We Are Building a Coalition of Local Leaders
A Teacher Finds Her Political Voice
Crystal Sousa lives in Denair, a small city in Stanislaus County. A mother, a teacher, and a recently elected member of the city’s school board, until February 2017 Crystal had never been more involved in politics than voting Democrat. Although there were more registered Democrats than Republicans in the district, Crystal remembers the Democrats keeping a low profile. “Some of my best friends are gun-carrying Republicans,” she says. “Republicans tend to be louder, even scary. We all lived in fear.” So from one election to the next, Crystal had not even put up an Obama or Hillary lawn sign.
Everything changed after the Trump election. When Crystal found Swing Left, one of the new grass-roots resistance organizations that sprang up around the country, she joined and instantly became a volunteer leader in CA-10. Since then she has led dozens of voter registration and canvassing events, connecting Bay Area volunteers with organizers and activists in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.
“I thought I was the only one,” she remembers people all around her were saying. Suddenly Democrats and progressives were everywhere. They formed local resistance groups, driven by a strong sense of injustice and the desire to protect the vulnerable and less advantaged: the undocumented, the uninsured, the unemployed. Throughout the primary campaign, Crystal has been heartened by the energy and commitment of the people who are showing up.
Crystal will spend June 5 helping Democrats with GOTV efforts in Modesto. In the evening she will join her friends at Be the Change Turlock to watch the primary results.
“What the past year has done is to build a coalition of local leaders. Whatever happens in the primary and the general election, we are not going away. We plan to take over all the local offices, one at a time.”
