Chop Wood, Carry Water 7/22

A new day.

Jul 22, 2024

This GIF and lots more Harris for President stuff can be found here.

Hi, all, and happy Monday!

It doesn’t really feel like we had a weekend, does it? It doesn’t, in fact, feel like we’ve had one in months! I hope you’re all hanging in there—this entire month has been exhausting, and to say that yesterday was an emotional rollercoaster is an understatement.

But you know, when the initial sadness and dismay wore off, and when it became clear that Kamala Harris was going to get Biden’s nod, I, for one, began to feel something I haven’t felt in a long while—excitement. If you’re not there yet I totally understand—Biden’s ouster was a pretty ugly thing. I’m actually surprised at how quickly I recovered from his announcement. But I did, and I’m going with it.

Look—it’s not that I don’t think we could have won with Biden at the top of the ticket—I believe we will win no matter who the candidate is, and Biden was a strong contender—but I’m now starting to believe we can not just win but absolutely sweep this election with Harris running. (And yes, I know she’s not officially the candidate yet, but it seems clear she will be.) Everything feels right: the moment, the candidate, the perfect symmetry of having a young, brilliant, Black, AAPI woman—a former sex crime prosecutor!—run against an elderly, white, mentally diminished felon who’s both a racist and a rapist. It’s delicious!

And the energy I’m feeling online! And from young people! And from politically unengaged people! It’s very encouraging. Voters are, dare I say it, galvanized! They’re also all suddenly very, very appreciative of President Biden, which is long overdue and a true pleasure to see. I hope this turn of events, and the momentous, selfless decision he’s made, will enable him to receive the plaudits in his lifetime that he will surely receive from historians.

Finally, let’s give our President credit for the timing of his announcement. He has skillfully wrenched the spotlight back from the Republicans seconds after the conclusion of their convention. Whatever press attention they had is gone. Whatever “bump” they received is immaterial now. The narrative has switched quickly and it’s all Kamala, all the time. Good.

Friends, this won’t be easy. Republicans will fight like the devil to stop not just a Democrat, but a progressive woman of color from becoming President. Harris will face misogyny, racism, lies, and dirty tricks. We will see unprecedented efforts to undermine her candidacy.

But we will also see, from our side, energy, drive, enthusiasm, and mobilization. It will be, I suspect, like nothing we have seen before. We will get the youth vote back. We will give women a true reproductive rights champion to rally behind. I just learned, by the way, that there was a Zoom last night for Black women who want to help organize for Harris. An acquaintance was on it. She told me 40,000 women were there—forty thousand!—and that they stayed on for four hours!

We are about to live through history, friends, and we will be a big part of it.

And in winning, we will make history. What a thrill. What an honor! What a joy.

So let’s get to work.

P.S. — For the many of you who wrote to tell me that their donation to Kamala Harris had resulted in a receipt saying they’d given to Joe Biden, never fear. His funds are all being transferred to her. She’s not the official nominee yet so it’ll take a while for the donation pages to officially say Harris for President.

P.P.S. — No Congressional calls today, sorry!

Extra Credit ✅

Let’s send President Biden a thank you note. So simple, but so important. Not an email, either. Let’s do a hand-written card if we can. He needs an outpouring of love and appreciation right now. Let’s give it to him. Here’s the mailing address:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

Get Smart #1—MICHIGAN! 📚

In 2020, Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson endured armed demonstrators outside her home and received death threats after Trump called her a “Rogue Secretary of State.” For her courage in protecting the election, she received the JFK Profile in Courage Award.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, from 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET Airlift is proud to host Secretary Benson in a conversation about what is being done to protect voters and poll workers and counteract AI misinformation in 2024.

Joining Secretary Benson will be organizers from We the People Action Fund, whose work was instrumental in fighting back against Michigan’s GOP’s attempts to disenfranchise Black and Brown voters and overturn the 2020 election results. Their organizing was crucial in turning out the vote in hard-to-reach communities throughout Michigan and flipping the state legislature for Michigan’s Blue trifecta.

Although this is technically a fundraiser for We the People Action Fund you do not need to donate to participate.

Get Smart #2—NORTH CAROLINA! 📚

Join me, Robert Hubbell, the folks at Markers for Democracy, and others for a conversation TODAY from 4-5 PM ET with Mecklenburg Democratic Party, and the New Voter Protection Director at North Carolina Democratic Party.

Hear how Democrats in North Carolina will make sure every vote is counted and learn about the Mecklenburg Democrats' plans to canvass hundreds of thousands of homes and add tens of thousands of Democratic votes in the "gold mine" county of North Carolina.

Moderator: Caleb Theodros, Democratic nominee, Senate District 41 (Charlotte); former chairman, Black Political Caucus of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

This will be a great and very heartening event!

Spread the Word! 📣

A few things:

Want to know what some of Kamala Harris’s accomplishments have been since she’s been VP? This Twitter post is AMAZING!
DemCast will be holding a Democracy Briefing tonight at 5pm PT/8pm ET to discuss how to message this moment and share resources.
Please RSVP here.
ASO Communications is out with an excellent Kamala Harris messaging guide. Lots of good stuff in there about how to talk about her and her candidacy.

Give 💰—WISCONSIN!

Please join the Wisconsin Giving Circle, Grab Em’ by the States, this evening from 6-7pm EST. They’ll be in conversation with extraordinary on-the-ground leaders in Wisconsin: Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, Ben Wikler, Chair, WI Democratic Party, and Melissa Walker, Head of Giving Circles.

Please use this link to register.

Win Races! 🗳

There are just 107 days until the Presidential election. Please take a moment right now to sign up for a phonebank.

The Environmental Voter Project has many coming up. They are so easy, and so fun, and so very, very important. Please try one!

Don’t want to make EVP calls? Make calls to protect the vote with NOPE and Red2Blue.

You’'ll call Pennsylvania Democrats to fix issues with registrations or mail-in ballots. Many dates and times are available, and training is provided in every shift. Sign up here.

Resistbot Letter (new to Resistbot? Go here! And then here.) 💻

[To: all 3 reps] [H/T Climate Action Now’s Your Daily Does of Climate Hope] [Text SIGN PIIASC to Resistbot at 50409 or via Apple Messages / WHATSAPP / MESSENGER]

There’s already some encouraging bipartisan agreement on increasing U.S. funding for Gavi, a vital global alliance providing vaccines against deadly diseases to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

Now, I'm asking you to make sure that Congress funds Gavi even more, because we have a historic opportunity right now to speed up the rollout of vital new malaria vaccines across Africa!

In 2024, the Biden Administration pledged a five-year commitment of at least $1.58 billion in U.S. support for Gavi (formerly known as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation). Even better, it looks like there’s actually some bipartisan support in Congress to fund that pledge (and maybe even increase it!) in the next federal budget.

Gavi is a critical global coalition of major health organizations from the World Bank to UNICEF, dedicated to manufacturing and deploying vaccines against deadly diseases to save the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people. The new U.S. pledge is really important, really good news: by number of human lives saved per dollar, funding Gavi is probably the single most important and effective thing the United States government is doing right now, saving millions of lives for relatively small amounts of money.

But there’s amazing potential to go even further. Right now, at this moment in history, any additional funding for Gavi will have a disproportionately huge impact, as brilliant new inventions have just opened up a whole new front against one of the world’s worst diseases. With extra funding, Gavi could help speed up the global rollout of malaria vaccines, one of the most important yet underreported changes happening the world right now.

Malaria is one of the deadliest enemies of the human species. We’ve been fighting malaria for generations, and heroically eradicated it in much of the world, but the mosquito-borne parasite is still hanging on in sub-Saharan Africa.

Getting malaria vaccines to where they’re needed is a gigantic win for human well-being (and should happen as soon as possible!). With the malaria vaccines beginning to roll out in 2024, humanity is starting an epic project to spare the poorest and most vulnerable people of Earth from debilitating illness by the millions and save children’s lives by the tens of thousands, using our ingenuity to defeat one of our species’ most ancient enemies. Not to mention, we’re defeating one of the biggest threats posed by climate change (a potential resurgence of malaria) before it has a chance to really get going. This is spectacular news.

Now, you can make it happen even faster, and save tens of thousands of lives. Please do your utmost and fund Gavi as much as possible to speed up the rollout of malaria vaccines!

Thank you very much for your time and your work.

OK, you did it again! You helped save democracy! You’re amazing.

Talk soon.

Jess

Chop Wood, Carry Water