Sister District’s mission to build progressive power in state legislatures is inextricably linked to our vision for racial equity and justice in America. Racism and discrimination are embedded in our government infrastructure as well as the laws passed by our legislative bodies. In order to dismantle structural racism, we must organize at the grassroots level to elect progressive representatives who will enact policies that are unapologetically anti-racist. We must also ensure that we are electing officials who represent all the voices in our communities.

The bedrock American principle of “equality and justice for all” has never applied to everyone in this country, nor does it today. In one breath, the same founding fathers who declared “all men are created equal” also decided that slaves counted as only 3/5ths of a person. State governments have always played an outsized role in denying equal rights to people of color.

When slavery was abolished, southern states quickly enacted laws such as the poll tax, the grandfather clause, and literacy tests to prevent Black people from voting. As far back as 1850, anti-immigrant sentiment drove states to subject Asian-Americans to unequal taxes, bar them from public schools and hospitals, and prohibit them from serving on juries or testifying in court. When the Voting Rights Act went into effect, states restricted the Hispanic vote by making voting accessible only in English, and suppressed the Native American vote by, for example, requiring that voters have a mailing address. Today, states continue the legacy of structural racism through a myriad of facially race-neutral policies that have a disproportionately adverse effect on communities of color, such as voter ID laws, lengthy incarceration for non-violent offenses, gerrymandering, attacks on reproductive rights, and dismantling the social safety net.

To root out structural racism and address the centuries of oppression inflicted on communities of color, Sister District will conduct its programs and operations to make concrete and tangible gains toward racial equity:

• We will build a portfolio of candidates who are not only running in strategic, winnable races, but also who represent all voices and will fight for progressive change.
• We will cultivate a community of volunteers who are representative of the nation as a whole, as well as knowledgeable, curious, and intentional about how their work is connected to racial justice.
• We will seek partnerships with allies who are incorporating equity into their work and holding themselves accountable to it.
• We will conduct research that advances racial equity.
• We will seek to achieve racial justice within our organization and create an organizational culture that is welcoming and inclusive. We are committed to viewing our work through a racial equity lens to assess the impact of all our internal policies and practices, including hiring, promotion, staffing, and budgeting.

We will hold ourselves accountable to this statement as we move forward, and we commit to constantly assessing how we can improve our efforts to serve the communities we aim to support.