Dear friends,
We still have almost three weeks of madness to contend with. Saturday night’s phone call between Trump and GA Secretary of State Raffensberger was a perfect illustration of the extent of the president’s delusions and criminal impulses. Wednesday promises to be a long, very stupid day, with some Republicans in both houses of Congress planning to oppose the certification of election results. We are going to have to keep our eyes on the horizon.
Tomorrow is a highly consequential election day for Georgia and the nation. Part of our justice mission is to see our fellow Americans more clearly and to make sure that all voices are heard. Although Asian Americans are a mere 4% of Georgia’s population, they have become an electoral force. When Democrats flipped a seat in Georgia’s 7th Congressional District in November, they did it with massive support from Asian voters. Forty-percent of Asian voters in that district were first-time voters. This is the product of tremendous on-the-ground organizing. A group called Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta spearheaded a campaign to produce Korean-language voting resources for the special election, including the first-ever “officially translated composite ballot” in Korean for Cobb County. This work is part of the long game to make American politics more democratic and more just, and there is still much to do. There are multiple Asian languages spoken in Cobb County and there are counties in Georgia with larger Asian populations that still lack access to in-language resources.
Support Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta.
Another group of voters, galvanized around a care agenda, are making a huge difference around the nation. A PAC called Family Friendly Action, which is focused on “the care economy” of child care, elder care, health care, and paid family leave has been bringing out Democratic voters in significant numbers. A post-election study of the 2018 Virginia gubernatorial race by Women Effect Action Fund, which promotes gender equity, examined voting patterns among voters whom PAC members had canvassed and those they had not. The study revealed that canvassing and conversation about care issues caused a double-digit shift of support to Democrat Ralph Northam. Northam’s victory inspired Lisa Guide, of Women Effect Action Fund to try to replicate those results in 2020 battleground states.
A post-election poll of two thousand voters commissioned by the fund found that more than thirty per cent of those surveyed said that care issues influenced how they voted. The poll also found that the kinds of programs in Biden’s plan appealed to voters: seventy-four per cent said they supported them, including fifty-seven per cent of Trump supporters. More than thirty per cent said that covid-19 made care issues more visible and important to them, and, in Guide’s estimation, that the Trump Administration’s mishandling of the pandemic gave voters the impetus and permission to cross party lines.
This data was so persuasive that the fund reversed its earlier plan to sit out the special election. Instead, they have been talking to suburban voters in Georgia who did not vote for Senators in November.
Support Family Friendly Action PAC and Women Effect Action Fund.
Sue Halpern’s article in The New Yorker, from which I quoted above, is also how I learned about Care in Action, a partner to the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Care in Action’s mission is to raise the status and visibility of caregivers in our society.
For the Senate runoff election, Care in Action has knocked on more than nine hundred thousand doors in and around Atlanta and in the state’s rural “Black Belt,” …home to a significant number of poor Black Georgians. Morales Rocketto [of Care in Action] described it as an all-out mobilization effort. “We’re really focussed on turning out Black women to vote, women who have voted infrequently, or even never before,” she said. “When they turn out, they have the ability to transform the electorate.”
Get involved with Care in Action.
Can you see the horizon? I can. I didn’t think you should have to wait until tomorrow for some good news.
Have a great day.
with love,
L