Grassroots and relational campaigning now hold the key to progressive electoral survival. The keys can be found at our Monday Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zooms (www.grassrootsep.org)

Traditional corporate media-based campaigning has become a death sentence. The untold millions wasted on this outmoded approach must be redirected.

Phone-banking, postcards, door-knocking, democracy centers and face-to-face conversation are essential to putting and keeping progressives in office.

So is precinct-level election protection guaranteeing fair ballot access and vote counts.

Key proof has come in Georgia’s 2020-2 US Senate campaigns, rooted in Andrea Miller’s Center for Common Ground and the political direction of Ray McClendon at the NAACP.

Facing immense odds, the emphasis on voter turnout and personal contact in Georgia’s predominantly of-color precincts swung runoff victories for Jon Ossof and Raphael Warnock, then Warnock’s re-election. Their triumph is documented in THE GEORGIA WAY

( https://independentmediainstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/The-Georgia-Way.pdf ).

But winnable races in Virginia, Ohio and elsewhere failed despite millions spent on media.

( https://www.rsn.org/001/the-dem-failure-to-follow-the-georgia-way-lost-virginia-and-points-toward-fascism.html?print=1 ).

Since April, 2020, our non-partisan Green Grassroots Election Protection (GREEP) zooms have focussed on protecting and enhancing the franchise among progressives of youth and color. Leadership has come from Miller, McClendon, Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, Arizona’s John Brakey & Ken Bennett, Florida’s Susan Pynchon and many others leading successful upheavals demanding fair, equitable, verifiable elections.

We’ve encouraged activists to NOT support donations to progressives of either major party whose campaigns are focussed on media advertising.

Since revelations of vote manipulations in Florida 2000 (Bev Harris & Greg Palast) and Ohio 2004 (Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman) a nationwide grassroots movement for mailed, hand-marked paper ballots has taken root. Thus in 2018 and 2020 as much as 80% of US ballots cast have been on paper, avoiding electronic manipulation and clearly affecting the outcome.

Advancing this right while shifting resources to get-out-the-vote efforts and precinct-level election protection has shifted control of our government in a progressive direction. But guarding this momentum against relentless right-wing attacks on the franchise of citizens of youth and color requires a deep grasp on the nuts-and-bolts of precinct-based voting…and on the tangible realities of bringing people out to vote.

Among others, right-wing strategist Steve Bannon has issued clear calls for anti-democracy activists to seize control of polling stations, and to work the grassroots at community-based organizing centers, school and election boards, and other on-the-ground pivot points.

Unless progressive resources counter-balance that strategy, our democracy will be lost.

centerforcommonground.org ; https://www.georgianaacp.org; grassrootsep.org