Last week’s midterm election results were a massive swing toward Democrats across the country. The Republican trifecta in the federal government has now been broken, creating opportunities to change policies and seek accountability for some of the worst harms of the last 2 years.
Meanwhile, direct ballot measures on issues like trans and abortion rights, billionaire taxes, redistricting, and voter ID laws in red and blue states alike were a mixed bag of results across the country that suggest there’s work to do on key issues.
So what does this shift really mean for those of us in movements working toward long-term progressive change and multi-racial democracy? And what are the next steps for that movement and the organizations driving it?
Last Wednesday, as we celebrated these major electoral victories, we gathered a panel of leaders to digest these results and think about what comes next to ensure these wins best serve the plurality of voters seeking material change and improvements in the long term.
Our guests for this round up of the midterm elections includes:
- Executive Director of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), Erin Heaney
- Executive Director of Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC), Chris Melody Fields Figuerdo
- Program Specialist at Reframe, Shaira Chaer
We’re also planning to continue this conversation with our comrades at Liberation Road in early December: keep your eyes peeled for an invitation to a live discussion about what comes next soon.
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Episode Guests
Chris Melody Fields Figueredo has been Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center since June 2018, bringing two decades of experience in advocacy, creating collaborative spaces, and movement building. She has devoted her career to social justice and ensuring our democracy works for “We the People.” She is the first queer woman of color to lead BISC, where she focuses on organizational vision, strategic planning, and fundraising. She believes ballot measures can be a tool for liberation, if we use them to build power, dismantle systems of oppression, and center the communities most impacted by the change we seek. Chris is Venezuelan-American, raised in Texas. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her daughter and border collie.
Erin Heaney is the executive director of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), organizing in majority-white communities to undermine the power of the Right and bring millions of white people into multi-racial movement. In her time at SURJ, Erin has shepherded significant growth and strategic shifts including the growth of the SURJ Chapter Network to over 150 local groups, the launch and growth of SURJ’s electoral organizing programs and the robust centering of and expansion of SURJ’s organizing in poor and working-class, rural and Southern communities. Prior to her work at SURJ, Erin was the founding director at the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York, a multi-racial, grassroots, member-led organization that supported front-line communities to win victories over corporations that harmed their communities.