Last week FBI and federal agents carried out a massive coordinated raid in Ohio targeting organizers, leaders and volunteers of a voting rights organization. Followed a few days later by unrelated indictments, Minnesota activists who stood up to ICE enforcement earlier this year were arrested.
The neighbor-to-neighbor organizing that is occurring around the country and was so effective in Minnesota, is terrifying to an authoritarian coalition that is trying to dismantle the rights and freedoms of Americans. As is the outrage communities have expressed in the face of authoritarian assaults on voting rights.
Make no mistake, an authoritarian movement that feels it is losing its grip on the American people will weaponize federal law enforcement in new and frightening ways to chill dissent. These are not isolated investigations into organizations or individuals, they are maneuvers designed to brand democratic organizing as criminal in a plot to steal the power of working people.
These attacks are not just about creating fear to sway the midterms. They are part of a much larger effort to rob American families of their rights, freedoms, and their agency to participate in the decisions that govern their day-to-day lives, undermining democracy beyond elections.
The authoritarian movement’s strategy isn’t to ban voting outright, but to advance tactics like the raid in Ohio to rig the system in many small ways to favor the authoritarian movement come election day.
This movement strategically directs its sharpest efforts at eroding democracy in non-white communities, knowing that degrading the democracy and citizenship of marginalized communities degrades it for all.
The raid in Ohio, like election sabotage strategies that target voter registration and mobilization efforts, is an assault on the 50 percent of the population who don’t normally participate in elections – disproportionately the poor and marginalized communities for whom American democracy is least responsive.
The threat to our elections doesn’t come from our neighbors – it comes from an authoritarian movement that has convinced those in and out of official positions to treat the practical participation of democracy as a criminal act.
Authoritarians thrive off fear and a lie of inevitability, but American history has proven that neighbor-to-neighbor organizing can build movements to fend off authoritarian assaults while demanding an expansion of democracy that begins to work for all of us.
There is an imminent threat to our elections but it isn’t coming from efforts to register and educate voters. Instead, it emanates from authoritarian movements employing tactics, like the FBI raids, that dissuade full participation in our elections under the false pretense of protecting their integrity.
The raids are a manufactured inflection point in a massive years-long effort to peddle the conspiratorial lie about coordinated voter fraud threatening our elections. It creates a dramatic storyline to advance an authoritarian fiction that they are unable to illustrate with real evidence of coordinated fraud. The Ohio raids provide a spectacle that fits into their lie, giving an opportunity for the authoritarian movement to deny unfavorable results come November.
This is part of a set of tactics that make up a strategy to overwhelm the actual integrity of the midterm elections with different election sabotage efforts. The maneuvers in Ohio are designed to create a chilling effect in a critical Senate battleground. Look no further than the recent redistricting throughout the South in the last six weeks to see that this is far from the only election sabotage plot in the works. Investigations and indictments are just one tool in the authoritarian toolbox. We need to recognize that each of these individual attacks, even those with limited success or that operate as small localized sabotage, add up to a serious authoritarian threat.
The modern authoritarian movement we are up against understands that democracy is about much more than just elections. The Ohio raids were designed to brand the practical day-to-day work of community organizing with the sting of criminality – creating the conditions where outreach to the 50 percent of Ohioans who don’t typically participate in the midterm elections is viewed with suspicion. The authoritarian goal is for power to be concentrated in the hands of a few, while the majority are locked out of representation and participation. This tactic is not just about voter registration but about the lie that the accent you speak with, what you believe, or how much is in your bank account confines our neighbors to second class citizenship.
Those already registered and in stable economic conditions are not likely to immediately feel the chilling effects from this election sabotage tactic. Instead, the largest impact will be on the efforts to organize poor, working-class, and marginalized citizens into our current democratic process. Not just to register to vote, but to organize in a myriad of ways to demand more of those in power and hold them accountable in a functioning democracy.
The political indictments in Minnesota in the days following the investigation in Ohio underscore this part of the authoritarian attack. Beyond the particulars of what the federal government will be able to prove in court, the sweeping generalizations of the public announcement of the arrests are meant to stop the neighbor-to-neighbor organizing that uses democratic tools to hold the government accountable to its citizens.
Though the investigations and indictments are devastating to those targeted individuals and organizations, they are largely an effort to cast a wider net of political intimidation to disrupt pro-democracy work. The authoritarian movement will use the midterms as an opportunity to deliver an onslaught of election sabotage tactics to tilt the midterms in their favor, but their broader goals are aimed at disabling the more effective democracy mechanisms of community organizing.
Increasing voter participation is an important goal in a functioning democracy. But increased turnout alone, in reaction to voter suppression efforts, is insufficient. The effort to protect the elections from sabotage needs to demand more than the protection of the status quo.
The authoritarian strategy attempts to trap us solely in defense of a system that is not working for working people. They are hoping we go no further than defending the systems they are trying to sabotage. Instead, we need to demand an expansion of democracy and citizenship that actually meets the needs of our families and our communities.
We need a movement response to a movement threat. That means not waiting for others with specialized skills or positions of power to oppose the threats to our elections and our democracy. It means organizing with our neighbors to tell a different story than the one the authoritarian movement tells to justify their assault on our democracy.
There isn’t a magic set of messages that easily fixes our authoritarian problem. But there are some adaptable elements that can help communicate the threat and the need for a democracy that works for us all.
Democracy isn’t working because we don’t have enough of it: American democracy has been failing to deliver. We see the failure to address major problems that make families struggle to get by. The solution is a more robust democracy, not an embrace of authoritarianism.
Flip the security threat: It’s not our neighbors who threaten our elections but the authoritarian movement.
This is the next stage in an authoritarian advance: Following the ICE surges at the beginning of the year, the attack on the midterms is the next major authoritarian advance to erode the rights and freedoms of the American people.
Righteous anger over stolen agency: The varied assaults on the midterm elections are an active theft of people’s agency over their own lives.
Expand citizenship: We need pathways to citizenship for our immigrant neighbors but also more expansive versions of rights and benefits so that we all have access to good jobs, healthcare, and educational opportunities.
The heart of the fight against authoritarianism is what’s happening at the community level. Whether it involves caring for neighbors, documenting ICE, or planning to defend local elections, we don’t beat authoritarianism unless communities are driving this movement. That is why the community defense networks that have formed in hundreds of U.S. cities and towns are so important. They are adaptable, they engage different kinds of people, and they are focused on addressing each community’s unique part in defending democracy.
Attacks on elections are designed to further discredit democracy in the eyes of the American people. We need a movement response that understands their strategy and develops one in return. Join us for a series of trainings that will help your community not just defend the elections but grow a proactive, movement-building response that demands a more robust democracy beyond the ballot count.
Join us July 8 - 6PM CT / 7PM ET - Protect Elections. Demand Democracy.
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