Hello GAIN Power Fam -
I’m writing this from DC after a great GAIN Power team retreat in Maine last week. We were there as Troy Jackson cinched the nomination, and now we’re finally able to take on Susan Collins in one of the most important races this cycle. Congrats to BJ McCollister and the Jackson team for the precision and speed with which they organized and locked it up.
We’re deep into rebuilding our platforms to make all our programs better for you all - and organizing two more career fairs on August 27 and September 24 before November. We’d love your feedback on our program and resources as we build out the new site. And we’re getting closer to locking in our post-election programs, including RootsCamp in person. Your input into our plans is critical to focus on what you want. Candidly, our ideas are always more ambitious than our funding, so we need your help to prioritize what we implement. Your ideas, advice, and more feedback help that happen, so please take a few minutes to fill out our survey.
Despite another heavy week living through Trumpian dystopia, I’ve had some fun while still fighting the good fight, and I hope you have too. I refuse to let the heavy stuff suck all the fun out of life - especially in summer. We need more joy because it’s been so tough.
My gratitude this week goes to Chris Galloway, who shared his Nationals baseball tickets with me so I could take my visiting brother and two friends to our first game of the year. I’ll fully cop to giving him love partly because of this, but the real reason I’m sharing here has nothing to do with the game. I’ve known Chris since he was president of the Young Democrats, and I’ve known FieldWorks even longer than that. Founded in 2001, the firm has run field programs for 500+ clients and put more than 50,000 people to work — and Chris and the whole FieldWorks team (Lew, Dessari, and everyone doing the actual signature-gathering and canvassing) are quietly some of the best in the business at the hardest, least-glamorous part of this work: petition qualification, ballot measure signature gathering, and the legal fights that come with both. That’s not flashy work, but it’s the hard work that gets ballot measures qualified, and so many progressive policy wins possible.
So: thank you, Chris. Thank you, FieldWorks team. Naming the people who power democracy, not just the candidates who win, is part of what we love here.
A special shout-out to four movement leaders sharing their wisdom in new books:
Atima Omara celebrates Black women’s essential role in building an inclusive, multiracial democracy in The Instigators.
Rashad Robinson offers a practical roadmap for turning activism into lasting change in From Presence to Power.
Ben Wikler lays out an urgent, hopeful strategy for defeating authoritarianism and rebuilding democracy in This Is the Plan.
And Albert Morales shares a beautiful and deeply personal story of spiritual awakening—sparked while attending Catholic Mass with his childhood best friend in Boston—in his new book.
Congratulations to Atima, Rashad, Ben, and Albert—and thank you for putting your experiences, ideas, and stories into the world.
1. FuturePAC – Portland, OR Field Director
2. Movement Labs– Remote Chief of Staff, CER
3. PTGR Strategies– Remote Call Time Manager
4. Spruce Street Compliance – Washington, DC Compliance Assistant
5. J Street – New York, NY Managing Director, Mid-Atlantic and Florida Region,
6. Revolution Field Strategies – AZ/NC/PA/GA
State Operations Director
7. Community Change– DC Director of the Executive Office
8. Moxie Strategies – New York, NY
Principal of Public Affairs, Public affairs consulting.
9. Healthcare Education Project – NY Paid Political Canvasser
Healthcare advocacy.
10. Dunlap For Congress– Old Town, ME Deputy Finance Director & Call Time Manager
1. Career Fairs — The next one is in a few weeks.
2. Powerful Idea Awards — We got a late start, but voting is underway for our 2025 Powerful Idea Awards. We’ve decided to fold them into the 2026 Powerful Idea Awards, likely alongside Roots Camp — more on that soon. For now, voting is open, and it’s a great way to uplift the people who’ve been nominated.
3. Website rebuild — We’re rebuilding our entire website from the ground up — not a renovation, a full teardown and rebuild. In the meantime, we redid our legacy site home page this week, which felt like a step closer to our new one. We’re still a few weeks out from unveiling the rebuild, but we really do want ideas!
I’m not sure I can say this enough about how eternally grateful I am to this community. This year has been really hard due to my cancer journey and some legal challenges in Rwanda. And that isn’t touching the democracy fights we’re all facing and attacks on our neighbors and friends by ICE. Recently, I learned that more fierce movement warriors are facing cancer battles - two for the second time. Your kind words to me have helped more than you can know, so if you’re friends with Tanya Tarr, Tory Brown, or Holly Armstrong, or Luke Quant, please send them some love and support - and even if you’re not, kind words from allies mean a lot too. It is crazy that so many of us who fight for our country as much as anyone working for it, and yet because of this administration, our health care premiums are through the roof, and out-of-pocket medical costs. We all know the instability of this work and how few safety nets most of us have. This is why GAIN Power exists - to provide community and support for the people who power our democracy. We need to do more to make this work sustainable and successful, and I promise that is all we’re working on. Please share your thoughts as we do. Till then - have a great weekend!
Thank you.
Amy Pritchard, ❌👑 & our GAIN Power Team!
I’m fixated on this job - and will be eager to see more like it:
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