People For Member,
THANK YOU for your amazing support this past month and for the past year.
We just reviewed our numbers for June and thanks to the thousands People For the American Way supporters who stepped up to contribute, renew their 2021 membership, or become Defenders of Democracy with a monthly gift, I’m happy to report that we beat our goals.
As we close out the first half of 2021 and head into the July 4 holiday weekend, we are also coming up on the six-month anniversary of the Trump insurrection. It's a good moment to take stock of how far we’ve come as a movement of likeminded progressives dedicated to the promise of democracy.
Yesterday’s 6-3 Supreme Court decision in Brnovich v. DNC guts the Voting Rights Act. It was even worse than the Roberts Court's damaging 2013 Shelby County ruling.
The Supreme Court's conservatives are part of the Republican Party's war on democracy. And that makes our work even more urgent.
I'm proud to report that People For made a massive impact this month in building the movement to defend the vote and save our democracy. You should be proud too, because we can only do this important work with your support.
People For’s African American Ministers In Action program helped mobilize Black church communities across the South to resist the Far Right’s racist voter suppression.
We were thrilled to help support an incredible group of Black clergy who came to D.C. for a march, press events, and Senate lobbying visits to push for passage of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
The voice of the Black church is so important in this movement. It has a unique moral authority on issues of civil rights and racial justice and its deep ties to the communities most targeted by voter suppression.
We led a petition delivery of more 330,000 signatures to the Senate to pass the For the People Act and hosted an accompanying rally on the steps of the Supreme Court with Senators Raphael Warnock, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and many other members of Congress.
We also continued the vital work of our Defend the Black Vote campaign. People For partnered with our amazing friends at Black Voters Matter for a Freedom Ride bus tour. It started in Mississippi and ended in Washington, D.C. with rallies in southern cities along the path of the original Freedom Riders. The grassroots energy on the ground and the buzz we were able to build on social media and in the local press with videos, pictures, and incredible earned media supercharged our shared movement to protect the vote and pass the For the People Act.
More of our top-line items from a busy June were covered in our American Way newsletter, but I wanted to acknowledge a few more here:
On June 1, with the help of 737 People For members who chipped in to make a difference in this important race, progressive Democrat Melanie Stansbury won the special congressional election to fill Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s seat in New Mexico – keeping the seat blue as the Far Right began its push to flip control of the U.S. House in 2022.
People For was proud to endorse civil rights champion Maya Wiley in the New York City mayoral race. The votes are still being tallied but I’m confident that People For supporters in New York helped provide a surge for Maya in the homestretch.
People For’s Right Wing Watch released an in-depth, two-part report on the Far Right’s attacks on trans people’s right to exist in public spaces and, specifically, their hateful attacks on trans youth and their participation in sports. As we celebrated Pride Month, our Right Wing Watch team met the clear need to keep a spotlight on the Far Right’s anti-gay bigotry as we continue our efforts to pass the Equality Act to protect the rights of LGBTQ+ people.
We were inspired to see two very important Biden judicial nominees confirmed by the Senate: Ketanji Brown Jackson to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Candace Jackson-Akiwumi to the 2nd Circuit. Both are brilliant Black women whose fair-minded approach to the law will benefit their courts and improve the quality of justice for the American people.
In addition to being an incredibly busy month of organizing and movement building, June also marked my one-year anniversary as president of People For the American Way. I’m excited all we have done together to defeat Trump and everything else we’ve accomplished in the past year. And I am so grateful to you and our more than one million supporters nationwide for being such a vital part of our progressive movement.
Stay tuned for much more in July as we redouble our efforts to hold insurrectionists accountable on the six-month anniversary of the siege on the U.S. Capitol, fight for voting rights legislation like the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and celebrate our co-founder Norman Lear entering his 100th year of life!
On behalf of the entire board and staff at People For, thank you again, for everything.
Sincerely,
Ben Jealous, President
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Do not reply directly to this e-mail. Please use [email protected]. Trouble viewing the email? THANK YOU for your support of People For the American Way! This email was sent to [email protected]. Reaching you over email is the best way we have to let you know about the ways you can take action to fight the Right Wing and defend our constitutional rights and values. If you have any thoughts, comments, or criticisms, or if there's a better email address at which to reach you, please let us know>> If you'd like to unsubscribe from our list, you can do that here>> Radical Right extremists are trying to turn back the clock on a century of advances in civil rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, the social safety net and more… they’re waging an all-out assault on the fundamental pillars of our country – democracy, checks and balances, a fair and independent judicial branch, and core values like fairness, equality, and justice for all. People For is fighting back every day with: ✔ Grassroots organizing But we can’t do this vital work without the robust grassroots financial support of our members and activists.
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