Indivisibles,

Joy. Optimism. Hope. Doesn’t that just feel great? For new folks receiving this bi-weekly-ish newsletter: Welcome! We’re here to defeat Trump, deliver a Kamala Harris presidency, and guarantee her a Democratic Congress so we can codify reproductive freedom and pass democracy reform next year. That’s the plan, and we need all of us onboard to make it a reality. So, again, welcome!

These newsletters are a place for us to talk about the news, brag a little bit about what we’re getting done on the ground, and engage in some genuine discussion about this movement-wide effort to save democracy. Sound fun? Let’s get to it, but here’s a summary:

Summary

The News: We are in what I hope we can make the defining news story of 2024: a massive, grassroots, pro-democracy wave made up of newly engaged Americans organizing on the ground to defeat Trump for good. 

The Brag: Indivisible did, in my opinion, strategic and forward-thinking work to rally behind Harris quickly, push back against any fracture of the Democratic coalition after Biden withdrew, and help build the wave of grassroots energy in the immediate aftermath of the news.

The Discussion: We are in a unique wave moment right now -- and that is both a huge opportunity and a huge challenge. As organizers trying to save democracy this year with people power, we all need to be thinking about how to pull new people into the movement. I want your ideas for how best to take advantage of the moment we’re in (and if you want a Project 2025 yard sign, read on).

The News: A what? A Kamalanomenon!

Our wave history. Indivisible was founded in a “wave” moment -- when suddenly a lot of people who had not been involved in political organizing before were searching for a way to get involved. It was before the #Resistance was even called the “resistance.” People were distraught after the 2016 election and looking for something to do. Leah and I wrote the Indivisible Guide, and shockingly it went viral and people started forming local groups all over the country.

It was a challenge back early in 2017 to communicate to the outside world what we were seeing on the ground -- the intensity of emotion, the joyful community-building in the face of adversity, and the full depth and country-wide breadth of this burgeoning movement. A regular retort we heard back then was, “sure they’ll march, but will they vote?”

Well, that movement produced the biggest midterm margins in the history of the Republic in 2018. We made Trump the first one-term president in a generation in 2020. We evaporated the supposedly inevitable red wave in 2022. 

You’re damn right we vote -- but we do more than vote. We organize.

So what the hell is a Kamalanomenon? It’s us winning. We are in an even bigger wave moment now. I have to stretch all the way back to my time volunteering on Obama’s 2008 campaign to feel a similar sense of overwhelming joy, enthusiasm, and possibility -- “hope,” as we called it in those days. Back then, in early August of 2008, the polls were tied between Obama and McCain, but the vibes were on our side. “Yes we can!” was the rallying cry of the day. An Electoral College blowout and congressional majorities not seen since LBJ -- that’s what that wave produced. Yes we did.

Today, it’s “Yes We Kam.”

Let’s just reflect on the incredible wave that’s been building in the last two weeks:

• Democrats in Array. Within hours of Biden’s historic act of political self-sacrifice, practically the entire Democratic Party started rallying around Harris. Every potential challenger almost immediately announced support for Harris. Within days, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama, and basically every elected Democratic official endorsed Harris. Democratic enthusiasm for our candidate spiked -- beating GOP enthusiasm for Trump for the first time this campaign.
• Eye-popping, historic grassroots fundraising. The sky unloaded, financially speaking. In July, the Harris campaign raised more money than any political campaign has ever raised in a month…ever. $310 million from 3 million individual donors -- and 2 million of those are first-time donors for this campaign. That haul is more than double Trump’s total, and the vast majority of that came in after Harris took the reins. We’re used to campaigns bragging about their fundraising numbers -- but this isn’t a brag; this is simply historic. Never before seen levels of grassroots fundraising enthusiasm.
• Organic grassroots energy. Black women immediately rallied with a virtual fundraiser that attracted tens of thousands and raised millions. Then, a “Win with Black Men” call attracted tens of thousands more. That was followed by white women for Harris, which was attended by over 100,000 people and raised $10 million. White Dudes for Harris followed suit. Rural Voters for Harris, AAPI voters for Harris, Latino Men for Harris, Hollers for Harris (Appalachia) -- group after group after group of organic communities started coming together to support the vice president.
• A campaign shoots into the stratosphere. It’s not just money: The Biden campaign infrastructure pivoted at lightning speed, allowing VP Harris to hit the ground running. It’s a huge credit to the campaign staff that, after a month of uncertainty and instability, they rallied immediately to seize and define the moment before Republicans could. The campaign signed up 170,000 new volunteers to canvass and contact voters in battleground states. They launched an immediate media blitz with excellent ads. And Harris held rallies that rivaled the feel and size of the biggest pop stars out there.
• Massive culture capital. Speaking of pop stars, Chappell Roan’s “Femininomenon” is inspiring multi-million-view “Kamalenomenon” memes. Another pop star, Charli XCX, gave Harris the highest compliment: “Kamala IS brat.” Joyful coconut tree memes abound on TikTok and Instagram. Don’t know what all this means? Indivisible has an explainer for you. But the short version is this: People who are not political junkies -- including young people, artists, and cultural influencers -- are falling hard for our new candidate for president. As a pop music fan -- from The Beatles to Chappell Roan -- who would also like our democracy to survive, I’m thrilled. This is called cultural capital, and it’s more valuable to a winning campaign than money because it drives money, enthusiasm, volunteers, and votes.
• A hilariously incompetent response from Team Trump. An effective campaign would rush in to define this new opponent…but that did not happen. From bizarrely damaging couch memes about JD Vance, to Trump’s disastrous interview at the National Association of Black Journalists, to Governor Tim Walz accurately and devastatingly labeling Trump and MAGA “weird,” the Trump team has had the worst two weeks of a political party that I can recall. I love it.

This is obviously the biggest news story of the last two weeks, and I hope it becomes the biggest news story of the year: the story of how Kamala Harris has inspired a joyful, enthusiastic, engaged grassroots movement of pro-democracy Americans organizing to dump Trump on the trash heap of history. That’s the 2024 I want in the history books. That’s the history we’re trying to write now and for the next 13 weeks.  

Yes We Kam. 

The Brag: Moving fast as a movement

There’s no real way to fully prepare for a wave of this magnitude, but dammit we did just about all we could to prepare for it.

We were committed to avoiding fracture. It’s easy to forget it given the Kamalanomenon we’re all bopping along to now, but in the weeks leading up to and in the hours immediately after Biden announced his plan to drop, there was real fear that we’d end up in a highly contested, chaotic period with multiple challengers to Vice President Harris. We thought that would be a terrible, dangerous outcome. So we worked with Indivisible leaders in the week before President Biden’s announcement to develop a contingency plan: If President Biden were to drop out, we’d move fast to consolidate enthusiastically behind VP Harris.  

By the time Biden made his announcement, we had already done multiple surveys and movement-wide conversations with group members and leaders to understand where the movement was and what y’all wanted to see. That meant that within hours of Biden dropping out, Indivisible became one of the first national organizations to endorse Kamala Harris for president. 

Indivisible isn’t just riding the wave -- we’re building it. All this prep work meant we were ready to help build this wave on day one. As the wave of Zoom calls took off, kicked off by Jotaka Eaddy’s leadership in bringing together more than 40,000-strong Win With Black Women Zoom, Indivisible jumped in to help support this explosion of energy for Vice President Harris. When Shannon Watts began organizing Answer the Call to bring white women together for Harris, Indivisible jumped in to help run the logistics and backend of the Zoom. With nearly 160,000 registered, enthusiasm for VP Harris drove what became the single largest Zoom call in history -- so big that Zoom crashed because it couldn’t handle the traffic (despite our work with Zoom engineers in the lead up). And we’re not stopping there. We’re helping to support more calls to build on the energy -- from an AAPI for Harris call to the upcoming Lawyers for Harris.

There’s a simple principle here that guides us -- when people start running at full speed, you start running with them. This is organic, record-breaking energy for VP Harris -- you can’t bottle it and you can’t come back next week. You’ve got to meet people where they are right now and help them translate their energy into strategic action.

Coming out of that record-breaking Zoom, which you may have seen Leah talking about on MSNBC, we are now sponsoring weekly “Women Wednesdays for Harris” events with Shannon Watts every single Wednesday from now through Election Day to direct all of these new volunteers into productive, on-the-ground work that will deliver us a Harris presidency and Democratic congress. 

We’ll be helping to run these action-oriented calls every week. And as co-executive director of Indivisible, I want us to do more. I want to send people yard signs advertising Project 2025. I want to pay for swag and pizza and gathering spaces for people to rally and recruit new volunteers in battleground states. I want to expand our voter contact plans to make sure every single swing voter in every single swing state swings our way over the next three months. And I want all this necessary grassroots work paid for by grassroots dollars. Help make it happen by chipping in here. 

The Discussion: I want your ideas for how we build this wave together

I’m from rural Texas, and one very smart thing that I see some of the big Southern megachurches do is reserve the best parking at the front for new congregants. Say what you want about their politics, those folks clearly understand a basic rule of organizing: You’re either growing or shrinking, and the best way to keep growing is to make it as easy and appealing as possible to welcome more members to your group. 

We’re in a wave and we should all be scrambling the jets to respond to it. We here at Indivisible national, alongside our Indivisible group leaders, are organizing for democracy all over the country. And we happen to be in an exciting wave moment right now. Within the national organization, we’ve asked all our organizers to move lower priority work to the back burner and get to work thinking about how we start welcoming the new people coming in because of their excitement to elect Kamala Harris president. 

So for this week’s discussion item, I want to ask a two part question:

1. What tactics do you think Indivisible national and local Indivisible groups on the ground could be pursuing right now to bring in new campaign volunteers in this wave moment?
   
   
2. Would you be interested in a yard sign designed to educate your community about Project 2025? We’re thinking a simple, “What is Project 2025?” with a QR code that folks can scan to learn more and sign up to help defeat it. Something like this:

Very much look forward to reading through your ideas. As I’ve said before: I tend to get a LOT of responses to these surveys, and I read through every one. I’ll reflect back the best ideas I hear, and if there’s enough interest, we’ll try to get started sending out lots of these yard signs. 

Until next time, remember there are more of us than there are of them. That means all we have to do is organize. So let’s organize and win.

In solidarity,

Ezra

Ezra Levin Co-Executive Director Pronouns: He/him

PS: It’s been a while since I shared a picture of Zeke and Lila, in part because we had some security scares after Trump tweeted out that long hit piece on us a while back. But I’m giddy on Kamalanomenon and want to share this one of Zeke staying up a bit late with his grandma watching his mom Leah on MSNBC talk about the wave moment we’re in. Zeke was happy to delay bedtime but wanted me to change the channel to Spider-Man. 17-month-old Lila was sound asleep -- and we do not wake a sleeping baby in this house regardless of the news. Here she is with her favorite Moana doll the next morning.