Friday Signpost: Now, Let's Get Out There and Win This

Are you fired up to make sure that The Donald doesn’t get a chance to implement his and his cronies’ authoritarian agenda this fall?

If you’re a Lowdowner, we suspect that you also want to not just cheer folks on from the sidelines, but to actually do something. It can be confusing in ordinary times to figure out how best to spend your time on election work, and in an extraordinary election year like this one, it’s even more so. That’s why we’re highlighting the work of Seed the Vote for our grassroots group this week.

Seed the Vote recruits, trains, and supports volunteers to door knock and phone bank with local partners in the most critical swing states for the presidential, senate and house races. And what we especially love about their work is that they partner with local organizations on the ground who have asked for help getting volunteers to support them.

We’ve lamented in the past about Democratic and progressive election strategies that parachute in volunteers during important elections, but then when those volunteers leave, the infrastructure and the relationships they’ve built go with them. Seed the Vote works with local and regional partners like Working Families Party, LUCHA,  Michigan United, Citizen Action Wisconsin, and many more, so the volunteers’ work stays in the region and helps build longer term capacity. We love it!

In addition, Seed the Vote also provides financial aid to support volunteers who travel to do the door-knocking—it costs about $1,000 to send a volunteer to go door knocking for a week. That means it’s not just people who can afford to travel out there doing the work, but people from more diverse backgrounds. And if you’re worried that those whose doors are getting knocked on won’t be happy with “outsiders,” Seed the Vote says that no one has ever been complained to (!), and if anything, the people being talked with are impressed that others feel so passionately about the work.

How can you join up? Four things that Seed the Vote could use your help with: traveling to swing states for door-knocking, phone banking from anywhere, volunteer to help coordinate the work, and of course, donations if you’re able.

• Want more information about how they work? They have several free info sessions every week to share how they do what they do. Check them out here.

• Ready to jump in? Go ahead and fill out this Volunteer Pledge Form.

If you end up volunteering with Seed the Vote, let us know how it goes in the comments! Let’s do this!