Toolkits, Podcast, Fundraiser
MANY ADVANCES, MANY ATTACKS —
and Many New Toolkits To Fight Back!
Dear Coupstoppers,
Greetings! Lots of good news and wins to share amid the Grim. We’re excited to share it with you.
Let’s start with a big WELCOME to those of you who have just joined us, and getting our newsletter for the first time. It provides updates on campaign news and ally efforts to keep you looped in. We also thank those of you who filled out our Volunteer Form to help out. We welcome help: our small team is racing to meet a growing demand for information, research, translation, media ads, and especially outreach to audiences around the country. We’ll be responding to each of you and thank you for your patience. We super appreciate it. Sharing our materials is a Big First Step everyone can do.
MANY NEW ALLIES — A Snapshot of the Outreach Challenge
The best news is that our efforts are bearing fruit: we’re reaching a lot more people and organizations. Our website has had 38,809 unique visitors in 2024, and we currently have 2,968 followers on X, and 1,038 followers on TikTok. We’ve translated much of our material into Spanish and a new ally, LatinX+, an HIV network led by volunteer translator Javier Morales, is helping to expand outreach to Latinx communities. We need more help there.
We now count 22 allies and active partner collaborations in different key sectors of the Project 2025 attack. They include groups fighting for religious liberty, pushing for fair elections, mobilizing students, LGBTQIA+ organizations – and a Republican-led partner, too.
The word about Project 2025 is definitely spreading. BUT the gap is clearer, too: A new US poll of 100 respondents showed ¾ of them – regardless of partisan affiliation – had never heard of Project 2025. Latino communities lagged a bit behind. So our collective work is cut out for us. The November election is less than five months away. All eyes on stopping Project 2025!
Hitting the Air Waves
We’re allying with new grassroots women’s and fair vote groups in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to integrate messaging about Project 2025 into their outreach to various audiences. Nationally, we’re allied with writer and progressive activist Ellen Gavin and The Writer’s Brigade who are creating TV ads about Project 2025’s threats and collaborating with Republican-led Lincoln Project to air them across the country, targeting swing states. Our campaign research is helping to shape ad messages. We’re also using social media to amplify ally efforts (@stopthecoup2025 | #stopthecoup2025). Please share the messages on social media.
New Congressional Task Force and Expert Working Groups Forming
We’re excited – and relieved – to learn that Congressional progressives have taken the first steps to form a Task Force to fight Project 2025 and define priority Congressional action steps and legislation to Stop Project 2025. We’re on board, discussing future Congressional meetings and webinars to inform the public on key fronts.
A new ally, Democracy Forward, has worked in parallel fashion to our campaign to closely break down Project 2025 and bring together policy and legal experts into several Working Groups on core topics. The goal: to develop a loose counter-agenda of proactive actions and mitigation steps to counter Project 2025’s agenda and shore up government institutions and brainstorm legal and legislative targets. If you want to join the Working Groups, email us at: stopthecoup2025@gmail.com and we’ll pass on the request.
Our HEADLINE NEWS DIGEST: A Weekly Yardstick of Victories vs. Setbacks
You may have seen that we began publishing a weekly Headline Digest of key headlines and reports, grouped into advances vs. setbacks, that provide a loose yardstick of the battle to stop Project 2025. We call your attention to this because the Advances often represent successful how-to field STRATEGIES for fighting back. Last week, for example, we noted that more US states are proactively passing laws to ban book bans – a nice twist on the attack on free speech and an important strategy for LGBTQIA+ people and the cause of racial representation. Share that with legal and education allies and your state and city officials. Proactive action wins.
Check out our Ally Voices and Ally Toolkits for Fighting Back
We’ve created a comprehensive online list of Ally Voices that represent frontline groups mobilizing in key sectors of Project 2025’s agenda (The Fighters). We’ve added frontline voices (blogs, newsletters, podcasts, videos) focused just on Project 2025 (Look Who’s Talking) and other voices on key battlefronts (Key Topics). They invite deeper dives on key issues. Have a look – and please share these resources with others.
Once people learn about Project 2025, the next question is: how do we fight back? So we compiled a large list of Toolkits for Action on the core topics of Project 2025’s attack that will be on our website very soon. You’ll find digital trackers, mapping tools, field models, Know Your Rights fact sheets, briefs, and How-To tips and best practices for talking about issues, mobilizing, and taking action to move the needle. Whether it’s how to successfully fight a book or library ban, speak up as a parent at a school board meeting, defend against trans discrimination, organize a protest or letter campaign, confront right-wing doxing online, or support youth-led climate or free speech or gun ban protests, we searched out the tools and best-practice tactics created by so many allies in the progressive movement. We also invite you to share such resources with us. Email us at: stopthecoup@gmail.com, Subject line: Toolkit.
#StopProject2025: A Toolkit for Community Organizers
We’re polishing our #StopProject2025: A Toolkit for Community Organizers and will post and share with key allies in swing states and others very soon. Our Toolkit is designed to provide core messaging about Project 2025 with take-home messaging, talking points and resources to support community organizers and activists to talk about the issues with their communities, for different audiences. We’ll have this in Spanish soon, too. Look for it on our website. Email us at stopthecoup2025@gmail.com to get a copy or suggest contacts to share the toolkit. We welcome beta testing and feedback.
WHAT DO WE WANT? Revisioning Democracy Video Podcast Launch
Knowledge = power. On June 14th, 7pm, we are launching “Revisioning Democracy”, a video podcast and livestream Public Conversation, co-hosted by founder Anne-christine d’Adesky and Jay W. Walker. It will take place at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division bookstore in NYC. Our first guest is Sarah Schulman, author, longtime fierce feminist and lesbian activist. Our monthly podcast (bimonthly in Sept) will focus on ideas and lessons to fight autocracy and Project 2025’s agenda, but focus our conversation on the other critical piece of the defending democracy puzzle for America: What do We Want? Our democracy is broken; the project of America is unfinished. Many are disaffected and won’t vote. Others are mobilized but tired and overwhelmed. What are we fighting to defend? We have to be able to vision What We Want to build: a true, representative democracy.
For our Revisioning Democracy podcast we’ll invite speakers, activists, and topic experts from the US and globally to share their perspectives, with an emphasis on cross-movement lessons and context for the present wave of right-wing attacks. We’ll include voices of the most-targeted communities and lessons from abroad. We invite you to join this conversation. Let’s educate and inspire one other – and spread the word on ideas to resist autocracy and seed democracy. All eyes on history & the present!
Organizing With Pride Campaign & Queer/Latinx Town Halls
It’s Pride Time! Join our new Organizing With Pride campaign to educate and mobilize grassroots LGBTQIA+ communities against Project 2025. We’ve allied with LGBTQIA+, Pride, and Queer events groups nationally to do outreach in their local communities. We’re planning a Town Hall with LatinX+ aimed at Latino queer and HIV groups and activists. Check out our Organizing With Pride campaign materials, social media tools and fact sheets. We invite queer allies in particular to jump on board.
Join us on Wednesday, June 26th, 7pm EST to discuss LGBTQ+ Rights as part of the “2024 and Beyond: Creating a Shared Future Town Hall Series”. Hosted by Chromatic Black, this session is co-sponsored by us and Impulse Group. The series as a whole unpacks Project 2025 and its impact on our democracy.
Finally… Our First Fundraiser – Help Support Our Work!
If I Can’t Dance, It Ain’t My Revolution
It’s exhausting to fight fascism. We took a lesson from the AIDS movement and know self-care and celebrating our win is critical to long-term political work. So we want to celebrate this Pride with you, too.
To that end we’re hosting our first Cocktails Against Fascism Mixer + Fundraiser at the Stonewall Inn in New York City on Tuesday, June 25th, 9pm, during Pride Week. Please join us and/or consider supporting us with a donation. We operate as a fiscally-sponsored 501(c)(3) project and can tax-exempt donations by check or handle electronic donations that are not tax-exempt. We’ll also have Stop The Coup 2025 t-shirts and buttons for sale on the 25th.
WE REALLY NEED FINANCIAL SUPPORT TO DO THIS WORK. Will you consider making a donation? We’ve been moving so fast to get the word out that we haven’t had much time or bandwidth to focus on raising funds that are critically needed to support our operation and expand our campaign. We have a November deadline to do our utmost to #StopProject2025, and plan for whatever follows the election. We believe if people know how Project 2025 affects them, they will vote against that agenda.
Trust us, even the smallest donations will help. That’s one concrete, very helpful, appreciated way your activism can count today. And if you are a fundraising guru, with contacts to share, please get in touch.
The Christian right has billions behind Project 2025. We hope to obtain funds for our small team to continue carrying out our campaign activities as fast as we can – with our eye on the November election. We face a historic election. The stakes for America could not be higher.
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!
In solidarity and resistance -- and HAPPY PRIDE,
Anne-christine d’Adesky
Founder, Stop The Coup 2025
