VICTORY! And a plea

Friends,

What a weekend! We gathered around 175 people through the doors of our fundraiser at the Inferno Room on Friday night - raising thousands of dollars and dozens of volunteers for Katrina Owens in the process.



Then we gathered dozens of people for a weekend-long training. A badass crew of veteran organizers flew in from New York, Boston, and the Bay Area to join amazing leaders from right here in Indiana to conduct an outstanding training. The end result of this training: dozens of people, very few of whom had been involved in politics before this weekend, now know what it takes to win a campaign, have skills and resources to do so, and are organized into fundraising, canvassing, and campaign leadership committees to help Katrina Owens win.  

The entire training, food, coffee, writing materials, and lodging for out-of-town guests were all provided free to all attendees thanks to the amazing Freedom From Freeman donors who helped us put this on. No one was turned away and everyone who attended walked away having learned an immense amount.


The heroic and amazing trainers happily and enthusiastically gave up their entire weekend to help us build the grassroots power that it will take to start reclaiming our democracy and put our government to work for the people, not the big donors and corporations. They did it all for free and nobody was paid a dime up front. As much as I'm shocked and grateful for their generosity, I feel deeply that providing some honorariums for the trainers would be the right thing to do - so I'm putting a bit of my own money to that task.

If, like me, you want to encourage this kind of amazing solidarity and dedication, please join me in donating generously through this link:

Movement Campaigns

All proceeds raised this week will be given as honorariums and stipends to the trainers who gave up their whole weekend to help us grow.  

And the form will stay active in perpetuity: as many participants asked for, we will be holding these trainings in future years to continue to build the teams it will take to remake our democracy.

I'll sign off now to go watch the eclipse, but you'll be hearing a lot more from me this week. Still to come as soon as I have time to write the emails:

-All the slide decks, Google Sheets templates, "scripts", and documents from the weekend's training

-Longer thoughts about the incident last month where I was hit by a car on my bike.

-Updates on recent City County Council developments and priorities

-My usual summary of activities for last week

I'm physically extremely tired from all of this weekend's activities. But I've never been more optimistic, energized, and ready to win as now, after spending the whole weekend surrounded by friends and fellow travelers on the path towards democracy and justice.

We have a world to win. And this weekend it became crystal clear: we are the ones who can win it.

In love and solidarity,
Jesse