DEMS 101 GOES TO THE DNC
Yes! Democrats 101 is present at the Democratic National Convention. Look for our new a just society .. as long as it takes bracelets on delegates’ wrists, and the Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity cards and definitions being passed around. We are truly thrilled that the Harris campaign has taken up the cry of Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity. Those three words are Democrats in a nutshell. They are what it means to be a true American.
UPCOMING EVENTS
MICHIGAN: RURAL SUMMIT 2024
Dems101 will be at the “Rural Summit 2024”, sponsored by the Michigan Rural Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party. The event will take place on April 11-13, 2024 at the Shanty Creek Resort in Bellaire, Michigan.
GEORGIA: CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 9
Jim Purvis. Founder and Author of Democrats 101, and State Representative Joe Miller (District 53, Ohio) will address county chairs and activists of the 9th Congressional District on April 13th, 2024 at the Craddock Center near Blue Ridge, Georgia.
OHIO: FOUR CORNERS
On Saturday April 20th, Dems101 will participate in the Four Corners event at Bowling Green State University, sponsored by the Ohio Democratic Party’s Rural Caucus.
Barbarians!
They are at the gate. They’re at the side door, too, and the back door, and crawling through the basement windows. They’re everywhere, because the Barbarians aren’t really a person, they’re an idea: that social progress can be turned around, that history can be undone, that if you close your eyes tight enough, you can make it 1950 again.
Yes, Donald Trump is real. And so is the threat of another Trump Presidency. And, yes, we have to do everything in our power to defeat it, every bit of campaigning, every attack ad we can think of. But if defeating him in November is all we do, then we’re going to be left standing right where we were in the aftermath of 2020, the same place we’ve been for the past twenty years: stuck in the mud, looking at an endless struggle to win 51%.
The Barbarians have a message. They have a powerful message, and it’s about more than Donald Trump. It's a clever message that allows you to believe whatever you want as long as you close your eyes and join in. It’s powerful because it’s simple, it’s universal (for them), and it’s emotional.
how we changed the vote
There are 35,000 registered voters in Huron County, Ohio. 20,000 are unaffiliated, and it’s getting worse. Vitriol .. the constant barrage of phone calls and texts and direct mail that filled 2020 .. drove away more than 3,000 of those Democrats, right into the ranks of the unaffiliated.
And then there’s 2023. Democrats comprise just 9.4% of the registered voters, yet last November, 44% of all registered voters in the county voted Yes for Issue One, Ohio’s protection for Reproductive Rights. That happened because everyone worked together, tirelessly. But most of all, this victory happened because the special election was about basic rights, about the kind of core values that are held by most Americans, the kind they recognize and care deeply about.
An open letter from a red county Democratic Chair
Like many of you, I am a Democratic Party Chair in a very red rural county (Huron, Ohio) where just getting a Democrat to run for office is almost impossible. But, I look at my grandkids and think I have to do something. Something to begin the necessary conversations to raise awareness of the dangerous times we are in.
Those conversations cannot begin with policies. We have to reach common ground first. Freedom, Justice and Opportunity are values that are difficult to claim as belonging to only one party - they belong to all of us, Democrat, Republican, Unaffiliated. Defining Democrats as having these values is critical to having our views listened to and having credibility.
2024: Chaos, or unity?
The chaos part is easy. “2024” means November 5th, and that means fear. Trump. That one word. And we’re all determined to stand against him. All the way. But is that enough? Is that even the right way to look at it? If we attack him relentlessly, then defeat him again the same way we did in 2020 .. by the same margins .. what changes? What will another 51% victory leave in its wake?
The forces that created Trump will still be there. MAGA and its adherents, and the vast money machine that created them, will still exist. So will the deep tribalism they have managed to create. Their ability to take fear and hate and a coordinated campaign of lies, and turn it into a political machine capable of challenging for control of government, that will still be there as well.
And once we’ve defeated Trump permanently .. and losing a second Presidential election will do just that .. what do we do? Once we are no longer united by fear of Trump, what becomes of us? Do we go back to fighting each other, Progressives versus Moderates, elites versus the heartland? Do we go back to pushing this policy and that while regular Democrats, the lifeblood of our party, go back to feeling alienated and demoralized? Fear of Trump has united us. What will unite us once he’s gone?
A special letter to every angry Democrat in this country
Two counties in rural Georgia have just sent a message, and they’ve sent it to you. There’s nowhere redder than Oglethorpe and Gilmer Counties, no people more surrounded by MAGA hats and giant Trump flags and endless personal harassment .. no Democrats more angry and fed up. And now they’ve taken a stand. They’ve said enough! They’ve adopted the Democratic Creed officially, and with it they’ve sent a message
INSPIRE
“Inspire” is the word we’re missing. It’s the emotion we’re missing, as Democrats, as Americans who care about guiding this nation towards a future as a truly just society. If we’re not inspired towards our ultimate goal, if we don’t see it clearly, how will we get there?
MAGA inspires. Trump inspires. They inspire a sense of emotional identity, of enduring passion, something far deeper and far stronger than politics. Why don’t we inspire? Forget the next election campaign and the latest issue, why doesn’t the Democratic Party itself inspire? Why doesn’t who we are as a party cause Democrats to stand up with pride all over this country, sweeping independents and unaffiliated with them?
DEMS 101: the idea spreads!
Delta County (Michigan) Democratic Party will host an evening with Democrats 101 on Wednesday, November 1, 2023. Bryan Watson will be the featured speaker before Democrats from around Michigan's Upper Peninsula. If you'd like more information, please contact the Delta County Democratic Party at deltademsmi@gmail.com.
words, words, words
“… 80% of people in this country who share the ideals of our founding, who share the idea that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness .. at least 80% of this country shares the same basic values that we do.”
Quick, who said that?
Abraham Lincoln 2. Barack Obama 3. Joe Biden
or 4. Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes! Vivek Ramaswamy, the Trump wannabe did. He said it just the other day, and you shouldn’t be surprised. It’s what’s been going on for decades .. decades .. right in front of our noses, the theft of language. We have, in fact, all but helped them do it.
That quote is accurate, of course, he just mixed up the parties. But to his listeners, he didn’t get it wrong at all, he hit the nail on the head. Why? Because it sounded good. It made them feel good. And that’s what happens when messaging has no purpose beyond gaining power.
Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity are what we stand for as Democrats, what we all feel is in our hearts. But we have never written it down. We have never stood up and declared it in simple, unequivocal English that everyone can understand. And we have never gone on to declare it, over and over again, until every American in this nation has started to believe it. That’s the problem. Our sensing it is not enough. That so many of us assume it isn’t, either. These things, these ideas, have to be made public, and they have to dominate.
our moment
We are standing at a true moment in American history, a fork in the road that will decide our future as a nation. This fork isn’t about Donald Trump, and it isn’t about the next election. It’s about something much, much deeper. For the first time ever as a nation, we are actually facing up to the fundamental principal American democracy: are all people created equal? Do all of us .. everywhere .. have the same right to equal Freedom, equal Justice, and equal Opportunity? That is what’s really going on.
We have nibbled at the concept of equality for nearly 250 years. Back in 1776, of course, we had virtually none. Wealthy white males didn’t just dominate society, it was considered normal. Women didn’t count at all. Blacks and Native Americans were considered subhuman. Being born gay was considered an aberration worthy of either prison or death, and Catholics were considered spawn of the Devil.
evil is evil
When are Democrats going to stop reacting? When do we stop defending? Yes, Florida Republicans used language in a bill that says somehow, some part of slavery might have benefitted slaves. Yes, it’s sneaky. Yes, it’s despicable.
Our response? To lament the action. To send the vice President down to show outrage. That, is defending.
Our response should be a powerful, public statement of just how evil slavery was. A once and for all, clear and unequivocal statement of just how destructive the institution was, for the slaves above all, but also for the country .. morally, in blood, in destroyed lives, in the endless racism we are still paying for today. Slavery was evil. Period.
The urge
America was born into an ideal: that all people were created equal. That ideal was immediately submerged in a world that was very unequal. In 1776, most injustice wasn’t even considered injustice, just the way of things. But that founding ideal of innate equality persisted. It endured, and it spread, because it represented a very human urge to seek Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity, the same urge that had caused so many of those early Americans to come in the first place.
This idea of the innate equality of people spread rapidly among the common people during the Revolution. Few of us have even heard about this, just how many people began to look at the lofty Enlightenment sentiments being voiced by the elite white men leading the revolution, and began wondering “why not me, too?”
FILLINg a hole
The Supreme Court has spoken, and it’s going to go on speaking for a long time. But what is it really saying? That decision on gay rights isn’t really about gay rights, and the decision on affirmative action isn’t really about race. Deep down, these decisions … all of them, including Dobbs and those endless ones yet to come … are really a statement about a giant hole in this country, a spiritual hole: the lack of commonly accepted, fundamental American values. We don’t have those values written down anywhere, the basic beliefs that say who we are.
America has never had such a statement of values. Ever. For the first two hundred plus years, it didn’t matter. Nobody agreed on national values, so basically there weren’t any. Racism and injustice were ingrained in society. They were accepted. As a result, social progress was tough. It was bought very, very slowly, one agonizing issue at a time.
We have a story
We have a story that begins with with FDR, a mythical figure who was actually a very real human being, a man crippled in the prime of his life, yet who found the courage to abandon the precepts of his wealthy upbringing and work for the common good. His story is our story as Democrats: leading this nation out of a national catastrophe, then through a World War, and in the process creating the vision of a government that works for the people. That story that led to Social Security and workers rights and an end to child labor, then on to Medicaid and Medicare and voting rights and every other bit of social progress inspired by his vision. FDR’s story is indeed our story, even today, the endless struggle to keep that vision of a government of and for the people alive, and to make it work. FDR did nothing less than found our party and lay the emotional foundations for the idea of a truly just society.
Why we need a Democratic Creed
We need to stand for something. Our identity needs to be bigger than the next election, bigger than policy, bigger than all the events crashing around us. As Democrats, we need to stand for something so basic and so true that it inspires each and every one of us, something that unites and gives meaning to everything we do.
We have existed too long as a machine to win the next election. Of course we need to win the next election. We need to win the next ten elections, and we have to work our butts off to do it. And that's exactly why we need purpose, and vision. It's why we need to inspire. A party official recently said, “We need to find another Obama to inspire us.” No, we need our party to inspire us. We need to inspire us.
MOVING UP in the U.P.
Democrats 101 author J.M. Purvis was the first person the Democratic organizers thought of as they planned their first annual Rural Summit in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, April 14th and 15th. Purvis opened the conference in front of 140 Democrats from rural counties across Michigan. See Jim’s opening remarks here.
The summit was the brainchild of the Rural Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party, chaired by Cathy Albro. Special thanks to the Chippewa County Democratic Party for purchasing 140 copies of Democrats 101 so every attendee would have the book. We made additional copies available at our information table in the conference lobby, and several Democrats made donations to help us cover the costs (Thank you!!)