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ELECTION 2024 - I am so grateful for your support in the March primary LACDP race …I do not mean to repay you with a dearth of information; apologies for the silence! Things are moving so quickly I have trouble getting thoughts to paper before either the next shoe drops or the next event needs shoeing into a calendar.
Top to bottom, national to local
Everyone feels the Joy as the presidential ticket is rejuvenated. The Harris-plus-Walz campaign raised $310m in July, 2/3 of which was from new donors: the electorate is supersaturated with relief. We have stared, paralyzed, at the cataclysm of Project 2025 approaching, even while it creeps up on us right nowin our disbelief. Here, for example, is an amendment that was passed just two weeks ago in Washington, which is straight out of the Project 2025 playbook ~ H.Amdt. 1170 (Perry) to H.R. 8998: To prohibit funds made available by this Act to be used for environmental justice activities.
Project 2025 is not so much a recipe as a manifesto, the battle cry of a particularly virulent strain of conservative, white-nationalist, Christian ideology. There are many ways the Heritage Foundation has in mind for skinning the cat of democracy; MAGA efforts are a present and clear danger, not some shrouded inferno menacing the future. So not only is the approach of fascism terrifying, but we are actually feeling its effect already, right now, all around. It is Harris’ genius to recognize that the best defense against “chaos, fear and hate,” is the offense of aggressive Joy.
What To Do Now
Well, pitch in: donate your time, your money, your good neighbor-persuasive wiles. Find someone you may not agree with necessarily, locate common ground, explain your concerns, and lay out why and how your concerns matter to your conversational partner. Personally.
And how about down ballot?
As terrifying as losing the executive branch is to contemplate, if Congress remains divided politically, even under President Harris the same congealed, refractory, intransigence of the past will persist. It is joyous to contemplate deliverance from fascism, but a rogue judicial branch and stalemated legislature would leave us in jeopardy. Holding – and flipping – the US federal Congress is absolutely vital.
CADEM, the state-level Democratic Party, recognizes 10 “Targeted Congressional Districts” in doing our part. You can find events for any of these candidates any week by visiting Mobilize, and if that doesn’t work for you, try these local organizations … or email me. I will be more than happy to help you find your place for pitching in comfortably.
Way down ballot – the nonpartisan races
It’s not as if local races aren’t important too. This map provides a very, very sobering, interactive experience, showing how California while blue, has been trending redder. California’s rural hinterlands are scarlet even while our very innermost, nominally blue cities, have experienced scary electoral shifts – check out yours. And as our state’s urban inhabitants are priced out of neighborhoods and away from the state, the proportion of red to blue may continue its rightward drift. Certainly, there have been terrible, brazen attacks on safety and civil rights, front and center in certain schools and schoolboards, victims of ideologically targeted, down ballot school board races.
As chair of the California Democratic Party Children’s Caucus, our membership has worked to sound the alarm about what is happening and the electoral jeopardy on our horizon, fore and aft. See our road show of the past year here, and consider joining us if you will. You needn’t be a delegate; all CDP caucuses are open to any registered Democrat. Our newsletters are all archived at our website, where you can sign up for future notifications as well.
Ours, like any organization, is as effective as those organizing, and their accomplishment. We have been relaying the message of down ballot political jeopardy, and training candidates to meet this challenge. Incursions on down ballot, non-partisan, school board races ultimately threaten the electoral process, Education, opportunity, and the very freedoms afforded by our democracy. While California electoral recalls of extremist school board candidates have all been successful, the effort is expensive in terms of personal volunteerism, public monies, and political capital. Many of these schoolboard races statewide will be on November’s ballot; find details for your district here, and make a plan to do what you can. Again, I’m happy to help you find your place.
Likewise, there are many groups tracking MAGA organizations, online and in person. Many local Democratic Clubs have been on the frontlines tracking and organizing against the chaos and hate, as well as affirmatively working to identify, endorse and boost the good. But the attacks are relentless, flagrant and underhanded.
In attending and supporting these Democratic Clubs, I represent you, at a half-dozen local westside Dem Clubs,
and another half dozen LA-county-wide Dem Clubs as well as some Dem Clubs further afield.
Turnout at local Dem Club forums for local candidates has been sold out or standing-room-only, as enthusiasm for the top of the ticket suffuses the entire electoral space: it is bracing.
And you can participate in these groups yourself, directly. Find a list of Los Angeles County local and county-wide clubs here, as well as coordinated headquarters organized specifically for direct action. Everyone has space for you to pitch in and lend five minutes of your time or five weeks. And it’s crucial that we all do.
County-Committee
At the county-wide Central Committee, LAC-DCC (LACDP), last spring’s elected delegates were sworn in for the new, four-year term in July (2024-2028). Members of the new LACDP delegation elected a slate of officers, including Chair Mark Ramos, of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, UFCW.
The summertime is devoted to strategizing for Fall’s vote and reorganizing internally during August while the DCC is on hiatus. I hope to represent you next term once again on the Legislative Action subcommittee as previously. The task feels important, writing advocacy letters and staying attuned and abreast of the legislation crafted in Sacramento and beyond, helping to inform the largest County Committee in the country. Likewise, I intend to represent you during the upcoming election season in the statewide, CADEM Voter Protection Hotline. Articulating locally between the county-level Central Committee, LACDP, and the Country Registrar in Norwalk to secure and protect the vote this November, will be critical.
Peruse others of LACDP’s standing committees here. Many of these meetings are public, open to Democrats registered to vote either literally or in spirit, should their immigration status interfere with actual legal registration. The standing subcommittees interview local, statewide and judicial candidates, recommending selections to the full Committee, which in turn relays their endorsements to the electorate during election season. The subcommittees in aggregate, fashion the DCC’s public stance on political issues, by taking positions on legislation, making endorsements, and drafting resolutions. Los Angeles County’s negotiated, coalitional position of last spring calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, was the foundation of the California Democratic Party’s similar resolve.
The full DCC meets the second Tuesday of each month in Koreatown at the United Teachers Los Angeles union hall. When I am unable to attend, you will be represented by my alternate, Hagar Ali, a Venice HS classmate of my eldest’s. Alternate delegates are eligible to participate in DCC subcommittees as full voting members and are eligible for internal election to the state-level Central Committee. And you are welcome to join us at UTLA anytime!
Facing tomorrow
Like running whitewater rapids, strong paddling marks the difference between rolling and advancing. The electrifying Harris-Walz duo may pull us across November’s electoral finish line, skirting ruinous authoritarianism. But the threat to democracy from plutocracy, fascism, zealotry, remains.
Not until we reignite excitement in participatory citizenry will we steer a safe course forward. We need the power voting brings the electoral system, to keep from being swamped. Dodging a bullet this time will not change the landscape of cynicism, alienation, and disengagement felt by so many of our neighbors – and youth. We need to resource safety, security, and shelter for the sake of the millions without enough of it.
And this we must do not for the sake of market-driven, third party, profiteering. But rather for the sake of a shared humanity and society. We do need, as Kamala Harris asserts, to decide what kind of society we want to live in. The increasing trajectory of disparity and segregation fuel a differential that cannot sustain democracy. We need a populism that uplifts everyman’s intellectual contribution, not the secondary value of wealth derived from it. When we incentivize a winner-take-all system, it is our very own selves we disenfranchise. And this is precisely what democracy was devised to prevent.
Convince your refractory neighbors to vote. Fight against the self-fulfilling prophecy of some that their singular value has no weight. Tied races are a thing; without your faith this house of cards surely could collapse:
VOTE November 5, 2024.
(Sara Roos is a biostatistician from northern New England living in West LA. Raising children from private to charter to public schools provides a front-row seat to the microcosm of electoral politics that is education politics. She started blogging this experience at redqueeninla.com, eventually co-publishing the LA Education Examiner. Sara is an elected delegate to the LA County and state Democratic Party Committees since 2020. Her monthly constituent newsletter and essays can be found at redqueeninla.com.)