Red Wine & Blue

Wine and Blue.

And I'm LaFonda Cousin, a part-time yoga instructor, self-care advocate, and the chief people officer here at Red Wine and Blue.

We officially

have four weeks until the midterms.

As of last week, about 220,000 Virginians had cast their ballots.

That is double the number of early voters at this point back in the 2022 midterms.

Red Wine and Blue has also been working with our local Red Wine and Blue network groups on the ground to push out yard signs for Virginians to put up about voting yes on three ballot amendments.

We are supporting reproductive rights, marriage equality, voting rights, And those things are flying like hotcakes.

[audience applauding]

You know, when I started Red Wine & Blue in 2019, and there are many women in this room who were a part of that journey from the very beginning, we started by working on city council, school board, town trustee races, and I just-- I'm curious.

Raise your hand here if you have been to a school board meeting, a city council meeting sometime in the last, aha, couple years or so.

Look at this.

Okay.

Um, this level of engagement, you all have seen with your own eyes.

And I also just have to point out, these state legislative races, these other even more local races in Ohio, every single cycle since we've been doing Red Wine & Blue, there have been between five and ten examples of these races, including state legislature, that come down to somewhere between zero and one hundred votes.

I mean, we've had some ties.

Welcome to How to Not Lose Your Shit.

I'm Katie Parris, the founder of Red Wine and Blue.

And I'm LaFonda Cousin, a part-time yoga instructor, self-care advocate, and the chief people officer here at Red Wine and Blue.

Today, we had a really interesting conversation about optimism and pessimism with climate journalist Emily Atkin.

LaFonda, what did you think about our conversation with Emily?

Let's share a few other wins, though, that our listeners may not have heard about either.

So, for example, LaFonda in Virginia, I want to share with you.

There is a red wine and blue network group that has been making good trouble.

There is very much so an antagonistic, anti-American, Haiti-first sentiment among the NGO administrative organizations of Clark County, Ohio, the objective being to keep the ex-TPS Haitians in place.

Those organizations, like there's a group called Red Wine and Blue, that's a conglomeration of liberal women They've given six figures in donations that go directly to the Haitians.

There's the publication called The Bulwark that just a few days ago had another multiple six-figure fundraiser, the objective being to keep them in place, drive them to their places of employment where they're working illegally, keep them food, keep them fully stocked, and kind of, frankly, wait out the Trump administration so that tens of thousands of Haitians can remain living and working in Springfield, Ohio.

I'm wondering if the liberal women raising this money spend a lot of their own time with the Haitians of Springfield.

I am so excited today.

For those that were able to make it to our Chicago gala and got to meet our next two guests from the incredible organization known as Red Wine & Blue, we have them back today, Director of Distributed Organizing, Missy McGinnis, and founder of Red Wine & Blue, Katie Paris.

Hi, guys.

How is it going?

It's so important.

We are in a partnership.

We're doing some great, amazing things, and I wanted to talk a little bit about what Red Wine & Blue is doing to get out the vote this election season.

There's an election?

All right, everyone.

Up next, Allison discusses community and midterms with the women of Red Wine and Blue right after this quick break.

Stick around.

We'll be right back.

It's really quite amazing.

Yeah.

The Red Wine and Blue to Run for Something pipeline is well underway-

Yes

And guess what? Tomorrow we've got a really cool thing happening.

We have a crossover episode with Red Wine And Blue and the Suburban Women podcast.

Yes.

So it'll be me and Jasmine and Rachel Vindman.

She says she felt the same exhaustion, so she set out to try and understand politics differently.

Katie, who is the founder of an organization called Red Wine and Blue, shares what she learned when she left the world of DC political strategy and organizing, and started paying attention to ordinary people organizing in their own neighborhoods, in their living rooms and backyards.

She talks about why she's come to believe the most powerful tool in politics isn't a message or an ad, it's doing it together with the people already in your life.

When our members reach out to the people they know, not strangers, voter turnout among the people they contact goes up five to seven percentage points.

So I hired two of the women from my road trip and we got to work.

Our first rule, if anything we did or said sounded like a political party, we'd throw it out and start over, starting with the name.

We called it Red Wine and Blue.

The wine is optional.