Electing Kamala Harris is Part Of Our Plan to Win for Working People in 2024
Please read the below message from Working Families Party National Director Maurice Mitchell to WFP supporters:
The Working Families Party is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Our members, chapters, and party leaders have voted overwhelmingly to support VP Kamala Harris as the next Democratic nominee — with 95% of the total vote in favor of the endorsement.
We are living in uncertain times. But we do know this: we cannot let Donald Trump and MAGA extremists return to power.
In 2020, we said that making Trump a one-term president was our moral mandate. It still is. Four years ago, we played a major role in organizing and mobilizing voters to oust Trump. This year, we’re prepared to defeat his movement once and for all. Electing Kamala Harris as President is one step — one important step — toward our goal of winning power for working people and a government that is responsive to all of us, not just the wealthy few.
Donald Trump wants to seize on the uncertainty that people are feeling to seize power and enrich himself and his billionaire backers. If elected to a second term, he will double down on his attacks on working people. His friends in the MAGA movement have drafted a 900-page plan called “Project 2025” that calls for slashing taxes on large corporations and the ultra-rich, raising the cost of health care, and making it harder for workers to organize for better wages and benefits.
We have a historic opportunity to stop Trump’s authoritarian movement in its tracks and elect Vice President Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States.
As Vice President, Kamala Harris has played a decisive role in President Biden’s greatest victories, casting the tie-breaking vote to pass the landmark Inflation Reduction Act and presiding over the confirmation of Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson.
Now, Vice President Harris has the chance to build on President Biden’s record of delivering for working people. Harris wants to bring back the child tax credit expansion, to raise the corporate tax rate, and to make big investments in preschool, childcare, and elder care. Meanwhile, she has an opportunity to turn the page on the United States’ disastrous support for the Israeli government’s human rights abuses in Gaza.
Change of any kind — especially at this stage in the race — can be scary. But we have a clear plan to win and set our movement up for even bigger victories in the future.
- Elect Kamala Harris and defeat Donald Trump. By engaging and mobilizing the majority of Americans who oppose MAGA’s extremist agenda, we can put a stop to Trump’s authoritarian movement once and for all.
- Win a governing majority in Congress. We need strong Senate and House majorities that don’t rely on corporate Democrats like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema. The path to retaking Congress this cycle will run through unlikely battleground states, like New York and California.
- Build the bench of progressive leadership at all levels of government. Progressives have shown leadership and vision during a period of incredible uncertainty. We need to build our ranks of progressive champions in state houses across the country, while protecting those who face cynical attacks from big money Super PACs.
We must win policies that make real, concrete improvements in people’s lives. Taxing the rich to bring down the cost of housing and child care. Raising wages for workers and making it easier for them to organize their workplaces.
Imagine a House majority with a growing group of WFP leaders fighting every day for our values. That’s not just possible — it’s happening. Year after year, cycle after cycle, the ranks of WFP champions in Congress and in state houses are growing.
Together we’re building an independent political party that reflects the values, hopes, and dreams of working people in our country — and that is rigorous about what it takes to win, and won’t risk throwing power to the right. We’re building coalitions and community across race, place, gender and generation. And if we continue to build our power together, before too long, it’ll be WFP leaders setting a pro-working families agenda in city halls, state houses, and Washington, DC.
It’s all possible — but it won’t be under a Trump presidency. Under Trump, we’ll be left playing defense and trying to deflect the worst of his attacks against our communities. To have a shot at a working families agenda, we’ve got to win at the top of the ticket.
We have a clear job in the next one-hundred days: block and build. We must block MAGA extremists from seizing governing power, and we must build the most viable, durable political vehicle that is beholden and accountable to the people and not the wealthy and corporations.
Recently, France provided us with a ray of hope and a path forward. The French were facing a rising tide of right-wing authoritarianism. A white supremacist, nationalist movement that pits working people against each other. It’s growing there, just like it’s growing here.
But France’s left and centrist parties recognized what was at stake, put aside their differences, and joined forces. By participating in a united front, the newly formed New Popular Front finished ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party.
Our endorsement of Vice President Harris doesn’t mean that we’ll never disagree with her, or never have contrasting views on policy. This election, however, is bigger than any one person. It’s about what kind of country we want to be and whether we will let the rights and freedoms that our ancestors fought for — the right to participate equally in our democracy, to love who we love, and to control our own bodies — be taken away from us.
We also know that our movement must give people something to vote for, by laying out a vision for a country where everyone has health care, everyone has clean air and food, and everyone can afford quality housing.
Defeating the far-right and electing VP Kamala Harris is a political necessity, but it’s not a final destination. No matter what happens in November, we will continue to organize — community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood — to create the future the next generation deserves.
In Solidarity,
Maurice
