Protect the Results Organizing to Protect the Results of the 2020 Election

Protect the Results

Organizing to Protect the Results of the 2020 Election

We are building a coalition of voters ready to mobilize if Trump undermines the results of the 2020 presidential election.    

WE’RE NOT ACTIVATING NATIONAL MOBILIZATIONS YET — BUT BE READY

Americans across race and zip code turned out in historic numbers to make their voices heard at the ballot box. Election officials are continuing to count votes across the country, and the outcome of this election will be decided by the voters. While the coalition will not be activating its national network, some local organizers may still hold “Count Every Vote” events in their community.

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Learn more about how you can help protect the integrity of the 2020 election with our Protect the Results Event Host Toolkit. LEARN MORE

Preventing a Constitutional Crisis

Throughout American history, when a president has lost re-election, he has always stepped down willingly. Accepting the will of the people, and allowing a peaceful transition of power, is a hallmark of American democracy.

But today, Trump routinely ignores democratic norms and continues to chip away at democratic institutions. In 2016, Trump repeatedly threatened to undermine the election results, and Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen has warned Congress that “given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” Most recently, Trump even threatened to “deploy the United States military” against the American people to quash peaceful protests. There is no line he won’t cross.

With COVID-19 poised to wreak havoc for months to come, the threat to our democracy is particularly acute. As Congress works to expand mail-in voting and in-person early voting, we must prevent Trump from using this moment to sow discord, confusion, and doubt on the November election results.

We cannot ignore the threat that Trump poses to our democracy and a peaceful transition. We will stand together to ensure that if Trump loses the 2020 presidential election he will not throw our country into a constitutional crisis. We will honor the valid results of the 2020 election, ensure that every vote is counted, and show up to demand that the losing candidate put their ego aside and concede for the good of our country.

“I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election . . . if I win.”

— DONALD TRUMP, OCTOBER 2016

Photo by Gage Skidmore

“Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has told her party to prepare for the possibility that Trump contests the 2020 results.”

— Politico

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Count Every Vote

Trump threatened to undermine the results in 2016. He claimed the election was “rigged” and “millions of people” were voting unlawfully. Afterward, he claimed—without evidence—that he actually won the popular vote in 2016.

Trump has repeatedly hinted that he will not leave the White House willingly. He warned that “people would demand that I stay longer” and even mused about being president for 20 years.

In 2020, we will not allow Trump to follow through on those threats. We will demand that every vote be counted, even if it takes days or weeks to get an accurate count from critical states, especially given the expansion of mail-in and absentee voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will organize to ensure that the loser concedes, and that Congress, the Electoral College, and state officials honor the accurate, final vote count.

“I didn’t like the outcome of the 2008 election. But I had a duty to concede, and I did so without reluctance. A concession isn’t just an exercise in graciousness. It is an act of respect for the will of the American people, a respect that is every American leader’s first responsibility.”

— Senator John McCain

About Us

Protect the Results is a joint project of Indivisible and Stand Up America to protect the valid results of the 2020 election.

Indivisible and Stand Up America are committed to strengthening our democracy and supporting progressives and progressive causes. All Americans—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents—must be prepared to protect and defend the valid results of the election whether their preferred candidate wins or loses.

If Trump loses, he must accept those results. Our democracy depends on it.

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In The News

  • Reuters, Americans Plan Widespread Protests If Trump Interferes With Election
  • The Hill, Over 170 events planned nationwide by advocacy groups after election to make sure all ballots are counted
  • Newsweek, Over 200 Protests Already Planned If Trump Attempts to Dispute Election Results, Prematurely Declare Victory
  • Vanity Fair, Democrats are Girding for Post-Election Chaos
  • The Nation, Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État?
  • The New Yorker, What Happens if Donald Trump Fights the Election Results
  • NYTimes, Trump Might Cheat. Activists Are Getting Ready.
  • Axios, Trump declines to say he’ll accept results of election: “I have to see”
  • Washington Post, Refusal to concede? Vote counting delays? Groups brace for the worst
  • NYTimes, Will Trump Ever Leave the White House?
  • NYTimes, Pelosi Warns Democrats
  • NYTimes, Populists Don’t Lose Elections
  • CNN, Donald Trump: ‘I will totally accept’ election results ‘if I win’
  • NBCNews, GOP Slams Trump: Not Accepting Election Results Would Be ‘Beyond the Pale’
  • Politico, What if Trump won’t accept 2020 defeat?
  • Newsweek, Trump Jokes Being President for 16 Years, Adds, “I’m Not Looking to do it, Unless you Want To Do It.”
  • Slate, What Happens if Trump Won’t Step Down?
  • CNN op-ed, What if Trump refuses to accept defeat in 2020?
  • Vice, The Nightmare Scenario: Trump Loses in 2020 and Refuses to Concede
  • NYTimes, Could Donald Trump Reject the Election Results? Yes. Would It Do Any Good? Nope.
  • Slate, Trump’s Jokes About Defying Election Results Could Create Chaos
  • NYMag, Odds of a Contested November Election Are on the Rise
  • Slate, What Happens in November if One Side Doesn’t Accept the Election Results?
  • NY Post, Schiff ‘worried’ Trump may try to keep people from voting in 2020
  • U.S. News and World Report, Will the Coronavirus Pandemic Threaten Election Legitimacy?
  • Washington Post, We need to prepare for the possibility of Trump rejecting election results
  • New York Magazine, Trump Is Laying the Groundwork to Contest the Results of the Election
  • Vox, Will He Go? A Law Professor Fears Meltdown This November
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HOW RIGHT-WING POPULISM UNDERMINES INTERNATIONAL LAW

by Jason Sibert

Humankind rediscovered the power of reason when leaving the Dark Ages for the Renaissance. The rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy played a role in the accomplishments of this era. Greek philosopher Pythagoras said, “man is the measure of all things” and his idea played a key role in bringing reason back to address human problems. The Renaissance proved to be a revolution in many intellectual pursuits, chief among which was the rebirth of Humanism – the reliance of reason in solving problems. Hugo Grotius, a Dutch Humanist, was one of the great thinkers of the Renaissance. He laid the foundations for international law, based on the idea of natural law. Natural law theorists, like Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero and St. Thomas Aquinas, believed that certain laws are embedded in nature and can be discovered by reason alone without the help of divine intervention. Grotius wrote two books on international law, On the Law of War and Peace and The Free Seas, that contributed to the evolution of rights. Prior to Grotius, rights were attached to objects and did not belong to human beings. Now, human beings had rights to defend, or at least an increased amount of dignity.

International relations theorist Hedley Bull said Grotius was not the first to formulate an international society doctrine, but he was the first to define a society of states –  a society governed not by force but by laws and an agreement to enforce those laws. His ideas were present in the first peace agreement of modern times – the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. The agreement ended both the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War. The Thirty Years’ War pitted the Hapsburg-ruled Spain and Austria and their Catholic allies on one side and Protestant Denmark and Sweden on the other side. Catholic France was on the side of Denmark and Sweden because the country was anti-Hapsburg. The Eighty Years War was between Spain and the Dutch Republic, and the Dutch earned independence at the conclusion of the war. The Treaty of Westphalia brought about the peaceful coexistence of individual nation-states in Europe. Interstate aggression was held in check by the balance of power of European nation-states. The ideas of one man, Grotius, lead to a peace that lasted until World War I, although small amounts of fighting still existed in Europe after the Treaty of Westphalia. The whole savagery of the war between Protestants and Catholics created a long-lasting revulsion of war amongst Europeans and many were willing to accept a solution.

In his book The Law of Nations: and Introduction to the International Law of Peace, J.L. Bierly wrote that the rise of international law meant “an abandonment of the medieval idea of a world-state and took instead as its fundamental postulate the existence of a number of states, secular, national and territorial; but it denied their absolute separateness and irresponsibility, and claimed they were bound together by the supremacy of law.” The United States emerged from a period of thought called the Enlightenment, an outgrowth of the Renaissance. President (and Former Secretary of State) Thomas Jefferson was influenced by Grotius’ thought, as he felt treaties made between nations were valid. Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson’s rival, used the concept of the law of nations when he was a lawyer and argued that the Trespass Act, passed by the New York state legislature to punish loyalists after the Revolutionary War, was a violation of the Treaty of Paris.

Our country’s history is filled with examples of embracing the idea of international law to prevent war. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said in his book On the Law of Nations that America at one time had the tendency to see the world as a court of law and that this was not a bad thing considering the expense of militaries.  At our Constitutional Convention, it was agreed that the law of nations was a part of our law. In 1890 the First Pan-American Congress established an arbitration system which Secretary of State James G. Blaine called a “new Magna Carta”. In 1897 Secretary of State Richard Only negotiated a five-year arbitration agreement with Great Britain to settle differences that were not previously settled with diplomacy. President Teddy Roosevelt negotiated the Treaty of Portsmouth which ended the Russo-Japanese War, making him the first American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1899, Czar Nicholas II of Russia assembled a peace conference at the Hague and our country attended. Roosevelt proposed another conference in 1907 and 44 nations attended. President Woodrow Wilson proposed a League of Nations to keep the peace after World War I. Our country did not enter the League, but the United Nations has been with us since the end of World War II.    

Our country has been creeping away from Hedley Bull’s idea of a society of states as of late. The foreign policy of President Donald Trump is a case in point. He has removed our country from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and the Paris Climate Accords. There were legitimate complaints about Russian compliance with the INF Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty. However, both treaties gave us a mechanism to control Russian behavior, a mechanism we have lost. The blame cannot totally be laid at Trump’s feet. The George W. Bush Administration invaded a sovereign country (Iraq) in violation of international law and the Barack Obama Administration did likewise in Libya. Bush also left the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and withdrew from negotiations over the International Criminal Court and the United Nation’s Small Arms Treaty. In his aforementioned book, Moynihan denounced the mining of Nicaraguan harbors by President Ronald Reagan’s administration in the 1980s as a violation of international law.

The right-wing populism of Donald Trump magnifies the trend. When he is coherent, he sees the world, as well as the US, as a place that is naturally divided. Trump feels that other nation-states, friend and foe, are trying to do ill to our country. He recently called a reporter “politically correct” for wearing a mask, a measure taken to fight Covid-19. Trump also said “when the looting starts the shooting starts” after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. This language further inflames a country that is already divided about race, policing, and the current pandemic. If we can’t solve our own domestic problems, our country will be hard-pressed to turn its attention to foreign affairs and embrace a vision that would make Grotius proud.

Forms of right-wing populism have been creeping into political systems around the world. It usually combines a belief that individual nation-states are under attack from internal forces that do not contribute to the culture of that nation and a belief that other nation-states are an equally hostile force. It does not totally reject a certain amount of state involvement in the economy, as these movements support some parts of the welfare state and even nationalization of certain industries.  Narendra Modi’s right-wing populism in India is based around the predominately Hindu culture in the country and it sees Muslims as being hostile to that culture. Recep Erdogan’s right-wing populism in Turkey is based around Islam and sees foreign influences as hostile. Marine LePen’s politics in France are based around hostility to Muslims and racial minorities. Trump’s politics are uncomfortable with the demographic changes that have occurred in America since changes to immigration laws in the 1960s – it’s really about race. 

Grotius thought the nation-states of the world as being bound together in the world of law.  By contrast, right-wing populism sees the world as a place of hostility and makes little attempt to understand it. This is more dangerous than ever before because the technology for killing has become greater and greater. The possibility of nuclear war has been with us since the 1940s, but now there are other new, powerful.  Writer Michael T. Klare outlined these new technologies in his story “The Challenges of Emerging Technologies”. The future of warfare means using artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons systems, hypersonic weapons and cyberattack. Hypersonic weapons are vehicles that travel five times the speed of sound. This presents challenges to the idea of arms control. Anti-missile systems that work against conventional missiles will not work against hypersonic versions, and any country that possesses hypersonic weapons has a first-attack advantage. Cyberattacks allow one country to disable another’s command and control systems and this would give it a first-attack advantage. Artificial intelligence can be embedded in machines, like robotic soldiers, with the ability to respond to stimuli. Some worry that machines will incorrectly respond to stimuli and take actions that escalate hostilities. Such machines are not totally capable of distinguishing between combatants and civilians, threatening international humanitarian law which requires armed personnel to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

Continuing to move in the direction of lawlessness will do us no good if we continue to develop more and more weapons of mass destruction. The United States has at times engaged in actions via treaties to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons and we did it with a geopolitical foe – Russia in its Soviet and post-Soviet forms. President John F. Kennedy signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty that banned the testing of nuclear weapons above ground, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons that bounds all treaty signers to work for the limitation of nuclear weapons. President Richard Nixon signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that limited the number of such missiles both Soviet Russia and the United States could possess. President Ronald Reagan signed the INF Treaty that banned ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers with a range of 500 to 1,000 kilometers, President George HW  Bush signed the START I Treaty that limited both the U.S. and Soviet Russia to 6,000 nuclear warheads atop 1,600 intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers, President George W. Bush signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty that reduced the operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads from 2,200 to 1,700 of the U.S. and Russia by the year 2012, and President Barack Obama signed the New Start Treaty that halved the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers.  

In all of these treaties, two or more powers chose to treat the world like a courtroom and not a battlefield. President Kennedy provided a vision of a world governed by law in the American University Speech that occurred on the heels of the Cuban Missile Crises. He stated the central goal of the speech was a vision of world peace. President Kennedy said: “I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war – and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task. Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament – and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude – as individuals and as a nation – for our attitude is as essential as theirs.”

Kennedy called on students of American University and the citizens of the U.S. to take action in saying: “and every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward – by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the Cold War and toward freedom and peace here at home. First, let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable – that mankind is doomed – that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.”  The president also said “both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race” and “for, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” Kennedy understood that an ideological war was raging in the world, but this ideological war had to be kept within limits. Otherwise, humanity would pay a large penalty. While the Soviet Union collapsed without a shooting war with the U.S., the current rise of authoritarianism represents a challenge to Grotius’ vision embodied in Kennedy’s speech. It also means more bloated military budgets, as various nation-states engage in a power-balancing act in an absence of quality arms control. Our country can not afford such bloat in light of the challenges of Covid-19, a crumbling infrastructure, the greenhouse effect, and the need to reform public safety.

The war against authoritarianism in various forms will have to be won by our country being a light and a beacon for the democratic ideal. Social democrats believe in the idea of democracy and that it can be applied to the economic realm to lift people from the lower economic stratum into the middle class. Therefore, social democrats should be on the front lines on the war to protect democracy and in the establishment of the peace crucial in maintaining it. If we as a country live up to these ideals, authoritarian movements around the world will be weakened by our example. We cannot do this if authoritarian movements have a significant amount of pull in the U.S. The defeat of Donald Trump in the election of 2020 will be a significant win for democratic values, but Trump’s defeat will not mean the end of authoritarianism. Those who are committed to the idea of the democratic republic will have to continue to defend those values as we move further into the future. Let us hope the spirit of Grotius and the Renaissance survives!

Jason Sibert is the executive director of the Peace Economy Project in St Louis.

SD USA Endorses AARON COLEMAN for Kansas House of Representatives

  • By MICHAEL MOTTERN

It is said in politics, “with age comes experience.” But, given the state of affairs in Kansas, with the no-taxation policy at the state level that provides its K-12 education system with zero money, we can say for certain that with Sam Brownback as governor, age does not come with experience at all. The great American socialist Eugene Debs, back in the 1920s, was pretty popular in Kansas. Just read Thomas Frank’s book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”!

As we consider the horrible failures of the state legislature and gubernatorial office in Kansas, its state of education, and ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council),  that Super PAC of corporate lobbyists that has ruined Kansas, an anti-corporate community college student and up-and-coming progressive star would not be a bad choice compared to that face of drudgery, neo-liberal incumbent Stan Frownfelter.

Aaron Coleman is the right guy to shake up the State House in the great state of Kansas. After his independent write-in campaign for governor in 2018 at the age of 17, which got him some coverage in Rolling Stone magazine, he represents the promise of progressive youth in Kansas. Now 19, this exuberant Democratic Committee member, with fire in his belly, could be the worst nightmare for the political establishment. In a state dominated by big money, especially in the banking sector, Aaron, a supporter of Medicare For All and the Green New Deal, would give them hell. That is why Social Democrats USA is proud to endorse Aaron Coleman for the Kansas House of Representatives, District 37, in the August 4th Democratic primary.

FLOYD FALLOUT by Jason Sibert

The killing of George Floyd has produced a huge fallout. Demonstrators of all races have filled the streets, and the media has become obsessed with the subject of policing. Police reform legislation is moving through Congress. The mass demonstrations that followed the Floyd killing may well have served as a sparkplug for the suggested reforms. The issues brought to the forefront by the demonstrations provide us all with much food for thought on policing and what it means to be a social democrat.

Social democrats, whether inspired by the New Deal or by 20th century Western European societies, believe in a fair-market economy, i.e., a free-market economy where the power of capital is significantly held in check by labor unions and government regulation in the interest of working people, consumers and the conservation of our environment. Social insurance to protect working people from the vulnerabilities of the market is also a key part of the social democratic vision. Social democracy differs from pure democratic socialism in that the latter arguably seeks to make the means of producing society’s goods public, but there are some portions of an economy that are already public in nature. Public safety, or policing, is arguably pure socialism because police departments are government entities providing safety on the public dollar with government employees.  Fire departments are similar. This is a reality in all major industrial democracies.

The motto of the Social Democrats USA is pro-democracy and pro-labor. Therefore, we have a duty to use our democratic liberties to question the way that public safety operates and make it better. Investigative reporter Radley Balko addressed the subject of police militarization in his 2013 book “The Rise of the Warrior Cop.” The book blames the War on Drugs for bringing about changes to our legal institutions and policing in our country. It makes the case that police should not act like military units or be equipped with military hardware. Progressive journalist Glenn Greenwald and libertarian Republican Ron Paul both praised the book. Militarized policing is just one problem with public safety. The selling of military equipment to police departments started in the 1990s with the War on Drugs and increased with the War on Terror.

The reforms in public safety in Camden, New Jersey which revolved around what is termed community policing have become a point of discussion after Floyd’s killing. In a recent work of opinion journalism, Congressman Will Hurd (R-TX), the House of Representative’s only black Republican, advocated a plan to reform policing in America. Hurd wants a federal best-practices policy to be adopted. If local departments do not adopt the policy, then the departments will not be eligible for their share of the $2 billion dollars in federal funding allocated each year. Perhaps the public funding should be tied to a community policing model. Camden abolished its police department in 2013 and built a new one from scratch. When the new model was instituted, police knocked on doors and introduced themselves to residents to see what they want in public safety. The idea behind community policing means that police are a part of the community.

Building a new department was a big challenge, as the city’s crime rate was among the worst in the US. Within nine square miles encompassing nearly 75,000 residents, there were over 170 open-air drug markets reported in 2013. Violent crime abounded and police corruption was a problem. Lawsuits filed against the department uncovered officers routinely planting evidence on suspects, fabricated reports, and committed perjury. After the corruption was exposed, courts overturned the convictions of 88 people, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Camden’s crime rate dropped under the community policing model. More officers were added to the payroll, but the way the officers interacted with the public was totally different. Foot patrol – which increased presence in a personal way – became more common. Police were taught to deescalate situations first and use force as a last resort. When demonstrations broke out in cities after the death of George Floyd, Camden had demonstrations which were very calm, and Camden Police Chief Joseph Wysocki marched with demonstrators who held signs like “Black Lives Matter” and “Standing in Solidarity.” Camden has recorded lower crime rates as of late. There were 75 homicides in 2012 and 25 last year, according to Bloomberg News. Complaints about the excessive use of force have also dropped.

Police in Camden – a high poverty city – are not militarized like the departments described in Balko’s book. There is a movement to stop sales of weapons from the Pentagon to local departments, and social democrats should support that movement. Camden’s experience proves that policing can truly be about public safety – something that should be provided to all regardless of income. Police have said they are called to deal with the homeless epidemic in cities and this is something they are not trained to do. Funding homeless shelters would take pressure off of police and free up funds used for policing.

While regarded by many on the Left as a seriously flawed politician, the late vice-president Hubert Humphrey called his vision for America “social democracy.”  Humphrey understood the importance of private property, but he also favored planning in certain parts of the economy. The vice-president wanted both freedom and equality and private property and social security. Each of our individual lives are, quite literally, private property and we must promote a vison of public safety that guards as many lives as possible.

Jason Sibert is the executive director of the Peace Economy Project.

Social Democrats USA endorse NINE FOR NEW YORK

On the heels of its recent endorsement of Adam Bojak for the New York State Assembly’s 149th District (Buffalo), the National Executive Committee of Social Democrats USA endorses these dynamic, progressive New Yorkers for public office:  

  • AOC – Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez – seeking re-election in the 14th Congressional District (Bronx, Queens). From her modest beginnings as a bartender, AOC has soared to become the premiere democratic socialist in the House of Representatives. She co-authored the Green New Deal and is a champion of Medicare For All.  She maneuvered Amazon, headed by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, into setting up shop in NYC’s Hudson Yards after foiling his plan to get NYS taxpayers to supply Amazon with billions of dollars in tax incentives. She is an advocate for sex work decriminalization and is currently doing in-person food and surgical mask drop-offs during this pandemic.
  • Jamaal Bowman: seeking election in the 16th Congressional District (Bronx, Westchester) against long-time incumbent Eliot Engel. Bowman, a middle-school teacher and principal, is a strong advocate for Medicare For All and abolishing corporate welfare. He offers his agenda as a distinct pro-peace alternative to the hawkish foreign policy of Engel, who opposed Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran and supported the US war in Iraq and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights.
  • Adem Bunkeddeko: seeking election in the 9th Congressional District (Brooklyn) against incumbent Yvette Clarke. Adem’s parents are refugees who fled Uganda’s civil war to come to the US. In addition to supporting Medicare For All and the Green New Deal, his signature issues are committing federal money to ensure affordable housing as a human right and reversing all of Trump’s setbacks to immigration: abolishing ICE and awarding all DACA recipients citizenship during this pandemic. Bunkeddeko came close to winning in 2018, losing by just a thousand votes to the increasingly neo-liberal incumbent Clarke.
  • Emily Gallagher: seeking election in the 50th Assembly District (North Brooklyn) against incumbent Joseph Lentol, who has of late been the recipient of real estate money and clashed with unions over his support for home-sharing giant Airbnb. By contrast, Gallagher is a vocal supporter of buttressing the historic Tenant Protection Act of 2019 and State Senator Julia Salazar’s legislation to mandate ‘good cause’ evictions in order to stop no-fault tenant evictions.
  • Mondaire Jones: seeking election in the 17th Congressional district (Westchester and Rockland Counties) for the open seat made possible by the retiring Rep. Nita Lowey. If elected, he would be the first-ever openly gay African-American member of Congress. He has made artful use of the Covid-19 pandemic to push for Medicare For All and other popular progressive legislation. One stand-out feature of his platform is his support for the German model of worker co-determination – letting workers elect a substantial percentage of representatives to their company’s board of directors.
  • Ron Kim: seeking re-election for his fifth term in the 40th Assembly District (Queens), This is one of the good incumbents: a stalwart for progressive principles who has been  willing to take risks for marginalized communities, be it Asian-American immigrants or sex workers. . He was instrumental in getting the brilliant sex worker advocate Kate Zen (one of our 2019 Left Forum panelists) appointed as Executive Director of the Asian Pacific-American Task Force of the NYS Assembly. Along with AOC, he played a leading role in defeating Amazon’s attempt to net billions of dollars in NYS tax breaks.
  • Yuh-Line Niou: seeking re-election for her third term in the 65th Assembly District (lower Manhattan).  She is the first Asian-American to represent Chinatown. Having restored her District’s reputation for honesty after it was ruined by her predecessor, the disgraced Shelly Silver, she secured a record $550 million in funding for the NYC Housing Authority for capital repairs to its crippling infrastructure. She voted for the successful repeal of Bill 50-A, which shielded police misconduct and police brutality from public scrutiny. As an initial Warren endorser, she has helped maintain the working alliance between Warren supporters and Berniecrats within the sex work decriminalization movement.
  • Jessica Ramos: seeking re-election in the 13th Senatorial District (Queens). She is the chair of the State Senate Labor Committee after having spent all of her adult years in the labor movement. After having defeated a Republican-leaning Democrat, Jose Peralta, in 2018, she is part of the progressive “blue wave” of New York State politics that compelled Gov. Andrew Cuomo to sign long overdue progressive legislation, sometimes reluctantly. She is co-sponsor of Senate Bill S.6419, which, if passed, will decriminalize consenting adult sex work in New York. During the pandemic, she is handing out food to the needy from her district office.
  • Julia Salazar: seeking re-election in the 18th – the “Greateenth” – Senatorial District (North Brooklyn).  Currently the chair of the State Senate Women’s Issues Committee, she defeated landlord favorite Martin Dilan in a landslide in 2018, spearheading the takeover of the State Senate from the rule of Republicans and conservative Democrats. The very first bill she authored, the Comprehensive Contraception Coverage Act, was signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. She was a key member of the coalition that led to passage of sweeping tenants’ rights legislation in 2019 and the repeal of the aforementioned Bill 50-A. But above all, she is an outstanding risk-taker. She is the first-ever Marxist in the NYS Senate.  She was the first NYS elected official to endorse Bernie Sanders in 2020. She co-sponsored the first-ever US legislation to decriminalize sex work involving consenting adults. She is the first-ever Jewish elected official in the US to support BDS. She has ignored the worrywarts who told her to play it safe, and instead, has only gotten stronger.