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John,

If you're reading this email, you are likely reeling from the results of the election. I know that we are exhausted, we are profoundly disheartened, and we are rightly terrified.

I've been thinking today about the fact that my siblings and I and my cousins, we were the first to be born into the Abrams family with the right to vote. I'm 50, and I'm one of the older ones, and yet that is a marker in our history. My nieces and nephews, the oldest of whom is 18, live in the first generation since Reconstruction to lose civil rights. I measure those two things because I grew up in the South.

I love my home. I love my region of the country, and yet for most of my adult life, I've been working to make my home state, my adopted state, my country, love me as much as I love them. And it hasn't always worked. And I look to elections, those times when we have to come together and ask for more of each other and our government as a way to anchor me in the work that I do, as a way to push us to be better than we were the day before.

And sometimes it works. Sometimes we get these giant leaps forward, the leaps that made the Voting Rights Act of 1965 possible, the leap that made Roe v. Wade possible because we elected people who appointed people who could see us as human.

But it doesn't always work, and sometimes elections like the one we had on November 5th, those elections come around and we forget the progress that we've made, and we only remember the pain. Well, I remember 2016, I remember inauguration, 2017. I remember that the last time we found ourselves facing this set of dynamics, we sparked a resistance.

It was a decision that was grounded in not knowing what was to come. We just knew what we'd been told, and we saw what we could see, and we pushed back. We railed against and as more and more evidence piled up, we organized and we persisted, and in so many ways, it worked.

In fact, for a brief moment, we united against racism and sexism, homophobia and ableism and those who would do any of us ill. We came together, and then it started to fall apart again, or so it seems, because November 5th happened, and they're back, and they've written Project 2025, and they've used invective and insult and promises to tell us what they will do, and now we know what to expect.

Unlike 2016, we know what could happen, because we have a Supreme Court that says we're going to not hold them accountable, because we have a US Senate that has suborned and supported and refused accountability, because we have a President-elect, who has told us what he intends to do, and now we know that while millions agree with the harm that he has promised, we also have to remember that millions did not agree, and they spoke up.

But I want to focus on the 60 million that didn't believe their views mattered enough to show up at the polls. We need to be curious about why they didn't come. We need to be worried about what worries them. We need to lean in at this moment and think about the 60 million, not the 71 but the 60 because unlike 2016, we cannot think that it is enough to just resist, that it is sufficient to persist. Detente, just accepting what we have isn't enough.

And so this time, we must insist. We must insist on a government and leaders that respect us and our needs, and that doesn't just mean the President and our federal government. I'm talking about the zoning committees that are forcing higher rents because they refuse to adjust, and the school board where your children or your neighbors' kids are being denied books and the truth. I'm talking about insisting on speaking up when we see wrong or when we need more. No more polite acceptance or making excuses for prejudice.

We have to demand better of ourselves and of our leaders. We must insist on fighting for our rights, even if we think we're going to lose, because the record will show that we tried, that we filed lawsuits and lodged complaints and put Tiktoks out there, if we still have Tiktok. That we had social media solutions that we shared and we made history report on our efforts, we must insist.

We must insist on being more important than anyone's wallet or their wishful thinking that it's not that bad, because those who would sanction bigotry to justify profit or their own comfort should be held accountable. And we must insist. We must insist on holding power, even if it makes us uncomfortable, and even if they tell us it is not ours to hold, we must insist on believing in our own power and the good change that we have accomplished and the change that will continue to manifest, because we exist between elections.

We exist between these moments. We exist between the harms and we are responsible for making the good and making change. We must insist and so every week, I will insist that we assemble the pieces so we can come together to build the world we deserve by being curious, by solving problems, and by doing good, even when it hurts, even when it's hard. Even when it makes us uncomfortable because we must insist, because we are right.

Together,
Stacey
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