Illustrations from the book Practical Radicals by Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce

Dear Maria,

Yes, we have a stronger presidential election candidate, yay, this feels better, but can we think longer term, bigger picture, ecosystem? As our friends at Movement Voter PAC remind us, we have strategic options—as surprising as that may sound—we DO have options. Hold onto your hope, and let’s explore the strategic options and levers we still need to pull collectively. It is not by chance, accident, or coincidence that Kamala Harris is the Democratic Presidential Candidate Nominee and Tim Walz her Vice President. We made that happen, but the fight persists.  

Cori Bush’s upsetting loss is another reminder of how much work is ahead of us. Cori represented more than a democratic woman of color candidate. She was a grassroots, community-powered, values-aligned, vision-aligned representative upholding a progressive agenda that we want to see in the United States and beyond. And that’s what we are fighting for. 

This extends beyond candidates and presidential election cycles. Our colleagues at the Working Families Party describe this moment as an “American expression of a global authoritarian right-wing movement stretching from India to France to Hungary to Israel.” And let’s be honest, we’ve known this about every election cycle. Unsurprisingly, community groups have long identified our inability to see, plan, and fund beyond election cycles as a significant capacity and strategic gap in our movements. 

Our job right now is to come together and decide what path we will commit to walking together. To state the obvious—but maybe not so obvious—since we are still asking, ‘What do we do?’—well, here it is: “No one is coming to save us. We’re going to have to save ourselves". And actually, yes!  

Why are we allowing shortsighted mainstream media to make us feel at a loss? We have labored and learned in the trenches of building a progressive movement. Do we genuinely expect one presidential election cycle to hold back 100-plus years of right-wing power-building? If ever there was a time to think big, believe in us, and bet on us, it’s now. We need to manifest our win, no matter the price, no matter the time, and no matter the party lines.

HOW are we going to fight? Erin Heaney from Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) puts it simply as the “BLOCK and BUILD approach" in our organizing - "stopping the worst that’s to come while building towards the majorities and power we need to win transformational change over the long haul.” And I think this is the best way to explain some of our mistakes in 2016:  

1. We assumed our vision appealed to most people  
2. We were bullied into a reactive, defensive mode  

And now, here we are again. We couldn’t get ahead because we didn’t address the root cause, so how do we do that now? Sandra Hinson opens this discussion with some of our movement leaders in her article, “What Does It Look Like When We Build Our Power and Fight the Right?”. 

This is by no means an attempt to undermine the amazing work that happened and continues to happen every day. There are many beautiful ways in which we have come together to protect each other and defend democracy. Reflecting on the past 20 years of Maria’s List, twenty years of creating a women-centered political communication and donor hub. Twenty years of identifying and uplifting progressive community-aligned, political movement-building organizations, leaders, women, and people of color candidates. We lean on a greater collective vision beyond endorsing candidates and fueling political community organizations. It’s a vision about creating systemic change, where the conditions for grassroots movements to hold our elected officials, government structures, and communities accountable exist and thrive so our dream of an equitable and just world can be externalized.

That means doing the expensive, deep, strategy-dependent, and long-term work of funding issues and building leadership pipelines that produce the right organizations and candidates that can house the pivotal progressive pillars of our movements: political education, training, fundraising, advocacy, and so on. We want to share some of our lessons and successes from the past 20 years over the next few months. But for now, we want to reaffirm our commitment to working closely with organized communities as we take on national and state elections. Our commitment to defending progressive leaders in Congress. Our commitment to retaking the House. Our commitment to progressive state leaders in Massachusetts and their ability to move our agenda. And our commitment to resourcing communities’ political organizations and ballot initiatives. 

In that spirit, we’ve put together a few resources and upcoming events to help you ride this hopeful wave, in a BUILD kind of way!

We’re glad to have you here, 

Maria Jobin-Leeds