give a little bit.

it's easy and it will help you sleep better!

Electoral politics aren’t everybody’s jam. To be frank, they’re not really my jam. I’d rather be reading a book in an inner tube. I find lots of the wonky particulars to be confusing, alienating, and snooze-inducing. But there’s no getting around the fact that electoral politics affect our lives in big and important ways—abortion access, gun policy, voting rights—and we ignore them at our peril.

So! I’m excited to start a Tea Notes Giving Circle for The States Project.

Here’s why:

+ States races are typically small, poorly funded, and under the radar but they can have a huge impact on policies that affect all of us. Rightwing extremists know this and they’ve been organizing and consolidating power at the state level for way too long. We can undo their work.

+ When anti-democratic fascist demagogues want to try to overturn election results, they look to state legislatures. We can ensure those legislatures are unwelcome places for those fools to turn.

+ I don’t have a ton of money to donate myself this election cycle, and I’m not really jazzed about donating for the presidential race, but I do have over 12,000 folks reading this newsletter (and 70,000 people poking around Instagram) and if we all pool our resources, together we can donate a whole bunch of money for races that are arguably just as important as the big one everyone’s talking about.

+ Raising money together for progressive causes is energizing and effective and good for our health, probably! It’s so much better than worrying! In 2018, the Reading My Tea Leaves readership raised nearly $24,000 for the fight against family separation at the border. We started with a goal of $5,000 and in three days we’d raised nearly five times that. Let’s do it again.

Where’s this money gonna go, exactly?

North Carolina! I lived there for two very formative years in my twenties! One of my three sisters lives there and I want her to be safe and cared for! Nearly fifty of you readers live there and I want the same for you! The States Project has identified North Carolina as one of the key states to focus on this election cycle!

North Carolina currently has a Democratic governor whose progressive values are being stamped out by a Republican supermajority hellbent on enacting extreme and unpopular policies including an abortion ban, anti-voter laws, and the elimination of widely popular background checks on guns. North Carolina needs to flip just one of their house seats to prevent a rightwing supermajority and stop these kinds of policies from being passed into law.

The way to flip that seat is primarily through two tried-and-true tactics that we can directly help fund. The first is old-fashioned door knocking campaigns, where political hopefuls get out from behind their desks and into their communities, and the second is ad testing which ensures that the big dollars spent on campaign ads will actually be effective.

One more time, why should states races matter so much to us?

If we care about Congress, we should care about state legislatures because they draw the district lines that decide who goes to Congress.

If we care about the Supreme Court, we should care about state legislatures because the Supreme Court doesn’t write laws; they rule on laws! Many of these laws are written by state lawmakers, like the bans on choice. 

If we care about the Presidency, we should care about state legislatures because they control voting rights in their states (who is eligible to vote, where, when and how). 

Ready?

If you can’t give right now, maybe your friends can! Share the link!

**If you’re surprised at my political leanings and can’t believe I’d support progressive politics, that’s on me and prob also on you for not reading v carefully! Happy to disappoint!