People United for Justice (in Airlift's West By Southwest Fund) was part of the campaign that ran Sheriff Joe Arpaio out of town. Now he’s back—what an inviting target! With Jeff Flake retiring, Kyrsten Sinema leaving Congress to run against Joe Arpaio for Flake’s Senate seat, and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton running for Sinema's Congressional seat, Arizona politics are full of opportunity. It’s a game of musical chairs even before you start to think about what John McCain’s potential resignation will do.
PUJ is preparing to launch bottom up campaigns for movement-aligned candidates running for local office. These candidates will galvanize excitement and energy in Phoenix's progressive communities. According to Airlift’s senior advisor Matt Singer, “That is going to shift long-term power in Arizona!”
Color of Change Named #2 on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Non-profits
Color of Change was formed in 2005 by Van Jones and others in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to strengthen the political voice of African Americans. Along the way they forced Fox News to drop the Glenn Beck Show and then successfully shut down Bill O’Reilly.
Responding to the experiences of African-Americans who felt marginalized working in Democratic campaigns, Color of Change is forging a movement that builds power from the bottom up. They have been named #2 on Fast Company's list of Most Innovative Non-profits.
They have created a permanent volunteer force to win elections and hold representatives accountable after elections. They are seeing large crowds of 500+ volunteers showing up at events in cities around the country.
Color of Change, in Airlift's Network Effect Fund, is creating brilliant new tools for drawing in and engaging black women, families and professionals. The Black Love Series explores the links between prosecutors, campaign money, and money bail and points the way to action. As volunteers move through the engagement ladder they learn to host their own events in small intimate groups settings to develop independent leadership.
PLAN Action Nevada: From Protest to Power
PLAN (Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada) operates from the premise that Nevada communities are in a fight for their lives. After electing Nevada’s first Latina senator in 2016, they drew standing-room-only crowds to events designed to frame Nevada’s 2017 legislative session on their terms. They decided that the most effective way to resist was going on the offensive with a bold progressive agenda.
During the session, PLAN held 10 phone banks, 5 Letters-to-the-Editor workshops, and monthly rallies and protests. PLAN organized 7 different lobby days to bring students, immigrants, workers, and other Nevadans into the process. They were successful in passing every one of their priority measures out of both houses.
Even with a Republican governor who vetoed many of these reforms, PLAN succeeded in their efforts to:
EXTEND voter pre-registration to cover all 17-year-olds
ENSHRINE Affordable Care Act standards into state law including birth control and free cancer screenings
STOP a voucher program that would have given away tens of millions in taxes to private and religious schools, and
RESTORE voting rights to thousands of Nevadans with past convictions who previously were permanently disenfranchised.
Even though automatic voter registration was vetoed, it will be on the ballot in 2018.
PLAN Nevada is in Airlift's West by Southwest Fund, and we are proud to support them!
Help This Incredible Candidate Become the First Black Woman Governor in the U.S.
Stacey Abrams and supporters in the Georgia State House
Stacey Abrams is the founder of the New Georgia Project, which has already registered hundreds of thousands of new voters in Georgia. NGP is one of the groups in Airlift's Voter Motor fund.
Stacey has been the Minority Leader in the Georgia House of Representatives for the past 6 years where she has managed to add and hold 6 new Democratic seats, keeping a supermajority out of the reach of Republicans. She has also stood her ground on 3 weeks of early voting, more than any other southern state.
So...guess who's running against her in the Democratic primary? A white member of the Georgia house named Stacey Evans, who insists that the 14 white swing voters in the suburbs are going to decide this election.
From Reuters: "Abrams, who rouses audiences to near religious fervor describing her struggles growing up poor and black in the South, argues that Democrats have wasted resources on swing voters."
“We have left too many voters untouched,” she said in an interview, noting that she refuses to tone down her support for abortion, gay rights and labor unions to appeal to Republican-leaning voters.
We are asking everyone to support Georgia Project Action, the electoral arm of the New Georgia Project via a contribution to the Voter Motor fund. Let's help Stacey Abrams finish what she started!
Read more from the New York Times: Is Stacey Abrams Assembling a New Democratic Majority?
When you donate through Airlift you help candidates but you are also building local infrastructure for November and the long haul.
From Orange to Blue!
Orange County, CA, is home to four key congressional races–more than any other state! With our help, the five OC groups we support will train 350 new organizers, register 34,000 new voters, and manage 1,000 volunteers! With large Korean, Vietnamese and Spanish-speaking populations, this job has to be done from the inside, by groups people know and trust.
Airlift's Orange County Civic Engagement Table, a part of Airlift's West by Southwest Fund, is a coalition of Latino, Asian-American, faith-based, and low-income organizations. in one recent week, they registered over 1,000 new voters while leading direct actions in multiple cities to defend DACA. Their increased capacity will be used to communicate with hundreds of thousands of voters, including a number of new voters registered through California’s automatic voter registration laws. This information will be “in-language” for their Vietnamese and Korean communities and will include voter education and mobilization materials. The in-language capacity developed by these groups is very unusual in the electoral space.
Hillary won Orange County in 2016. Now we need to make it happen from the bottom up.
Conor Lamb PA Congressional Race Just Became a 3-Pointer!
The Pennsylvania special Congressional election on March 13th, with Conor Lamb, a former Marine and federal prosecutor, running against Republican Rick Saccone, just became a 3-pointer.
Lamb is trailing in the latest Monmouth Poll by only 3 points in a +11 Republican district. If you’re a Warriors fan, you know about the power of 3-pointers.
We are recommending that everyone in our network help out a tenacious grassroots group called One Pennsylvania. They are getting out the vote for Conor Lamb by organizing young and minority voters. These people overwhelmingly vote our way — if we get them to the polls.
Matt Singer, Airlift’s top adviser, thinks that One Pennsylvania is poised to play a serious role as PA redraws its district maps for the big one in November.
We know from Virginia and Alabama that this stuff works.
Students are Waking Up!
Following on brilliant successes at college campuses in Virginia, Airlift-supported groups like Alliance for Youth Action / Student Power Network are planning for massive mobilizations at 500 college campuses across the country! They are cracking the code with a sophisticated festival atmosphere mix of DJs, free food, animals to pet, voter ed., and Election Day dorm sweeps.
These groups have developed sophisticated systems for registering and turning out young voters . Their local organizations are completely run by young people. And they have been successful at creating programs that work so well they have been taken over by major funders like NextGen America.
Alliance for Youth Action, a part of Airlift's Network Effect Fund, has been a major force behind automatic voter registration in four states, including the first such bill in the country. And they helped oust the Cook County (Chicago) States Attorney, the fight that activated prosecutor races nationwide. In last fall’s elections, using sophisticated, proven programs on and off campus they were instrumental in tripling youth (under 30) turnout. As high school students across the country escalate their protests over gun control, these groups are ready to provide organizing support.
$500 pays half the cost of training a local organizer. We know young people vote the right way. They just need some cajoling and pizza to make sure they show up.
Organize Florida Helps Ensure the Right to Vote
Organize Florida (a part of Airlift's Voter Motor Fund) is engaged in the biggest voter suppression battle in the country–restoring voting rights to 1.6 million felons who have to wait years and show up at the State Clemency Board to individually plead their cases.
We just learned that Organize Florida and their partners have gathered over 500,000 signatures, enough to ensure that a Florida constitutional amendment to automatically restore their right to vote will be on the ballot in 2018.
This would bring Florida voting laws in line with most of the country and welcome folks who have paid their debt back to society.
This effort focuses on Puerto Ricans, all US citizens by birth, who are settling in Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. AIRLIFT helps Organize Florida welcome these new residents, support their relocation and resettlement during an incredibly difficult period, and ensure that they become engaged in Florida political life.
Our next job: help Organize Florida make sure 1.5 million targeted people know what to do on Election Day.
Communities for a New California Engages CA's Latino Democrats
With California's Latino population at close to 40%, and a tendency of that portion of the electorate to vote 3:1 Democratic, It's a mystery to us why the Democratic Party would routinely ignore Latino Democrats. Enter Communities for a New California, an organization in Airlift's West by Southwest Fund, which is reaching out to this population in numerous ways. CNC:
Runs very sophisticated phone banking operation in the CA Central Valley–they are a trusted local organization with incredible metrics
Reaches an average of 700 voters a night using predictive dialers
Has real conversations with disengaged voters 4 times per year, the kind of people that were being ignored in the present system, instead of being brought in. (Read more about some of the dynamics involving Latino voters in California.)
AIRLIFT’s first contribution of $1,500 allowed CNC to put on two additional shifts that talked to 700 voters. Real money going to real people talking to voters one-on-one to make a difference.