Opening Letter from our Co-Executive Directors, Leah and Ezra:
The Indivisible movement began five years ago as a ray of hope in a period of profound fear, grief, and anger. Democracy was under attack, authoritarians were rising to power, and millions of people across the country were looking for the tools to make their voices heard. In other words, while much has changed over the past five years, the driving impulses behind the Indivisible movement remain the same: we organize to safeguard democracy during a time of historic threat to our constitutional republic.
Indivisible entered 2021 with a combination of pride, hope, and trepidation. Our collective efforts transformed the political environment and created new opportunities for national progress. At the same time, the attempted coup of January 6th and the subsequent wave of voter suppression and election subversion laws in the states dramatically demonstrated that our democracy remains fragile and under imminent threat.
At the national level, we faced a new and exciting challenge: organizing to govern and deliver transformational change, rather than simply to resist. And at the local level, we knew that movement-building would be more crucial than ever—especially as we continued to grapple with the second year of the COVID pandemic, with all its implications for organizing.
We didn’t win everything—no movement does. What movements can hope to do is to fight, adapt, innovate, and grow stronger for the next fight. We won a historic recovery bill, greater in scope and progressivity than Obama’s 2009 stimulus. We fought to a showdown on democracy reform, dragging 98% of our potential allies—including the President of the United States—with us. We fought tooth and nail for an economic package with sufficient scale to meet the crises facing our climate, our workers, and our families.
Through it all, we persisted.
Indivisible groups dug in, sought out new ways to organize and build community, and made their voices heard at every level, from the hyper-local to the national. As a national organization, we worked to bring together the grassroots leaders of the Indivisible movement with the latest intelligence from Washington, guiding and coordinating national campaigns for change. Simultaneously, we supported Indivisible groups’ sustainability with new commitments in training, resourcing, and leadership development.
Since Indivisible’s founding, we’ve always known that one of our toughest challenges as a movement would be moving from resistance to persistence. This year was the test of that transition—and we’re deeply proud to say that we head into 2022 strong and determined to continue the fight for transformational change.
The fight for American democracy is not over. It will not be won with one victory or lost with one defeat. As long as there are engaged, pro-democracy constituents, the fight will continue. And Indivisible will persist.
