Dear MoveOn member,
What a year. MoveOn members and the broader Resistance movement powered stunning victories in 2017—legislatively, electorally, and culturally—and momentum is on our side heading into 2018.
We must be clear-eyed about the damage Trump and Republicans have already inflicted on our country and the damage they continue to do. But we can also know that our work together has slowed, and even stopped, parts of their vicious agenda. Thank you for being part of a movement that took to the streets, hit the phones, and filled social media and TV airwaves—and for all you did with MoveOn throughout 2017. And thank you for continuing to fight with as much commitment and impact in the year ahead.
(Not on Facebook? You can click here to watch the video on YouTube as well.)
We can't sugarcoat it: Real harm has resulted from Trump's and the Republicans' actions—attacks on immigrant communities, Muslims, women's rights, the LGBTQ community, and so many more; rollbacks of environmental regulations; and the recent destructive tax scam, to name a few examples.
But again and again, we confronted—and even defeated—this radical agenda. 2017 was the year of the Resistance—and we can remember this as the year when:
- We helped defend access to health care for tens of millions of people.
- We helped propel stunning election upsets in Virginia and Alabama.
- We stood with communities on the front lines of Trump's attacks—fighting for Dreamers, against Trump’s racist and unconstitutional Muslim Ban, and against the white supremacists in the streets of Charlottesville and the halls of the White House.
- MoveOn members contributed millions of dollars directly for hurricane relief efforts for our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico, Florida, and Texas.
- We helped force the recusal of Jeff Sessions from the Trump-Russia investigation and have propelled the demands to protect the investigation—and even consider impeachment—into the heart of public discourse.
- We helped build and wire an incredible grassroots network to respond if Robert Mueller is fired (over 175,000 people have already committed to join protests if needed), or if Trump tries to rush us into a new war.
- We stiffened the spines of elected Democrats and showed Republicans the price they’ll pay at the ballot box in 2018 for scamming their constituents to give handouts to billionaire donors and giant corporations.
And so much more.
None of this was inevitable.
The year began with Trump declaring he’d build a border wall. Congressional Republicans promised Obamacare repeal the day after the Inauguration. Trump appointed white nationalists to positions of power. Too many Democrats seemed poised to treat the administration as business as usual, rubber-stamping early Cabinet nominees.
Then we, collectively, showed up—with historic crowds at the Women’s March and sister marches, at airport protests, and at district offices of members of Congress, with floods of phone calls to Congress and packed town halls around the country—and eventually at the ballot box in Virginia and Alabama. And the Resistance is still rising—as we continue to confront the Republican and Wall Street agenda, demand that Trump and his cohorts be held accountable for corruption and collusion, and set the stage to win Congress in 2018 and sweep in dynamic, diverse, inspirational candidates at all levels of office to fight for all of us.
For all the damage Republicans have inflicted, we’ve resisted and defeated them just as often. Polls have swung wildly against Republicans in next year’s congressional races, Trump’s approval ratings are at an all-time low, more and more Republican incumbents are announcing their retirement, members of Trump’s Cabinet and inner circle have been forced to resign amid corruption scandals and are facing popular outcries, and more of his closest advisers are coming under scrutiny by an investigation that the Resistance called for and has, thus far, helped protect.
This has been the year of the Resistance, not the year of the GOP, and we’ve set the stage for an even bigger year to come. Check out and share our short video about what we were able to accomplish this year against the backdrop of this dark political moment and what we can achieve together in 2018.
Throughout this year, MoveOn members were a crucial part of the Resistance—and we showed up at an unprecedented scale. Take a look at these numbers we were responsible for, together:
- Nearly 1 million phone calls to Congress
- More than 250,000 people joining Ready to Resist national organizing calls
- More than 100,000 people—MoveOn members, members of partner organizations, and Americans of all walks of life—attending town hall meetings during February’s Resistance Recess; and tens of thousands more attending local MoveOn events over the rest of the year
- 1,000 Mobilizers trained in MoveOn’s Resistance Summer program and now organizing in their communities and laying the groundwork for 2018
- More than 2,000,000 texts sent by volunteers to MoveOn members and voters, to recruit volunteers, urge calls to Congress, and get out the vote
- 16 million signatures on petitions, leading to victories in Washington, D.C., in corporate boardrooms, and in local fights for progress
- 285 million views on 536 videos produced by MoveOn’s Video Lab, which were shared by MoveOn members 3.7 million times
- More than $3.7 million donated directly to hurricane relief efforts
- 1 million individual donations from MoveOn members to support all this work
In what is likely one of the darkest political moments many of us have experienced, we—together with Americans of all walks of life, from women donning pink hats to Dreamers courageously risking their futures, and so many more—helped light the spark of Resistance that has yielded light and hope throughout 2017.
We're ready for 2018. Together, we'll march to the ballot box, resist Trump and the GOP's ongoing attacks, build our movement's strength and capacity, and invest in the leadership of the future through our work up and down the ballot. That's what this moment calls for. And we know we can do it, because MoveOn members have been showing up every day to resist—and to persist.
So thank you for all you have been doing—thank you for all you are doing—to meet the challenges of this moment and to turn the tide, together.
With gratitude, hope, and determination,
–Anna and the entire MoveOn team
P.S. I'm so proud of the work we've done together this year. Please watch my message to MoveOn members about this past year, and the work we face ahead.
P.P.S. Here are a few images of MoveOn members and allies in action at a few of the thousands of events we participated in this year.
This email refers to both work done by MoveOn Political Action and MoveOn Civic Action; both organizations are shorthanded as "MoveOn" for the purposes of this email.
Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with us?
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This email was sent to Eddie Alfaro on December 28th, 2017. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.