Hey DCCC do I need to really write this letter? Do I need to tell you that no one has time for this shit? We are engaged in a war on all fronts right now and you just decided to turn a gun on the people in the trenches with you in order to win it. The women who you threw under the bus today by saying our reproductive freedoms were up for negotiation when it came time to financially back someone are a good portion of the people out there actually backing your candidates with not just our money, but our time and our voices, too. And it’s not just when you’re candidates that we back you: once you’re elected we help to push your agenda via our calls, our protests, our presence at town halls. We’re the people giving you the support you needed to take back to DC last week to find 3 Republican Senators with the guts to vote with your Democratic allies in the Senate. Is there some part of this that you do not get? Do you think it’s all straight, white guys making this party what it is? Did you not see the millions of us marching on January 21? Or did you just think that we’d keep taking your marching orders no matter how many different ways you find to tell us that our issues don’t matter as much the issues of people who can’t even be bothered to join this party?
You are NEVER going to win by alienating women, or people of color, or the LGBTQ community or Americans with disabilities or immigrants or the many others who do value us and share our concerns. You are NEVER going to win by saying your big tent can include people who don’t want to include us or go on an unwarranted and malicious attack against any candidate who looks a little like us. You may win them over (although I doubt it bigly as like the Devil, the other side will always offer them a better deal when it comes to hating us) but you will lose us. And to quote George Bailey, “this rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” Is it too much to have us work and pay and live and die in a party that has our back? We don’t think so.
But here you are as if we don’t have enough to do fighting Trump’s agenda – writing letters, making calls, showing up for protests when I can assure you I would much rather sleep in – now we have to find the time to fight you, too? While that will be exhausting, I can assure you, we are up to it. One thing men like you in charge have never had to do is fight too hard for anything. The bad things in your records are expunged or qualified or dismissed with an excuse while they can be a career-ender for a woman or POC in your same circumstances. You don’t have to hide who it is you love for your career or worry that by not hiding it you are ending it. You did not risk getting removed from your own wheelchair, the very thing you rely on to move in the world and arrested just for protesting legislation that threatened tens of millions of us. You didn’t volunteer to put your life on the line for your country, only to have that same country tell you just last week that your life was less than everyone else’s. You clearly do not know what a fight is because the first sign of trouble you just rolled over to the biggest bullies and threw your actual allies under the bus.
Well, good, this will make it easier for us, I suppose, because we know what it is to fight for what we believe and we’ve been practicing for years.
Today you are no better than the GOP, who are at least honest and forthright in not having our backs, and not covert about it while skating to victory on our dime and our efforts. You will see none of my support – not a dime, not a call, not a vote – until I am confident that we have yours. All of us. And we will have no problem leaving this party if you leave us to die in your trenches.
Sincerely,
Tess Rafferty