John,

I want to take a moment to reflect on the 2024 primaries with you, but before I do, will you consider chipping in any amount to fuel Justice Democrats’ work to elect more progressive leaders to Congress and get big money out of politics?

Over the last six years, we’ve had some upset victories and heartbreaking losses. This is to be expected when you go up against opposition like AIPAC, Crypto or other corporate lobbies, which are some of the most powerful right-wing forces in American politics.

In order to have a shot at winning, we need to always be willing to do things differently which means we are constantly innovating, experimenting, testing our assumptions and reflecting so that we can use every win and every loss as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Over the next few months, we will be debriefing the races we won, the races we lost and the races that were uncontested. We are going to be doing internal reflections as a staff, debriefing with the campaign teams, partners, and fielding quantitative and qualitative research. As we learn more, our takeaways will be refined, but here are some of our initial thoughts:

• These races were wholly about diverse, working-class, progressive power against Republican megadonors. Right-wing special interests are threatened by the Squad in Washington. None of these races were a referendum on Israel-Palestine policies, nor were they an intra-party debate between the so-called left and center. At the end of the day, the megadonors behind AIPAC are overwhelmingly corporate CEOs and Wall Street billionaires whose profits and bottom lines are threatened by progressive champions who support policies like raising taxes on billionaires or Medicare for All. It’s important to note that despite losing the elections, Congress Members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush won the vast majority of working-class voters in both of their districts.

• The Democratic Party largely remains silent in response to AIPAC and Crypto's unprecedented outside spending. They do so at their own peril. AIPAC has created a blueprint for right-wing Super PACs to try and buy elections and lobbies like Crypto are already following in their footsteps, and other big lobbies surely will too. While their silence may protect Democratic Party leaders for now, and result in some large campaign contributions, corporate and right-wing donors will not stop until they have complete control of our country and have silenced all dissent. That’s why the same donors who funded AIPAC and Crypto’s ads against Jamaal and Cori are also some of Donald Trump’s biggest donors. These are the same interests who have us on the road to fascism, and they are targeting who they see as their greatest threat: working class, Black and brown members of Congress who cannot be bought. Corporate donors elect strong Republicans and weak Democrats, their perfect combination to achieve full corporate control of our government. It’s time for our Party’s leaders to stop being weak and stand with the people and the Party's base. We must get serious about campaign finance reform and take big money out of politics once and for all.

• We are winning the long term fight, and we won’t back down. While Cori and Jamaal are major losses for our movement, their races show that what we are doing is working. As we have said previously, AIPAC’s spending is coming from a position of weakness. They know they are on a path similar to the NRA — moving further and further from a veneer of bipartisanship to unconditionally support right-wing extremism. They have lost the war of public opinion and have resorted to forcible suppression of their opposition after years of progressive power building in Congress. For many members of Congress, their threats work and members get in line. However, this is increasingly not the case, in large part due to Justice Democrats’ elected leaders, who refuse to have their voices suppressed even under the threat of losing their jobs. The coordinated right-wing opposition they attracted proves just how transformational any single principal or nurse can be to our politics — and just how threatening everyday people are to right-wing interests, corporate power, and the wealthiest billionaires in the country.

We’ll have more details on our plans for the future soon, but for now, will you make a grassroots donation of $5 or more to fund our efforts to recruit more Justice Democrats to Congress and pressure the Democratic Party to reject AIPAC once and for all?

Contribute $5

Thanks for all you do,

Alexandra Rojas
Executive Director