RAD Regional Organizer Kevin Pentz at the polls in the Lakes Region supporting our local endorsed candidates!
RAD Leaders in Action
New RAD member and activist Gwen DeYoung-Reynolds is leading the charge for adequate unemployment benefits in New Hampshire. After being furloughed in the spring, Gwen began organizing weekly rallies in Portsmouth to demand that our Congressional leaders and the Trump administration not leave workers stranded with no support.
Jodi Newell is not only a RAD member leader, she’s at the forefront of organizing to end the overdose crisis in New Hampshire. She recently hosted a panel with Real Progress in Action centered on the war on drugs, the opioid crisis, and the subsequent economic/societal impacts of the criminalization of mental health issues. You can watch the full video (featuring some other great RAD members) here!
September often brings to mind the hallmarks of fall – back-to-school, cooler weather, the onset of leaf peepers – but for this year at least, it is also a month full of question marks. Fresh from a prolonged period away, students are, in a fashion, returning to school. Yet as we continue to monitor the daily pandemic reports, even resuming the familiar routines of school and work feels uncertain. In the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, racial justice uprisings persist across the country and the potential threats to our democracy remain disturbingly palpable.
But we are still here and we are still working for the change that is becoming increasingly essential for our collective well-being.
Did we mention that this September marks RAD’s fifth anniversary? When we launched RAD five years ago, we could not have imagined how critical a popular movement would become in leading the fight for our rights and our democracy.
On Monday, we took time to celebrate Labor Day and kick off our sixth year with a few of our biggest movement advocates including US Senator Bernie Sanders, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO, Sara Nelson, as well as RAD-endorsed candidates, activists, artists, RAD leaders, and more. If you missed it, you can watch the full video here.
We don’t have all the answers, but we do know that in everything from ensuring the needs of our communities are met to realizing a shared vision for our future, all of us together can make the difference. We couldn’t be doing this work without you.
Let’s keep going.
Onward,
James
CAMPAIGNS
MILK WITH DIGNITY
This month, RAD hosted #MilkwithDignity: Farmworkers Call on Hannaford Supermarkets Across the Northeast, a webinar with ally organization, Migrant Justice, on the latest campaign urging the supermarket chain to stop the exploitation of farm workers by joining the Milk with Dignity program. For more information and updates on the campaign and how you can get involved, click here.
On Monday we kicked off Labor Day and RAD’s sixth year with Sen. Bernie Sanders, President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO, Sara Nelson, New Hampshire gubernatorial candidate, Andru Volinsky, Vermont gubernatorial candidate, David Zuckerman, Singer and activist Myra Flynn, and many more! To see the full recording, head over to our Facebook.
IN THE MEDIA
RAD NH Member Terri O’Rorke was published for her piece about NH Gubernatorial Candidate Andru Volinsky’s energy policy.
RAD Leadership Committee member Andrea Polizos was also published in the Keene Sentinel highlighting Volinsky’s climate action plan.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Fighting for Congress to #SaveThe600 and extend UI benefits with Gwen DeYoung-Reynolds in Portsmouth.
The #NotMeUs movement lives on in our push to elect our endorsed candidates into office this fall in NH.
MOVEMENT POLITICS
We’re incredibly excited to share that of the 21 RAD endorsed candidates with contested primaries, 15 won!
Our organizers and members texted over 63,000 voters ahead of yesterday’s primary! We saw record voter turnout in NH with nearly 265,000 votes and counting (soaring past 2018’s 228,000 votes).
Thank you to all our members who helped get out the vote! Interested in helping us elect our candidates inthe general? Phonebank with RAD! Sign up here.
Rights & Democracy endorsed over 100 candidates in New Hampshire – a record number, and an incredible indicator of how many excellent candidates we have running this year. To see the full list and prepare for the general election, head over to our website to learn more about the candidates.
CHAPTERS
Our regional organizers have been hard at work within their communities and alongside campaigns to support our local endorsed candidates with primaries. From the Seacoast to the Upper Valley and everywhere in between, we’ve been using every tool we have to spread the word on our movement candidates.
Upper Valley Regional Organizer Ali Brokenshire is hosting a screening of Knock Down the House on the 10th to celebrate primary wins and energize our ongoing support of RAD endorsed candidates in the weeks ahead of the general election.
Lakes Region Organizer Kevin Pentz has been hard at work supporting our endorsed candidates in the region – his efforts paid off when we saw endorsed candidate Carlos Cardona win his primary! On to the General!
Monadnock Regional Organizer Heather Stockwell is helping start a SURJ (Showing Up For Racial Justice) Chapter in their region; for those interested in getting involved, fill out this form.
Our new Greater Manchester & Nashua Regional Organizer Brandon Lemay hosted a Meet the Candidates panel in their region last week – for those interested in meeting the Manchester & Nashua Region’s candidates, you can watch the full video here.
A PARTING NOTE
The world has lost a few good souls in the past weeks, and we’d like to take a moment to remember and lift up two friends whose marks on the world left us better than we were.Anthropologist, activist and author, David Graeber died this month. A leading figure in Occupy Wall Street, Graeber brilliantly engaged with the gravity of everything we are up against in his uniquely frank yet hopeful style. We recommend his book, The Democracy Project for an insightful analysis of the Occupy movement, the takeaways, and where we can go next.
We are deeply saddened by untimely passing of Chadwick Boseman, the actor best known for portraying Black Panther in the Marvel superhero films, but who, in his short career, also played several key Black figures including Thurgood Marshall and James Brown. Boseman’s work is a cultural milestone, which gave Black and Brown youth a superhero to identify with and all of us a glimpse at a vision of a world with Black joy.
Rest in power and peace. The world will miss your bright lights.