Folks,

A lot of folks ask me how I’m going to be able to work in Congress if I’m the only Green elected.

I’m going to do what I’ve always done: Build solidarity and organize.

On that note, I want you to meet Melissa Chaudhry.

Melissa is running for Congress in Washington’s 9th district, to the south of our district incorporating parts of South Seattle, Renton, SeaTac and more working class communities, with a slice of Bellevue at the top end.

That slice is where Melissa’s opponent Adam Smith lives, among the richest grifters of the vulture capital class who bankroll his political career.

Adam Smith and Rick Larsen are a real pair. They’ve both been in Congress forever. They both take truckloads of cash from the industries they’re supposed to be regulating in Congress – notably the weapons manufacturers sending bombs to drop on Gaza.

But there is one place that Smith has Larsen beat: He’s taken 2.5 times more money from AIPAC than Rick Larsen. (Not that Rick isn’t trying.)

I feel a strong kinship with Melissa and her campaign. Her husband Zahid and I both organized within the Washington Democratic Party for YEARS. I’ve moved on and have dedicated myself to building power for the Green Party. But when I’m elected, I want Democratic colleagues like Melissa in the chamber with me.

Melissa will bring to Congress the REAL lived experience of being the wife and daughter of disabled veterans deployed repeatedly in America’s forever wars. Her opponent, Adam Smith, sits at the head of the House Armed Services committee that keeps the cash churning into the war machine that wounded both her husband and her father.

The 9th is a majority minority district, with huge immigrant populations and a lot of working class people getting squeezed out by the outrageous cost of living. Melissa knows how these communities are struggling as the wife of an immigrant and the mother of a biracial child, who has been organizing for justice for Black, Brown, and Indigenous people of color her entire life.

Adam Smith is funded by the megalomaniacs building personal spaceships instead of affordable housing.

Bottom left photo taken by Elliot Stoller.

Right now Melissa is in a 5-way race with four right-wingers – one of whom calls himself the “progressive” Democratic congressman for WA-09.

In the past, when I ran as a Democrat, this is where I would point you to a tandem fundraising page on ActBlue and ask you to support both of us with a split contribution.

Neither Melissa nor I have access to the Democratic Party’s preferred fundraising platform, so here’s what I’m going to do instead.

Whatever contribution you were thinking of making for me today, give half of it to Melissa here. ⬇️

And if you can, donate the other half to my campaign here. ⬇️

Before you go, do me a favor and go follow Melissa on social media (links here). Stop by her website here, and forward this email to a few friends.

Imagine what a ruckus we could cause if we simultaneously took down two of the biggest Democrats in the Genocide Caucus from the same state and replaced them with two voices for peace and justice with decades of organizing experience to back it up.

We have that opportunity. Don’t let it pass us by.

In solidarity,

Jason