Friends, here’s the truth:

As billionaire-backed data centers spread across our Commonwealth, they drive up our utility bills. Greedy corporations and corrupt elected officials make backroom deals and line their own pockets, while working class Pennsylvanians continue to struggle to put food on the table. 

At Pennsylvania Stands Up, we say enough! While billionaires use their ill-gotten gains to turn working people against each other, we build class solidarity across race, place, and generation; we develop leaders to elect working class champions who fight for us. 

And while Jeffrey Yass and the other 1,134 US billionaires are desperately clinging to what they have stolen from us, thousands of Pennsylvanians hunger for working class power. 

At our post-election huddle, one of our Regional Organizing Managers, Rob, grounded us by reflecting on his own organizing journey. 

“The minute I graduated high school, I knew I wanted to dedicate my life to fighting that same fight for a future where people with power did something with it. Where they didn’t just let children go hungry, where they didn’t let single moms work 60+ hours a week to get by.”

At first, Rob didn’t know how to enter that fight until he took a risk. During his first semester of college, he knocked doors. On blocks he had never been to, talking to people he wouldn’t have met at other venues. 

“It was eye-opening – there were a lot more people who also saw that things were broken, who were waiting to be invited into a vision for the future they could see themselves in.”

The next year, Rob took another risk: he ran for the Columbia School Board at 19 years old. He had a choice to make; he wasn’t an expert in balancing budgets or middle school curriculum, but he knew what it felt like to sit in a classroom with over 30 kids and no one to one instruction, to have substitutes all year because of teacher shortages, and to use textbooks that were falling apart at the spine. 

Rob also knew this:

“I wanted to be a leader who was willing to stand up for what I knew was right – even if it seemed unpopular, and even if no one else had the courage to do it.”

But he didn’t take that risk alone. Rob had a mentor to show him the ropes of petition filing, designing campaign lit, and raising money. Hundreds of volunteers joined him. Together, they flipped control of the Columbia School Board six years later and are now moving towards a governing majority on the borough council. 

{{FirstName or “Friend”}}, we’re facing harsh realities. Whether we are Black, white, or brown, native or newcomer, we must fight back, recruit, protect, and organize.  It’s time for us to act courageously, and it starts by talking to our neighbors, including those who don’t agree with us on everything. Join us for a community canvass to build multiracial working class power.

As the year closes, we all hunger to build working‑class power—that means organizing people, ideas, and money. Our End of Year Campaign begins now. This is our final push to raise as much organized money as we can, and we need you to take a risk with us and help fund our own liberation. Use our toolkit with graphics, captions, and a guide on how to make your own reel and make an ask for our end of year campaign. We need all hands on deck! Our goal is $5,000 to ensure that we have what we need to sustain our work and win governing power in 2026.

Winning our vision of the future won’t happen alone; join a chapter membership team or our statewide comms team.

The path forward is clear, let’s take it together.

In Solidarity,

PA Stands Up Staff