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.

But across the country, when it comes to education, voters rejected those policies loudly and firmly. As the founder of Red Wine & Blue, a community of over 600,000 diverse suburban women, I hear from women all the time who don’t want right-wing extremist groups coming into their school districts to impose their vision of so-called parents’ rights. The vast majority of moms believe in America’s public schools, want to work with their children’s teachers to make education better and are sick of a vocal minority wasting time and resources on culture war chaos.

But I don’t just say this because it’s what I see in my group chats and hear in conversations at the bus stop. Of the common-sense candidates — those standing up to attacks on history lessons about race and age-appropriate sex ed — who were supported by my organization in school board races across the country, 69% won. And in some states, that figure is even higher: 78% of our 45 candidates won in 15 Michigan school districts, and 86% of our 14 candidates won in six Virginia districts — an especially gratifying result given that Virginia became ground zero for the uproar over so-called Critical Race Theory in 2021.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Mo Green, a Democrat and former superintendent of Guilford County Schools, won the statewide race for superintendent of public instruction over homeschooler Michele Morrow. Morrow was a Republican Moms for Liberty candidate who has described public schools as “indoctrination centers” and urged people not to send their children to them; called for the assassination of national leaders; and demanded military intervention to keep then-President Donald Trump in power on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump may have won the presidential race in North Carolina, but Morrow’s slogan, “Make America’s Schools Great Again,” clearly didn’t resonate with the majority of voters who want to build up their public schools, not tear them down.

It’s true that different parents and families have different values and concerns — and that’s okay. If there’s a book you don’t want your kids to read, then don’t let them read it. I believe in providing students with accurate, age-appropriate sex education, but I also believe in allowing parents to opt their kids out if they alone want to have those conversations. But I don’t think one parent should be able to take those opportunities away from everyone else’s kids. American public schools should be, at their core, places where all students should feel supported and safe. And while extremists have come in from outside communities to gain power, divide and control people, most voters want none of it.

If you zoom out and examine other election results, you see similar trends. Republicans spent at least $215 million on political ads attacking the trans community — including trans children who attend public schools — on issues ranging from sports to health care. But there is no evidence that these ads swayed voters at the ballot box. In fact, an October poll found that a majority of likely voters (including a plurality of Independents, by a 23-point margin) thought they were “meanspirited and out of hand.” Likewise, a post-election poll of voters in eight Senate battleground states found that those who saw the ads found them “intensely off-putting” and that they failed to impact candidate support.

In four states — including three that voted for Trump — voters rejected Republican priorities for education. Ballot measures to expand voucher programs, which shift money from public to private schools, failed in Colorado, Kentucky, Nebraska. In Florida (the home of Moms for Liberty), voters defeated a state constitutional amendment to make school board elections partisan.

MAGA politicians will ignore these rejections at their own peril. Many parents remain concerned about their students and the state of the public schools. And when I sit down and talk to them, we almost always realize that we have far more in common than what separates us. We don’t want a loud minority telling us how to raise our children. We don’t want books about Anne Frank or Martin Luther King Jr. to be banned. We certainly don’t want kids to be bullied just because of who they are. It’s time to tune out the claims of MAGA mandates and get to work with teachers and administrators for the good of all students.

To read the article by Katie Paris go to The74million.org

The post No MAGA Mandate on Public Education as Voters Reject Vouchers, Culture Wars 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.

Katie Paris, the founder of Red Wine & Blue, opened the session by emphasizing the gravity of the Senate vote. She pointed out that only two Republican senators voted in favor of the Right to Contraception Act, a stark indicator of the current political climate surrounding reproductive rights.

“We need to get loud about this,” Paris said. “This election is about common sense versus extremism, and we need everyone to know what’s at stake.

To read the complete article: The Sentinel

The post Sen. Casey joins organizers to discuss contraception, reproductive rights 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.

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.

“This is 100% about abortion,” said Right to Life President Mike Gonidakis. “That’s what the ballot board put in front of them and that’s what we’ll vote on.”

“People signed on to the language of the actual constitutional amendment,” Red, Wine and Blue founder Katie Paris said. “They deserve to see the actual language.”

Read the full article at nbc4I.com

The post Chaos in Congress; Ohio’s abortion vote appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Red Wine & Blue Launches Virginia Program With Year-Round Investment to Organize Suburban Women Against Extremism, Including “Parents’ Rights” 

Suburbs across Virginia, June 15, 2023: Today, Red Wine & Blue launched a year-round Virginia state program to organize and mobilize suburban women against extremism—including “parents’ rights”, gun violence, attacks on public education and DEI, book bans, and attacks on LGBTQ+ people and reproductive healthcare. Virginia joins Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania as states where Red Wine & Blue has permanent, year-round staff on the ground.

Founded in 2019, Red Wine & Blue has quickly grown to half a million members as suburban women reject extremism. Expanding into Virginia represents an extension of this momentum with over 3,000 members already in Virginia.

Red Wine & Blue reaches out to people who are ignored by traditional political organizing – and does so in nontraditional ways. They use microtargeted digital media to engage suburban women who may not have been political before, provide women with the tools and training to organize their communities, and empower them to reach out to their own circles: family, friends, and neighbors. They have a best-in-class relational organizing (also called friend-to-friend organizing) that proves that talking to someone you know is more effective than talking to strangers.

“In Virginia and across the country, the so-called ‘parents’ rights’ movement is about trying to control what our kids read, believe, and learn. Red Wine & Blue was on the ground in Loudoun County in 2021 and now we’re building on that work with long-term, year-round investment in Virginia for 2023 and beyond. Mainstream moms are fed up with a loud, vocal minority trying to control how we raise our children. We want to end book bans, gun violence, and attacks on reproductive healthcare. We’re organizing and speaking up—just like we have in other battleground states—because suburban women are on the frontlines fighting extremism in their communities every day.” – Katie Paris, Founder of Red Wine & Blue

“Virginia has been a hotbed of extremism for too long. We are sitting in the birthplace of this latest iteration of ‘parents’ rights’ extremism, which has nothing to do with rights or the freedom of parents at all. Organizing against extremism in Virginia and making sure voters know what and who is on the ballot is more crucial than ever. We are now the only access to abortion in the South and extremists are continuing to try to ban books, attack public education and DEI, and target reproductive healthcare. Red Wine & Blue is building permanent infrastructure to mobilize suburban women in Virginia—and extremists at every level of government should be worried.” – Penny Blue, Red Wine & Blue Virginia Program Director

Red Wine & Blue targets state legislative, ballot initiatives, and school board races – investing in making sure people know who and what is up and down the ballot. Last month, Red Wine & Blue launched “Freedom to Parent”, a campaign going on offense against the “parents’ rights” assault on kids and calling out them for undermining the majority of parents’ freedom to decide what’s best for their kids.

Some more information about Penny Blue, the Virginia Program Director, and Lara Bury, the Virginia Deputy Program Director, is below.

Before joining Red Wine & Blue, Penny Blue served as a Virginia School Board member for 8 years, leading the effort to ban the confederate flag in the district’s schools. Initially, she was the sole vote, but the ban passed unanimously after the murder of George Floyd. Penny also owned a consulting/training company, worked at IBM, taught math in the Virginia secondary school system, and served as an adjunct professor at Virginia Western Community College. Penny is the author of A Time to Protest; Leadership Lessons from My Father Who Survived the Segregated South for 99 Years.

Lara Bury, a suburban woman, baseball mom and military spouse in Northern Virginia, brings her decades of marketing, technology and leadership expertise to ignite and propel women in community-driven mobilization.

Red Wine & Blue, headquartered in Ohio, is an empowered community of half a million diverse women working together to defeat extremism, one friend at a time. They train and connect women across the country with a network of half a million suburban women 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 Red Wine & Blue launches year-around VA program mobilizing suburban women against extremism appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

“A big goal is to flip back seats that were won by extremists in 2021 just to stop the chaos,” said Katie Paris, the group’s founder. The other side, she said, is “not winning as much as one would think based on how much they have dominated headlines over the last two years and been allowed to misrepresent parents.”

Read more on The Washington Post

The post Liberals try to reclaim ‘parents’ rights’ from conservatives in education appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Red Wine and Blue launched a series of Troublemakers Trainings to help instruct suburban moms on how to teach their friends and neighbors to fight back. And even as Republicans broadcast their intent to use the school wars to win back suburban voters, Paris and her colleagues were convinced the strategy would fall flat. “You’re going to claw back suburban moms by scaring them? How dumb do you think we are? That lit the fire,” Paris says.

Read more at The Nation

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