When Vice President Joe Biden won the Democratic primary earlier this year, it was ablow to the independent progressive and left forces, which had been working hard in support of more progressive candidates like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. People grieved, then rallied. The most important thing now, many have reasoned, is to oust President Donald Trump from office, even if it means backing acandidate who does not share the same core values youdo.
Now, in the final weeks before the election, progressive and left organizations are working hard to get out the vote for acandidate many of them dont feel enthusiastic about. In the process, theyre aiming to build astronger, independentleft.
LeftRoots, asocialist organization, doesnt normally get involved in campaigns. The organization educates and trains community organizers (mostly people of color and women) across the country in political education and strategy development, with the goal of establishing 21st century socialism in the UnitedStates.
This year is different. In the wake of acatastrophic Trump presidency, LeftRoots took astep back to review the whole picture. Several times aweek the organization mobilizes its members and networks to canvass, phone bank and text bank for Biden through Seed the Vote, avolunteer-based coalition working with already-existing groups providing grassroots efforts to get out thevote.
In this moment, defeating not just Trump, but also the forces that he represents, is our number one task, says Milena Velis, LeftRoots training director. Thats because of the real danger this white supremacist authoritarian minority thats vying to take control of the country right now poses for our communities and for our organizing goingforward.
Campaigning for Biden has not been an easy decision. The establishment Democrat, who voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and rejects key left demands like Medicare for All, doesnt reflect the socialist values that LeftRoots holds. Biden is not aleft-wing candidate, Velis explains. It requires us to both be honest and to not lose sight of our vision. We have to be talking about much bigger change than Bidens platformpolicy.
In its recently released situational objective document, LeftRoots says that left forces working to oust Trump should not hide our politics, nor become subsumed within the Democratic Party. Rather, the group says it sees the defeat of Trump not as an ending, but as the launching point for new struggle. The organization argues that whenever possible we should be open socialists against Trump, voting for Biden, defendingdemocracy.
So far, the call to action appears to be working. The enthusiasm from the LeftRoots community around getting out the vote has been strong, despite the many other issues staff and volunteers juggle. Many folks who are on the frontlines of community organizations, who are really engaged in fights against evictions, or trying to fight for labor protections for workers, at the end of the long day are getting on the phones for two hours to call someone in aswing state, Velis says. We have parents who are home with their kids, squeezing in afew hours to text folks on aweekend. This is really the time to throwdown.
LeftRoots is just one of many groups working to support Seed the Votes campaign effort in swing states, particularly Pennsylvania, Florida andArizona.
This years mission is to fill the gap in the Biden campaigns outreach, which appears to be neglecting to reach some marginalized communities with apowerful voting pool. In activating those people who have traditionally been left out, Seed the Vote hopes to nurture and build onto its existing base of voters and volunteers, creating amovement independent of the Democratic Party that can be activated forchange.
We dont know what the next weeks of the campaign will bring, but one thing is clear, wrote Emily Lee of Seed the Vote and Peter Hogness of Water For Grassroots in New York in arecent Guardian op-ed. Defeating Donald Trump is too important to leave up to the Bidencampaign.
The solution, they argue, lies in supporting established grassroots organizers who already have connections to communities that are at risk of voter suppression, or who arent yet registered tovote.
In conversations with disenchanted voters, agroup doing long-term organizing can have more credibility than acandidates campaign, state Lee and Hogness. Theyre working in the community 12 months ayear, not just appearing at election time, extracting avote, and thenvanishing.
These on-the-ground organizations, however, dont always have the staff or volunteer base available to run operations for amajor campaign, particularly in dense urban areas. Seed the Vote draws from anational pool of volunteers, trains them on the needs of each geographic area, and deploys them to canvass or phone bank for small organizations. Often, community-based nonprofits or neighborhood groups are away to start aconversation with potential voters who the Biden campaign may overlook, or not be culturally adept to talk to. For example, the Biden campaign didnt ramp up efforts to target Puerto Rican voters in Florida until mid-September. Seed the Vote has been making Spanish-language calls in Florida since at least August.
In Florida, which Trump won by 112,911 votes in 2016, Seed the Vote partners with the New Florida Majority, which fights for inclusion of marginalized communities in the electoral process, and Mijente, which advocates for Latinxrights.
Florida is avital state to watch in the upcoming election. As the third most populous state in the country, it has 29 seats in the electoral college, and has historically goneRepublican.
Its not impossible to flip. The population of people of color in Florida has grown 25% since 2010. Florida now has the third largest Latinx electorate in the country, with 3.1 million eligible to vote. But race does not always connote apolitical stance. As Seed the Vote states on its website, we can expect that Trumps campaign will aggressively pursue Latinx people and other key groups in Florida through anti-abortion and anti-socialistfearmongering.
In Pennsylvania, Seed the Vote volunteers provide support for Pennsylvania Stands Up, an umbrella advocacy organization with nine networks statewide that supports candidates who fight for racial and social justice while battling voter suppression and working to get people to thepolls.
In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania by only 44,292 votes. This year, those on the ground believe the state can be flipped, but it wont happen without aton ofwork.
Michaela Purdue Lovegood, the deputy executive director at Pennsylvania Stands Up, says that voter suppression is amajor concern for the upcomingelection.
When Ithink about the work of voter suppression, theres alot of work that we need to do around laws, and around really figuring out how do we change laws, how do we ensure that people show up at the voting polls, how do we ensure that people get our mail-in ballots, she says. All of those things we have to do, but we dually have to do the work to deal with the decolonization that exists in our minds about what our vote is, and what it cando.
Every Thursday Seed the Vote volunteers team up with Pennsylvania Stands Up to help state residents make sure they are registered to vote, and to ensure they understand theprocess.
The work doesnt stop there. Even during the pandemic, there is acall for volunteers to travel to high-density areas like Philadelphia to canvass for Biden. Simply put, research shows us that there is no more effective way to persuade someone to vote than through aface-to-face conversation, reads an information guide for Seed the Vote volunteers. That is why it is critically important that you and your friends travel to Philadelphia to bring locals to these polling centers. (The Biden campaign initially declined to do door-to-door canvassing, but recently reversed itsposition.)
Last but not least is Arizona, which Trump won by 91,234 votes in 2016. In this state, Seed the Vote partners with Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), which advocates for the rights of the states large Latinx population, and has been wildlysuccessful.
In a2019 New York Times op-ed, LUCHA founders Alejandra Gomez and Toms Robles Jr. state that Democrats have long treated communities of color as instruments of someone elses power rather than core progressives who should be instruments of their own power. This is despite the fact that there are 1.2 million eligible Latino voters in Arizona, making them ahighly impactful voterbase.
In the years since its creation, LUCHA has launched ahighly successful reclamation of that power. In the 2020 August primaries, 14 of the 15 legislative and county candidates LUCHA supported were victorious. In the primaries, LUCHA endorsed Sanders. The organization hasnt openly endorsed Biden, but its work hasnt stopped, and the mission is clear: kick Trump out ofoffice.
For organizers who campaigned hard for Senators Sanders or Warren only to see them lose, its important to keep their eyes on the horizon. Change happens in increments, and this is just one step toward amore progressivenation.
Biden is not our savior, write Lee and Hogness. In fact, if he wins, on many issues he may be our opponent. But defeating Trump will open possibilities for organizing that wont exist if he remains inoffice.
While existing organizations continue their legacy of voter education and empowerment, new collaborations are beingborn.
Every four years theres achorus of voices that says this is the most important election of our lifetime, states Maurice Mitchell the national director for the Working Families Party. This year Iam one of those voices. Things are bad now, and they can get worse. But that doesnt have to be where our story ends. In the midst of an unprecedented crisis, there is much we can be hopeful and drivenby.
The Working Families Partywhich identifies itself as a progressive grassroots political party with chapters in 15 states nationwideis now part of anew movement christened The Frontline. Launched in September, The Frontline is acollaboration between several groups, including immigrant rights group United We Dream Action and the Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project. Its acollaboration that centers the myriad experiences of people of color, uniting them toward one clearcause.
The movements goals are short and succinct: Mission one is to defeat Trump in alandslide, to make it harder for him to refuse to step down between the election and inauguration. Step two is to push candidates Biden and Kamala Harris policies furtherleft.
We must seize the opportunity in the first hundred days to lift up the demands our movements have been fighting for decades, Frontline volunteer Cindy Wiesner recently told Organizing Upgrade. We have an opportunity to make the BREATHE Act real. We have the capacity to pass aGreen New Deal, to continue to push for areal Peoples Bailout, not acorporatebailout.
The energy, organizers believe, is already there. The Black-led uprisings around the country in response to police violence has activated acommunity that is desperate for change. Black and Brown communities, meanwhile, are the ones Trump is working hardest to discredit and exclude through voter suppression andcriminalization.
Our lives and the lives of the people that we love depend on us fighting with everything weve got to overthrow the Trumpism, the white supremacy, the white nationalismall the harm that is being done by this administration to our communities, says Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson of the Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project. We are committed, not to fighting for asavior on Pennsylvania Avenue, but to fighting for our next target. And we will come as hard at the new administration that we hope will follow the Trump administration as we are at Trump rightnow.
Originally posted here:
The Socialists and Progressives Working Outside of the Biden Campaign to Oust Trump - In These Times