Interested in these emails?
Do us a favor and click on one of the links (any one will do). That’ll tell us you’d like to keep getting updates.





Indivisibles,

Bi-weekly-ish newsletter time! Reminder: We’re here to defeat Trump and
MAGA, rebuild the Democratic trifecta, and pass democracy reform and
abortion rights legislation next year. That’s the plan. This newsletter is
an opportunity to share relevant updates and have a conversation as we
walk this path together. With that, let me get to the news, the brag, and
the discussion! 

The News: Building the case for democracy in New Jersey -- and nationally.

There was a lot of news in the last couple weeks -- [ [link removed] ]No Labels dropping
out (good), [ [link removed] ]RFK Jr. building his campaign (bad), [ [link removed] ]Trump falling on
his face in court after court (schadenfreude). But I want to focus on
something less flashy: the New Jersey Senate race.

Talking to friends and family, I’ve been surprised how many haven’t heard
about this. It hasn’t received the type of coverage it deserves. This is
an inspiring and consequential David and Goliath story about a
pro-democracy fighter, buttressed by a grassroots movement, successfully
taking down a corrupt political machine. It’s good stuff!

The corrupt incumbent and the powerful political machine. Last year, New
Jersey’s senior Democratic Senator Bob Menendez [ [link removed] ]was found to have been
hiding bribes of literal gold bars in his house. Nonetheless, Menendez
insisted he'd run for reelection. Congressman Andy Kim was one of the
first elected officials to say that that was unacceptable -- and he put
his money where his mouth was by throwing his own hat into the ring for
the Senate race. But most observers thought Andy had little hope of
winning because the governor’s wife, Tammy Murphy, was also eyeing the
seat. The political machine in New Jersey is so powerful that it didn’t
matter that Murphy was a major GOP donor who voted for George W. Bush
twice, had never held elective office, and wasn’t sure about filibuster
reform. Because of the machine’s support, [ [link removed] ]most pundits described her as
“unstoppable.”

New Jersey is a notoriously hard place to run for office if you don’t have
the party machine’s support, for a very specific reason: the Line. The
Line is, in a nutshell, a primary ballot design that puts the party’s
preferred candidate front and center and buries any other candidates way
in the back. It’s estimated that the candidate who gets “the Line” gets a
15%+ bump in the vote -- an almost insurmountable advantage in a primary
election. For a candid take on exactly how damaging and corrosive this is,
check out fellow Indivisible fave [ [link removed] ]Tom Malinowski’s recent piece on his
own experiences running for office in New Jersey.

Grassroots momentum builds into a pro-democracy crescendo. Andy courted
everyday New Jersey voters in his attempt to take on the corrupt machine.
Ten local New Jersey Indivisible groups endorsed Andy Kim late last year,
and they called on Indivisible National to come in with an endorsement. I
hosted a [ [link removed] ]statewide event with Andy, and New Jersey Indivisible members
voted overwhelmingly in favor of a national endorsement. To toot our own
horn, that made Indivisible the first major national organization to come
out in support. You can read about Indivisible’s work on this in [ [link removed] ]The
New York Times, [ [link removed] ]The Washington Post, [ [link removed] ]CNN, [ [link removed] ]Roll Call,
[ [link removed] ]Semafor, and the [ [link removed] ]New Jersey Globe, to name a few.

Andy was gaining steam, winning county conventions in the lead up to the
statewide primary date this summer. At the same time, [ [link removed] ]Andy filed a
federal lawsuit arguing that the line disenfranchised voters. 

The last couple weeks saw three major developments in this story:

 1. New Jersey’s own attorney general, who had worked for and been
appointed by the governor, [ [link removed] ]declined to defend the political
machine’s wacky ballot in court.
 2. Then the governor’s wife, Tammy Murphy, [ [link removed] ]suddenly dropped out of
the race, ending what everybody thought would be a bitter primary
fight. 
 3. And finally, just last week, the federal [ [link removed] ]judge ruled the machine’s
decades-old ballot design unconstitutional, and [ [link removed] ]denied appeal. 

Wow.

What started as an improbable campaign by an outsider candidate and a
doomed lawsuit against the powerful political machine turned into nothing
less than a pro-democracy upheaval for the entire state. As my former grad
school professor wrote, “[ [link removed] ]New Jersey Politics will never the same.” 

More than one candidate. Bigger than New Jersey. This is great news for
those of us who care about our American democracy. The story Democrats get
to tell in competitive congressional elections like New Jersey’s 7th isn’t
that the corrupt incumbent was replaced by the governor's wife, but rather
by a pro-democracy champion. In my interview with Andy I asked him about
the filibuster, abortion rights, voting rights, democracy reform, and
court reform -- and he gave A+ answers on all of them. This means we’re
going to have a strong pro-democracy champion in the senate next year --
and if we do our job right, he’ll be part of a pro-democracy Democratic
trifecta ready to take action.

The Brag: Arizona and the political potency of the fight for abortion rights. 

Trump likely doesn’t have a path to the Presidency without Arizona. And
Democrats likely don’t have a path to a senate majority without Arizona.
The strategic logic of focusing on Arizona is overwhelming -- which is why
Indivisible set Arizona as our top target this cycle shortly after the
2022 elections. 

We built up a statewide team of organizers, digital staff, campaigners,
and tech supporters. [ [link removed] ]We ran polling last year that showed adding the
abortion rights measure to the ballot would boost our turnout and decrease
GOP turnout in the battleground state. I spoke to NBC news just this
Friday about [ [link removed] ]why this is a smart strategy. And we made this ballot
initiative campaign our top priority, becoming the largest volunteer
signature gathering effort in the state over the last few months. If you
were out in Tempe or Prescott or Flagstaff or Phoenix the last few months
you probably saw Indivisible volunteers collecting signatures for the
ballot initiative outside of tattoo parlors and colleges and farmers
markets.

And…drum roll…I’m proud to write that this week, the coalition behind this
amendment has reached [ [link removed] ]500,000 signatures! That’s more than the
required number of about 384,000, but knowing inevitable GOP opposition,
we’re not taking our foot off the gas until we hit 800,000 or until the
deadline in July -- whichever comes first. This is good for Arizonans, and
it’s good for anybody looking to prevent MAGA from taking the White House
or Congress in November.

[ [link removed] ]If you want to support this work, throw in a celebratory $0.5, $5, $50
(feel free to add as many zeroes as you desire). Any donation you give
here is going straight to the frontlines in Arizona to pay for clipboards,
reimburse for signature gathering events, and distribute voter targeting
and contact tools. Just this week we rolled out our relational
organizing/canvassing program Neighbor2Neighbor to the entire state to
build on this momentum. If we get more money, we’ll collect more
signatures, simple as that. Democracy is messy, but we like to keep it
simple when we can :). 

And if you know folks who want to participate in this work on the ground
in Arizona -- [ [link removed] ]please point them [ [link removed] ]here!

The Discussion: Vibe check follow up

Thank you to everybody who wrote in to help me get a sense of how much
your community is engaged right now. An overwhelming number of you
provided thoughtful replies in addition to the one-click survey. 

For a distributed grassroots movement spread across every state and every
type of congressional district, maybe it should come as no surprise that
the results are mixed! About a third say that your community is extremely
engaged (5), another third very engaged (4), about a quarter mildly
engaged (3), and about 10% say somewhat or completely unengaged (2 or 1).

[26]Pie chart showing the results of last month's community engagement
survey.

That’s the data, but data lacks the emotional punch that I got from your
written responses. I felt energy. I chuckled. I empathized. I sympathized.
I reflected. And I thought about how I could best convey this back to the
movement. Rather than do a poor job summarizing, I’m including a
quasi-representative sample of each of these five categories of responses
at the end of this email for you to get your own sense of where our people
are nationwide.

I didn’t want to sanitize this to create hopeful propaganda. Indivisible
has persisted for seven years by building community -- and you build
community with honesty, openness, and vulnerability, not blind optimism
and BS. 

There are folks in deep red areas who are fired up. There are folks in
deep blue areas that are depressed. There are folks who just experienced a
big win who question their contributions. There are folks in swing
districts who feel guilty for not doing more. There are folks in blue
cities who feel powerless, and folks in red rural communities who are
determined. And vice versa.

If you’re feeling alone in this chaotic year; [ [link removed] ]read these comments --
you’re not. If you’re feeling fired up, you’ve got lots of company -- and
you’ve got folks in your midst who could use some of your fire. Even among
those fired up, there’s doubt. Among those doubting, you’ve got a
community. But we’re not united by our fear or our doubts - we’re united
by our commitment to doing something about it. That’s why I’m here -- and
I know that’s why you’re reading these words.

I’m going to keep discussion simple this week: click the one-click survey
to tell me how this newsletter and discussion structure is hitting you.
Give me an A if you love it, and F if you hate it, and please do add
additional feedback or comments if you feel so moved!

[ [link removed] ]A

[ [link removed] ]B

[ [link removed] ]C

[ [link removed] ]D

[ [link removed] ]F

Until next time

Putting aside reasonable doubts and fears, we can be secure in the
knowledge that there are more of us than there are of them. Americans
support democracy. They want abortion rights. They oppose MAGA extremism.
Our job is to make sure the electorate sees the choice between fascism and
freedom as clearly as possible this year.

Thank you for being with us in this fight. We’re gonna win this thing.

In solidarity,
Ezra

Ezra Levin

[33]Indivisble Co-Executive Director

Pronouns: He/him

PS: Lots of folks have asked, and, no, Lila still does not have teeth.
Nevertheless, she persists with her voracious appetite, and she also
almost -- almost -- took her first step this week. I’m sure she’ll be
running by the next update. As for Zeke, he’s inventing new plausible
reasons to extend bedtime more and more every night. He’s got a knack for
tactical innovation. He’s also developed a new obsession with “bad guys”,
which may be because he hears his parents talking about Trump and MAGA all
the time.

[ [link removed] ]Indivisible Facebook

[ [link removed] ]Indivisible Threads

[ [link removed] ]Indivisible Instagram

[ [link removed] ]Indivisible TikTok

[ [link removed] ]Indivisible Mastodon



You can unsubscribe from this mailing list at any time:
[link removed]