Progressive Champions

Our Revolution Board Member and BLM South Bend Co-founder Jorden Giger is running for City Council in South Bend, Indiana!

Jorden’s community organizing work has helped secure millions in home repair for low-income communities, led the city’s first racial wealth divide study, and provided $400k in rental assistance

“For six years, we’ve been organizing in South Bend to hold our local government accountable to our low-income communities, raise wages, win housing, and rein in tax breaks to the wealthy and well-connected,” Jorden told us on our Live Call. 

“So we decided to run and now we’ve built this coalition of progressive champions endorsed by Our Revolution and putting forward a unifying agenda for the city,” he said.

“Our Revolution’s executive director, Joseph Geevarghese, said local progressive organizing, from mayor to school board, is more effective now than it has been in decades,” The Associated Press wrote. 

Thanks to our members and volunteers, our 400k voter contact operation helped propel Mayor Brandon Johnson to victory in Chicago and elect a progressive trifecta to lead St. Louis.

Local races are key to moving the progressive movement forward nationally, Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese told Billy Penn. “City and local governments are laboratories of policy experimentation,” he said.

Billy Penn highlighted our work to “turn out progressive super voters in Philadelphia,” where we’ll be mobilizing our 40k members and making 300k voter contacts over the next couple of weeks. 

“Our theory of change,” Joseph said, “is if we can get that slice of the electorate out, through multiple contacts, that can be a game changer.”

We’re also investing resources to elect a more progressive City Council to work with Helen, including Amanda McIllmurray — a working-class organizer who would be the first openly queer Council Member ever in the city.

In 2016, Amanda was working as a nanny, a law firm clerk, and a softball umpire when she got involved with the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and later started organizing for local power.

“I’m running to win good jobs, affordable housing, worker’s rights, and universal family care,” Amanda said. As the daughter of union members, she knows “everyone deserves the chance to have just ONE job, a family-sustaining job.”

Last week, Our Revolution-backed Sara Innamorato beat back big money to become the next Allegheny County Executive – creating a progressive trifecta in Pittsburgh!

We backed Sara in her successful run for PA House back in 2018 alongside now-US Rep. Summer Lee, and now we’re proud to see her take the helm of the second-largest county in Pennsylvania!

As County Exec, she’ll have the power to directly affect people’s lives — from county-wide housing to addressing human rights violations in the county jail to protecting abortion care.

Jovanka Beckles has kicked off her run for California State Senate with the backing of Our Revolution East Bay and Richmond Progressives! She’s the strongest progressive in the race and would be the second black woman in the state’s 40-seat legislature. 

Jovanka got a rare local endorsement from Bernie Sanders in her run for Richmond City Council in 2014, when she was embattled with Chevron. She won her race and helped get $100M from the corporation to invest in the people of the city.

An activist, Jovanka is featured in the Smithsonian for her work with BLM and the Oakland Museum, which describes her as a ‘community member facing down goliath, who became a member of Richmond City Council as Chevron waged a multi-million dollar campaign against her, went on to raise the corporations’ taxes, lower crime by 33 percent and pass California’s first rent-control ordinance in 30 years.’ 

“Siblings, this is just to say that I have a track record of standing up and defending the community,” she told us on our live call.

Thursday marked the 3rd anniversary of George Floyd’s death, and we sat down with Minnesota AG and Our Revolution Board Member Keith Ellison, who put Derek Chauvin – the murderer of George Floyd – behind bars in a rare conviction for police brutality.

A leader at the forefront of the battle for police reform and true public safety, Keith joined our LIVE Organizing Call on Monday to impart lessons from the case as told in his new book, “Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence.”

“When we stand against police brutality, we’re standing up for the idea that the government should not be able to use arbitrary violence against you because you’re the wrong color, the wrong religion, the wrong politics,” Keith said.

“This is about equal protection under the law. No one is above the law, no one is beneath the law,” Keith told us in this clip. “This issue of police brutality is solvable, we don’t have to live with it.”

Indeed, Congress has not passed the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act and the number of police-involved incidents doesn’t seem to have stopped, but we are seeing more police officers being prosecuted for killing people. 

But, when progressive leaders like Keith stand up for what’s right, they can face massive blowback, and it’s up to us to be there for them when they do.

Keith faced an onslaught of negative ads from police unions and big money in his run for re-election in November, but Our Revolution made 500,000 voter contacts and helped him win by 20,000 votes. “Because of Our Revolution, we prevailed,” he said.

He explained, “some prosecutors who want to hold police accountable and make sure everyone lives under equal justice, but think ‘if I do this the police union is going to come around next election and defeat me, then I won’t be able to do any good for anybody.” 

“We’ve got to stand together. It’s way better to win the election, not just know we fought the good fight,” Keith said. “We’re in it to win it, and we know most people share our values — we just have to reach them.”