Who are the Justice Democrats?

https://www.justicedemocrats.com/

Why “Democrats”? Why not just start a new party?

We want our democracy to work for Americans again as soon as possible. The best way to do this is by working to change the Democratic party from the inside out. Once Justice Democrats take power, we plan to implement electoral reform, like ranked choice voting, so third parties can have more power in our democracy.

How are you different from other Democratic groups?

We are thrilled that so many new organizations have come forward to enact change. Here are few things that set us apart from other groups:

1. We don’t endorse based on this bogus concept of “candidate viability,” which is the establishment’s way of saying “who has raised the most money” or “who has the strongest political connections.” Instead, we endorse based on who we want to see in Congress and who will best represent our values -- which you can find here.

2. All JD candidates are required to pledge not to take any corporate PAC or corporate lobbyist money. (Wondering who all these awesome people are? Check out our list of endorsed candidates here!)

3. We focus primarily on Congressional and Gubernatorial races -- but are grateful there are other organizations out there working to elect progressives at the local level too.

Who is running Justice Democrats?

The current board of Justice Democrats is Alexandra Rojas, Nasim Thompson, and Saikat Chakrabarti. Although all of our staff (aside from those who choose to volunteer) make a living wage, none of us are even close to wealthy. We’d rather invest campaign funds into better field programs than take big salaries. Don’t believe us? You can find our FEC report here.

What do you all do besides send these emails? Where does the money go?

We’re glad you asked! We use donation money to hire staff that recruits and trains candidates, runs all Justice Democrats social media, manages the Justice Democrats website, answers all incoming emails to our help desk, creates videos and other design assets that are used to promote Justice Democrats policies and candidates, handles inbound and outbound press communications, and also any other work involved with promoting Justice Democrats candidates as well as Justice Democrats issues.

In addition to promoting candidates, we also promotes issues. For example, we worked with the National Nurses United to pressure over 45 Democrats to co-sponsor Medicare for All in the House, getting H.R. 676 up to 121 co-sponsors — the most it has ever received.

One of Justice Democrats' goals is to get everyday, working people into Congress. Many of these people don't have a lot of campaign experience, and so in addition to endorsing candidates, Justice Democrats can help nascent campaigns get off the ground with the resources they need. These resources include a distributed field program in which candidates can opt-in to get access to an auto-dialer for voter contact, a texting tool for event turnout, a volunteer portal, and other general help on their field program. We also help candidates with recruiting campaign managers, message training, press, creative work, and a host of other services that campaigns require.

And it works! Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was one of the Justice Democrats who took full advantage of all of these resources, and together, we were able to pull off one of the biggest upsets in modern political history!

How can I support Justice Democrats?
Justice Democrats is powered by small dollar contributions from folks all across the country, at an average donation of less than $16. If you can afford it, we’d love for you to chip in to help support the work and resources listed above!