If They Won’t Protect Our Democracy, It’s Time For Them to Go

After a year’s worth of pressure from Stand Up America and activists across the country, the Senate finally held a vote to reform the filibuster and protect the freedom to vote.

48 out of 50 Senate Democrats did the right thing and voted to finally put our democracy ahead of the Jim Crow filibuster. But just two senators—Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona—decided to align themselves with Mitch McConnell and his Jim Crow faction to undermine our fundamental right to vote.

This isn’t on the grassroots. We did everything right. We made over 200,000 calls and emails to our senators. We sent millions of texts to our fellow voters to show up at the polls in record numbers. We submitted our letters to the editor begging our leaders to step up. We signed petitions to President Biden, spoke up on social media, and turned out in the streets. We fought. 

But 52 of the people charged with upholding our constitution in the United States Senate simply did not care. If this moment proves anything, it’s that we must elect more people to office who will put our democracy first—even as the very people currently charged with doing that are making it harder for us to replace them with the representation we deserve. 

We need true democracy champions in the House, the Senate, and our state capitols who will fight for us. Help us move to the next phase and invest in new leaders. Chip in your time or your resources to help elect more people to office who are willing to put our freedom to vote ahead of the Jim Crow filibuster: 

Despite this setback, we’re not giving up. We can’t.

Like generations before us, we have no choice but to keep fighting and keep organizing to protect voting rights and build a truly representative democracy. The stakes are too high to take no for an answer. 

This year, we’ll be mobilizing our two million members across the country to help elect democracy champions up and down the ballot—from United States Senators to Secretaries of State. And we’ll continue our work to defend and expand the right to vote at the state and local level.