Please See Our New Organizing Site: https://www.usgrassroots.org/
Published by Center for Common Ground, Communities United, Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition (GREEP), et. al.
The Call to Action
The survival of American democracy in 2024 (and beyond) will depend on effectively executed grassroots strategies. These strategies will be vastly different from the media-based communications campaigns that have dominated American elections in recent years–campaigns with centrally-driven, carefully crafted messaging designed for mass media that do not unite people around our most important shared values or actively engage citizens in the democratic process.
We Can and Must Do Better!
As proven in the “Georgia Miracle” U.S. Senate campaigns of 2020-2022, in statewide elections in Virginia 2023, and elsewhere, pro-democracy forces can only win by moving their resources to hands-on grassroots strategies engaging people at the local level. These strategies have critically evolved over the past two decades and must be widely shared to empower and activate people to be forces for change.
These strategies include relational organizing, democracy centers, computer-based ‘Get Out the Vote’ campaigns and other hands-on tactics as pioneered by Andrea Miller’s Center for Common Ground and Communities United for Justice (co-founded by Ray McClendon and Richard Rose), featured on Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection weekly zooms since April, 2020 (Join GREEP most Mondays, 2/5p.m. ET-PT)
For a full video exposition from Andrea Miller and Ray McClendon on the grassroots path to victory through relational organizing, please watch the January 8, 2024, GREEP zoom recording. This 2-hour presentation lays out the core elements of progressive non-mass media-based electoral work necessary for this election year and beyond.
As witnessed especially in Arizona, 2020, saving our Democracy also demands universally available hand-marked/digitally scanned paper ballots with reliable audits and recounts done by credible, non-partisan professionals such as John Brakey of AUDIT Elections USA and Ray Lutz’s Citizen Oversight Projects.
Taken in tandem, these strategies saved our democracy in 2020. They are essential—and need everyone’s participation—if we are to survive 2024.
Here’s How You Can Help: (see below for links and references)
1. GET OUT THE VOTE: Voter turnout can make all the difference in any election. The Virginia-based Center for Common Ground has developed highly effective set of procedures based on phone calls, post cards and more. They’ve proven to tangibly turn critical races. They can also be fun and fulfilling. To volunteer.
2. DEMOCRACY CENTERS: Community-based store fronts, staffed by local residents, can provide considerable foundations for grassroots campaigning. Providing accessible facilities for phone-banking, post-card writing, educational instruction, special events and more, these on-the-ground outposts bringing people together are essential to rallying a quantum leap in education and turnout. See Center for Common Ground’s Democracy Centers.
3. RELATIONAL ORGANIZING: Door-to-door campaigning, canvassing through the streets and neighborhoods, meet-and-greets at democracy centers and local events… all can make the definitive difference. They should be conducted by local residents emphasizing local issues…and providing, in the words of Ray McClendon: “targeted messages delivered by targeted messengers.” If this is your cup of tea, check out.
4. ISSUES WITH LOCAL IMPACT: National and International issues do have some impact in certain communities. But by and large, all politics is indeed local, which means focusing on issues that make a difference in voters’ daily lives should be the highest priority, such as wages, working conditions, health care, schools and school lunches, reproductive rights, student debt forgiveness, climate, voting rights, etc. Local issues presented by local people are the essence of democracy, and engaging people about these issues can make all the difference in preserving ours.
5. UNIVERSALLY AVAILABLE HAND MARKED / DIGITALLY SCANNED PAPER BALLOTS:
Since the machine-based democracy-killing debacles of Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, the need for hard copy voting with transparent digital counting (and re-counting) capabilities has been overwhelmingly evident. The fact that more than 85% of the ballots cast in 2020 were on paper, counted (and audited) digitally, may well have preserved our democracy, at least for the time being.
6. GUARANTEED ACCESS TO THE VOTE:
The forever-worn battle of who can get a ballot, who can cast one, and how, will rage hotter than ever in 2024. Voter ID, voting by mail, access to often-disappeared polling stations, ex-felon eligibility, safety at voting sites and more will roil this election as thoroughly as all others in this century. The social movement for election protection that rose out of the bitterly contested uproars in Florida/Ohio-2000/2004 will be in play in 2024 as never before. If this is of interest to someone, where do they go? Ask Andrea?
7. RELIABLE COUNTS, RECOUNTS & AUDITS
The need to guarantee accurate voter tallies, recounts and audits, which became critical in Arizona in 2020, will be multiplied amidst the many disputed elections sure to erupt in 2024. The work of John Brakey, Ken Bennett, Ray Lutz and others provide vital guidelines for guaranteeing that votes duly cast in this election will be reliably counted and confirmed.
8. GERRYMANDERING
The demographic battle over fair districting for Congressional and state legislative seats has raged with special fury since the “Redmapped” outcomes of 2010. Citizen activism continues to roil the maps in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere. It will rage right up to election day 2024. Full awareness of the issue is inseparable from preserving any semblance of democracy in our representative institutions. Important, but not sure I would include. Nothing for anyone to do!
9. ENFORCING THE OUTCOME
For the first time in US history, we experienced on January 6, 2021 a violent attempt to reverse a legitimate electoral outcome. It could happen again. Forewarned must be forearmed. Again, true and what can anyone do at this point? I would omit.
Please Participate in and Support Grass Roots Engagement in Your Community in Any Ways You Can. Everyone is Needed in 2024!
Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition 