The under-appreciated, under-reported grassroots movement

July 12, 2024 8:29 AM

"...on every call, in every meeting, in every action, women constitute 90% of the grassroots volunteer movement. If grassroots groups are the secret weapon of democracy, women are the not-so-secret weapon of grassroots groups." Why I remain hopeful about 2024.

But after the two meetings today, I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I was reminded once again of the Democratic Party's secret weapon: the millions of grassroots volunteers who began as members of “the resistance” in 2017 and have matured into a seasoned, professional, battle-tested citizen army ready to defend democracy.

Hubbell mentions two of the campaigns he's supported, whose volunteers have given him such hope:

Kari Lerner for Florida
Blue CD2 New Mexico

The Movement Voter Project lists over 500 groups on their partner groups page, all vetted; you can filter by location and issues (abortion rights, LGBTQ+, climate, racial justice, voting rights, and more). A few they highlighted recently:

• Black Voters Matter
• Working Families Party
• Showing up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
• The Collective
• Alliance for Youth Action
• Community Change Action
• MoveOn.org
• People’s Action
• Working America
• Accelerate Action

Hubbell says,

There is nothing like viewing screenfuls of faces of dedicated volunteers who haven’t given up and aren’t buying the B.S. the media is selling. While I am frequently asked to provide inspirational and motivating remarks to the groups, I take inspiration and motivation from them every time I meet with a group.

What is so gratifying and confidence-inspiring is that the volunteers remain focused on the grinding work of neighborhood-level get-out-the-vote efforts despite the firestorm in the media over Joe Biden. Such efforts are the secret sauce and secret weapon of the unexpected Democratic success since 2022.

posted by kristi (8 comments total)

This reminded me of a comment I made on MetaFilter back on January 5, 2021, about how utterly inspiring it was for me to encounter a bunch of young people on a phone banking call:

when I was phone banking for Georgia, our group pre-call Zoom chat featured Special Celebrity Guest John Legend, who did a little "yay volunteers" talk and then sang "Georgia On My Mind" for all of us a capella.

(Although actually - that wasn't the coolest thing about that call. The coolest thing was that John gave most of his time over to asking some of the volunteer phone bankers about who they were and why they were volunteering. And it turns out they were all like 14 and 16 years old. This whole phone-banking call was full of teenagers from all over the country - California, Michigan, all over - committed to taking on climate change and voting rights and systemic racism and the future of democracy. I mean, those were their actual words. John Legend was great and all, but I was so excited to get dialing when I heard those young people. It was awesome.)

Those brief introductions to other volunteers from all over the country really helped broaden my perspective and lifted me out of the little circle of people I know and interact with most days.
posted by kristi at 8:35 AM on July 12 [13 favorites]

I read this yesterday, and I really appreciate his work.
I'll be ready to call for Biden to drop out only when and if Hubbell and/or Richardson do.

Also, I'm curious to see if Biden would like to give George Clooney some acting advice.
posted by MtDewd at 8:46 AM on July 12 [4 favorites]

Glad to hear some optimism about grassroots organizing work this cycle. I wonder how total doors knocked / calls made / active volunteers compares to 2016 or 2022. Haven't heard much numbers reporting and it seems difficult to collate figures across all these groups. Probably healthier for democracy for organizing work to happen in independent, issue based groups rather than primarily directed by a presidential campaign, though.

That being said, I didn't get to vote in the primary because I live in Florida. I'm not happy about it but I'm not all that outraged about my democratic rights since we all knew who the nominee was going to be; the primary votes were a formality. I'm also enjoying this relatively pleasant cycle of media driven Biden criticism because I expect it's much more fair and accurate than the upcoming Trump and Republican party driven criticism. They're wisely holding their fire now but they've got a ton of dry powder. I don't think Biden is going regain the ability to speak extemporaneously in the next few months, so it'll likely get worse, not better.
posted by Hume at 9:13 AM on July 12 [2 favorites]

Posts about how horrible everything is going sure attract more comments than positive ones! It's almost like all online engagement is tuned to the negative...

I will be out knocking on doors and phone banking and texting and whatever I can do. North Carolina is supposedly a swing state, but it hasn't felt like that since 2010, since the courts have basically allowed the GOP to cheat here with impunity. We could win in a fair fight, and we did in 2008, and so the money poured in to tilt the playing field.

I did a lot of in-person canvassing in 2016 and was dismayed by how many people said they voted Democrat for everything but boycotted the presidential vote. I know that sentiment is still out there, but I hope that this time, after all that's happened, people can be swayed by things like abortion access (and birth control!). Not to mention that the GOP candidate for governor here would love to put all queer folx in internment camps. The stakes are so fucking high.

But I'm also thinking about what I can offer for mutual aid and community building. Institutions are failing us, and politics seem structurally incapable of neccessary reform. Every election from here on out has the potential to be the last election, as long as the Republican Party is allowed to exist.

The good news is when you look at the red-vs-blue map, the blue areas are much more concentrated. That means we can reach people. We just need to help them overcome despair and hopelessness and get them to the polls. Whenever I get down about politics, I try to think about Jeff Jackson. He's a NC pol who's staked his career on transparency and open communication. Even if he Milkshake Ducks someday, his value as someone who goes on facebook and twitter and reddit and tells everyone in the state what is going on in the legislature, what he's thinking about, what his various tasks are, etc. are an absolute model for what EVERY politician should be doing. And of course the GOP has tried to fuck with him, redistricting him out of a seat, funding a primary rival, playing dirty every way they can. But if he wins the race for attorney general, I expect him to start looking under some rocks and revealing some very icky things.
posted by rikschell at 10:58 AM on July 12 [9 favorites]

How depressing there is only one group in my state

And the link to the website has the domain for sale
posted by lescour at 11:08 AM on July 12 [2 favorites]

I don't think it's just politics, and not just America. I'm male and I've done a lot of grassroots work in Iceland especially, but in the Nordic countries more widely, in the field of literature for the past two decades, and most everyone else I've worked with is a woman. I've had dozens of female co-organizers, but I can count the number of men on the fingers of both hands. And I can count my fellow cishet men on the fingers of one hand. For whatever reason, cisgender, straight men are socialized not to spend time volunteering or doing grassroots work, but boy howdy are they first in line when it's time to reap the rewards.
posted by Kattullus at 11:19 AM on July 12 [8 favorites]

Thanks for the action-oriented posts, kristi!

Movement Voters Project and Grassroots Dems are two great ones, as is Sister District. State legislatures are where we can build power.
posted by ichomp at 11:20 AM on July 12 [8 favorites]

How depressing there is only one group in my state

I don't think that list is anywhere near exhaustive. They don't have the group that I'm active with. I don't know what their vetting criteria are and whether we'd meet them, but we're out there and have been knocking doors since April. And yeah, it's overwhelmingly women. Men are active in other ways in local politics, but the people who knock doors and do the voter registration tables are mostly women, although my sense is that it's less true the closer you get to the election.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:01 PM on July 12 [5 favorites]