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Welcome to The Revolution Report — the weekly e-newsletter of
our national grassroots organizing network!

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Join our Weekly National Organize to Win Call on Monday,
December 7th at 8:30pm EST to learn about breaking progressive
wins in Georgia and Illinois and get the latest update on what’s
happening on Capitol Hill from Rep. Jamie Raskin!

RSVP HERE ( [link removed] )

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This week’s REVOLUTION REPORT features the latest from Georgia,
how we’re holding Biden accountable, and recent victories in
unexpected places.
Read more below!

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This week, The New York Times singled out Our Revolution’s
Georgia GOTV campaign as an example of the “furious” efforts
underway to flip two Senate seats in the state’s January 5th
runoff: “Our Revolution is currently contacting its 50,000 member
households in the state to encourage them to request mail
ballots.” The article highlights the “political evolution”
happening in Georgia as it is becoming “increasingly receptive to
left-leaning ideas,” pointing to several local progressive down-
ballot candidates who won their races in November. Get a deeper
look at our Georgia organizing strategy below!

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ORGANIZING IS KEY

The Democratic establishment’s playbook to win Georgia is
simple: Raise huge sums to pay for slick commercials and big
social media ad buys that they hope will “persuade” voters. Our
Revolution’s theory of winning is radically different. We believe
that the only way to win is by organizing - talking one-on-one
with people, building relationships, and moving them to take
action on the issues that matter to them personally. That’s the
cornerstone of our plan to win Georgia.

On our special Georgia Organize to Win Call
( [link removed] )
this week, Sen. Nina Turner and “raptivist” Killer Mike fired
up over 50,000 Our Revolution members to get out and organize to
win in Georgia and beyond. Killer Mike - a Bernie surrogate in
both 2016 and 2020 - said that “we should make sure that on a
daily basis we’re doing something to organize. Whenever the polls
are open, we need to be out there in numbers. And the day after
the election, we should be plotting, planning, strategizing,
organizing, and mobilizing — not only for the next election, but
for the next neighborhood meeting and the next city council
meeting — because at every step, we need to be pushing a
progressive agenda.”

Senator Turner also talked about how our organizing must never
stop - we organized to defeat Trump, we’re organizing to win the
Georgia runoffs, and then we must organize to hold Democrats
accountable in 2021. Organizing is a calling because "we are on a
justice journey. Every generation is charged with advancing
justice for the next, and it's our assignment to fight for
justice in our time. The issues that we are standing for and
fighting for lift humanity.”

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GEORGIA PLAN TO WIN

Our Revolution is carrying out our strategic plan to win
Georgia. The map above represents the distribution of over 50,000
Our Revolution supporters in Georgia - between now and January
5th, our army of grassroots volunteers are focused on
Getting-Out-The-Vote with progressives through our canvassing,
phone and text banking operations. Read more below about our
canvassing operation in Georgia!

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GEORGIA GROUND GAME

A key part of our Georgia organizing strategy is ground game.
This week, The Washington Post wrote that “Democrats would have
won bigger if they knocked on doors.” Our Revolution won’t let
the political consultant class make the same mistake twice.
That’s why Our Revolution onboarded experienced local organizers
in Georgia to recruit teams of volunteers to conduct safe daily
canvasses. We’re knocking on every door in targeted rural and
urban areas to boost turnout to record levels. New polls
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show Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock - the pastor of Ebenezer
Baptist Church - leading GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Jon
Ossoff tied with Sen. David Perdue - so turnout will be critical
to get them both over the finish line!

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Councilman khalid of South Fulton, GA, who’s helping to lead our
ground game in the Atlanta area, also joined our Georgia Organize
to Win Call
( [link removed] )
to report that our activists knocked on over 700 doors in the
first 10 days of canvassing. He noted that some of the most
“challenging conversations” have been with Black men who feel it
doesn’t matter who’s in office because they see “no material
difference” in their lives or their circumstances. “It’s
important for us to push Democrats to create economic benefits in
the lives of people of color because we will keep losing their
vote if we don’t give them a reason to stick with us.” Councilman
khalid also emphasized the importance of winning upcoming local
elections in Georgia by highlighting some of the bold policies
his city of South Fulton has enacted in the past 3 years,
including raising the minimum wage to $15, decriminalizing
cannabis, and banning no-knock warrants. “The local level is the
proving ground for all of our progressive policies. We are
building a bridge to believing that progressive policies can
work, and local elections are that bridge.”

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This week, Michele Sanchez and a team of Our Revolution Georgia
volunteers were canvassing and distributing personal protective
equipment to workers outside a poultry plant in rural Georgia as
they clocked in for work. In addition to handing out PPE, Michele
said her team “spoke to workers about the election and how to
register to vote. The workers were grateful - one told us ‘I’ll
be sure to get both my kids to vote. Thank you so much for what
you are doing. God bless you all.’”

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GEORGIA GOTV PHONE BANK

In addition to our ground game, hundreds of Our Revolution
volunteers are hitting the phones to have deep organizing
conversations with Georgia voters about issues that matter to
them and help them register to vote, request absentee ballots,
and educate them about the voting process. In just two weeks,
we’ve talked to over 30,000 Georgians!

Read the stories from our
Georgia GOTV Phone Bank Team below.

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WHEN WE ORGANIZE, WE WIN!

Our work in Georgia goes beyond flipping the Senate — we’re also
organizing to win local races. This week, Our Revolution Georgia
helped to elect Deborah Gonzalez — Georgia’s first Latina
District Attorney, the first woman DA in the Western Judicial
Circuit, and the first Puerto Rican woman DA in the nation!
Deborah, who will represent the city of Athens and part of its
suburbs, ran on a progressive platform of ending cash bail for
low-level crime, abolishing the death penalty, and tackling
racism in the criminal justice system. “This is The People’s vote
and The People have made it clear they want change.”

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More than control of the Senate is at stake in Georgia’s January
5 runoff. There are also important down ballot contests,
including Daniel Blackman’s bid for the Georgia Public Service
Commissioner. Daniel spoke on our Organize to Win National Call
( [link removed] )
about how he’s running to bring a Green New Deal to Georgia and
lower energy costs for ratepayers. “Georgia has the 5th highest
utility bills in the country, while 1.9 million of its residents
are living at or below the poverty line. We must treat
environmental issues as social justice issues.”

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Help us flip the Senate and elect down-ballot progressives in
Georgia! Volunteer to help make Get-Out-the-Vote phone calls! We
hold our virtual phone bank on Thursdays and Sundays from 6:30 -
8:30pm EST!

SIGN UP HERE!
( [link removed] )

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You can also donate to help us ramp up our GROUND GAME in
GEORGIA during the FINAL 30 DAYS! Your gift will help us arm our
volunteers with what they need to succeed - from masks to
transportation stipends to door hangers - so we can maximize our
outreach.
( [link removed] )


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Our Revolution joined with our allies - Roots Action, The
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) to demand Biden pick a
Defense Secretary who is committed to stopping endless wars. “We
urge President-Elect Joe Biden and U.S. Senators to choose a
Secretary of Defense who is unencumbered by a history of
advocating for bellicose military policies and is free of
financial ties to the weapons industry,” our statement said.
“Michèle Flournoy does not meet those qualifications and is
ill-suited to serve as Secretary of Defense.”

READ MORE HERE
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This week, The Guardian covered Our Revolution’s campaign to get
President-elect Biden to appoint progressive champion Deb Haaland
to be Secretary of the Interior. Deb is a true champion for the
people. She physically stood with other Indigenous Peoples at
Standing Rock protesting the illegal and immoral acts the Trump
Administration inflicted on peaceful protestors on behalf of the
greed of the fossil fuel industry. We need an Interior Secretary
like Deb who understands the importance of defending the land
from corporate monopolies, protecting our water and righting the
wrongs inflicted on indigenous communities.

READ MORE HERE
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When President Lincoln created the USDA in 1862, he called it
“the people’s department” — but in recent years it’s become the
department of Big Ag interests. In a just published op-ed,
( [link removed] )
Our Revolution board members Jim Hightower, Jane Kleeb, and
Deborah Parker called on Joe Biden to restore fairness and
opportunity to rural America and make a “solid progressive
choice” for Secretary of Agriculture. Among the candidates being
considered, we endorse Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio as the best
choice to lead this important public agency and break the
corporate stranglehold on our food system.”

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Our Revolution Board Chair Larry Cohen was a guest on C-SPAN’s
popular morning program, Washington Journal, where he discussed a
range of topics, including Joe Biden’s platform, Bernie’s
possible role in the new administration, and the future of
progressive policies like the Green New Deal. When asked about
bridging the divide between left and right, Larry said, “Our job
is talking to people about issues.” Pointing to the successful
effort to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Florida as an
example of a crossover issue, he called it a “starting point” in
bringing us together.

WATCH THE INTERVIEW HERE
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This week, Biden named establishment insider Neera Tanden to
head the White House Office of Management & Budget. Paco Fabián,
campaigns and communications director for Our Revolution, told
Politico that Tanden is “certainly not a unity pick” and “it’s
not a secret that progressives and Neera Tanden haven’t gotten
along over the last few years on several issues.” He added that
she tends to “punch left, instead of focusing on the real
adversary here, which is the Republican Party and money in
politics.”

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Will County Progressives - a local group that’s part of Our
Illinois Revolution - pulled off a stunning upset against a
28-year Democratic incumbent by nominating a slate of
progressives to lead Joliet Township. Despite the shenanigans of
the incumbent slate - including keeping the caucus date and
location secret until right before the caucus - our volunteers
were able to turn out 3 times more people than than the
establishment machine and win over 60% of the vote. Our
Revolution members nominated for office include Angel Contreras
(Joliet Township supervisor), Alicia Morales, (township clerk);
Vincent Alessio (Township highway commissioner) and Ranisah
Brown, Cesar Escutia, Karl Ferrell and Suzanna Ibarra (Township
trustees). “The truth is that ‘When We Organize, We Win!’ is not
just a snappy chant that we use at the end of our virtual
meetings,” said Ibarra, who also serves as co-chair of Our
Illinois Revolution. “We made that real. We beat the
establishment in the Township. If we can do it here, we can do it
at the county and state level too.”

READ MORE HERE
( [link removed] )


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Centrists have been blaming progressives for their losses in the
House and their failure to retake the Senate. “The knives are out
for the left,” writes Washington Post Digital Opinions Editor
James Downie. While party leaders warned against running on
Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and other bold solutions to
our multiple crises, those policies have actually been growing in
popularity: a majority of Americans support Medicare for All, a
near-majority of voters in swing districts supported the Green
New Deal, and every swing-district House Democrat who
co-sponsored Medicare for All kept their seat.

In Florida, where centrist Democrats up and down the ticket fell
flat, voters passed a $15 minimum wage. In Colorado, paid leave
won more votes than Joe Biden. And drug decriminalization
measures got more votes than the top of the ticket in states like
Arizona and Montana. Not one progressive House incumbent lost -
in fact, we doubled the Squad with candidates who ran on bold
policies. As Downie opines, “If a candidate couldn’t manage to
tie their GOP opponent to almost a quarter of a million covid-19
deaths, a tanked economy, or a dozen other policy fiascos, that’s
the candidate’s fault.”

READ MORE
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The centrist blame-game also fails to be convincing when we look
at results in non-federal races. Bloomberg’s City Lab writes that
while a “blue wave” didn’t sweep over the national elections,
progressives scored big wins in down ballot contests. The article
quotes University of Virginia Prof. Richard Schragger on his take
on the 2020 election - “There’s a dramatic progressive turn
taking place on the local level.” We totally agree. During the
2020 election cycle, Our Revolution endorsed 450 progressive
champions - 88% of in down ballot races - and over 74% prevailed!

We analyzed our strong win rate and identified our Top 3
Takeaways from the 2020 elections that demonstrate that the
progressive movement has momentum.

Takeaway #1 is that progressives are beating Democratic
establishment picks in tight races. In San Francisco, for
example, Our Revolution: San Francisco Berniecrats volunteers
helped Connie Chan win her race against the mayor’s machine
candidate by just 123 votes, and Our Revolution in Contra Costa
CA powered Ellie Householder’s bid to take out an 8-year
incumbent to become the next Antioch City Clerk with only 29
votes to spare. These tight margins indicate that when it comes
to taking on corporate-backed candidates, our grassroots
organizing plays a decisive role.

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Takeaway #2 is that our progressive candidates are beating
Republicans at the local level. For example, Our Revolution Maine
helped 28-year-old Chloe Maxim defeat a two-term Republican
incumbent in a rural state senate district, and Our Illinois
Revolution helped Eric Rhinehardt beat the sitting Republican
State’s Attorney in Lake County. In addition, progressives who
flipped GOP districts in 2018 - like State Rep. Courtney Neron in
Oregon and State Rep. Anne Stava-Murray in Illinois - held on to
their seats in 2020 with comfortable margins.

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And Takeaway #3 is that our progressive policies are more
popular than ever, even in states that went red this election
cycle. In Florida, for example, even though Trump carried the
state with 51% of the vote, a measure raising the minimum wage to
$15 an hour passed with 61% of the vote; in Colorado, paid leave
won more votes than Biden; and drug decriminalization measures
also proved to be more popular than presidential candidates in
places like Arizona and Montana.

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Thanks to the pandemic, Amazon is now a trillion dollar
monopoly, with CEO Jeff Bezos becoming the first person in
history to amass $200 billion in personal wealth. Meanwhile,
Amazon’s essential workers are risking their lives and facing
threats for demanding fair wages.

In a recent survey, our members named fighting corporate power
as a top issue priority for 2021. That’s why Our Revolution
joined #MakeAmazonPay - a global coalition of over 50 trade
unions and advocacy organizations that coordinated worldwide
protests, strikes, and actions
( [link removed] )
on Black Friday. Our #MakeAmazonPay coalition also enlisted
over 400 global lawmakers - including Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida
Tlaib and Ro Khanna; and MN Attorney General and Our Revolution
Board member Keith Ellison - to sign onto a letter to Bezos
urging him to "act decisively to change your policies and
priorities to do right by your workers, their communities, and
our planet." The lawmakers pledged to use their power to “support
the movement that is growing around the world to Make Amazon
Pay.”

You can read our list of demands and learn more about our global
campaign HERE. ( [link removed] ) And join our call
to Joe Biden to break up corporate monopolies like Amazon HERE.
( [link removed] )

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President-elect Biden recently released a list of advisors -
including corporate executives from Amazon Web Services - to
staff the Office of Management and the Budget, which oversees the
$5 trillion budget and “shapes regulations on everything from
labor standards to air pollution.” We don’t believe lobbyists
from Amazon - which profits from billions of dollars’ worth of
lucrative federal contracts - should be running the office that
runs our government. That’s why Our Revolution joined with Demand
Progress, Revolving Door Project and others to pressure Biden to
adopt restrictions on corporate lobbyists, executives and
consultants from serving in his administration.

READ THE STORY HERE
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Our Revolution New Jersey continues to put in the grassroots
work to transform our broken, for-profit healthcare system. Our
members passed three Medicare for All Resolutions in the state,
including one in Maplewood, where Deputy Mayor Dean Dafis
introduced it in August with the support of Our Revolution Essex
County NJ. Backed by Our Revolution, Dean was recently re-elected
to Maplewood Township Committee. On December 3, he joined Public
Citizen’s Medicare for All Resolutions Webinar to discuss his
local government’s desperate need for Medicare for All. “Medicare
for All is the only way we can ensure justice and equity in
healthcare.” In addition to featuring Dean Dafis and our New
Jersey efforts, the webinar also featured Our Revolution-endorsed
Rep.-elect Mondaire Jones (D-NY) who got elected on a strong
Medicare for All platform, and Our Revolution Wisconsin organizer
and physician Richard McGowan who talked about Medicare for All
organizing in Dane and Milwaukee counties.

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VICTORY SHAREABLE

On Friday, Congress took a major step to end the racist War on
Drugs and reform our broken criminal justice system by voting to
decriminalize marjuana at the federal level. In the run-up to the
vote, Our Revolution members partnered with NORML and others to
organize a grassroots petition campaign to get the US House to
pass The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement
(MORE) Act which would decriminalize marijuana by removing it
from the list of scheduled substances under the Controlled
Substances Act and by eliminating criminal penalties for an
individual who manufactures, distributes, or possesses marijuana.
The act also begins the process of expunging federal marijuana
convictions and removes penalties for those with such
convictions, including the denial of student loans and other
federal benefits.

Our Revolution will be mobilizing to pass the bill in the Senate
- where Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris was an original
co-sponsor on the bill - and holding President Biden accountable
to his promise to decriminalize marijuana and end the racist War
on Drugs.

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We are thankful this season for all our volunteers and donors
for your solidarity and commitment to transformational movement
building. Together, we are building a powerful independent
political organization that is organizing to win in 2021 and
beyond!

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Our Revolution is a national grassroots network of local groups dedicated
to organizing a political revolution powerful enough to challenge the
structural forces that threaten our survival as a society. From city halls
to the halls of Congress, our movement is fighting to win progressive
issue fights, elect progressive champions, transform the Democratic party
and get big money out of politics. [ [link removed] ]Help us achieve these goals by
donating today.

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