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Friends, Over the weekend, I spoke at Netroots Nation, a huge progressive gathering where I shared our movement’s wins and how we can build on our progress together.
We are seeing the biggest resurgence of progressive organizing and movement building in our lifetimes. Young people across the country are reviving the labor movement. In the first half of this year, union election petitions increased 57%. From Starbucks, Google, and Amazon, to Trader Joe’s, we are taking on the biggest, wealthiest corporations in the world. Just yesterday, I joined the Minnesota Nurses Association on the picket lines to support safe staffing. It’s happening in the halls of Congress, too. Workers in my office led a movement to unionize the staff in the U.S. Congress. We are just getting started. We’re seeing transformative change at every level of government across the country. Now — despite super PACs spending millions of dollars against us in four consecutive elections to defeat our multi-racial, working-class movement — we have won. And we’ve made incredible progress. This summer alone, we’ve passed laws to rein in gun violence and give veterans exposed to toxic burn pits access to better benefits and healthcare, and the most transformative climate action legislation in our nation’s history. None of this would have been possible without a massive progressive movement driving the narrative and pushing for change. We cannot take any of our wins for granted or leave anything to chance. I know well that it is when you start to get comfortable that your opponents strike. We have to protect our victories as vigorously as we fight for them — because we cannot build on those wins if they are rolled back. Labor rights, abortion rights, criminal justice reform, and even the very survival of our democracy are being threatened at this moment. We are up against forces that are willing to suppress the vote, overturn election results, and literally commit treason against our country to get their way. We are up against corporate donors, landlords, and war profiteers spending millions of dollars to take out progressive members of Congress. We cannot count on the Liz Cheneys and Joe Manchins of the world to save us. We need to elevate people who have fluency in the day to day struggles of the people they seek to represent. For every moderate suburban Republican, there are line cooks, homeworkers, dishwashers, cashiers, and farmworkers who will vote a straight Democratic ticket if we give them a reason to do so. We need to elevate the boldest, most transformative ideas we have as a party — from canceling student loan debt to enacting Medicare for All — and give working folks a reason to show up. That’s who our party should be for, who we should focus on reaching, and who we should be counting on to save our democracy in November. Let’s go fight and win. In solidarity, Ilhan Omar
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