UNITE HERE on January 6 Anniversary
One year ago today, over 1,000 UNITE HERE housekeepers, cooks, dishwashers & airport workers—who are mostly women & people of color—wrapped up months of full-time canvassing in Georgia. It should have been a day to celebrate an extraordinary triumph for our union—but instead we watched in fear along with our fellow Americans as our democracy was shaken to its core.
Our fight in 2020 felt like a David & Goliath struggle—our union, 98% out of work in the early days of the pandemic, helped defeat Trump in Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, and then turned on a dime to Take Back the Senate. Georgia’s Jim Crow past had always ensured that runoff elections favored Incumbents.
The stakes couldn’t have been higher. COVID relief was on the line. The future of our freedom to vote was on the line. Losing in Georgia was not an option. UNITE HERE members knew it. So, we knocked on 1.6 million doors as part of a larger 9 million-knock statewide effort to win the vote for Reverend Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
Since then, politicians have proposed hundreds of anti-voter laws to try to push us all backward—and hurt working people and people of color most. We deserve a democracy where all of us have a say in the decisions that affect our lives—no matter our race, zip code, or income. We cannot afford to go backwards. We already have enough of an uphill battle ahead of us.
We took back the Senate and it’s going to take ALL of us to hold the line in both chambers in 2022 so we can get the work done in D.C. that working people need, NOW. Si, se puede.