Not Me, Us.

Friends and Constituents,

I hope you all are well. Is it just me, or has every single week of 2025 felt like a decade?

As usual, I have been staying incredibly busy. I’ve been fighting against local, state, and federal government overreach and abuses. I’ve been showing up at the Statehouse, I’ve been going to IPS board meetings, I’ve been voting at Democratic Party reorganization, I’ve been at union meetings, I’ve been at neighborhood association meetings, and I’ve been to rallies and protests.

But looking back at that paragraph, there’s a clear problem: the pronoun “I”.

Bernie Sanders correctly pointed out that the actions of one individual are not ever going to be enough to accomplish the revolution that is required to put politics in this country back on the right track. That’s why he focused so much energy on the slogan, “Not Me, Us.”

Today, I write all my own social media, handle all my own emails and phone calls and texts, participate in Discord groups and Slack groups and Whatsapp groups and Signal groups. I very rarely receive much support from the taxpayer-funded City Council staff, as they all report to President Vop Osili, who has refused for fifteen months to give our district fair representation in committee assignments.

But hundreds of people have reached out to express support for the independent, constituent-focused, unbought and unbossed form of politics that we are practicing in District 13. Many people have asked how they can help support our project. The people of District 13, and the people of Indianapolis, have shown how badly they want a change from the status quo.

It’s up to all of us to build a better world.

If you are reading this, I’d love to work alongside you to be a co-creator of a new way of doing politics. No matter what your skill set is, no matter where you have expertise, we need your help.

First off -

if you can spare a few dollars, please click here to donate to my new Building Power fund.

​I want to start paying stipends to supporters for their help with the campaign, to allow more people to get involved without quitting their day jobs. I want to start printing and distributing newsletters. I want to start preparing now for May and then November in 2027, when all 25 Councilors and the Mayor are all up for re-election.

Here is a short list of the organizing tasks we can accomplish with more money, more volunteers and more collaborators:

1. Website help: I’m proud of the amount of information we have on www.jesseforindy.com, but it could be far better. We need developers to help improve upon the functionality and design of the current site. We need translators to help us get information out to constituents for whom English isn’t their first language - especially but not exclusively Spanish speakers. We need researchers to look into Council proposals and prepare summaries of each proposal for other constituents to read.

2. Canvassing help: We currently have about 800 people on the campaign email list. In a district of 36,000 people, that is far too few. We need canvassers willing to knock doors in the district to pass out literature with my contact information and information about how to get involved in organizing. We need friendly people to sit and table in front of local businesses to catch people who aren’t often at home during canvassing hours. We need neighborhood liaisons who can attend neighborhood association meetings to gather feedback and represent the Council, especially on nights when meetings conflict with committee meetings.

3. Help reporting problems: Currently, many of the city’s departments have very limited ability to understand the needs of our neighborhoods due to a lack of data. They rely upon requests made to the Mayor’s Action Center or RequestIndy app in order to understand the depth and location of our district’s many needs. We need walkers/bikers/drivers willing to intentionally tour around the district submitting tickets for every pothole, damaged sidewalk, and messed up alley they see. These people can then share information about their submissions, and we can file public records requests to be able to prove to the city and to the media how many unfulfilled requests we are dealing with. This will also help ensure that the district will not experience more retaliation by President Osili and Mayor Hogsett.

4. Town Hall help: We need event planners to plan and execute big public facing events at least quarterly. This includes marketing, working with venues, security, A/V support, etc. These folks can also help facilitate our monthly People’s Caucus meetings prior to full Council meetings.

5. Fundraising help: We need fundraisers to help call through lists of prior donors to collect feedback and ask if they would donate again to help prepare for the next election and to allow the campaign to provide more resources to volunteers between elections. We need hosts for house parties that could gather neighbors to talk politics and discuss our campaigns. We need friends to ask their friends to consider small recurring donations, so we can continue to be an entirely people-powered campaign without any corporate or PAC funding.

6. Graphic design help: We need designers for new literature, campaign materials, better images for emails, merch, and so on. My original campaign logo has served extremely well - but we could use a much bigger portfolio of design elements to help easily come up with campaign-branded materials.

7. Audio/visual help: We need photographers, videographers, and audio technicians to help document more of the work that constituents and I are doing around the district. We need social media experts to create posts featuring this content. We need constituents willing to be interviewed on camera about their frustrations with the status quo, their hopes for the future, and their assessment of how the district is doing.

8: Correspondence help: We need friendly writers to help with constituent services: folks who could take a first crack at emailing constituents back if they’re writing about common issues. We need liaisons who could proactively contact neighborhood associations and other constituent groups.

9. Policy help: We need policy wonks and those willing to dive deep on specific policy areas who could help provide a semi-formal “brain trust” for the campaign. We need researchers who could study issues to propose new policies for the campaign to champion, or who could study proposals in front of the Council to recommend a stance for the campaign to take.

And finally,

10. Electoral help: We need potential candidates who could consider running for office at every level - from Precinct Committeepeople to US Senators - over the next few years. We need trainers who can build on our existing resources to help candidates build their own teams and challenge the establishment politicians currently holding our city back.

I’m looking for people who can do any of the ten things above, or other ideas you have, and who are willing to work together to do them.

For now, we can get organized under the banner of my existing campaign committee. But as we start to work with each other, I would like to move beyond District 13 and beyond one campaign for one race.

What if instead of a committee to get one person re-elected, we had a small-d democratic organization that voted on leaders and strategies, and we worked to change the politics of the entire city?

What if we grew beyond that group to become a statewide organization?

If you can help with our tasks, and if you want to join me in dreaming bigger, reply to this email. I’ll set up a callout meeting soon where we can meet each other and get organized.

I hope to hear from you soon!

In love and solidarity,

Jesse