Everything You Need to Know to Defend Democracy This Week
This could be one of the most important weeks in our lifetimes. On Tuesday evening elections officials all across the country will begin to report out results of the 2020 election. Throughout the entire election season Donald Trump has waged a war on democracy. For months he’s refused to accept the results of the election, making up baseless claims of ‘voter fraud.’ His Republican Party has resurrected a dirty trick of the Jim Crow south by deploying tens of thousands of right-wing operatives to intimidate voters of color all across the country, and his Postmaster General Louis DeJoy attempted to gut the US Postal Service just before millions of Americans cast their ballots by mail.
Trump has done everything that he can do to steal the election. But even after pulling out all of the stops in his outright assault on democracy, millions of people are heading to the polls to vote him out of office. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers and organizers have knocked on doors, phone banked, text banked, and defended polling locations to defend democracy. So far, more than 90 million people have cast their ballots. In the state of Texas, more people have already voted early in 2020 than voted during the whole 2016 election season. And over the next three days, millions more will vote.
If you are eligible to vote and you haven’t voted yet, the single most important thing you can do over the next three days is to go out and vote.
And on November 3rd, after you vote and volunteer to get-out-the-vote or support polling sites, hit the streets. If you’re in Washington, DC, come to Black Lives Matter Plaza. We’re going to start this next phase of the election cycle in the streets. Starting at 4pm we’ll have GoGo bands, salsa dancers, artists, cultural workers, and much more. We’ll also be watching the election results coming in on big screens.
Votes will still be coming in, so this will (probably) not be the time we need to create disruption to stop a coup - yet. But we’ll be in a good place to respond to whatever might happen. This has been a really long and dark era so we’re going to be together to process our hope, anger, fear and exhaustion as a community.
Regardless of the results, election-night programming will probably wrap up around midnight so we can be energized and ready to hit the streets again on the 4th.
It’s impossible to know what will happen on election night, but we know that no matter what the outcome is, we need to be in the streets. We may need to mobilize against attempts to stop the vote count, we might need to respond to massive voter suppression on election day, or we might need to fight back against a full blown coup.
This is an incredibly fluid time and things are likely to change rapidly. The best way to be in touch is to sign up for text messages from ShutDownDC by texting DEMOCRACY to 88202.
To help get us started, we’ve got the basics of action plans for the rest of the week - times, meeting places, some ideas about tactics that we can take. But exactly what each day of action looks like is going to really come down to how the vote count is playing out and the threats and opportunities that we’re facing. (And of course, plans may change completely… so make sure to text DEMOCRACY to 88202 to sign up for text updates):
On Wednesday, November 4th we’re meeting at 11am at Black Lives Matter Plaza AND Union Station (pick which one is most convenient for you), and we’ll step off to visit some of the organizations and institutions that have been enabling Trump’s attack on democracy for so long.
The afternoon of the fourth we’ll all regroup at McPherson Square to join the Protect the Results Coalition rally at 3pm.
That evening we’ll flesh out our plans more at an open organizing meeting and spokes council at 6pm in Black Lives Matter Plaza.
Then on Thursday morning we’re starting early--at 7am. And we’re heading to the White House by bike, by car, and on foot.
On Friday, we’ll hit the streets early in the morning again. And then reconvene at 12 noon for the Count Every Vote rally led by Casa in Lafayette Square.
These certainly are interesting times. There’s a ton happening this week and there are lots of ways to get involved. We’re having our last spokes council meeting before the election tomorrow (Sunday, November 1) at Black Lives Matter Plaza (and online). If this is your first meeting join us at 3pm and we’ll bring you up to speed on the plans already in place and the way we’ve organized ourselves. Then at 4pm we’ll jump right into the final planning for this historic week of actions.
Stay safe and healthy - Love and solidarity,
#ShutDownDC
