By Laura Haight
President, DWGC

Democratic Women is organizing an effort to bring all the party organizations, communities, and issue-aligned nonprofits together to chart a path to 2026. What does that mean and why do we need to do it?

We are living through something that is unimaginable. Although it would appear that most of the impact is at the federal level, this is an object lesson in how much the federal government impacts us locally. 

For starters, our beautiful community is not safe. On a recent call with the Hispanic Alliance, it was discussed that immigrants – even documented ones – should be advised not to drive. Because it is the most vulnerable place where they will be stopped by police and taken into custody. Next step: an ICE visit. 

In a brief exchange with one of the leaders of the LGBTQ community just last Friday, I asked: how are you doing? They responded: “It’s been rough. We’re doing the best we can and just keep showing up.”

At our coffee get together on Saturday, I talked to two people who had family members laid off from their federal jobs. And I had another conversation with a member who is active in a nonprofit organization in the county that has been unable to access any of its federal funding for two weeks.

This is just the beginning. As we move further down this road, the impact on our community will become more apparent. 

What we’ll also see is just how far our GOP-majority state government wants to go.

Emboldened by what’s going on in DC, the legislative agenda may get even more extreme. Already we have bills to eliminate contraception, to cut out the virtually meaningless exemptions in the current version of the abortion bill, and to add prison time for women and their doctors. A bill to protect the “preborn” would give a fetus  – regardless of gestation stage – the rights of an American citizen (oddly based on the 14th Amendment that Trump wants to upend) and would treat an abortion as “murder” subject to the same penalties, including death. 

Creatively, state legislators have now determined that DEI is a violation of the civil rights act and a bill to make it illegal to have such programs across the entire public infrastructure including all education facilities is on the table. 

One of my favorites is kind of a one-off but it seems to illustrate a bit of a trend. House bill 3590 would remove the pesky higher education requirement for elected state officials – including probate judges. If enacted, which seems highly unlikely, a high school diploma is all that would be required it seems, including for the state Superintendent of Education.

All of this demands that we, as Democrats, make changes to move forward. We cannot keep doing the same things and hoping for a different result. And we cannot continue to work separately – Dem Women, the GCDP, North Greenville Democrats, Young Dems and all the other groups must come together, look deeply at our own efforts, and chart a course for 2025 and 2026. We must work not only together with other partisan groups, but together with issue-aligned organizations and community groups. Our values are the same and we will have to row together to convert them into electoral wins and legislative accomplishments.

To this end, Dem Women is moving ahead with a series of summit meetings we are calling Solidarity Greenville ’26. Notices have gone out to all the Democratically aligned organizations in the county and we hope to have our first session in late March/early April. 

Our mission is to build a coalition of partisan and non partisan organizations, community and neighborhood associations to work together to strengthen policy and positive governance in Greenville County and South Carolina. 

Our objectives are:

• To improve relationships with our communities. 
• To establish common ground with issue aligned organizations and to work together to craft a set of policy goals that will strengthen our communities and improve options, opportunities and outcomes for our neighbors. 
• To find ways to aid and support individuals, communities and organizations that are impacted by the Trump administration’s actions. 
• To hold the City Council in 2025 and flip a seat in Greenville County in 2026. That will require strong messaging pushed out to those who would never read or be exposed to our communications. It will require a strategic approach that we all agree on and work to implement.

It will require a hard look at ourselves: Our strengths and weaknesses, our opportunities and threats before we try to convince non-partisan issue aligned organizations that we have our “stuff” together.

We are all working toward the same goals, but often at cross purposes.

• The Party focuses on electing Democrats.
• The aligned organizations focus on the doomed concept of getting enough Republicans to vote on a bill that is often an affront to their bedrock principles or the demands of MAGA. With no concern that they could lose the support of their constituents, Republicans vote as they choose, not as the voters they represent may demand.
• And increasingly voters don’t demand much from their legislators. They focus on what’s going on in their lives from day to day, never connecting the dots. Many of our communities have no neighborhood associations pulling together to address local issues like safe communities, infrastructure, law and order, much less the bigger topics of climate/environmental justice, women’s rights (including but certainly not limited to reproduction), and education.

I don’t know what the outcome of our efforts will be. We may fail. But, in the words of Wayne Gretzky: You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. 

So we are going to take this one. I hope that all the groups, elected officials, and candidates that comprise the Democratic Community will join us. 

This is not a think tank. The end goal is to effect change, to elect Democrats and move toward a more balanced and responsive government. And to become a better member of our own community, helping during the tough times, and working to build better, safer, stronger futures.