By Laura Haight
President, DWGC

My mother was extremely proud of her heritage. She was a Colonial Dame, which means we can trace our family back to the original settlers. But she was most proud of being DAR. I did not join the DAR when my mother was still alive as she so badly wanted me to. I did so to honor her after she passed. Although I confess I’ve never been to a meeting. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my ancestors who fought during the revolutionary war. They were among the very first American soldiers. They were farmers and smiths, shop owners and ranchers, bar keeps.. 

They fought in horrible conditions. They were outgunned and outmanned, short on bullets and boots, but long on patriotism.

Their patriotism was a dream, a wish, something that didn’t even exist yet and their sacrifice made it a reality that has been an example to the world for nearly 250 years. 

Today, I can only hope that i have half their grit, their guts, their passion. Because we are in a civil war. No shots have been fired. But we are in it. There is a binary choice each of us must make. It’s not are you pro-life or pro-choice, pro-gun or pro-gun safety, progressive or moderate. It’s are you for democracy or not. We don’t know yet what the “not” represents. It could be authoritarianism, it could be facism, it could be a monarchy with Trump crowned and his sons princes in waiting. Whatever it could become, it will not be the democracy our ancestors fought for.

Not if we don’t stand up, put our boots on and fight for it.

What does that look like? 

A big part of it is treating the elections over the next two years like our damn lives depended on it. Because in all too many cases, they may. Every Republican who follows the dictates of Donald Trump or Project 2025 is a traitor to our democracy. They will do the bidding of Washington; they will clone legislation (like the DEI bill) that comes down from DC. Every Democrat we elect is someone standing in the way of the spread of this anti-democratic movement.

It doesn’t matter if it’s City Council or the White House. There is nothing normal about the elections we face now. Here’s a not-impossible scenario: Do you want a Democratic-majority or Republican-majority council when the Department of Homeland Security calls and tells the city they want to have the city police start rounding up all the immigrants they can, check their papers and hold them – with or without cause – for the feds? Do you think that’s impossible? That that will never happen?

We cannot hide from the bigger fight taking place all around us. We cannot take the laissez faire approach to elections that we always do. It can’t be the same 30-40 people who do all the phone banking, the canvassing, the door knocking. It needs to be all of us – everyone in this room, everyone you know – getting out of our comfort zone and doing everything our candidates, our party, and our democratic organizations can think of to reach every potential voter (no matter what party affiliation they may have claimed in the past).

Imagine the number of voters we can reach for Tina and Lillian if everyone in this room participated. 

I want every Republican in Greenville County to hear from us. That we are on the front lines, we’re putting down the TV remote and picking up a clipboard and if Tina needs 50 people on Saturday and Lillian needs 50 people on Sunday, we’ve got them.

It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be uncomfortable, it’s going to be 18 solid months of working our butts off, and I know most of you don’t want to do it. You are wishing things would just stay the way they are. Our ancestors had a wish too. They made it a reality and they gave it to us. And here we are now, watching it disintegrate before our very eyes. 

Our democracy is only as strong as the representatives we elect to speak for us. We have accepted mediocrity in the past. But we can’t anymore. Mediocrity won’t make sure that strong Democratic voices stand up for what’s right in the City Council, County Council, Statehouse, and Congress when the long arm of federal authoritarianism sends down an edict. 

I hope conversations like this are happening in every county in South Carolina, in every state in the South, in every Republican state in the country. Because we are all patriots fighting for a wish we’ve had the privilege of living under all our lives, to ensure our children and their children have that benefit as well. 

So say it loud: That you are all in. That you know what democracy looks like and are prepared to fight for it. Because that’s what it’s going to take.