“To fight for a fairer system, the working class would have needed collective action, which has always been in tension with the pull of American racism.”– Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us

Those in power use racism to try to prevent white people from taking collective action with people of color. If we’re going to face down what’s coming, we must organize millions of white people away from zero-sum thinking and towards shared interest and solidarity.

We are excited to share that author and strategist Heather McGhee launched a podcast last week on the heels of her bestselling book, The Sum of Us: what racism costs everyone and how we can prosper together, to explore just this– the strategic use of racism to build the power of corporate politicians and big businesses while gutting public infrastructure– and stories of people across the country who are fighting back. Listen here on Spotify.

And then join Heather this Thursday, August 4 at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET in conversation with SURJ National Director Erin Heaney to learn more about how we organize white people into movements for collective action. Here at SURJ, we believe that organizing white people through a framework of shared interest– what McGhee calls “the solidarity dividend”– is our best contribution to our movements right now. See you on Thursday to go deeper.

“The narrative that white people should see the well-being of people of color as a threat to their own is one of the most powerful subterranean stories in America. Until we destroy the idea, opponents of progress can always unearth it and use it to block a collective action that benefits us all.” – Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us “White privilege is real, but it’s not an organizing strategy.”– Erin Heaney, SURJ National Director

As we fight to protect civil liberties and block white nationalism in the days ahead, white people must have a clear understanding of why we’re in this work.

At SURJ, we believe that racism is employed by the wealthy elite to make white people believe they have more in common with a white billionaire than the people of color in their neighborhoods. From the inception of this country– from the creation of white identity to the racist backlash to Civil Rights– this is a strategy that has continually been employed to keep power in the hands of the few. 

The truth is, white people have so much to gain— a shared interest– in fighting for racial and economic justice. 

All of us will benefit from a world where our communities have the resources they need. In these times when organizing white people away from the Right and corporate power is critically important, SURJ organizes white people around the reality of shared interest.

On Thursday, August 4th at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET, join us in conversation with Heather McGhee, political strategist and author of “The Sum of Us,” to explore the history of strategic racism and how white people can organize their own communities away from a “zero sum” mentality and towards an understanding of their shared interest in fights for justice. 

Long before I was out, I was known. I was in 7th grade the first time a group of boys yelled “Wehman’s a Man!” up the stairwell at me. Over the next five years the yelling escalated to shoving, to being buzzed off the road by cars of teenage boys yelling homophobic slurs, to teachers punishing me for not adhering to gender dress norms or for kissing my high school girlfriend in public– like hundreds of other teenagers around us. As I became an adult, homophobia and transphobia continued to shape my life in the form of job, housing, and healthcare discrimination and the ways that fear of violence and discrimination restricted where I went or what I thought was possible in my life.

My name is Grover, I’m a Butch parent with two young kids, a writer, the kind of person who puts bright pink wallpaper in their house. I joined the staff at SURJ two months ago as the Deputy Director of Communications, and know that storytelling is one important way we can come together to make sense of the world and gain the strength to take action together.

As we close out LGBTQ pride month, I want to share my story with you that shapes my motivation– my shared interest– in ending white supremacy as a white queer person. What do I mean by shared interest? I mean the specific ways I, in my specific humanity as a white person in a racist world, have a personal stake in the work to end racism and white supremacy. Not just a duty as a person who cares about others, not just a responsibility for repair as white person in a racist system, but a fight-for-our-lives shared investment with communities of color in ending white supremacy and racism and creating a better world for us all.

When I was 19, I lost stable housing for the first time and became one of the many gender-non-conforming, queer, and trans young people who experience homelessness and housing insecurity in their lifetime. I slept in my car, a storage locker, my friend’s couch, a basement, my workplace’s couch before opening shift. I changed cities, I walked into social service offices, waiting, waiting, only to be sent out with no help. Maybe some of you reading this share this experience too?

The racist strategy of those at the top is to present homelessness prevention and affordable, publicly supported housing as a handout, rather than tell the truth: that the system of homelessness is a violent choice our nation makes and justifies with racist, classist messages and greedy policies, and we can make it rare, brief, and singular like other nations have. White queer and trans people, white people who’ve experienced housing insecurity, have everything to gain by ending white supremacy.

Read the rest of my story here.

As a queer white person, the world will be a safer place for me when we end white supremacy. White nationalists are among us, embedded in the leadership of majority white communities and being radicalized every day by intentional organizing online and in person. They are dangerous to communities of color, Jewish and Muslim communities, and must be stopped. They are dangerous to LGBTQ people across race and faith, to children whose genders don’t conform to a narrow sense of what boys and girls should be and must be stopped. They are dangerous to cis and straight white men and women of conscience and must be stopped. We must out organize the right.

The story I told here is an example of mutual interest or shared interest storytelling. As white people organizing, we can all identify a shared interest– or two or three– in ending white supremacy.

In the days ahead, those of us who are white have the opportunity to do our part in pulling the country back from escalating authoritarianism and the brink of fascism. This is not the time that we turn away in despair, but when we root deeper in what we know is true: millions of white people across the country are ready for us to talk to them and waiting to be given a better option than white supremacy.

Today, we launch our midterms election program, Block, Build, Grow and we are inviting people from across the country to help us BLOCK white supremacist organizing, BUILD progressive power in key states, and GROW our collective “we” of anti-racist white people to show up big in 2022, 2024, and beyond.

We know elections aren’t the end goal, but another form of opportunity:

“At its worst, electoral work can be transactional, short-sighted, heartbreaking, and painful. And – elections are opportunities for our movement. They are an opportunity to bring new people into our movement, to build new leadership and skills, to shift power dynamics for the long haul, to contribute to victories that are set by folks most impacted by the systems, and to really change the conditions under which our broader movement is operating.”

• Erin Heaney, National Director, SURJ, in our 2020 webinar, “Building Anti-racist Electoral Work” in 2020

No matter where you live, you can help us organize white people in 2022 to build long-haul power. We’ll be working in states where we already have roots to make sure white people vote based on what they stand to gain from progressive platforms like the ones Stacy Abrams, Rev. Raphael Warnock, and Charles Booker represent – and not based on the racist divide-and-conquer tactics of the Far Right.

Here’s what we’ll be up to:

• GEORGIA: building off our massive program– of which many of you were a part– contacting nearly 2 million white voters in the 2020 General and 2021 Senate Run-Off elections, we’ll be joining our partners at New Georgia Project and CASA again to knock doors, text, and call voters in multiracial counties outside of Atlanta where our job is to organize enough persuadable white folks away from Trump’s Big Lie and towards justice-aligned platforms.
• KENTUCKY: Charles Booker– who narrowly lost the Democratic primary in 2020 and came back this year to win it– is a candidate who understands that working people of all races have so much to gain by working together to shift power. We’ll be building off our deep work with our chapter in Louisville and rural base building project in Eastern Kentucky to organize working class white support for Booker in 2022 across the state.
• OHIO: JD Vance, Trump’s pick and millionaire author of Hillbilly Elegy, does not represent the interest of the people of Appalachia. We know it from our rural, harm reduction-focused organizing project in Appalachian Ohio, Nelsonville Voices, and know that our members are ready to organize to block this Far Right candidate to show the country that the real values of Appalachia are multiracial solidarity and collective care.

We know these locations are strategic places where we can move key groups of white people, grow a base of voters who understand their shared stake in fighting for justice, and build the power and skills of SURJ members across the country who take action with us.

Today, we at Showing Up for Racial Justice are outraged and grieving in light of the Supreme Court ruling that overturns the right to an abortion in every state. Though it was expected, this is a heavy and difficult day amidst a series of many difficult days before it. Find a rally near you to join in expressing collective grief and rage– practices that are absolutely essential in these times of increasing fear and despair. When you’re ready, take action with us to continue the work.

This decision is one piece of a political agenda of the Far Right to establish a nation where a number of wealthy, white, conservative elites rule over the lives and autonomy of the rest of us– communities of color, immigrants, people who can be pregnant, poor people, women, trans people, and people with disabilities.

For those of us who are white, our work in the days ahead remains the same: to out-organize the Right in our communities and bring millions more white people into our movements for justice. So many white people– today, particularly white people who can get pregnant– have so much to gain by joining multiracial fights for justice.

Over the last forty years, the Right and those at the top have built a primarily white, conservative, Christian base around this issue through dog-whistle politics– racist messaging without explicitly naming race– lies, and scare tactics. And, in doing so, they have consolidated enough political power to enact the similar conservative rulings we have seen in the past few weeks– weakening existing gun legislation, increasing the ability of the state to kill potentially innocent people, and weakening police accountability– growing the wealth and power of the elite few at the expense of the many.

Part of our collective path forward to fight back against this ruling is working to shift power in Washington and at the state level. The representatives in Congress have the power to approve or reject federal judicial appointments. Governors can veto repressive laws inclusion those that would seek to punish people seeking abortions. State houses will be the gatekeepers of legislation to allow abortion, to criminalize those seeking abortion, and we must keep organizing for bold candidates in every state.

Here are four ways white people can show up today to take action for reproductive justice:

1. Find a rally near you.
2. Join our mid-term elections program– Block, Build, Grow– to organize white people to shift power around issues like abortion and healthcare. Our first action is a text bank in support of Stacey Abrams for the Governor of Georgia on July 13th.
3. Donate to people-of-color led organizations that fund and organize for abortion access like SisterSong and the National Network of Abortion Funds.
4. Watch our webinar with long time reproductive justice activist, Loretta Ross, to better understand why abortion is a racial justice issue and why white people have a key role in organizing to defend this right.

We join with others across the nation in grief and rage. And take today as an opportunity to recommit to the work of justice.

In the wake of the murders in Buffalo, NY last week, the cost of unchecked white supremacist activity could not be more obvious. Here in Buffalo, we continue to grieve the loss of life and immense impact felt by Black people and people of color in our community. 

I am clearer than ever that to fight back against this kind of racist violence, we must be organizing white people away from white nationalism and into multiracial movements for justice. Yesterday, myself, other SURJ National Staff members, and leaders in our Buffalo chapter spoke with NPR to talk about our work of organizing against white supremacist activity in the area. Listen to the 7 minute clip on NPR’s All Things Considered where we share about white people’s role in fighting white nationalism.

“We’re in a battle, SURJ National Director Erin Heaney says, for white people because the Far Right has been pouring vast sums into winning them over to the belief that Black and Brown people are to blame for their problems.” 

And it is exactly these moments where SURJ intervenes– to find white people looking for meaning for their suffering and to organize them to fight back against the wealthy elite, and not their neighbors of color.

From acute white supremacist violence to the erosion of voting rights, the stakes of letting the Right build unchecked power in white communities are incredibly high. And yet, we know from our work in places like Buffalo that our organizing can and does move people to join the work of justice.

We are building lasting infrastructure to grow progressive power in Kentucky for the long haul. Despite the defeat of Attica Scott in a Democratic primary on Tuesday, we are inspired, driven, and hopeful. Landscapes don’t shift overnight– and this is just the beginning of the momentum we are building to carry into the days and years ahead.

Progressive victories led by Black women in Georgia in 2020 and 2021 showed the nation that transforming conditions requires a commitment to building power for the long-haul, not just in election cycles.

We knew that Attica – a working class, Black mother who has a long history of standing up for justice– was the underdog, facing off with a millionaire lawyer who received donations from the likes of billionaire tech bros. Instead of relying on high dollar donations, we ran our campaign on people power- and moved thousands of white Louisvillians to see their futures tied up with the movement values Attica stands for. As Attica wrote, “It took nearly $2 million to defeat our people-powered campaign.”

I am proud that over 200 SURJ members from the Louisville chapter and National Membership program contacted 133,471 white voters in KY-03 to organize them to support Attica Scott. In white working class precincts where we knocked doors, support for Attica was over 7 points higher than in similar precincts where we did not canvass. And the campaign has been a strong catalyst for recruiting new SURJ members and moving seasoned SURJ members deeper into action. As one LSURJ member, Lindsay, shared with us:

“Working with SURJ has given me hope. It’s been this galvanizing force that it is possible to organize people who don’t have a lot of funding behind them to fight for what’s right and to fight for all of us. The racial justice side of it is what got me into it- and now I see how possible it is to politically mobilize and go up against the corporate establishment Democrats who have just completely failed us- and how interconnected all of this work is.”

We have our work cut out for us in the days ahead. We’ll continue mobilizing white people to support progressive people of color in Kentucky, Georgia, and other key states leading up to the midterms. And we’ll be organizing in those communities long after the elections to make sure the work continues.