The race is set, we have eight months to go, and everything is at stake.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Every election lately is the election upon which our democracy depends. It’s exhausting, anxiety producing, and infuriating. It’s also true. We are hanging on to our country by a thread and the only option is to keep fighting. I often reference one of my favorite books, The Unsteady March, which does a brilliant job of showing us that the freedoms we win are never won forever. If we make the mistake of resting on our laurels, those freedoms can and will be taken away.
Sound familiar?
We rested, for too long, and now we have to fight, and keep fighting, to preserve the rights we have, win back the rights we’ve lost, and maybe even win some new ones. This time, we have to do things differently. We can’t keep chasing the voters who have made it clear they want nothing to do with democracy and equal rights. We can’t keep showing up at the door of “reliable” but low priority (read: poor and brown) voters a few weeks before the election and expecting them to turn out. We cannot keep ignoring the millions and millions of people who are desperate to vote but have been locked out of the system.
That’s where Spread The Vote comes in.
From day one, we have focused on the people you won’t find in VAN. The people who don’t have doors to knock on. The people you can’t text, because they don’t have a phone. We spend all year working with the people no one else will, with comprehensive voter education, transportation, and whatever support they need. We make sure they have the IDs that they need not just to vote, but to access the necessities that make them feel like they are human, that they belong, and that their most basic needs are met. We run the only national incarcerated voter program, helping thousands of incarcerated citizens cast their vote from behind bars. And we have astronomically high turnout rates.
Elections are won by those who show up. This year, let’s try something new. Let’s try to make sure that every American, regardless of their socioeconomic status or whether or not they voted in the most recent election or whether or not they look like us, makes it to the polls. The only way democracy wins is if every single member of that democracy has the right, and opportunity, to participate.
Eight months. That’s all we have. What are you going to do with it?
Kat