One thing you can do for democracy this weekend

Freedom makes democracy matter. Here's how we can spread it.

THING ONE (CASH): Support the DLCC to help democracy win everywhere
With so much money heading to the top of the ballot, we must remind everyone that down-ballot is where your money goes the furthest. The DLCC has the broadest reach with its plan to win 50 state legislative majorities by 2030, and they have similar targets as the States Project, which is where you can give if you want to support similar but far more targeted efforts.

THING TWO (TIME): Spread the news about becoming a poll worker
Power to the Polls is a vital new initiative from Run for Something to recruit democracy-minded citizens to work at the polls this Fall. Superlawyer Marc Elias says becoming a poll worker is the next step after checking your voter registration and volunteering in a campaign to help do all we can to preserve democracy this fall. Not everyone can do it. But we can all spread the word.

PLEASE VOTE IN OUR POLL TO CHOOSE A NEW STATE FOR OUR GIVING CIRCLE.

At erlywrm.com, you can find other ways to support democracy, including sending postcards to Ohio voters.

What would you add? Anyone doing some democracy this weekend?

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Freedom is the word of the summer. 

It’s the rallying cry of the new Harris campaign. It’s what our diplomats led by President Biden negotiated for 24 prisoners held by Putin’s regime. And it’s what voters are after, trying to escape the full or nearly full abortion bans that have captured 18 states now that Iowa’s six-week ban is in effect. (Support the Iowa Abortion Access Fund to help the impacted Iowans.)

You might even begin to think “freedom” has replaced “democracy” as the shorthand for what people like us are after in the 2024 elections. But one of our patron saints of freedom, Anat Shenker-Osorio, says the freedom argument is a natural and necessary expansion of the democracy rallying cry that many efforts, including earlyworm are built on.

“People newly tuned into or writing about Democrats embrace of ‘freedom’ have wrongly cast it as eschewing ‘democracy’ framing,” she tweeted. “In fact, ‘freedoms’ & need to protect them is best way to make democracy tangible & meaningful to voters.”

We need to make what’s at stake this fall as clear and meaningful as possible because this time, we know what will happen if freedom wins at the polls.

“With fewer than 100 days until the election, Republicans are building an election subversion war machine,” Marc Elias wrote on Thursday.

Elias’s post is a must-read. I suggest you pair it with two other pieces that show the scope and depth of the weird challenges we must overcome.

Will Voters Decide the 2024 Election?

America’s Whimpering Democracy Is Trump’s Past, as Well as Future 
By Marcy Wheeler

These pieces take on my two most withering worries about November, besides winning: 1) the legal challenges that have been honed in a Project 2025-style fashion to meet courts that have proven very friendly to trying to make Donald Trump king and 2) Trump’s extraordinarily effective use of bullying and abuse to get institutions to collapse against their own mission.

In short, Democrats may be ready to take on the last January 6th, but Republicans have a new sort of assault on our democracy in mind. It’s time we prepare.