activist Jon Alexander (above right) was featured in an NPR story about the shutdown of the GM Lordstown plant. Jon told reporter Tamara Keith that when Trump claims “Lordstown is booming,” it’s not reality.
“There’s no jobs here,” said Alexander, a third-generation factory employee at GM Lordstown until it closed. Alexander supported Bernie Sanders in Ohio’s Democratic primary and seethes when asked about the president’s claims that Lordstown is booming. “I could have been there right now, working, making a good living, still with my kids,” Alexander said. “We’re not booming. How are we booming?”
★ ★ ★
This week, The Columbus Dispatch covered Our Revolution Ohio activists protesting at Mike Pence’s campaign rally. As Pence touted false job numbers at a construction site, laid-off workers unfurled “PENCE LIES” banners to expose the Trump Administration’s failure to keep the GM Lordstown factory open. Our activists were then removed by Trump’s private security force.
★ ★ ★
At Trump’s rally in Des Moines this week, Our Revolution Iowa activist Bob Morrison and Iowa Labor Federation leaders called out the president for failing to save jobs at the Siemens plant in Burlington. The response from Trump supporters? They spit on them. “Trump promised to be ‘the greatest jobs president God ever created,’ and that he would stop jobs from being shipped overseas. Trump lied to me and my family,” Bob told his fellow Iowans. “It’s going to take a lot more than spit to keep me quiet. Together with my brothers and sisters at Our Revolution, I’m going to keep telling the truth about Trump.”
★ ★ ★
“It’s All Fake:” Trump’s Manufacturing Jobs Promises Ring Hollow in Midwest
The Guardian highlighted how our Midwest Strategy is exposing Trump’s lies to working people, featuring the voices of Our Revolution activists Chuck Jones, Shannon Mulcahy, Bob Morrison and Chuckie Denison. As Shannon, a former Trump 2016 supporter, noted: “There are a lot of plant closings he could have stopped. He talked the talk everyone wanted to hear about saving jobs. I don’t see him saving any jobs. I think it’s all fake. It’s all a campaign thing. He’s telling people what they want to hear.”
★ ★ ★
Broken Promises: How Trump Betrayed the Autoworkers of Ohio
Rolling Stone published an in-depth feature about the closing of GM’s Lordstown plant and Trump’s refusal to intervene on behalf of the thousands of workers who lost their jobs. The story called the plant’s closing “a symbol of the president’s phoniness.” As Our Revolution activist Dave Green – former union president at the plant – summed up: “Trump is all bullshit, no action” and predicted that Trump would lose Ohio because working people would not be fooled again by his lies.
★ ★ ★
#2 – We must elect more progressives to the U.S. House and flip the Senate to advance progressive policies.
★ ★ ★
Jamaal Bowman and Georgette Gomez – two of our progressive champions running for Congress – fired-up thousands of our local leaders on our Weekly Monday National Organizing Call. Jamaal, who toppled a 16-term incumbent in his primary for NY-16, is already getting to work. “We’re not waiting until 2021 – we’re organizing and strategizing right now.” Georgette, the president of San Diego City Council is campaigning in a competitive race “to bring a strong voice that is progressive and rooted in community” to Congress. Our NY & CA members are working hard to make sure Jamaal and Georgette finish strong in November!
★ ★ ★
Marie Newman – the progressive we helped to take-out conservative Democrat Rep. Dan Lipinski in the primary – headlined Our Illinois Revolution’s Get Out the Vote Rally. Marie talked about how important it is to not just win in November – but to win big. “We have an incredible opportunity to make big policy changes because of the pandemic and economic crisis. We just need to show that we have the people power behind us to get it done.” She cheered on the hundreds of Our Revolution Illinois activists who are reaching out to our 21,000 members across the state to ensure every progressive voter gets out and votes!
★ ★ ★
Our Revolution Texas’ GOTV Rally featured Mike Siegel, candidate for Congress in TX-10 who’s running to flip a Republican seat. “The 10th has been in GOP hands for 16 years, but it’s a battleground now because of all the work we’ve been doing.” Mike is running on a platform of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal because “we need big, bold, progressive solutions that meet the scale of the crises we’re facing.” Two recent polls show Mike is TIED with his millionaire right-wing opponent. The Our Revolution Texas team is working hard to mobilize our 20,000 members in the Lone Star State to deliver a victory for Mike on November 3rd!
★ ★ ★
★ ★ ★
#3 – We must build a bench of down-ballot progressive politicians & policies to fight for change from the bottom up.
★ ★ ★
2020 TOPLINE: This election cycle, Our Revolution HQ – in partnership with our state and local organizations – endorsed over 400 progressive champions – and most importantly, over 88% are running in down-ballot races! Between now and Election Day, our members are mobilizing to elect them to serve on local water commissions, school boards, city councils, and county commissions. So far, our rolling series of State & National GOTV Rallies have engaged over 400,000 people, and we’ve made over 2.3 million one-on-one voter contacts!
★ ★ ★
‘Good trouble’ candidates are winning– and rebuilding politics from the ground up
Our Revolution Board member Jim Hightower profiled several of our down-ballot candidates in the October issue of The Hightower Lowdown. “In practically every state, a record number of outsider campaigns are being run for state legislature, county positions, DA, city hall, courts, and other seats that old-line political powers have long considered their own property. With no big money and few big-name backers, their campaigns are an extension of democratic movement-building, grounded in long-term, street-level organizing around kitchen-table issues.”
Jim will discuss his article and chat with these candidates on our Monday National GOTV Call – RSVP HERE!
Please consider subscribing to The Lowdown to get Jim’s populism in your email inbox or mailed to you the old-fashioned way!
★ ★ ★
This week, State Reps. Dotie Joseph and Anna Eskamani joined Our Revolution Florida’s GET OUT THE VOTE Rally to pump up progressives to elect our down-ballot candidates. Both are endorsed by Our Revolution HQ in their bid for re-election. Reps. Joseph and Eskamani have been leading the effort in Florida’s legislature to fight back against Trump loyalist Governor Ron DeSantis — who is pushing for a bill that would silence, criminalize and penalize Floridians who take to the streets to protest systemic racism and police brutality.
★ ★ ★
Our Revolution Oregon’s GET OUT THE VOTE Rally featured a slate of endorsed down ballot candidates, including Eddy Morales, a Gresham City Councilor who’s running to be town’s next mayor, and Ashton Simpson, who’s running to represent District 47 (East Portland) in the State House. Both encouraged the 12,000 members of Our Revolution Oregon to keep up their continuous organizing to win policy fights in city halls and at the state house.
★ ★ ★
Janeese Lewis-George, candidate for DC Council Ward 4, was featured on our District of Columbia GOTV Rally. Janeese defeated her establishment incumbent by running on a bold progressive platform to hold the police accountable. The call also featured Ed Lazere, candidate for an At-Large City Council seat, who has been a key architect of progressive policy change in the nation’s capital as Director of the
DC Fiscal Policy Institute.
★ ★ ★
State Rep. Will Guzzardi – cofounder of the Progressive Caucus in the Illinois House – joined Our Illinois Revolution’s GET OUT THE VOTE Rally to discuss the importance of passing the Fair Tax Amendment to finally ensure wealthy people pay their fair share during this time of fiscal crisis for local governments.
★ ★ ★
Our Revolution Connecticut’s GOTV Rally featured Attorney General William Tong and State Rep. Kara Rochelle!
★ ★ ★
Help us build a bench of progressive candidates and policies up and down the ballot!
★ ★ ★
FEATURED DOWN-BALLOT INITIATIVES!
In addition to supporting down ballot candidates, Our Revolution is organizing to support down ballot initiatives. Local jurisdictions are laboratories of policy experimentation, and when our progressive policies succeed at the local level, they can be exported up to the national level.
★ ★ ★
MASSACHUSETTS
Our Revolution Massachusetts is all in for Ranked Choice Voting. During their GOTV Rally, Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD) spoke about how RCV can increase democratic participation and help progressives win. Ihssane Leckey and Jesse Mermell demonstrated that one of them would have prevailed in their Democratic primary with RCV since together they garnered far more votes than the corporate Dem who squeaked through. #YesOn2RCV!
★ ★ ★
FLORIDA
Our Revolution Florida GOTV Rally highlighted our campaign to help pass Amendment 2: the $15 Minimum Wage Initiative. Currently, a full-time worker earning minimum wage makes less than $18,000 per year, while research shows that a family of four in Florida would need an annual income of $55,000, just to cover basic expenses. Raising the minimum wage isn’t just a financial imperative, it’s a moral one in a state that ranks second in the nation for income inequality. “The minimum wage doesn’t match what it costs to live here,” said Cassandra Santiago Revelles, a single mother in Central Florida who was recently laid off from her job at Disney.
★ ★ ★
CALIFORNIA
Alex Catsoulis of the California Labor Federation joined our Monday National GOTV Call to expose Prop 22, an anti-worker ballot measure funded by gig companies to boost profits by denying workers their rights under the law. She said gig workers are battling a giant misinformation campaign and “absurd” amounts of money to defeat it. “Prop 22 could potentially set back decades of workers’ rights and labor laws and open a Pandora’s box of exploitation. It’s a race to the bottom with no way to hold gig corporations accountable.”
★ ★ ★
#4 – We must build a movement in the streets and inside the halls of power to win progressive change.
No honeymoon: Activists on left prepare for Biden presidency
The LA Times interviewed Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese about his experience working with Vice-President Biden and what it’s going to take to pressure him to advance our progressive agenda.
“During Obama’s first term, Joseph Geevarghese was helping to lead a labor coalition. He repeatedly met with the administration task force on middle-class families, headed by Vice President Joe Biden, and pressed it to support a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage and other pro-labor initiatives. But Biden’s team was adamant — they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do it. “That first-term experience was incredibly disheartening and frustrating,” Geevarghese said. “We had invested troops and treasure, and had incredible hope that change would come with a progressive, quote-unquote, president. But we didn’t get anywhere.” Now, activists on the left are poised, if Biden’s elected, to be more aggressive from the start in pressing their agenda. They talk of a strategy that combines insider politicking with outside agitation — the sort of demonstrations by fast food workers, Walmart employees and Los Angeles port truck drivers that brought pressure to bear on the Obama-Biden administration by its second term. Within a Biden administration’s first 100 days, Geevarghese said, there would need to be a “mass mobilization” of progressives: “There is not going to be a honeymoon period.”
★ ★ ★
Ahead of Election Day, Our Revolution HQ is holding “Get Out the Vote” Rallies across the country to organize to win at the local, state and national levels.
★ ★ ★
UPCOMING “GET OUT THE VOTE” RALLIES!
Join U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Our Revolution board member Deborah Parker and down-ballot progressive candidates as we discuss the political revolution in Washington State!
★ ★ ★
Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes will headline Our Wisconsin Revolution’s “Get Out the Vote” Rally which will also feature candidates who are running as bold progressives in swing districts.
★ ★ ★
Dreamer Erika Andiola will join U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego for Our Revolution Arizona and Progressive Democrats of America Arizona’s joint GOTV Rally!
★ ★ ★
Rep. Jamie Raskin will join Our Revolution Board Chair Larry Cohen and Baltimore City Council candidate Franca Muller Paz to get our members in Maryland pumped up to GOTV!
★ ★ ★
A week from Election Day, Our Revolution Board Member Keith Ellison will kick-off Our Revolution Minnesota’s GOTV Rally featuring State Sen. Patricia Torres Ray and St. Paul City Councillors Mitra Jalali Nelson and Nelsie Yang as we gear up for our final push to the polls!
★ ★ ★
PHONEBANK TO WIN! Between now and November 3rd, we are calling voters every day across the country to defeat Trump, flip the Senate, and support our nationally-endorsed candidates up and down the ballot.
★ ★ ★