We often talk about the importance of local organizing. In Georgia, the Athens-Clarke County Democrats are using the runoff elections to make a huge step forward. Athens-Clarke will have two runoff dates in the next weeks. You probably have heard about the January 5th runoff that features the Senate races of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. The other runoff will be on December 1st, when Democrat Deborah Gonzalez vies to become District Attorney on a progressive platform of ending mass incarceration and a focus on serious crime.
Faced with the daunting task of two GOTV operations plus a focus on registering voters before the December 7th deadline for the January 5th runoff, County Commissioners Russell Edwards, Mariah Parker, Tim Denson, and State Representative Spencer Frye, and community organizer Omar Reid have put together an ambitious program — the Athens Progressive Canvassing Corps. The plan is to pay 10 organizers who in turn will lead more than a hundred volunteers to knock on 27,832 doors.
“We need Deborah Gonzalez as our next DA, and we need to flip the Senate, but beyond that, we need to empower working class organizers and organizers of color with living wage work and apprenticeship in the kinds of civic skills that are critical to Athens’ continual transformation. Our project accomplishes both,” Parker said in a news release.
Alas, such an effort is not free. It will cost $25,000 to run this program — and all of it needs to come through donations. If you want to support this attempt to build grassroots power, bring progressive justice to NE Georgia and help win Joe Biden a Democratic Senate, please donate to the Athens Progressive Canvassing Corps via ActBlue.
You can also support this effort by amplifying the fundraising drive via Twitter or Facebook:
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