In the spring of 2020, early in the pandemic, I heard Paul Getsos — veteran community organizer, creative strategist, and effective coalition builder — articulate an experiment he planned to launch focused on building a base in some of the red states and communities deprioritized by national progressives. I was then Managing Director at Community Change, and Paul was inviting us to collaborate and support the experiment. I was impressed with the organizing insight and startup mentality that Paul brought to the project, as well as the serious need for the work being proposed. We soon decided to provide resources and serve as fiscal sponsor for the project that eventually became United Today, Stronger Tomorrow (UTST).
As I prepared to interview Paul — along with some of the organizers and members of UTST — about the power analysis informing their work, I reflected on my own view of the power that progressives need to build nationally. As I’ve also argued in Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections, I believe that our progressive movement ecosystem must eventually constitute a political super-majority — not just the 50% +1 needed to win an individual election but the 70-75% needed to boldly and durably govern. Achieving this breadth and depth of power will require that we organize and align large majorities of all communities of color as well as a significant base of white people. We can’t win with our current base of activists alone, nor can we win by organizing people of color alone. We can’t wait for demographics to shift. They aren’t destiny. Plus, the world is on fire and people are dying — now.
We have to build a super-majority base to consistently win statewide elections and move our agendas. On the national level — as we’ve all been reminded over the course of 2021 and 2022 — truly governing the country and implementing our vision for boldly progressive government action will require us to build that base in a super-majority of states. UTST is one of a number of groups building that common vision in areas that progressives typically ignore. They start with organizing basics and relational outreach, layering on creative coalition building and some smartly scaled digital organizing — all while staying grounded in the day-to-day realities and concerns of people in the cities and counties where they’ve begun to work over these past two-plus years.
Initially, UTST focused on organizing communities to respond to the COVID crisis — calling for mask mandates, vaccine equity, and the equitable allocation of federal COVID relief, among other issues. They’ve done thousands of conversations over these past couple of years — via surveys, organizing meetings, one-on-ones, and town halls. What they’ve heard from people across the political spectrum is that they want solutions to issues including inflation, housing, education, childcare, healthcare access for rural people, support for small farmers and ranchers, and clean air, water, and energy. One leading campaign focus is on how federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding for state and local governments is actually deployed and how it can reflect community priorities.
For this installment of the power analysis series, l talked with members, coalition partners, and local staff of UTST in La Plata County in southwestern Colorado, and in Pottawatomie and Woodbury Counties in western Iowa.
The conversation, which has been edited and condensed, included the following people from UTST:
IOWA
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Matthew O’Kane: a public school art teacher and city council member in Sioux City, Iowa whose decision to run for city council was partly inspired by his involvement in UTST
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Jen Pellant: Field Director for the Western Iowa Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, and a member of AFT Local 716
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Trisha Etringer: Director of operations and Director of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives work for the Great Plains Action Society (GPAS). She is also a member of the Inclusive Sioux City Advisory Committee, serving as the Native American representative.
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John Springhower: operates a farm in McClelland, Iowa, and is a member of the McClelland City Council
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Dave Bushaw: Regional Organizer for United Today, Stronger Tomorrow in Iowa
COLORADO
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Beatriz Garcia: program manager at Compañeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center.
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Jodi Walker: founder and director of Kids At Their Best
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Olivia Thomas: Regional Organizer for United Today, Stronger Tomorrow in Colorado.
Editor’s Note: If you haven’t read the companion interview with Paul Getsos and Brandon Dew, you can read it here.
Iowa
I’d like to kick off our discussion with two questions: Why did you become involved in UTST? And how do you think about what you’re trying to do by building this new organization?
Matthew O'Kane: The reason I got involved is I realized the people in positions of power did not reflect the people in our community. Sioux City has a strong, progressive base that has continuously been ignored. I realized, a lot of people have, that we need to get up and organize, and we need to get people in positions that will be more equitable with the way they are making change happen.
Jen Pellant: I grew up in Council Bluffs, but I lived in Chicago for 20 years. Then I came back home to my roots and to labor and politics. UTST is providing us with amazing reach and resources to expand what we're trying to do here in Western Iowa.
Trisha Etringer: I've been organizing since 2017 with Great Plains Action Society. Working with UTST, we were able to bring the Indigenous perspective of what was going on in our county and why it's so important in these spaces.
John Springhower: I was born and raised in Southwest Iowa, so I've lived my whole life here. I'm definitely more of an independent. I'm a registered Republican. I see what's happening on a national stage, the wedges that are driving us apart, and it starts to filter down into the county level. Some of the decisions that have been made here in Pottawatomie County frankly disgust me. The way money's been spent, the lack of transparency as well as the lack of representation that we have. It's a good-old-boy system. It's been a great experience working with UTST. It's giving a platform, but it's also giving people some courage to stand up and talk about things that they want. I may not agree with your idea, but at least let's talk about it.
What did the power situation look like in your community before you began to build United Today, Stronger Tomorrow? And how do you see that power shifting through your organizing?
Etringer: I think that is such a loaded question because, coming from the Indigenous perspective, we have these systems, concepts, and ideologies that stem from the doctrine of discovery. So already knowing — as an Indigenous woman coming into spaces like our Woodbury County Supervisors meetings — they weren't built for me to even have any say.
The pandemic pointed out all the inequities and injustices that were going on, not just at the local level but nationwide. Basically, $15 million of the American Rescue Plan funding in our county was projected to go into this law enforcement center. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make change for our community. So, we tabled at our community college, harnessing student power and underserved communities, and we were able to get signatures. We were able to successfully have some of those final [U.S. Treasury Department] guidelines in the ARP funding say, "No, you cannot put funding into new jails, new institutions of that sort." Through the work on American Rescue Plan appropriations that UTST led, we built new relationships. UTST brought consistency and momentum. For my organization, Great Plains Action Society, being part of UTST we also learned tools we bring to our own power building work.
Pellant: A lot of our campaigns were directed at our county boards of supervisors. And we have five white men — five relatively affluent white men — sitting on the county board in Woodbury and the same in Pottawattamie County. I call them Chamber of Commerce Republicans. They're realtors and things like that, so they have a lot of money and power in the community. And the thing that they have in abundance is money and time. And those are things that working people do not have in abundance because they have to go to work.
It is hard to organize people around things like this when they're working from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM every day. And they can't take off for a two-hour lunch to go to a supervisor meeting because then they're not getting paid. But the thing that we have on our side is love and survival. What UTST was able to do was just really rally all these different groups to one particular cause. And that was very powerful, I think, for the community.
In my job for the area labor federation, I run political programs and I focus a lot on local elections. These awareness campaigns around how they were spending this ARP money did seem to go against some of our incumbents in the primary. The problem here in Pottawattamie County is that if you take out one wealthy, powerful Republican, there's like 10 others that pop up in their place. But people are becoming a little more aware of what these boards and councils are doing and they are holding the incumbents a little more accountable.
O'Kane: This is just one small local example. I teach K-12 art in the Sioux City School District, and we are a “majority-minority” district. Our teaching staff as a district has started to reflect our population a lot more quickly than our city government has. [As a newly elected City Council member,] one thing that really stood out to me is there wasn't a lot of equity in the decisions that affected everybody.
When I started on the council, our human rights commission had lost staff. At one point, the people that were applying to the human rights commission were people that did not have the best interests of the commission. Some even purposely tried to take some of that power away.
I identified early on that we needed to bolster our human rights commission. The first budget cycle, I made a motion to change a position that was not recommended and change it to full-time to get them an additional half staff member or get one part-time position up to full-time. That put it on the agenda and we were able to get that position. That's one thing that I chart as a huge success and a huge win. And so many minute things had to fall into place for that to work out well, but it's a measurable difference at the end of the day.
Springhauer: It’s definitely a good-old-boy system and I'm fairly new to county politics, but it seems like you got to know somebody to be involved or know the right people to donate to you. That's obviously not the way it should work, but the one thing I really liked about the way the UTST coalition operated was that it was not zoomed in. By that, I mean we have a broader focus on a larger issue that can bring more people in, from all political parties and views. We just want the public to be able to have input [on how the ARP funds would be spent] instead of the politicians — of any party — just deciding themselves. That's all we're asking for. And so I think those are two very, very important things that we need to stick with because, moving forward, we're never going to agree on everything, but we do have to come together on the things that we do agree on.
Colorado
Why did you become involved in UTST? And how do you think about what you’re trying to do by building this new organization?
Jodi Walker: We live in a county that speaks 26 different languages right smack in the middle of Red USA. So a whole lot of diversity. Prior to UTST, in our county [Morgan County, Colorado,] things were very clear. If you are a friend of the county commissioners, you will get to be heard. If not, they probably don't have time for you and, if they do, it's just superficial. I have spent years trying to have issues heard and have always found it an exercise in futility. Since UTST has arrived, you can see the commissioners paying attention. They have tried to shut doors and close us out, but Olivia [Thomas, UTST organizer,] has made sure that they have been reminded of statutes and rules. I can't say that they are willingly listening, but I do know that it has provided a single place for all of us to come together to ask questions and to have our say.
What did the power situation look like in your community before you began to build United Today Stronger Tomorrow? And how do you see that power shifting through your organizing?
Walker: We haven't had any of those big wins; we've been shut down. But you have to look at the work from the angle that the [Morgan County] commissioners tried to not make Zoom available at their meetings. They tried to gloss over the public comment like, "Hey, we're just not going to offer it in this meeting.” This is stuff that systemically has gone on for decades. You don't want to hear from the people, you just don't put public comment on the agenda. And everybody's like, "Oh, well, I'm not welcome to be here, so okay." We have had a big win in that our commissioners are playing by the rules, which seems like such a small thing, but it is such a huge, huge thing. People are empowered. Like, "Oh, they can't just shut me out. They have to give me at least three minutes." So now we've got more and more people coming to the table and we've got other organizing agencies that are like, "Oh, well, yeah, we wanted to talk to the commissioners. Awesome. Here's the opening to do it." And I know these are ground-level baby steps, but they're so incredibly important to turning our democracy around.
Olivia Thomas: At one of our first meetings about language justice in La Plata County, we had a simultaneous interpreter present and the county manager was pretty dubious of the quality and was like, "I don't know what's going on." [They were] very aggressive and rude towards one of our members who didn't speak any English and made jokes about her intelligence. It took a while for us to get to any point where they would listen to us and agree to actually implement language justice practices. So we were able to secure their promise that they would have simultaneous interpretation at public county meetings. And then we also submitted a proposal for the ARP funds to be used for a language justice cooperative in the county. And we just found out last week that we were given that money, so that'll be $130,000 to build up a co-op in the county.
How did that fight play out? What do you think moved them to eventually say yes?
Beatriz Garcia: I think they were very skeptical, but they saw that we organized, they saw that we were 10, 20 people who engaged. I work for people who don't have the right to actually vote. The only way to raise their voices is organizing with them. And now we have that $130,000 from ARP funds. I think that's a change. People never were able to go to a county committee because they were not able to actually know what the people said. No invitation or even flier was in Spanish or whatever other language is needed here. So I think that those are the little powerful steps.
Opposition
Are there examples anyone wants to share about the organized opposition and what their power looks like — including anything you saw opponents doing behind the scenes to exercise power?
Dave Bushaw: I will say from Iowa we had some interesting opposition in our county campaigns. For example, down in Pottawattamie County, one of our combatants was a pretty esteemed Democratic leader who was angry that we were causing schisms with the county board. Those that got angry were the ones that had the board in their back pockets in the first place. Once we started activating the working class power, they got a little bit mad because that power structure was going to be disrupted. And in fact, it was.
O'Kane: You would think that everybody would want some public input, but almost as soon as Dave started asking the questions, one of the board of supervisors members made a point to stand up and give this big speech about how Dave was parading for lawlessness and how he wants the criminals back out on the street. There were some pretty wild accusations thrown out in that speech.
Etringer: It is challenging. There are many out-of-state investors coming into our community, buying buildings, homes, and businesses, but they don't invest in our community needs for the long term. Because they bring money, our city council is afraid to take them on — because they don't want the investors to leave if the city makes too many demands.
Springhauer: In Pott County, I don't know about [opposition power] behind the scenes, but with all the casino money, it's hard to say there's not. There's a lot of money in Pott County and the surrounding counties. And so wherever there's money, there's nefarious things going on. We all know that. So one thing I can say for sure is we definitely have upset an agenda. And the other thing is more people are starting to care about things and get involved — and they get pissed off. And that's a good thing. And the other thing, when you look at the results from the primary, which in a normal year, the primary is the general election. This year's a bit different. And when you look at that, the incumbents were on the lower end of that. And so there's only one incumbent that's making it to the general and he's going to have a hell of a hard time making it through that general election. So I would agree, there's definitely something happening here. I think we upset an agenda.
Lessons
What have you learned about power that you didn’t know a few years ago?
Bushaw: One lesson we’ve learned has to do with the large-scale digital outreach and tactics we were able to do and the politically diverse people and communities we could reach and activate. In one of the local campaigns about the use of the ARP money, we were able to text 25,000 people in a county a very simple question that both educated and agitated them: "Hey, it's Dave with UTST. What do you think about the board of supervisors spending $3.5 million to buy a ski hill with ARP funding?"
We realized with those kind of tactics and messaging, we can reach a huge number of people, including Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians — many of them people who we wouldn't reach before, especially in the rural, red areas. I think of them as disenfranchised communities, not red communities or blue communities. They're just disenfranchised. But with these kinds of issues and approaches, we can build common ground, engage more people from many political backgrounds, and organize more power.
