In the News

Recent Highlights From Our Partners

Changing the Conversation’s founder Adam Barbanel-Fried in the Nation: “The Conversations Democrats Need to Be Having”

Working America’s board member and famed activist Jane Fonda in the Washington Post: “Here’s what happened when I went door-knocking in Pennsylvania”

Critical Race Theory And The 2022 Election

Fight for a Better America recently sponsored a discussion on “Race and the 2022 Election” that yielded some important wisdom for the challenges that lie ahead and especially for the 2022 mid-term elections.

Michael Harriot, senior writer for The Root, points out that, while critical race theory has become a lightning rod for political dissension of late, right-wing efforts to weaponize race are not new – and are highly effective at mobilizing a fairly homogeneous, white conservative base.

Thus, in response to current “campaigns” decrying the spread of critical race theory, it should be unsurprising that conservatives have a knee-jerk reaction; even without knowing what critical race theory is, many immediately perceive it as an attack on white people (rather than a complex interdisciplinary field of study, imbued with legal scholarship) and are persuaded to stand, and vote, with those leaders seemingly “defending” white communities.

In November 2021, Sally Avelenda, executive director of the New Jersey Democratic Party, witnessed the critical race theory voter mobilization first-hand. She notes that Republicans organized massive voter turnout on the basis of active resistance to critical race theory, Covid-19 restrictions, and other forms of perceived government encroachment on (white) communities. As a result, Republican (and moderate/swing voter turnout for the Republican candidate) increased by 40%; despite being an overwhelmingly Democratic state, New Jersey Democrats carried the 2021 gubernatorial election by just 3.2%. This underscores the urgent need to counter the right’s divide-and-conquer tactics and rally the Democratic political base ahead of the 2022 mid-term elections.

However, Matt Morrison, executive director of Working America, and a veteran of over 500 elections, notes that strong partisan messages really just reach and mobilize a small group of faithful activists (on both the left and right), and that “more than 80% of voters are not invested in the game of politics.” As a result, most people are still available to be reached with more positive messages, and are available to “contribute to the effort to uphold democracy.” (Morrison reminds us that “democracy is not something we get, it’s something we make.”)

The way to combat cynical extremism and bolster voter engagement is neither to scare voters still further, nor e-blast them at the last minute. Political activists and volunteers must get to know them: knock on their doors, find out how they are, what really matters to them – learn if they have the housing, health care, wages and security they need – and then actually speak to their primary concerns. Help them understand which candidates can actually bring about the changes they (and their diverse neighbors) really want and need – thus making them less vulnerable to the right’s cynical use of wedge issues to divide and conquer.

Fight For A Better America & Partner Media Highlights

Fight in the SD Union Tribune:

"Flip the 49th has added structure compared to previous efforts, said Tazheen Nizam, who volunteered for Democratic candidates during the last two congressional races. Previously, a hodgepodge of groups worked alongside each other and often overlapped their efforts, she said. “It was amateurish,” Nizam said. “We were organizations, but we were not professionals. I have a full-time job, a kid and a family. We were just amateurs.

Now, groups meet monthly and there is a team that goes to neighborhoods with a list of addresses they should visit… “If there’s not some infrastructure there to support them, some paid staff, you really can’t get a lot done,” Montanari said. “We can hire people who can do some heavy lifting and the volunteers can get out and do what they want to do.

The leap in organization is, in part, due to money. Federal Election Commission records show that Flip the 49th received $25,000 from Fight for a Better America, the political-action committee in Manhattan."

Flip the 49th in the SF Chronicle:

"The most significant endorsement that Democrat Mike Levin received en route to a runoff spot in a California House district that his party would love to flip didn’t come from a big-name politician, he said. It came from grassroots activists who held 67 demonstrations in front of retiring GOP Rep. Darrell Issa’s office during the past year."

NJ11 For Change In The NYTimes:

"One of my favorite parts of the [political "how to"] guide is the story of a lawyer named Saily Avelenda who lives in north-central New Jersey. Shortly after Trump’s election, Avelenda formed a group of progressives whose mission was to keep their congressman, Rodney Frelinghuysen, accountable.

The group started small, meeting in a coffee shop and on Facebook. But it stayed focused and committed to a clear strategy. It courted Republican voters as well as Democrats. It showed up at Frelinghuysen’s office, even in the rain. It repeatedly highlighted the fact that he had voted last year to take health insurance away from many of his own constituents. The organizing evidently worked. In January, with Frelinghuysen’s approval ratings way down, he announced he wouldn’t seek re-election."

Working America in the Washington Post:

“Persuasion can work in partisan general elections when campaigns use experiments to identify persuadable voters and remove voters that react negatively to their messages.

For example, Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, conducted experiments in 2016 that found surprising pockets of voters persuaded by their messages. It then targeted these voters more intensively going forward, and stopped talking to the voters who reacted negatively.

It’s a powerful approach. From validation studies, we estimate that Working America’s changed targeting generated many thousands of additional votes. These votes would have taken many millions of dollars to capture with other tactics.”