Dear Lucas,
Today we are celebrating two amazing victories in Wisconsin: Jennifer Shilling and Jessica King are headed to Madison to continue fighting for working women and their families. Their victories are your victories. Your support for Wisconsin WOMEN VOTE! allowed us to get ads up on the air and put Team EMILY volunteers on the ground. Thousands of you gave $25, $50, $100, and when we put your individual contributions together, we were able to do incredible things.
Your calls -- thousands of them! -- ensured that voters went to the polls and made their voices heard when it counted the most. That's the power of our community.
Jennifer and Jessica beat Republican incumbents in Republican districts, a remarkable feat in a recall election. And we've learned some valuable lessons in Wisconsin. We learned that when right-wing extremists target women workers, they will face extraordinarily powerful opposition from a broad coalition of labor, women's groups, and our progressive allies. We learned that we need women to lead if we want to protect our values: making education a priority, ensuring affordable and accessible health care, and protecting the right to bargain for a fair wage.
We have a lot to be proud of, from the working people of Wisconsin standing up and fighting back against a governor and legislature that prioritizes corporate interests over working families, to the incredible bravery of all five of our women who threw their hats in the ring.
We may not have won our ultimate goal of taking back the Wisconsin senate, but these victories are sending a message: the Republican War on Women will not stand. The tea party GOP has already punished working families, caused the credit crisis, and shown their willingness to destroy our economy -- and we are fighting back. In Wisconsin and across the country, the tide is turning. Women have been the key to victory after victory, and they will be the key again in 2012.
Please take a moment to look at a photo album we put together of some of our favorite moments from Wisconsin, along with quotes from our volunteers about why they joined this critical fight.
I am so tremendously proud to have worked with you, and so happy that we can celebrate these great victories together today. But most of all, I am certain that we have many more victories yet to come.
Take care,
Stephanie Schriock
President
P.S. You are the key to our victories -- please consider making a contribution to EMILY's List so that we can continue to fight back against the Republican War on Women and win back the House majority for Democrats in 2012.