Contact: Maggie Bridges, maggie@redwine.blue, 303.807.8304

Suburbs Across America, February 13, 2025 — Today, Red Wine & Blue’s nationwide local group organizing program, TroubleNation, reached a major milestone by expanding into their 50th state. Red Wine & Blue’s TroubleNation now has 672 groups (and growing every day) in all 50 states – more than double that of the extremist organization Moms for Liberty. With the midterm elections around the corner, TroubleNation groups are evenly divided between red and blue congressional districts nationwide.

“Taking back power from MAGA requires winning the suburbs,” said Katie Paris, Founder of Red Wine & Blue. “Every day, suburban women who haven’t been politically active before contact Red Wine & Blue to find out how to make a difference. We help them connect with one another, quickly grow their ranks, and take action together. There’s been a gap in local organizing infrastructure for too long. Women understand that the local level is where we have the most power – and we intend to use it.”

“The growth of TroubleNation has far exceeded even our expectations, which is in sharp contrast to groups like Moms for Liberty that are in decline,” said Missy McGinnes, Director of Distributed Organizing at Red Wine & Blue. “Since the inauguration, we’ve seen a surge in engagement, adding 148 new groups. While pundits may say that people aren’t taking action, what we’re seeing on the ground tells a very different story — people are organizing and mobilizing in greater numbers than before.”

Red Wine & Blue launched TroubleNation in September 2023 in response to the increasing demand for local organizing support among women who felt disconnected and alone. TroubleNation is a network of independent local groups across the country that are affiliated with and supported by RWB. Women can search for a local TroubleNation group by entering their zip code or get help starting their own if there isn’t one yet near where they live. TroubleNation is a full service, organizing support system that provides one-on-one coaching, new group orientation, small-group, customized training for group leaders, monthly happy hours, and continuous engagement from the Red Wine & Blue team.

Red Wine & Blue has TroubleNation members in every state available to speak on the record.

Medina Mavens, OH – Deep in red Medina County, Ohio, three women enraged by the Dobbs decision started what’s considered to be the original TroubleNation group in August of 2022. Since then, they’ve grown to over 500 members, holding monthly meetings and keeping members up to date through their Facebook group and email list. Some of their key accomplishments include gathering thousands of signatures for a Reproductive Rights petition in 2023 and educating their members about the dangers of Project 2025. In meetings, they hold discussions and watch documentaries about voting rights, gerrymandering, and more while also preparing members for action, like speaking up at school board meetings and getting one of their own members elected to the school board.

PHX East Valley – Laurie and Julie, two women based out of East Valley, Arizona, took over their local TroubleNation group after they found Red Wine & Blue through a New York Times article and were spurred into action. They relaunched the group back in September of 2024, with just 20 attendees, but their group has grown to over 150 members as of January. Mostly, their members are focused on how they can impact change around education in their communities.

NOVA Blue Squad, VA – Since starting at the beginning of 2024, this Northern Virginia TroubleNation group has grown to 260 members. They have a robust newsletter and meet monthly to discuss issues like Project 2025, reproductive health, and public education. In addition to writing letters to their elected officials, the group is heavily focused on relational organizing and getting their friends and neighbors to show up to the polls.

Red Wine & Blue is an empowered community of over 600,000 diverse suburban women working together to defeat extremism, one friend at a time. They train and connect women across the country of all political backgrounds – including many who have never been political before – to organize in their communities and address the growing threats of extremism to public education, reproductive freedom, and democracy.

The post Where’s the Resistance? It’s Right Here: Red Wine & Blue Local Groups Explode to Nearly 700 in All 50 States appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Waves of emotion washed over DeJuana Thompson as she stood in the convention hall in Chicago last month watching Vice President Kamala Harris become the first Black woman nominated for the presidency by a major political party.

Battleground North Carolina

In North Carolina, a state that Donald Trump won by about 74,000 votes out of some 5.4 million cast in 2020, groups led by Black women are crisscrossing the state in a scramble to expand the electorate. Black residents make up about 21% of the state’s population, and North Carolina is home to nearly a dozen Historically Black College and Universities.

Thompson, the Alabama activist, is the founder of Woke Vote, an organization that in 2017 helped elect Doug Jones as Alabama’s first Democratic US senator in a quarter century. In this election, her work focuses heavily on a handful of states, including North Carolina and Georgia, which Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020.

The Tar Heel State marked Trump’s tightest margin of victory four years ago, and Harris is trying to become the first Democratic presidential contender to win the state since Barack Obama in 2008. Thompson, who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign in North Carolina, is focused on turning out rural Black voters in the eastern part of the state often overlooked by traditional outreach efforts, she said.

Black female organizers in the state also are extending their reach far beyond other Black women.

Janice Robinson is the North Carolina program director of an organization called Red Wine & Blue, which engages in “relational” organizing. She is encouraging diverse groups of suburban women to turn out their friends, neighbors and relatives for Harris and other Democrats in the Tar Heel State.

At a house party on a recent Friday morning in the Charlotte area, about a dozen people – mostly White women – gathered with Robinson to strategize over coffee, pastries and orange juice. Holding up her cellphone, she walked them through a tool to share information about the election with other North Carolinians in their contact lists.

“People listen to the people that they trust,” she emphasized.

Her goal is to get 40,000 voters to the polls in North Carolina.

The North Carolina chapter of America Votes, meanwhile, is working with an array of other organizations to reach 4 million voters in the state – a record quadrupling of its outreach in past elections, said Ashlei Blue, the group’s state director.

Deputy director Nervahna Crew is a veteran of several presidential elections in North Carolina, including 2016, when she logged so many miles door-knocking and literature-dropping for Hillary Clinton that she developed a cyst on her right foot. Crew said she worked “overtime” in that election, in part, to honor her grandmother Mary Starkey, a stalwart Democratic activist from Delaware who desperately wanted to cast a ballot to elect Clinton as the nation’s first female president but passed away in 2015.

This election cycle, Crew’s nonpartisan day job keeps her mostly focused on voter turnout rather than working directly on behalf of a candidate. But her commitment to making history in the presidential election hasn’t waned, she said.

“At the end of the day, what you’re not going to do is blame Black women for not doing their job,” she said. “If we’re not successful this time around, it won’t be because we didn’t give it our all.”

Read the full article on CNN.com

The post From Oprah livestream to house parties, Black women marshal unprecedented outreach for Kamala Harris appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

……“Women-led grassroots organizing gets dismissed by the Beltway class,” texted Katie Paris, who founded Red Wine & Blue in advance of the 2020 election. The group organizes multiracial suburban women, a Democratic response to the Moms for Liberty groups driving Republican turnout; Red Wine & Blue now has 500 groups nationwide, compared with Moms for Liberty’s 310. “But they really may have no idea what’s been going on in the middle of America,” Paris said. “Do they have any idea that we organize in our communities year-round and not just around elections? That we pay attention not just to presidential races but to school boards and school levies and whatever else needs tending in our communities? I was just listening to NYT Nate on The Daily and it’s like they have no comprehension of any dynamic outside of the candidates and their campaigns. It’s like they’re trying to report on the storm without checking the weather.”…..

Read the full article at TheCut.Com

The post The People for Kamala Harris How a women-led movement, born in the devastation of 2016, put Democrats on the brink of making history. appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Summer School is presented by the Red Wine and Blue Education Fund; ACLU Ohio; Equality Ohio; Honesty for Ohio Education; Innovation Ohio; and the Ohio Conference of the NAACP.

Read more about summer school at: Signal Cleveland

The post Need a refresher on Ohio government? This free online course is for you! appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

“We’ve all gone from doom scrolling to hope scrolling,” said Katie Paris, the founder of Red Wine and Blue – a group with about 500,000 members that organizes suburban women around reproductive freedom and pushing back on book bans, among other issues.

“That feels good. I know I shouldn’t be looking at TikTok before I go to bed at night anyway. But before it wasn’t very good for my mental health – and now I feel like I can kind of make an excuse for it,” she said. ”It’s like joy is back in town.”

Read more at NPR.Org

The post From doom scrolling to hope scrolling: this week’s big Democratic vibe shift appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

On what? It was 4:30PT and I was deep in a TikTok about J.D. Vance. I had no idea what she was talking about.

“I’m on the zoom with Heather Cox Richardson!”

Oh, right! I’d forgotten it was happening. Too bad—I’d hoped to attend. But I was buried.

Then Nadine added this:

“Over 30,000 people on! It’s awesome!”

WHAT?

Nadine isn’t one to exaggerate, but the number seemed implausible. So a bit later that night I emailed Katie Paris, who runs Red, Wine, and Blue. Her response?

42k total and apparently we turned ppl away…I’m floored.

Not 30,000 but FORTY-TWO THOUSAND people on a Zoom about Project 2025, you guys. That’s absolutely jaw-dropping. Staggering.

And there’s more:

Continue reading with Jessica Craven at: Chop Wood, Carry Water

The post Democracy isn’t a Spectator Sport appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Ohio’s abortion vote comes just one year before voters head back to the polls for both a presidential and Senate election. Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown is up for re-election next year, but faces a tough bid for a fourth term in a state that has increasingly veered to the right in statewide elections. In 2022, Republicans JD Vance and Mike DeWine won their Senate and gubernatorial races, respectively.

Brown highlighted the difference between his and his opponent’s stances on abortion when asked about his takeaways from Ohio’s Tuesday election.

The election “tells me that Ohioans understand that women and doctors should make that decision, not politicians in Columbus,” Brown said. “All three of my opponents are for a national abortion ban, and they are out of step with the reality in my state.”

Continue reading at nbcnews.com

The post Ohio abortion vote excites liberals, but it may not predict 2024 Democratic wins appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

“There are so many times when circumstances would make us feel alone and powerless, but organizing like this shows us that we’re not alone and we’re more powerful together,” Harris said in the online event Nov. 3. “The strength of our nation has always relied on folks like the women on this call to believe in what is possible and fight for us to get there.”

Elections on Tuesday, Nov. 7, feature gubernatorial and state legislative candidates across the country who could have a dramatic effect on the efforts of those participating on the call. During the 12 minutes she spent on the call, Harris cited crucial elections in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Additionally, those in Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina were given specific instructions on how to sign up to rally their networks in preparation for Election Day.

The online rally was sponsored and organized by three networks with similar values — Red Wine & Blue; Sisters Lead, Sisters Vote, and Win with Black Women.

Read the complete article at rollingout.com

The post VP Harris helps ‘Sisters United’ clap back during virtual rally appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Duffey is one of those candidates on RWB’s site that did not get the organization’s approval. Even so, Duffey explained he’s not focused on endorsements. Rather, he said he’s centered on academic excellence, fiscal responsibility, low taxes and growing the district’s trades program and his first win as a school board candidate.

“I’m very excited and I’m hopeful. I think we’re winning. I think we have a healthy margin of victory. That’s my prediction,” Duffey said.

For Katie Paris, “I look forward to a day when these school board races can be a bit more boring. In the meantime, we have got to stand up against these culture warriors who are trying to push a political agenda on our kids because. Our kids, education, and our children are just too important to allow them to do it.”

Read the complete article at spectrumnews1.com

The post November school board races heating up appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

“I felt like more of the Republican values were my values,” said Pippin, a 37-year-old surgical and operating room nurse from Sebastian, Florida. “Once I actually kind of started growing up and realizing my values, I registered as a Republican,” she said, saying she wanted to push for more control of her kids’ education.

Pippin’s departure from the Democratic Party is not unique. As the 2024 presidential election and control of Congress loom on the horizon, Democrats face an often underreported challenge: persuading white women to join — and stick with — the party, giving Democrats a shot at control of Washington.

Read more at USA Today

The post White women have long been unreliable voters for Democrats. Could that change in 2024? appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.