Presidents Day 2021
With Donald Trump’s daily desecrations of the office, it’s easy to want to think of something, anything other than the presidency. But a year from now, President’s Day 2021, with a lot of hard work, we will have a new president. Over the holiday weekend I was reflecting on how we can get there, and what we’ll need to do once we are there. Because no matter who the president is a year from now, the fight to tackle the climate crisis will continue. Which means we need to use this election to energize our base, expand the electorate, push the Overton Window, build power for our bold 2030 vision, and be ready to keep the pressure on in the days, months and years after November 3rd.
Let’s begin by how the Sierra Club is working to get rid of Donald Trump. Stacey Abrams recently observed that we aren’t going to win simply by pointing out all the ways Trump is corrupt, incompetent and deceitful. To win we have to provide an alternative vision for a better, more just and equitable world. For the Sierra Club this means being grounded in our mission, which dictates that we must be a committed partner in the overall fight for justice. We fight for immigration justice, racial justice, economic justice, gender justice and, of course, climate and environmental justice. That’s one of the reasons why we developed a 2030 Blueprint for Change and why we’ve signed onto and are committed to the Equitable and Just Climate Platform.
We will continue to synthesize those big bold visionary commitments to re-anchor the conventional wisdom about what’s possible. Everyone deserves clean air, clean water, a stable climate, healthy communities, and everyone deserves living wages on a living planet. These are ideas that can help us turn the impossible into the inevitable. And that’s what we have to do in this election.
If part of beating Trump, then, is being bold about our positive vision of the world, the other big part of winning is using the energy and enthusiasm that’s in the air to build a movement of people knocking on doors, writing letters, talking to friends, posting on social media and using every tool imaginable to highlight the importance of voting this year. This election is likely going to be decided on the margins and every vote matters. We must mobilize the electorate like never before.
That’s why the Sierra Club is going to run the largest ever Get Out the Vote Program in our organization’s 128 year history. We need our 3.8 million members and supporters to reach out to voters and have conversations about the importance of voting for justice this election.
Please sign up here to join this voter mobilization movement.
We’ve already engaged thousands to join our efforts, and are working tirelessly to bring in thousands more. Recall that Trump’s electoral college victory was made possible by 70,000 votes in WI, MI and PA. And that in MI it was fewer than 10,000 votes. Recall too that George W. Bush and his disastrous presidency was made possible by 500 some votes in FL. So while there are a lot of things we can’t control this year, we can each commit to doing everything in our power to increase turnout among the voters who will decide this election.
As I laid out in my last blog, we have to get behind whoever wins the Democratic nomination. There’s just too much at stake to allow another four years of Donald Trump. But this concept of unifying behind the eventual candidate does not mean we have to give up on being bold. Quite the opposite. We need to use the primaries and then our general election work not just to win, but to keep moving the conversation toward what’s necessary rather than what’s possible. Because no matter who wins in November, we are going to need a powerful movement of people ready to keep pushing and keep fighting for what’s right, what’s just, and what this unique moment in human history demands of us.
So get involved. Stay loud. And stay engaged. We need you today, tomorrow and a year from now.
In solidarity,
Jesse
Paid for by Sierra Club Independent Action, www.sierraclubindependentaction.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.