My name is Kara– I’m an engineer in Michigan and I found SURJ while doom scrolling late one night in 2024. A few months later, I signed up for my first ever organizer training because I was overwhelmed and wanted to make a change– and now I’m the one leading SURJ trainings in my community!
SURJ has become my home because it’s a community that has invested in me and given me the tools and support I need to fight back in this critical time in our country’s history. Will you join me in making a donation to SURJ during the Grassroots Fundraising Drive so that we can train thousands more white people like me?
The first executive orders on Inauguration Day in 2025 left me feeling paralyzed by fear and anxiety. I knew action needed to be taken in my community, but the how was scattered and hazy.
Then I received a text message inviting me to participate in SURJ’s “Love and Rigor” Block by Block Organizer Training. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity, and spent a weekend with fellow SURJers in Lansing, Michigan, discussing SURJ’s plan for the midterms and getting trained on how to organize white people in my community.
It turns out that weekend was exactly the clarity I needed to push me into action.
I recently held my own training and led people to phone bank and canvass for our local candidate, Will Lawrence, who won his primary and is one of SURJ’s endorsed candidates in the primary and general election. I would never have known how to take these steps without SURJ, and I’m ready to keep going.
There were four other Love and Rigor leader trainings across the country this summer, hundreds of others were trained up and transformed like I was, and now we’re organizing our own communities.
SURJ helped me gain the skills and confidence to step into leadership in this terrifying time in our country’s history. Will you join me in making a donation today to help reach enough other white people like me to build the moment we need in white communities?
In Love and Rigor,
Kara
Showing Up for Racial Justice
PO Box 1376
Buffalo, NY 14205
United States