By Laura Haight
President, Democratic Women of Greenville County

Dem Women worked hard in the off-season to help candidates, to support an effort to repeal/amend the abortion ban, and to prepare for a crucial 2024 election cycle.

In April, we organized a Zoom virtual event to spotlight all of our primary candidates. With assistance from Colleen Condon, first vice chair of the SCDP, we had most of the primary candidates present and those who didn’t attend were offered a chance to submit a video for inclusion in the replay. We had a good live audience and the replay has been viewed 298 times.

As our quarterly community involvement activity, a group of about 25 volunteers came together for Hands on Greenville (our second year of participation) to assemble hygiene kits for schools. In June, our summer activity was a donation campaign to collect funds for United Way’s School Tools program.

Also in June, we partnered with Moms Demand Action to sponsor and organize a rally following the annual Wear Orange Day walk on June 8. We invited those candidates who had applied for and received the endorsement of Moms Demand. Wendel Jones, John MacCarthy, Shauna Johnson, Taylor Culliver, Karl Allen, and Octavia Amaechi spoke to the group of about 60 walkers. Brann Fowler was on National Guard duty and was represented by his wife, Becca.

We’re also actively growing our membership and finding new ways to reach new audiences. Our monthly book club and Cocktail & Conversation events are bringing in new faces; some of whom are able to attend our Summer Series of evening meetings June through August.

This cycle we will be working hard with our candidates and with the party to reach Greenville Democrats and get them fired up about this election. But we also know that on the national level, our efforts might be more effective to find ways to support Vice President Harris in other states.

To that end, we have made a high-level contact with the campaign in Georgia and North Carolina, and are planning to organize phone/text banks and in person canvassing throughout the summer/fall. We are also planning a large postcard campaign in conjunction with Turnoutpac’s Postcards to Swing States project. We’ll be writing postcards to voters in Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania at our events and at dedicated opportunities. We’re only limited by how many stamps we can buy. So all the proceeds from our monthly raffle as well as profits from our merchandise sales will go to cover mailing costs.

We’ve been excited to have as many as 150 people at our monthly meetings. Get information on our website and register to attend. If you want to catch up on some of the excellent programs you’ve missed (yeah, I am a little prejudiced), you can find the replays on our YouTube channel.

We welcome new and returning members, so stay in touch with us and we’ll keep you updated on what’s going on.