I am so proud to share that the Kentucky People’s Union (KPU), a project of SURJ in Eastern Kentucky that I helped found alongside community members, was featured this week in MSNBC’s annual racial healing special to commemorate the Martin Luther King Day Holiday.

KPU and other projects like it at SURJ are changing the narrative about what racial healing and racial justice mean. We are a working class-led project fighting for housing rights in a majority-white small town in Appalachia in a deeply conservative area. When white folks talk to other white people about race and what we stand to gain by standing with, rather than against, people of color, we come together and become powerful enough to win things like renters rights in small towns here in Kentucky– or bigger scale things like federal elections.

Watch the special here– KPU’s segment starts at about 43 minutes in.

In the special, I talk about how racism is a strategy. It doesn’t serve those at the top for white people to recognize whiteness or to talk to other white people about racism or transphobia or other issues those at the top try to use to divide us.

While SURJ National is taking on big electoral fights in 2024 to block authoritarians from taking the federal government, KPU will be continuing our long-haul organizing work in Ashland to grow our membership, elect aligned local leaders, and win house legislation in deep red Kentucky. Our work at KPU is a part of SURJ’s strategy of building the white working class flank of Southern, multiracial movements to deliver wins for working people and out-organize the right in areas it relies on for support.

I’m proud that SURJ is struggling on multiple fronts: both on a national scale and deeply local. We’re blocking the far right from further advancing in Washington, and cutting their base out from beneath them by growing our small town organizing in the South. 

We need your support to grow this work in 2024. Can you give a gift today to power KPU and our Southern organizing?

In solidarity, 

Beth Howard

2024 is a critical year for beating back authoritarianism and bringing in thousands of people to movements for justice. We have a sharp plan to organize millions of white people into the multiracial coalitions that are needed for us to win, and we need your help this year to make it happen.

Join SURJ to launch our 2024 work at a mass meeting, “White people: we’ve got work to do in 2024!” on February 7 at 8 ET to hear about our plan to organize millions of white people, bring in thousands of new SURJ members, and deepen our community to face the year ahead. 

We’re kicking off the year by showing up to defend members of the Squad. Squad members have been at the forefront of fights in Congress to work to advance legislation that is most closely aligned with the visions of our movements: housing justice, expanding affordable healthcare, calling for a ceasefire, climate justice, taxing the rich– things white people have so much shared interest in winning. 

They have also been the targets of major attacks by the Far Right, white supremacist, and white nationalist forces, which we know will continue this year. In their primary races, the majority of voters are white, so alongside our partners, SURJ will show up to do our part by organizing thousands of white voters to support the Squad.

We’ll use the momentum of these primary races to swing into the federal election and beat back authoritarianism, defend the election results, and bring in thousands of new people to our movement. At our meeting, we’ll talk you through our plan to organize 12 million white people across 5 battleground states and share how you can get involved. 

This is a pivotal time when the stakes are higher and when we know thousands of white people will be looking for our leadership and to be plugged in. We’ve got a plan to rise to the moment, welcome them in, and mobilize thousands to accomplish our slice of the work.

It’s an undeniably challenging and devastating time. And we believe that one of the strongest antidotes to despair is reaching towards one another in collective action. 

There are two ways to make sure this work happens: join us on the 7th and make a gift to support this work. 

We need the people power to be able to reach out to millions of white people and we need the resources to power that machine. Can you make a gift today to ensure SURJ has the resources we need to show up big this critical year? 

Last year on a SURJ phone bank, I had a conversation with a long distance truck driver from Kentucky. We spoke while he was on the road and connected initially over what basketball teams we liked, our families, and his horses back in Kentucky. I was calling about the ballot initiative in his state, where we were calling white working class voters to vote “no” to prevent a near-total abortion ban from being added to their state constitution. 

From the beginning of the call, he told me he didn’t have anything to vote for at all, did not believe in political change, and he was clear he was anti-abortion. But as I shared my own story and perspective about who would be impacted by a lack of access– poor people and rural people and people marginalized by our country’s healthcare system– we dug deeper into our conversation. 

I used the SURJ script and leaned on my training to find our way through a long conversation, validating him in what he shared, sharing my own experience, and gently drawing connections about abortion being a wedge issue so that those at the top can grab more power by dividing us. 

In the end, he said he would make it back to Kentucky in time and that he would vote “no” on Issue 2. 

“I’ll vote for you,” he said, after 55 minutes on the phone. 

Will you give a gift at the end of this year to make more conversations like this possible in 2024? 

I am a proud SURJ member since 2016. I have been trained as an organizer with SURJ and am now myself training others. It’s serious and important work with high stakes, but something I always try to communicate when I talk to friends and family about this work is how fun it is. There is so much joy and community in our phone banking spaces! 

And it’s joyful to be in a space undercutting white supremacy! That’s kind of the whole point.

SURJ is who I say yes to. It always has a place for me. Thank God I don’t have to face this moment alone.

Join me today to support this joyful, important work.

In community, 

Mary Biggs

Two years ago today, a broad coalition of white nationalist and white supremacist organizations, backed by powerful allies in the government, attacked the US Capitol. 

Since then, the racist, anti-Democratic forces that drummed up election-denial have continued to organize and amass power and influence, from capturing leadership in the House of Representatives to passing book bans and anti-trans legislation in states across the country.

As we enter 2024, we know that far right politicians backed by corporate interests have a well-resourced plan to win. Just like we saw on January 6, 2021, they will use every tactic possible to sow division amongst those of us who have everything to gain by joining together in solidarity. 

They will target people of all backgrounds and races, but let’s be honest: the overwhelming base of their support is white. They will lead with a strategy of racism in order to win over enough white people to gain more federal power.  

Those of us who are white have a responsibility to do everything we can to undermine white support for their authoritarian platforms, which, as we have seen play out across the country, have dire consequences for all of us.

Election years are special – early money really matters so that we can begin our voter outreach efforts in time to move people! Will you make a gift today to ensure SURJ has the resources it needs to fight the Right and win in 2024?

From Georgia to Kentucky, SURJ has seen massive success organizing white people away from the right and into the multiracial coalitions we need to win. SURJ runs one of the most effective voter contact programs in the country targeting working class white people who are less likely to vote for progressive candidates and issues. 

And we’ve got a plan to go big and win in 2024 to ensure we block an authoritarian takeover of the federal government.  

Not only is early money critical, but monthly support makes a huge impact. Can you join us by making a sustaining gift today?

We will organize a universe of 12 million white working class voters in key swing states– Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona. These are the types of voters we have successfully organized in the past, and they are the same voters the far right will target in those states. 

We’ll use the power of our national phone banking infrastructure to deploy thousands of highly-trained SURJ members to have tens of thousands of conversations with these voters through our shared interest organizing model, bringing white people in through the stakes of this moment and issues that affect them.

I know that when we contend for these voters, we can win them over. But we’ll need to raise the funds this year to ensure we’re as equipped as the Right. Later this month, we’ll be sending more information about how you can sign up to phone bank and knock doors with us. In the meantime, the most helpful thing you can do today is donate to support the work ahead. Will you join me in making a gift?