Pennsylvania Stands Up

Pennsylvania Stands Up

History

From Daniel Doubet:

After 3 years as executive director of Keystone Progress, one of the largest progressive organizations in Pennsylvania, I am stepping aside from that role. Under my leadership KP has gone from near extinction when I started to unprecedented size and stability. In 2017, I accepted the role, moved across the state, only to find that we were dangerously short on revenue and many of the organization’s relationships needed serious repair.

I am extremely proud of my work leading Keystone Progress through this time, and confident that I served our members, leaders and staff extremely well. Now, as we merge to become Pennsylvania Stands Up, we have the opportunity to have an organization truly capable of creating radical, structural change. After all that work to get us to this exciting new chapter, I’ve chosen to step down as Executive Director and take on a new role in our organization.

When I became executive director of Keystone Progress, I had a big, beautiful vision for how we could transform the political landscape of Pennsylvania. The biggest problem for progressives in PA is not that we need to convince more people that we have the right ideas, in fact, we know everywhere in the state, majorities support progressive PA: we just needed to get organized and build power, so that’s what I set out to do. But it was a tremendously difficult transition, especially as a first time leader of an organization. We were down to one, albeit amazing, organizer and were buried under a massive amount of debt. It quickly became apparent that fulfilling any sort of grand vision for our work would have to take a backseat to triage and righting the ship. These were challenging times that truly tested my leadership- but I never could have done it alone. The only reason we made it through was thanks to the support, accountability, and trust of those around me. In particular, I must acknowledge that lone organizer, Rafael Diaz, whose contribution to the organization’s cannot be overstated.

He kept us centered in the work that was happening on the ground, and was the link between our partners at Reclaim Philadelphia, and our new partners at Lancaster Stands Up.

Leading the organization with 25 staff across the state, Hannah Laurison, our new executive director, has decades of non-profit leadership, and built Pennsylvania Together from nothing to an organization reaching all corners of the commonwealth in 3 short years. Michaela Lovegood our deputy executive director has led countless successful organizing projects across the country for 20 years, and trained thousands organizers and leaders (including me).

Affiliates

• Berks Stands Up
• Capital Region Stands Up
• Chester County Stands Up
• Delco Stands Up
• Chester County Stands Up
• Erie Stands Up
• Lancaster Stands Up
• Lehigh Valley Stands Up
• Reclaim Philadelphia
• York Stands Up

CEO

In 2020 Hannah Burton Laurison was CEO of Pennsylvania Stands Up.

Leaders

• Jacob Swenson-Lengyel is Director of Narrative and Communications at Pennsylvania Stands Up.
• Daniel Doubet serves as Political Director of Pennsylvania Stands Up.

Founders

Lancaster Stands Up membership voted to endorse Bernie Sanders in February 2020. The Sanders campaign has close ties to the group. His national field director, Becca Rast, and deputy field director, Nick Martin, cofounded Lancaster Stands Up. Rast is married to Jonathan Smucker, another cofounder, who helped start Pennsylvania Stands Up, a larger network of progressive groups that includes Lancaster’s.

Pennsylvania Stands Up has eight other chapters, including in Erie County and the Lehigh Valley, as well as Reclaim Philadelphia, which powered the winning insurgent progressive campaigns of District Attorney Larry Krasner and City Councilmember Kendra Brooks.

Braxton connection

Amadee Braxton October 30 2020 · Mobilize ·

I will be phone banking this weekend to get out votes in Pennsylvania. You can join me!

I’m attending Pennsylvania Stands Up’s event, “Defeat Trump: Get Out The Vote with PA Stands Up” – sign up now to join me!

2020 election

In Penn­syl­va­nia, Seed the Vote vol­un­teers pro­vide sup­port for Pennsylvania Stands Up, an umbrel­la advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion with nine net­works statewide that sup­ports can­di­dates who fight for racial and social jus­tice while bat­tling vot­er sup­pres­sion and work­ing to get peo­ple to the polls.

In 2016, Trump won Penn­syl­va­nia by only 44,292 votes. This year, those on the ground believe the state can be flipped, but it won’t hap­pen with­out a ton of work.

Michaela Pur­due Love­g­ood, the deputy exec­u­tive direc­tor at Pennsylvania Stands Up, says that vot­er sup­pres­sion is a major con­cern for the upcom­ing election.

“When I think about the work of vot­er sup­pres­sion, there’s a lot of work that we need to do around laws, and around real­ly fig­ur­ing out how do we change laws, how do we ensure that peo­ple show up at the vot­ing polls, how do we ensure that peo­ple get our mail-in bal­lots,” she says. ​“All of those things we have to do, but we dual­ly have to do the work to deal with the decol­o­niza­tion that exists in our minds about what our vote is, and what it can do.”

Every Thurs­day Seed the Vote vol­un­teers team up with Pennsylvania Stands Up to help state res­i­dents make sure they are reg­is­tered to vote, and to ensure they under­stand the process.

The work doesn’t stop there. Even dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, there is a call for vol­un­teers to trav­el to high-den­si­ty areas like Philadel­phia to can­vass for Biden. ​“Sim­ply put, research shows us that there is no more effec­tive way to per­suade some­one to vote than through a face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion,” reads an infor­ma­tion guide for Seed the Vote vol­un­teers. ​“That is why it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that you and your friends trav­el to Philadel­phia to bring locals to these polling cen­ters.” (The Biden cam­paign ini­tial­ly declined to do door-to-door can­vass­ing, but recent­ly reversed its position.)