November 17, 2020

Dear friend, 

As I write this the effects of the most important election of our lifetimes are still unfolding in a year filled with uncertainty for all of us. Black-led uprisings, visionary mass action, robust electoral defense, and long term strategic organizing have ousted Trump and swung the state of Georgia. But Georgia's Senate runoff races will decide who controls the Senate and whether or not we will be able to advance a progressive national legislative agenda. Alongside our movement partners, and as part of a multi-racial coalition, SURJ is positioned to play a unique and decisive role in flipping the Senate, and we are rapidly expanding our organizing with a number of majority-white communities in Georgia.  

But no matter what the next few months bring, these things I know for sure: 

  1. Doing white anti-racist organizing at a bigger scale is possible. More people are with us than ever, and SURJ is moving them into action. When the pandemic hit, SURJ members mobilized 8,000 people to take nearly 25,000 actions in campaigns to release people from jails, prisons and detention centers. When Black-led uprising began in June, SURJ organized over 10,000 people from all 50 states and 20 countries to take public #endwhitesilence actions. SURJ members have called over 700,000 white voters in Georgia and Pennsylvania in support of the Movement for Black Lives and to unseat Trump. We grew from 125 to 175 chapters across the country and are still growing. 

  2. Organizing with poor white people has never been more important than it is now. We are seeing an extraordinary growth of anti-racist organizing in rural areas across the South. Southern Crossroads, a project of SURJ, is building on that momentum by resourcing organizing with a wide range of small-town groups and individuals who are making their voices heard in this crucial moment. We launched national social media that upended stereotypical narratives and called people to action with pieces like Rednecks for Black Lives and NASCAR Fans for Black Lives. We won powerful coverage in the NY Times and NPR lifting up proud voices of progressive organizing rooted in poor and working class Southern communities. We brought in thousands of new people from communities progressives often ignore through weekly digital organizing meetings.

  3. People need support and community in order to step into anti-racist action. This year we saw that when people are supported to take collective action and have ongoing support to learn and reflect together, people stick with us and make commitment to this work for a lifetime. In the words of one new SURJ member, “Participating in the Swing Georgia Left phone banks has done more to train me as an organizer than any other community of practice I've been a part of. I know for a fact that there are still lots of people out there waiting to be invited into action, because I was one of them!" 
    ​
  4. Following the leadership of the Black liberation movement is essential in order for any of us to get free. The transformation we’ve seen is because of their labor and leadership. This year, we were so proud to work alongside the Movement for Black lives, the New Georgia Project, and so many others. If you haven’t already, please make a matching gift to one of our partners this year. 

We’ve seen what’s possible when people resource the work and enable us to scale up. In 2020 an unprecedented number of people supported SURJ’s work financially. It allowed us to bring in hundreds of thousands of new white people into anti-racist organizing, to show up alongside our comrades, and build a larger community that will take action and challenge power long after 2020. 

I love this work, am so proud of what we’ve done this year, and wouldn’t be anywhere else. Can you make a gift this year to help grow this work even further in 2021?
​ 
In solidarity and with hope, 

Erin Heaney, SURJ National Director

We started the year moving white voters as part of a massive victory in Los Angeles County, winning the largest reallocation of dollars out of criminalization and into community-based alternatives in US history. The coalition was led by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors and other organizations that have been in the fight for decades. SURJ’s local affiliate, White People for Black Lives, mobilized over 600 volunteers who knocked on over 30,000 doors and had 10,000 conversations with voters to ensure they voted for the ballot initiative.
​When the pandemic began, we organized over 1,000 members in 30 states to participate in 21 campaigns to release people from prisons, jails, and ICE detention centers, and more than 50 chapters organized at the local level to #freethemall through creative and COVID-safe actions.
​By May, we were running phone banks that reached hundreds of thousands of people weekly and launched online canvassing programs in key majority-white districts of two presidential battleground states: Pennsylvania and Georgia. We secured tens of thousands of commitments to vote from white voters who sat out 2016 and who are critical to defeating Trump and winning back the Senate.
We strengthened support for organizing with poor white people, especially in the South. The Bedford County Listening Project (BCLP), which started with support from SURJ organizers in Tennessee in 2018, created ways for people to focus their anger and anxieties into making change instead of turning it inward or scapegoating others.
As COVID-19 spread, with local governments in upheaval, and people restricted from public meetings, BCLP met the challenges by escalating their campaign for housing security, joining with statewide coalitions to win an eviction moratorium and utility bill relief and fight back against the Klan’s escalated organizing in their community.
Southern Crossroads (a project of SURJ) is now spreading this transformative organizing with poor and working class people in strategic rural districts of Tennessee, Georgia, and Kentucky, as well as more broadly across the South. Tens of thousands of Southern, rural people found us through our new website and earned media work, and over 3,500 people in Georgia alone said they want to organize with us after the election in this fight for justice. In 2021, we’re launching an apprenticeship program to train folks up as skilled organizers, calling in families, neighbors, and communities to come to full terms with how white supremacy has caused tremendous suffering for poor people everywhere. Southern Crossroads is helping make a movement “home base” for low-income white people in the South that puts race and class front and center.
As the nationwide uprising unfolded this summer, providing white people new to the movement with the support and community needed in order to step into anti-racist action was essential. We use a threefold model, training participants in recruitment, leadership development, and in-depth canvassing that works to exponentially expand the base of active, skilled organizers and their commitment to long term work.
The combination of the powerful organizing by the Movement for Black Lives, Trumps’ presidency, escalated state repression, and the intentional organizing of white people for racial justice, has meant that millions of white people are thinking about race very differently than they were just five years ago. SURJ is making the most of the moment – bringing together mass action and recruitment, deep leadership development, and community based organizing, with an abiding belief that white people are capable of transformation and meaningful action. Through our collective efforts we have built the people power that is making a tangible and important contribution to our movement. We know whatever comes next, we're more skilled, with more reach, and we're more connected than ever.
How to give to SURJ or SURJ Education Fund
Gifts to SURJ, Inc. (501c4) allow the maximum flexibility in resourcing the work, but gifts to either organization are deeply appreciated! And please support our solidarity partners at showingupforracialjustice.org/match

For Showing Up for Racial Justice, Inc. (SURJ), (501c4)
For Showing Up for Racial Justice Education Fund (SURJ Ed) (501c3)