National Stonewall Democrats Makes Democrats Better

National Stonewall Democrats: Winning Elections, Improving the Party, Growing the Grassroots.

When it comes to winning campaigns, every successful politician knows there are three vital resources which are almost always in short supply: time, money, and volunteers. 
 
Our community is responding well to the first two. We're recruiting and training candidates to run earlier. Through communities like eQualityGiving, and other donor collaborations, we're funding progressive candidates so they have the necessary resources to win. 
 
Unfortunately, we haven't invested enough in a resource that's in critically short supply: boots on the ground to win elections. 
 
With over 90 chapters across the country, and new chapters forming all the time, National Stonewall Democrats (NSD) is training volunteers for campaigns across the country, as well as recruiting and training future candidates for elected office. Importantly, we are also electing more and more LGBT folks to leadership positions in state parties across the nation. Stonewall Democrats sit on central and state Democratic committees across the country where they directly impact policy. NSD is bringing the reality of partisan politics into our fight for equality. 

PARTY MATTERS 

And partisan is not a dirty word. Partisanship in pursuit of a greater good is a very high calling indeed. On almost every issue of importance to us, and almost without exception, Democrats vote with us. I don't envy the task of our counterparts in the other party. The leadership of the Republican Party is firmly in the grasp of those who most adamantly oppose us. None of their presidential candidates offer us even a glimmer of hope for substantive progress. The most expedient route to achieving our codified civil rights is through the Democratic Party. In my lifetime, that is the political reality. 
 
Of course, party in itself cannot be where our litmus test ends. National Stonewall Democrats is not the Democratic National Committee. NSD is not an arm of the Party nor are we under the direction of any ranking Democrat. 
 
National Stonewall Democrats not only works to elect fair-minded Democrats, but we also work to improve the Democratic Party as a whole, from top to bottom, from The White House to the white picket fence. Our job doesn't start with Get Out The Vote efforts and end on Election Day. We develop relationships years prior to the election season. This allows us to elect Democrats who are best on our issues and then hold them accountable for their votes directly in the communities they represent.

WHY CHAPTERS WORK 

I give to National Stonewall Democrats to support our chapters, those fabled grass-roots folks who live and work in the districts and who can best challenge their elected officials to stand for what is right, and not what is politically expedient. I'm one of those grass-roots people myself. I'm an Irish/Sicilian/Native American, union member, son of an auto mechanic and retail clerk, the eldest of six siblings. My schoolteacher husband is an elected official in our small Massachusetts town and Secretary of our Democratic Town Committee. The leaders in those communities know us, know our issues and therefore respond to our opinions much more readily than they would an outside, national organization trying to make local change.

WHY I GIVE 

I give to National Stonewall Democrats to invest in the long-term field efforts which benefits my husband and my own community, and which we know directly impact communities across the country. I know from personal experience that local teams of organized volunteers are what are critically needed to win elections. 
 
I give to National Stonewall Democrats because I want to see full equality for LGBT people in the shortest amount of time possible, preferably in my lifetime! To achieve that end, I'm committed to electing fair-minded politicians into a fair-minded party. No political party is perfect, but it is our participation – through National Stonewall Democrats – which continues to make the Democratic Party better. 
 
I give to National Stonewall Democrats, and gladly. I hope you will, too.