Stories of Impact 2024 - The States Project (original) (raw)

Dear Giving Circles,

There is a certain numbness that came with the 2024 election. I felt myself protecting my heart, minute by minute on election night, then hour by hour, and then day by day after November 5th. The pain of the results at the top of the ticket didn’t hit me like a sledgehammer as it had in 2016 — it seeped in like water dealing more damage to a boat that I already knew had holes.

Over the past eight years, a lot of us have had to come to terms with who we are as a country. Pondering that — questioning our neighbors, our family, our friends, and their choices — can be particularly painful in moments like these.

I have been lucky enough to spend these eight years building and being part of a community of Giving Circle Leaders and Members, people who know just what the not-yet-fulfilled American Promise means. It means effective government, fair markets, personal freedom, representative democracy — that’s good schools, affordable healthcare, abortion access, jobs that can support our families — and it’s worth fighting for.

That’s why we remain committed to building governing power in state capitols; this power is an insurance policy against the worst of a MAGA agenda. And when it comes to state legislatures, together, we know we have the ability to have real impact. Indeed we have had an impact even in a national environment as tough as this year.

Our greatest electoral victories of 2024 were at the state level, where States Project Giving Circle Leaders, this community, has been focused all along. Today, our team remains standing and ready — because Giving Circles are with us.

Over the next four years, the rightwing will do everything they can to break our government down and dismantle it. But because of folks who are with us — folks like you — we have a shot to protect the aspiration of the American Promise. A good shot. Because we are staying in the fight.

This is not a flash-in-the-pan project, not a reactive and exhausting endeavor. No. We Giving Circle Leaders? We tend steadily to democracy at its foundational power centers — in state capitols. We love a win, we do, but we are in it for the fight.