News you can use the week of Nov 15th.
We’re feeling so grateful to all our members and the supporters of our scrappy little organization in recent years. Thanks to YOU, we flipped a US Senate seat, prevented an insurrectionist from becoming our next Governor, 13 of our 18 endorsed candidates won, including Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz, who flipped a key district in Reading for the state house.
At PA Stands Up, we organize for power. We work year-round in the same counties that are essential to putting progressives into office and delivering real change for working class people. We train leaders, organize around the issues our communities care about, and hold elected leaders accountable to our vision of a Pennsylvania for All of us.
This election showed that our deep investments in rural and small town Pennsylvania are showing powerful results.
Lancaster and Berks counties are largely written off as rural, red areas. Bullshit. Lancaster and Berks counties are full of promise: rural farms, who are experiencing massive generational turnover; small, diverse cities at the heart of the county, lucky enough to be home to immigrant populations who contribute significantly to the economy and culture.
In Lancaster County, the democratic candidates for US Senate and Governor in 2010 got about 32% and 29% of the vote, respectively. Twelve years later, those margins grew by nearly 9% and 18%. In Berks county, the swing toward a Democratic governor was almost 10%. Investing in our people in rural areas for the long-haul is worth it, and it’ll change Pennsylvania.
Lackawanna county is the sweetheart of the entire country, if you ask me. John Fetterman outperformed Joe Biden by 3% and Josh Shapiro outperformed Biden by 7.5%. Lots of political insiders told us it wasn’t worth knocking doors in Northeast Pennsylvania. “We’ll hit them with mail,” they said. We said bullshit. Our people are worth it. We asked our members and supporters for the money to knock on those doors. We found the people to knock them. And we told a better story.
In the Lehigh Valley, Northampton County was a pivot county in 2016, voting twice for Barack Obama and flipping for Donald Trump. Biden squeaked out a razor thin win in NorCo in 2020. We helped widen those margins this year — more than a point for Fetterman and nearly 6% for Shapiro — keeping our friends and neighbors in Northampton County on the right path: working class solidarity over white Christian nationalism.
We hope you can make it, and that you can take some more time this week to rest and pat yourself on the back. (Though you should check out a few of the events happening in the next two weeks below.)
With deepest gratitude, love, pride and solidarity,
—Carrie, Ashleigh, Eddie, and Jacob for PASU
P.S. Our event platform, Mobilize, has been experiencing some outages recently. You can also find information about tonight’s event on Facebook.
PA Stands Up
- 11/15 – The Path Forward: November’s Election and the Fight Ahead in 2023: Sign-up!
- 11/29 & 11/30 – Deep Canvass Institute: November Training Series: Sign-up!
Lehigh Valley Stands Upd
- 11/21 – LVSU Organizing Meeting: Sign-up!
- Pledge – Pledge Card-Mental Health Response: Sign-The-Pledge
Berks Stands Up
- 11/18 – A Hard Won Victory Party with Berks Stands Up: Sign-up!
That’s all we have this week! If you haven’t already, become a member of your local PA Stands Up chapter — or join as an “at-large member” living elsewhere in the state — so that together we can build a Pennsylvania that works for #AllofUs.