Black-led uprisings, visionary mass action, robust electoral defense, and strategic organizing have ousted Trump. But the Senate runoff races in Georgia will decide who controls the Senate – and whether or not we will be able to advance a progressive agenda.

Alongside our movement partners, and as part of a multi-racial coalition, Showing Up for Racial Justice is positioned to play a unique and decisive role in flipping the Senate.

Building off our success in Georgia during the 2020 presidential election cycle, SURJ will mobilize 30,000 white voters across Georgia to turn out to vote for Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff. We will not only impact the Senate races but build lasting infrastructure for ongoing organizing and lay the groundwork for racial and economic justice victories for years to come.

SURJ is the largest progressive program in the state that focuses on moving the needle with persuadable and low propensity white voters. Our Southern roots, the track record we have moving white voters in Georgia, and our deep relationships with Black-led organizations in the region position us to make a significant impact in these runoff elections.

​In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, SURJ made over 1 million calls to low-propensity white Democratic voters who we knew were suffering under the Trump administration and were unlikely to vote. Our program in Georgia engaged: over 3,800 volunteers to make 1 million calls; this led to 36,000 conversations with voters that secured 21,200 vote commitments for Biden. This is what strategic, focused electoral organizing looks like.
​The SURJ strategy is about deep listening. Until GOTV the week before the election, our conversations were 20-minute calls through which volunteers deeply connected with voters, centering white people’s mutual interest in ending racism. As a result, over 3,500 people said “yes” to joining our long haul organizing work for racial and economic justice after the election. Preliminary data out of the state shows that SURJ’s strategy and effort paid off: Biden made gains in majority white counties among whites without college degrees.
SURJ plans to build on and expand this work in the runoff election - we will re-engage low propensity voters and mobilize likely voters who are less likely to turn out in a special election.
SURJ sees our work as complementary to and reliant upon the success of organizing led by and focused on Black communities and communities of color. We understand what the Democratic Party and other liberal organizing groups have failed to appreciate for decades: that winning requires deep investment in organizing led by front-line communities of color, especially Black movement organizations.

The SURJ role within the Black led movement landscape is to organize white people to participate as an engaged and significant minority within multi-racial coalitions that win concrete change and build power for the long haul. We are members of the America Votes Table and we work alongside partners (including the New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter, Working Families Party, and many other groups) that have laid the foundation to flip Georgia through their tremendous ongoing work to expand the electorate with more Black voters while keeping real solutions to working people’s problems front and center.
In addition to the massive work done to turn out Black and Brown voters in Georgia, winning these Senate races will require winning a percentage of the white vote. The Right is strong in the state, and we know they will be using every racist trick in the book to ensure white voters are not motivated to vote or that they see themselves aligned with Republicans instead of this powerful, progressive multiracial coalition that has been built.
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SURJ will achieve this level of turnout in the next three months by:
  • Running a Covid-safe canvass operation. SURJ is setting up a minimum of 5 field offices in majority-white parts of the states or where partners ask us to take on predominantly white turf, likely in communities where we have high concentrations of members. Locations will be finalized after data is analyzed and will include Savannah, Canton, Athens, Chattanooga Suburbs, and Marietta. We are recruiting canvassers from our Georgia base, from our national membership, and are absorbing other volunteers from majority-white national formations. Our canvassing operations in rural counties will be led by rural, working class white Southerners on SURJ’s organizing team.
  • Running scaled phone banks. SURJ has a highly-motivated and skilled volunteer phone bank infrastructure. SURJ will run (1) weekly phone banks starting December 1st that will average about 120,000 dials and 5,000 conversations per week with voters and (2) a daily GOTV phone bank operation the week of the election. We will re-engage with the people we have already called and also expand to calling higher propensity voters.
  • Race-forward and culturally relevant mail and digital program. SURJ will develop and disseminate culturally relevant and race-forward content to its universes through mail and digital. We will re-engage people who committed to joining SURJ through our phone banks, test pieces like “Rednecks for Warnock” and other creative pieces, and develop messages that directly combat the anticipated racialized attacks on Warnock intended to win over white voters.
​SURJ is moving quickly to begin implementing this plan - we already have the phone banking infrastructure and we have key staff on the ground in Georgia.
SURJ is the largest national organization of explicitly anti-racist white organizing in U.S. history, founded by Southerners and rooted in the history of powerful Southern organizing.

Across SURJ’s staff & board, 52% are Southern and 70% come from poor or working class communities. Southern Crossroads, a project of SURJ by and for Southerners in small towns and rural communities, is bringing in new people with its race-forward framework that addresses the needs of struggling people, and it’s being noticed. Projects like Rednecks for Black Lives and NASCAR Fans for Black Lives have become the cutting edge of a critical shift in what is happening with white people, and garnered coverage of our game changing work in the NY Times and on NPR.

​In addition to our Southern Crossroads project membership, we have a national network of 175 chapters, over 500,000 people connected with us through email and social media, a base of 10,000 active member-organizers, and 50,000 people who have participated in action on-the-ground actions with us this year.
SURJ works deeply alongside Black and people-of-color led organizations and movements. Historically, Black and POC-led organizing work has been severely underfunded, especially in the South and in Georgia. We asks that donations made to SURJ be matched to a Black or POC-led group on the frontlines in this moment. If resourcing Black organizing & organizing in the South isn’t already part of your giving plan, please make a match gift to organizations such as: New Georgia Project Action Fund, Black Voters Matter, Mijente, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR), and Fair Fight Action.

You can find a full list of partner organizations at: showingupforracialjustice.org/match
HOW TO GIVE TO SURJ OR SURJ PAC
Our primary need is for donations to SURJ’s PAC, however c4 gifts are also appreciated!
To give to Showing Up for Racial Justice, Inc. (SURJ), (501c4)
To give to SURJ PAC