Hello Indivisibles,

Welcome to the monthly newsletter from us two, the co-founders of Indivisible. For the last nearly 3 years (!) we’ve split our time between fighting battles in Trump’s swamp here in D.C., and traveling around the country meeting with Indivisible groups who are organizing locally to change politics nationally. We started writing these newsletters every month to give you a sense of what we’re seeing around the country, what we see happening in D.C., and to get your thoughts on what we’re grappling with. As always, if you want to get in touch with us directly, feel free to ping us on Twitter -- @ezralevin or @leahgreenb.

Time travel with us

Everything is so incredibly hectic right now. We’ve got the daily chaos of the Trump administration. There’s impeachment moving forward. There’s a crowded presidential primary. It’s hard to keep track of everything right now, let it alone respond to all. And the future? Who has time for the future when the world is on fire?

Well, if you’ll bear with us, we want to try something in this newsletter. We think we have the technology. We want to time travel with you. We want to put ourselves 15 months into the future. Can you do that with us? Let’s give it a shot. Here we go:

Wow, here we are. We made it. It’s Monday, February 1st, 2021. Everything sort of looks the same, but did you feel that huge weight lift off your shoulders? We did. Eleven days ago, the new president gave her (or his) first State of the Union address. That new president gave a soaring speech about the promise of America – our resilience, our unity in the face of forces that would divide us. It was moving. We teared up, reflecting on everything that made that moment possible. During that speech, the President was looking out over a congress that has a Democratic Speaker of the House, and a newly elected Democratic Senate Majority Leader.

As amazing as everything we’ve accomplished is, one thing is still clear: American democracy is not suddenly saved, at least not yet. Trump is gone – booted out of office, imprisoned, or maybe both. But the forces that allowed Trump to rise are still here. The reactionaries who pack the courts with ideologues, who purge voters, who gut the Voting Rights Act, who gerrymander themselves into safe districts, who buy elections and block election security legislation remain even though Trump is gone. Even now they scheme for the next election – for a future President Tom Cotton or Ted Cruz – a future reactionary who will match Trump’s maliciousness, but without his unmatchable incompetence.

But despair not, because today Congress is passing legislation to change that. Today, in February of 2021, they’re debating the greatest democracy legislation the country has seen since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They’re expanding the vote, securing the elections, investing in independent media, and unrigging our representative bodies. It is their first act in the post-Trump era. They’re building a democracy that actually represents its people, and it is these democratic reforms that will allow us to tackle every other one of our priorities from climate to health care to immigration to gun violence prevention.

This moment is made all the more sweet because outside Congress, and outside congressional district offices across the country, Indivisible groups are cheering on these new elected representatives -- pushing them to pass the reforms, not at some future date, but right now. There is a palpable national sense that this is an historic moment -- that the people are demanding more from their democracy. And the future is bright because the people will have a say in it.

Ok, let’s time travel back to today.

That future is just 15 months away. As much as will happen between now and then, that reality is almost in our grasp. So let’s talk about how we reach for it.

Book tour for democracy

On Monday, we kick off the Indivisible book tour. We’ll be traveling across the country talking about about how we build the power necessary to drive through impeachment, retake power in 2020, and demand democracy in 2021. And it’s an easy subject for us to talk about, because we started writing a book about it right after the 2018 elections. That book is We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump – and it comes out 4 days.

We have two goals for the book: grow the Indivisible movement, and firmly cement historic democracy reform as the number one priority of the next administration and Congress. So the book is half how-to guide for becoming an Indivisible leader; and half manifesto for building democracy in America.

At the same time, we are talking to congressional leaders and presidential candidates about this vision. We are pushing them to “out-democracy” one another – to impress us with their plans. Regardless of who makes it out of the primaries, we want them trumpeting democracy reforms.

If this sounds at all good and/or useful to you, we hope you’ll get the book. You can pre-order it from independent bookstores here, or if you want, Amazon here. This book is by us, but it’s not for us – every single dime of author proceeds are going to Indivisible’s Save Democracy Fund, which is supporting all of our work to make that 2021 vision and a reality. We want We Are Indivisible to sell like hotcakes only because that’ll get the campaign more attention and help us build the movement.

We hope you’ll buy the book, but you don’t have to buy a book or make a donation to be part of this movement. And with that in mind, we want to get your feedback on this whole plan. What did you feel on the time travelling trip we just took? How does all this land with you? Does this match up with what you’d like to see out of presidential debates over direction of the post-Trump era? Share your thinking with us here.

Last month follow up: impeachment

Last month, the Ukraine debacle had just become public, and our question for you was impeachment. Let’s be honest, the topic of the day is still impeachment. It’s impeachment all day every day. In response to our questions last month, more than 500 of you wrote back to us about your thoughts on impeachment. It will probably not surprise you to learn that fully 95% of the Indivisibles who responded were affirmatively supportive of impeachment proceedings. The vast majority wanted this to be the top priority that Indivisibles works on while it’s going on.

We took that to heart! You may have noticed. We launched Impeachment Daily with our Democracy Director Meagan because we thought “hey maybe there will be some stuff to talk about on a regular basis.” It turns out there’s more than enough stuff to cover every single day. On top of that, we're now running ads in key GOP senate states to put pressure on them around answering the basic question: should it be OK for a U.S. president to extort a foreign power to interfere with our elections? We participated in national call in days, and we’ve now run nearly 300,000 calls using our cool tool that allows you to activate progressives in target GOP senate states. And finally, we’re linking up with a bunch of other national organizations to run a major nationwide day of action the day BEFORE articles of impeachment are voted on in the House (whenever that turns out to be).

In short, impeachment is happening and Indivisible is deep in it.

Until next month (if not sooner)

If we happen to be traveling near you during the book tour, we hope you’ll drop on by the event and say Hi. If not, we’ll be kicking off a virtual book club to discuss these ideas with Indivisibles across the country right after. Let’s continue this discussion and keep building this movement for democracy together.

In solidarity,

Ezra & Leah

Co-Founders and Co-Executive Directors, Indivisible