Building the Democracy Movement: 2022 In Review, what's in store for 2023, & the importance of supporting our movement
Our work at MarchOnHarrisburg is necessary and immense. We fight for democracy so that we can build a world of love and service where everyone thrives, and we fight against fascism so that we do not further unlock the greed and absolute horror that humanity is capable of. We stand in the breach between this love and fear, this joy and terror. We fight for democracy as we descend into madness, and we march into the halls of corruption to convert practitioners of corruption into democracy warriors. We smash idols to move us from the golden rule of idolatry to the Golden Rule, from ‘The guy with the gold makes the rules’ to ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
As the end of the year quickly approaches, let’s take a look at what we have done this past year, what we plan to do in the next year, our financial situation, and more.
To be blunt, we need your donations so we can keep doing this important work. Recurring monthly donations are especially impactful, but any amount helps!
First, here are some quick numbers for 2022:
[Get details on the above here: the Rabid Rabbi, 40 under 40 award, and the brick wall of corruption]
Our Campaigns
MarchOnHarrisburg currently has four ongoing campaigns alongside the outreach, leadership development, and organizational infrastructure that drives everything forward. They are the Gift Ban, Ranked Choice Voting, Poor People's Campaign, and Pennsylvania Action on Climate.
Gift Ban
We moved the Gift Ban out of committee for the second consecutive session, but we were unable to win a full House vote despite our aggressive attempt to bypass the House Majority Leader with a rare once-in-a-century legislative maneuver.
We organized heavily this session in Centre County in the districts of the only two powerful gatekeepers opposed to the bill, and we made them defend corruption on their home turf all session by knocking on over 3,500 doors, flyering at large events, yard-signing everywhere, and generating sustained local media coverage through protests at their district offices and their golf course fundraisers.
We are a non-electoral organization, but it is worth noting that every single powerful legislative leader who has actively opposed the Gift Ban has lost their position within one session: We are 4/4. In every one of their districts, inspiring and motivated local electoral opposition did mobilize against them while campaigning aggressively on our democracy issues, but none of the democracy obstructionists lost at the ballot box because of their huge campaign war chests and gerrymandering.
They all lost in the Capitol: Metcalfe lost his committee chair, Turzai resigned, Corman retired, Benninghoff lost his leadership position and will soon resign.
There have been 33 Gift Ban bills introduced over the last 22 years. We have now passed two of those 33 out of committee. Next session, we pass it into law.
RANKED CHOICE VOTING
We continued to grow the RCV movement in PA through social media, educational events (both in-person and online), and by developing policy expertise, writing our bill, and lobbying in the State Capitol. We have partnered with national experts from FairVote, RCV Resource Center, and Rank The Vote, we have built RCV coalition strength (mostly through our educational presentations) across PA, and we have built our statewide RCV working groups.
We are ready to introduce our bill next session with support in the Legislature and are hopeful that an interesting coalition of ‘everyone except MAGA legislators’ could pass it (trump supporters correctly see RCV as a direct threat against toxic campaigning and election winners who do not have majority support).
Other Policies
We successfully played defense this session against judicial gerrymandering and repealing vote by mail, and as we continue to grow, we can also grow the number of proactive democracy campaigns we are waging. We have partnered with national policy experts on public campaign financing, national popular vote, ballot initiatives, open primaries, and voting rights (same day and automatic voter registration, and early voting), and we are currently working with law students at Penn to design a new state ethics code. We have 23 policies to win in our Money Out, People In Platform.
We are ready to fight as fast as we can grow the movement, develop leaders, and support the staff necessary to support the movement.
Pennsylvania Poor People's Campaign
We continue to be a core member of the Poor People's Campaign in PA. MoH leaders serve on the coordinating committee as a statewide tri-chair, faith leaders chair, and media and communications chair. This past year as the PA PPC, we mobilized thousands of Pennsylvanians for the June 18th Moral March on Washington, hosted two national PPC events in Philadelphia, and helped contact and mobilize 5 million poor voters across the USA ahead of the midterms. I also spoke before Congress in September.
For our PPC friends and other allies, we regularly provide assistance and strategic planning help on everything from forming a legislative strategy to organizing clergy for rallies to taking on media work for a direct action to making 300 sandwiches to setting up massive outdoor tents to accounting services to website construction and more. We try hard to be mensches to our friends and share our strengths (and, also, get help from them on our weaknesses).
Pennsylvania Action on Climate
This year, we started a moral fusion group with our climate allies across PA to focus on corruption-fueled ecological devastation. We conduct nonviolent direct action trainings and carry out and support decentralized nonviolent direct actions. Our first set of actions was in June, and in just the last two weeks we pulled off a direct action in State College and one at the swanky PA Society in NYC.
Outreach
We are constantly recruiting new members and organizing people into the various chapters and working groups that drive our work. Our main outreach effort now is organizing toward our spring 2023 barnstorming tour, with a focus on organized religion, labor, and universities. We will be doing 25-30 events across PA to educate, motivate, and organize.
Leadership Development
This year, our political education team has been building our School course by course while offering dozens of presentations to our members and allies, including: Ranked Choice Voting, History of PA Political Corruption, Lobbying, Nonviolent Direct Action, Researching Your Legislators, Tik Tok Production, Poor People's Campaign 101, and Letters to the Editor.
We are currently (and always) building the School. Our current projects are: Developing ‘Corruption Connection’ educational materials to clearly show how corruption affects different problems in Pennsylvania, building our organizing courses, and creating an engaging graphic novel showing the life-cycle of a legislator and a voter. We also held an in-person leadership retreat in July in York for the first time since the pandemic started!
Organizational Infrastructure
MoH is a collection of working groups, chapters, and staff that maintain the organizational infrastructure necessary to advance our campaigns. These duties include art production, march logistics, legislative and policy research, interns, fundraising, accounting, legal support, education, graphic design, and coalition building. Out of these, I would like to highlight three specific departments:
Media
Every word of the following paragraph is a different hyperlink to a different article about us this year:
We are everywhere in the news. Whenever we do anything, we get Capitol coverage, we often get statewide coverage, and we sometimes get national coverage. We have close relationships with journalists, we are asked to comment on any relevant story, and we are knowledgeable, truthful, and reliable sources as well as story generators.
Social Media
We are on Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Three of our Tik Toks have received over 100k views, and it’s been quite amusing and inspiring to see new people joining MoH through finding us on Tik Tok.
Website
We have true web wizards within MoH who keep our various websites running smoothly. This year, we created an interactive map that allowed constituents to quickly see who their State Rep. is, what their position on the Gift Ban is, and how to contact them.
Financial Update
In 2022, we raised a combined $138,448.52 and we spent $208,240.58. If we were to raise no more money for the rest of 2022, we would end the year with about $64,000 in the bank. Our average monthly expenses are about $16,000 (almost all of which goes to our full-time staff of three), so we are currently solvent until the end of April. We would like to raise $60,000 by the end of the year so we can begin the year with the confidence that we are funded through the summer. We would like to also raise even more than that, because there is no shortage of work to be done.
Please donate.
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Thank You!
There is joy in being truthful and honest brokers in a house of lies. There is honor in being nonpartisan peacemakers in a hyper-partisan and war-torn system of rotting political trenches. We march on because we are in love with the world of love we can build through democracy. Thank you for your support.
For Love and Democracy,
Rabbi Michael Pollack
