I am the #KimThatCares. The five-foot-tall #MotherActivist fighting for voting rights, reproductive rights and paid leave. My work for the last six years has been in reproductive rights and in gender and racial equity, including birth equity.
It hasn’t been easy organizing around reproductive rights in my community. The privacy that was guaranteed those of us who actually could access abortion care because of Roe v Wade was precious. Clinics have been firebombed. Abortion providers have been murdered. Patients get accosted walking into clinics whether or not it’s abortion care they are there for. Over the years, it has all accomplished what it was meant to accomplish: it terrorized. It silenced. Many people still sleep beside someone whom they’ve never told they had an abortion. But every one of us loves someone who has.
Judging from my inbox and my phone messages since the Alito leak, if they didn’t before, many people recognize now that silence is no longer an option. We welcome you.
My interest in running for State Senate began in 2019 when my then (pre-redistricting) state Senator Kim LaSata stood on the floor of the Michigan Senate and said that abortion should be painful and it should be hard. Redistricting has changed who I’m running against (Aric Nesbitt) but it hasn’t changed the fact that I’m running against both my past and my current senators’ legislative records.
Nesbitt’s first mailing stated his position clearly. He said, “As citizens, we have a duty and responsibility to defend the most vulnerable among us. There is no more vulnerable life than an unborn child.”
On this Mother’s Day weekend, let’s remember that “unborn children” don’t exist without the pregnant people carrying them. And let’s also remember that 59% of the people who have abortions are already parents.
After a Trump presidency. After Covid. After George Floyd and too many like him. After an insurrection attempt against our democratic process. After this last school year and the two before and with school board recall petitions circulating in our communities. We are all feeling strapped and demoralized. This last week hasn’t helped. It’s hard to imagine asking my mom friends and parents I know for help with my campaign right now. But my work for the last six years has been because action was the one thing that made me feel better. So, I’m reaching out because help is indeed what we need. We need your dollars, however much you can spare, and we need your skills, whatever it is you’re good at and whatever your capacity.
If you would like to volunteer on my campaign, please email my campaign manager August@FriendsofKJG.com or comment below. If you can donate, please visit https://secure.actblue.com/donate/friends-of-kim-jorgensen-gane-start-strong.
