Our adversaries want us to sit this election out, but our communities are in dire need of investment. As organizers, we cannot support the Democratic Party outright, but we understand that the difference between these candidates is what we can do in each terrain. We’re joining local efforts to stop Trump – not out of fear, but because we believe in the future we’re fighting to create.
That’s why we’re releasing Mijente’s 2024 Electoral Position video and our political vision. Check it out below, and learn more about our analysis and the Mijente’s organizing in the years to come.
Where We Find Ourselves
This year, an estimated 150 million people are expected to cast a ballot in the 2024 Presidential Election. It is a time when most people take political action and includes over 36 million potential Latinx eligible voters.
Our communities and progressive movements can’t hide the disappointment and frustrations at the conditions of our country. After cycles of large scale mobilizations at the ballot box and in the streets, the change we have been fighting so hard for has not come. Right now, we see billions of dollars aiding the genocide of Palestinians while U.S. wages stay low and rents soar. President Biden, and the Democratic party, have failed us.
Meanwhile, Former President Trump is riding out what his daddy gave him: wealth, white supremacy and machismo. He and his allies are exploiting every crisis to strengthen their base and advance a disastrous agenda. If they get their way, Trump and his associates will dismantle gains of generations past. They are applying lessons from four years in Office, plus the last four years of conspiring to take it again.
What’s At Stake
Our gente have achieved major organizing wins in the last 20 years that are now at stake. The Project 2025 document is crafted by former Trump appointees and influenced by over 100 conservative organizations. Allegedly, it aims to “restore traditional family values, reduce government bureaucracy, defend national sovereignty, and protect individual freedoms”.
Instead, among many other unfavorable outcomes, Project 2025 will:
- cut overtime protections and reduce job support,
- restrict access to affordable medications and food assistance,
- eliminate educational programs and childcare supports,
- limit reproductive rights and healthcare access, and
- rollback civil rights protections across various domains.
Trans Rights
Trump has stated his plans to overturn the Biden administration’s extension of Title IX on “day one”. Currently, the law prevents federally funded schools from barring transgender students from using facilities and pronouns that match their identities. Additionally, Project 2025 aims to put an end to transgender healthcare in Medicare and Medicaid, along with banning gender-affirming care for youth.
Abortion Rights
Current plans show intentions to use the Comstock Act (over 150 years old), implementing a nationwide abortion ban in every state. This leaves no room for exceptions, overriding any congressional involvement. Trump also expressed that decisions to prosecute people for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies should be left to the states.
LGBTQIA+ Rights
If reelected, Trump plans to remove federal rules that protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Instead, the administration will ensure that federal civil rights laws no longer protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
There’s no doubt about it: when Trump pumped his fist and yelled “fight” after being shot this weekend, it was a rallying cry for his supporters to unite and for those on the sidelines to close ranks. The future they envision is grim. So Mijente is paying close attention to the well-thought-out plans from Trump and his allies. They are promising, and ready, to enact an ultra-conservative agenda during their second shot in the White House.
The Current Political State
Yet the status quo makes us wonder: What is our future? What is our place in this country? Four years ago, Mijente made our first presidential endorsement of Bernie Sanders in February 2020. We will not be making one this year.
Why? Because the Democrats only want to regroup the diverse anti-Trump coalition that won them the White House in 2020. However, throughout much of the Biden/Harris Administration, they have often taken our communities for granted and left the progressive movement out to dry. We – the people – are living proof that one can survive, but at what cost?
We want to be clear: We will not be pawns for others’ cause. Given the lack of investment in our communities and on the changes we need, we will tell the truth and we reserve the right to talk shit.
Mijente is organizing under the banner of strategic necessity, mobilizing our communities will require effective and innovative tactics.
So, the actions Mijente will take towards November are not in support of a candidate or the ‘business-as-usual’ parties. We need to select the conditions under which we can most effectively organize for the change our communities need. We know that our choices go beyond Trump versus Harris – the real contrast between these candidates lies in what the people can do.
This means going beyond spending millions in advertisements repeating Democratic talking points or knocking on doors using peer-pressure or fear tactics to encourage voting. We must strengthen our community’s ability to mobilize and create the infrastructure for driving change from the ground up.
Lessons Guiding Mijente’s Organizing Ahead
We believe in organizing. That means we need to choose the conditions that allow us to fight, secure our wins, and push for more in the future. Because the scenario we’re in is far too familiar for many of us. Our ancestors and home countries in Latin America have faced widespread and rampant nationalism and militarism. They too encountered censorship, brutality against a free press, and violations of human rights.
What we need now is to seed the ground – to secure the terrain and give ourselves a fighting chance. That’s why Mijente will be joining the coalition to defeat Trump by putting our ear to the ground, mobilizing our base, and deepening our multi-strategy, political framework.
Driving Change from the Ground Up
From organizing, we know that when direction is unclear, you put your ear to the ground. You find out what people are talking about, the conditions they’re facing, what they’re worried or excited about. We’re connecting with people and identifying new opportunities for organizing can serve as a rejuvenation of purpose. We’re also base building and strengthening our community’s ability to mobilize beyond November.
This is why this year Mijente is engaged in a strategy we’re calling “El Chisme 2024.” Launched in June in Los Angeles, this political and cultural tour gathers organizers, artists, elected representatives, and educators in 20 cities across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The events include concerts, artistic productions, political panels, comedy, and cultural events.
The goal is to broaden the discussion of what’s at stake in this election and engage audiences disillusioned with the current political discourse. Closer to the election, we will visit key states including Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.
Mobilizing Base
Defeating Trump and empowering the Latinx vote requires making real investment in reaching voters at the forefront of demographic change. Ahead of the election, Mijente will mobilize Latinx voters in battleground states of Georgia, Texas, Arizona and North Carolina to turn back Trump.
What does that look like? In Georgia, our partnership with GLAHR Action Network aims to reach voters directly, especially in rural areas, with a focused bilingual canvassing effort. Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Siembra NC’s groundbreaking door-knocking campaign, supported by Mijente, represents our largest-ever initiative in the state aimed at mobilizing Latinx voters.
In Texas, we’re creating and testing messaging for voters, as we strengthen organizing and help build political infrastructure. These efforts aim to uncover what motivates Texan Latinx voters towards progressive politics while steering them away from Trumpian politics. In Arizona, we’ve been developing the local political infrastructure in multiple cities, and will continue crucial relationship building and messaging that mobilizes voters against Trump.
For the remainder of the electoral cycle, we will connect with our gente face-to-face, in their language and in real conversations about the threats and opportunities for our families. This work is essential, especially if it is part of a long-term investment in building political power.
Multi-Strategy, Political Framework
Building power for our gente sin, contra, y desde el estado (without, against, and within the state) is one of the key pillars to our theory of change. It has been an instrumental framework in shaping Mijente’s multi-strategy approach to organizing and movement-building. The conditions of localities and the needs of our gente are used to determine whether we employ one, two, or all three strategies within a campaign.
Our Sin el estado work focuses on imagining new paths and developing solutions outside of existing structures. We build alternatives in the present and strengthen the autonomy of the people.
Our Contra el estado work exposes systems of oppression and corrupt leaders by any means necessary to retake our power. We put our bodies, time, energy on the frontlines to defend our rights and put the power back in the hands of everyday people.
Our Desde el estado work expands our influence using the existing infrastructures of government, politics, and representatives to get the goods. We work to shift the way our communities relate to their governments, elect our gente, and keep officials accountable.
The bottom line is that we want el Buenvivir for our communities. With el Buenvivir we can self-determine and shape our experiences through people power. No matter the strategy, we are fighting for a just future for our families and the generations of people that will follow.
La Lucha Sigue
This election is about our power and our future – beyond November, no matter who wins. We know that many in our movement are considering not participating in the election – we did, too. Many of us voted in protest during the primary as uncommitted. It was an important moment and a necessary message.
But in the general election, protesting Harris by refusing to vote will only clear the path for Trump’s victory. In making a choice between the options we have on the ballot, we’re not choosing our targets or our saviors. We’re choosing the battleground we’re organizing in for the next four years.
With a clear-eyed analysis of the battlefield, we must choose the option that presents the most opportunities to fight and win. We will not be driven back into the closet, back into the shadows, to the back of the bus, or into climate catastrophe. This means joining the effort to turn back Trump – not out of fear, but out of a belief in the future we are organizing to create.
Our Power, Our Future, Our People
Mijente emerged as an organization when Trump first came into power. And we come from peoples who have lived under authoritarian rule. We know that even if Trump and his cadre win, our children will survive. Because we and our ancestors have survived, in places like Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and more.
So change is coming, one way or the other. It may bring a future that takes us backwards or another where we continue to ignore the present issues that flood us into complacency. Or it can be the kind of change that sees the people taking back power into our hands. Through it all, Mijente will continue organizing as fiercely as we always have.