On this week’s episode of The Brief, hosts Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld continued to to analyze 2020’s election outcomes and parse the specific lessons we can learn from organizers of color who helped create historic turnout among their communities—lessons of special importance as Democrats work to help Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win the Georgia Senate runoff races in January. With the growing potential of the nonwhite youth vote in mind, Markos remarked that Democrats can and should think aspirationally: “We don’t want [Georgia] to be a battleground state—I mean, we’re happy that it is—we want it to be a safe blue state like Virginia or Colorado, states that used to be red states that then turned into battlegrounds that are now safely Democratic.”
This episode’s guests were Janie Parrish of Northeast Arizona Native Democrats and Lauren Floyd, staff writer at Daily Kos. Janie shared her perspective on why organizing Native American communities was key to flipping Arizona this year. Lauren lives in Fulton County, Georgia, and spoke about the youth vote and what she’s witnessing as Democrats plan for the crucial January runoff elections.
In Arizona, Native Americans were key to delivering Joe Biden’s victory. What can we learn from their organizing strategies? Markos and Kerry spoke to Janie about important lessons from organizing Native communities. Janie was able to share the tactics she and her team developed to increase Native community voter participation and grow their involvement in GOTV efforts.
Organizing communities of color always requires unique strategies that may need to be shifted or changed depending on geographic location, predominant language(s) spoken, access to the internet, and more. Groups that do the work on the ground to turn out these communities have also historically have been underfunded, and politicians often only pay attention to them when they need their vote every few years. As Janie described, “That was always the challenge for communities of color, right? We’re kind of left to our own devices until like maybe the last month … but [the parties] are not there all year round or for the long haul, and so you do have little enclaves that do the work all year round, but they’re not together. [For example], in Arizona, we have 22 tribes.”
Janie also described key part of their work, including constant communication with all of the parties invested, having weekly meetings, defining an infrastructure for their group, and coordinating with other groups. Overall, she emphasized fostering a network of community care and deemphasizing digital outreach as crucial parts of their innovative strategy:
Most of our organizers were paid by Daily Kos donors, so we could pay them, you know, a living. We didn’t want them to go without. But we also supported their efforts—their internet, if they had a phone bill, if they needed copies, anything they needed, gas, fuel, because Navajo and Hopi and Apache are large places to travel … It was being aware of each others’ moves and finding out what was happening. We don’t have good internet service, so [digital advertising] is not going to work for our people … We had to go back to old school communication, which was one-on-one at a distance. It’s part innovation, it’s part we have to go back to before the internet.
Janie’s work embodies the spirit of community organizing, covering various aspects of getting everyone involved in a different way. As Markos reminded viewers, “Casting a vote is just one of the many things you can do to be part of community.”
Lauren joined Markos and Kerry for the second half of the show to discuss how Democrats can prepare for the January Senate runoff elections in Georgia. She noted that young voters in the 18-34 age range were a key bloc of the voter demographic in November 2020, especially in Georgia. In fact, youth voter turnout was through the roof in the Peach State. The youth voter outreach strategy in Georgia has been particularly effective, Lauren said, and “a lot of it is just getting that message out there and talking to young voters.” Young organizers are reaching young people virtually, not just through TikTok but also through email threads, classes, and Republican student groups. As an example, Lauren explained the streamlined strategy that Students for 2020, one youth organizing group, employs:
One of their long term goals is to make government more representative of young people. They were explaining to me that they want to see young people representing young people. Speaking to the issues that they care about—like college affordability and student loans—there are certain messages that resonate with young voters regardless of party. So that’s one of the things that they are really zeroing in on, is some of those things … when they have these conversations with Republicans, those are some of the things they would say.
Lauren said that Ossoff and Warnock were both great on these issues—particularly Ossoff, who had integrated student loan forgiveness into his platform. To her, both candidates are passionate about helping students repay those loans. With more and more students graduating with huge amounts of debt, Lauren noted that other issues, like lower levels of home ownership among young people (especially people of color), are also related to the cost of college—representing a layered, complex challenge that Ossoff and Warnock are seeking to address.
You can watch the full episode here:
Source: Daily Kos
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