By Marcy Rein, Organizing Upgrade
Vocalize Protest Persist Resist by Amanda Sanchez for Power to the Polls at amplifier.org
Right before the 2020 election, SURJ National Director spoke with Organizing Upgrade about the Right’s strategy to maintain power and SURJ’s efforts to protect the results of the election:
“The particular ways in which the threats to the election are being rolled out are consistent with Trump and the GOP’s overall strategy for maintaining power by building a cross-class alliance of white people as their base, keeping white supremacy as a tool for keeping poor and working class white people from joining black working class people and other people of color,” said Erin Heaney, director of Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ). It shows up in the way Trump uses issues, and in his “consistent and escalated reliance on alliances with white supremacist organizations,” Heaney said.
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SURJ, for one, began organizing before the election to be sure that every vote counts, and plans to continue during and after. Its Election Defender teams had activated in 38 states as of mid-October. Working in coordination with local grassroots groups, they put particular emphasis on outreach to the county election officials who oversee the ballot counting. In October they began calling and emailing those officials in Ohio, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Georgia, asking them to pledge to count all the votes.