Watching the election returns come in state after state last night was flat out painful.

A lot of people are waking up this morning deep in thought and deep in pain. From a historical perspective, polls show that the atypically short campaign timeline made it hard for voters to know where Vice President Harris stood on issues. This, combined with deeply rooted racism, sexism, homophobia, and patriarchy in our nation – and also with a massive disinformation campaign from the far-right and from foreign nations – created a perfect storm.

*Remember: This moment, just like our next president, is not permanent. History shows us that when the political pendulum swings too far in one direction, voters soon correct it. We can mourn, and we can also build something brighter for our futures.

1- The work we did to get out the vote together is important, not just for 2024, but for the future too – so we’re doubling down on building an even stronger movement with you. The programs we built together to get out the vote (with more than 82,938 GOTV volunteers!) created a bigger, stronger, more powerful, long-term movement. Thank you. That long-term movement we’ve built together has never been more needed than it will be in the weeks, months, and years ahead. For that reason, we’re doubling down, and not giving up. We’ll be scheduling an all- movement ZOOM meeting ASAP to be in community together (Watch your inbox for an invite and details) – and in the meantime:

2- Disinformation hurts democracy – so we’re launching a campaign to educate the public about the disinformation crisis. The sheer level of disinformation, misinformation, and flat out lies that’s been aimed at voters – often through 30 second video bits – has been historically high through this election. It’s coming from a multitude of sources, including: Being intentionally spread by the Trump-Vance campaign (and from there across social media like wildfire); being moved by right- wing news-entertainment outlets like Fox; being distributed by foreign nations like Russia and China in an effort to destabilize our democracy; and being amplified by right wing business leaders like Elon Musk who bought X, to name a few. [1,2,3,4]

This moment in history is unique. We are in a time “in between.” A time between having had professional journalism at the center of national conversations and a time of figuring out how to deal with a barrage of faux news coming at us in a rapid succession through seconds-long video bits via nearly unlimited platforms as more than half of us now get our news on social media. [5] Our national conversation hasn’t caught up with disinformation tactics, so there’s work to do.

3- Hope is still around us – so we’re committing to look for it each day. We’re going to say it again: Hope is still around us. Every morning, we’re still going to wake up and be able to find joy in big and small things like watching a small child laugh with delight, taking a moment to catch up with people we love, drinking a warm cup of coffee or tea, watching the sun create mini-rainbows through water droplets, connecting with people to keep helping to build a nation where everyone can thrive. These little things are big. We lost (for now) a major election and the promise of major changes that we’ve long-needed, but we can’t lose track of our hope, our joy, our love for one another, and the fact that together we can and do make a difference.

And, despite the loss at the top of the ticket, when we look for examples of hope and change from Election Day, we can find them. For instance, we had many meaningful wins, including: We won 7 of the 10 state abortion ballot measures and had majority support in 8 of them. We also elected two Black women to the United States Senate (from Delaware and Maryland) and elected the first openly transgender member of Congress (also from Delaware). And we also handily beat back measures that would have rolled back our progress on paid family and medical leave, child care, and long-term care in Washington state. Voters backed ballot measures to boost the minimum wage and provide paid sick time to working people in Alaska and Missouri. Nebraska voters approved a ballot measure giving workers the right to earn paid sick leave. California voters enshrined the fundamental right to marriage for all people into their state constitution. And there’s even more breaking good news heading our way.

NEXT STEP #3: Commit to not giving into despair. Take breaks. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. Find the helpers. Look for the ways we are building better policy and better representation. And don’t give up.

These are just the first of many steps along the way that we’ll take together. We’ll be reaching out to you in the coming days with more ways to take action; and for now we want to close this note with our gratitude.

Thank you for believing we can build a better tomorrow for our children – it’s that belief that’s going to make our progress, which sometimes feels impossible, inevitable.

-Kristin, Donna, Gloria, Monifa, Nate, Ruth, Xochitl, and the entire MomsRising Team

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