Guest post by Erica D. Smith, NC Senate candidate follows:

I’m writing to my Blue America, Down With Tyranny and Crooks & Liars friends today to tell you about an exciting new initiative that our campaign is launching.

I’ve said from the start of this campaign that we were going to go everywhere, fight for every vote, and write no one-off. 

And we meant it. 

Across North Carolina and across the country, we’ve lost rural voters and rural counties at an alarming and unprecedented rate. These red, and only growing redder, counties are why Trump won in 2016 and why he won here in North Carolina in 2020. 

These counties, these communities, and these voters have been made to feel as though we don’t even know they exist. Or that worse, we don’t care. 

While we’ve left these communities, other forces have stayed. Forces that have corrupted our politics, weakened our Democracy and divided us. 

I want us to show up. I want us to tell them that we know that they’re there. We know that they’ve been hurting. That we see them, and that regardless of who they voted for before, moving forward, there is room for them in our movement. 

The same broken system that’s failing us is failing them, and the only way we can fix it is by coming together. 

I want to invite you to directly be a part of bringing about the change we need. This money isn’t going to DC consultants or polls that tell us what we’re supposed to believe. For every dollar donated, we’ll knock on a door. One dollar, one door. Ten dollars, ten doors. One hundred dollars, one hundred doors. 

For every dollar donated, we will knock on a door in a county that Trump won in 2020. 

One dollar, one door because it’s time we stop seeing these doors as walls and recognize the humanity of the person behind the door. 

The person who breathes the same air and drinks the same water that we do. 

The person who’s working more and more, but making less and less, caught in the same rigged economy that we are, who lost a loved one because of a for-profit healthcare system that disregards them just as much as it disregards us. The person whose child has fallen behind because their broadband is insufficient just like mine is, and school is underfunded just like my children’s was. 

We can keep going down this path of tribalism and division, of cynicism and alienation...or we can forge a new way forward. 

We can show up. We can have conversations, we can believe in the best in people, and manifest a new coalition that ensures our government truly works for all of us.   

I’m a 51-year-old Black woman who’s spent almost all of her life in the south. I’m not naive to the challenges we face. I just believe that together we can overcome them.

North Carolina will not flip blue by itself. Together, we need to flip it. 

Progressive infrastructure will not build itself. Together, we need to build it. 

This country will not magically overcome this moment of division, unless together, we work to bring people together, build consensus, and move past these hostilities. 

Our politics will not become any less corrupt or cynical unless together, we transform them.

All of that starts with showing up.

Showing up one county at a time, one town at a time, and block at a time, one door at a time. 

Without showing up, we have no shot. 

Once we show up, anything is possible. I’ve had enough conversations across this state to know that.

If you believe that we should be having these important conversations, and door by door, block by block, community by community, transforming our politics and bettering our country, then please chip in whatever you can.

Together, I truly believe that we can transform our politics and change the country. 

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Thanks for always doing what you can to help make this a better world,

Howie, for the entire Blue America team — Digby, John, Howie and Jacquie