Dear John,

As we bear down on the jungle primary in just two days, we’re moved to share gratitude for all of our supporters—especially the many volunteers who have helped inform our neighbors about their choices, and spread our campaign message far and wide across the city of San Francisco.

From the Mission to the Marina, and from the Sunset to the Fillmore, we’ve been recruiting supportive merchants to help promote our campaign in commercial corridors.

That’s just one way that we’re working around the media whiteout obscuring our race from voters.

Can you contribute today to help us sprint across the finish line this week?

Another way we’ve worked around the refusal of the press to cover the election, or the incumbent’s various hypocrisies, is by training and mobilizing supporters to engage and inform journalists. Their work has made a palpable difference.

For instance, it was a local San Francisco supporter who works in tech who pitched the story to an SF Examiner columnist that led to the only article published in local print media covering Tuesday’s jungle primary.

Empowering volunteers as the face of our campaign has been a consistent strategy since we first launched. Tonight, you are invited to a virtual outreach workshop via zoom during which we will train supporters how to take advantage of some new digital tools that we’ve configured.

Join us tonight to learn how you can independently inform and identify voters beyond those targeted by our campaign!

Another set of supporters for whom we are grateful are the ranks of our endorsers. From Matt Gonzalez, Gloria Berry, Eric Curry and the SF Bayview here in San Francisco, to Marianne Williamson, Gayle McLaughlin, and Susan Sarandon far beyond it, they’re each visionaries who share the rare courage to challenge the establishment.

It takes independence to stand up to entrenched power. Not everyone has the stomach for it, for better or worse.

That’s why each of their voices are so admirable to me. I’ve always been willing to take on risk, partly because I am less interested in today than I am in the future, and also because the corruption of our failing system has been apparent to me for 30 years.

Can you donate today to support a voice who not only saw today’s crises coming, but worked—despite disadvantages—to prevent them?

Losing a home to foreclosure as a teen has a way of forcing one’s eyes wide open. And while I would not wish that experience on anyone, I’m grateful for the insight and perspective that it led me to.

Understanding the view of our empire from the bottom of the boot helped me put my training and skills to better use. Rather than monetize them, as most in my generation chose to do, I’ve spent 20 years focusing them on holding entrenched power accountable from San Francisco to Washington.

Thank you for standing with us as we work to liberate San Francisco’s voice in Washington, and to secure a vote in Congress committed to visionary policies supporting the future we all share!

Your voice,
Shahid

PS -- Join us for our election night party at Madrone Art Bar (at Divisadero & Fell in the Lower Haight) on Tuesday! And whether or not you can join us that night, join tonight's workshop to learn how you can leverage our latest digital tools to inform your friends about their choices on the ballot!