Like many groups during the pandemic, Health Care Voter pivoted to digital organizing tactics exclusively in the spring. Now, our grassroots organization is finding that regularly scheduled digital events are able to keep our activists engaged for a long-term fight, which is our focus as we head into 2021.
First, a quick reminder of how my organization got here. Back in April, we pivoted our 30-city bus tour into a digital town hall series with elected officials and simulated the cross-country journey by holding state-specific town halls via localized Facebook groups.
In May, we shared some of the lessons we learned about digital organizing in the first months of the pandemic, emphasizing the importance of uplifting people’s lived experiences in dynamic ways.
Though our work has always focused on elevating stories to demonstrate why we must protect and expand access to quality, affordable health care, and prescription drugs in the United States, the pandemic made our mission that much more important.
Most recently, our work to fight the Trump administration during the Supreme Court confirmation battle required us to apply all of the lessons we’ve learned about digital organizing throughout the year.
From Labor Day to Election Day, my group embarked on an ambitious new project: an in-depth, celebrity-hosted web series interspersed with Instagram Live conversations discussing various health care issues at stake during this election cycle.
Titled What’s At Stake, the series featured five, bi-weekly, hour-long episodes about a pressing health care issue, hosted by April Reign, an activist, and creator of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign.
In each episode, she heard from patient advocates who told their personal stories, and experts who framed those experiences within the broader context of COVID and the political landscape.
In the weeks between episodes, we hosted Instagram Live conversations on our new Instagram account with guests like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) about various health care issues. Together with a media partnership with Axios and cross-posting with partners like NowThis, this helped rapidly expand our platform over the last couple of months.
The regular pacing of events allowed viewers to return week after week and provided a steady beat of important information to our followers and audience. What’s more, pulling off this feat of a web series required us to have a robust network of media-prepped patient advocates and renowned experts ready to take questions from both Reign as the host and the comments sections of the live stream on Facebook and Twitter.
Before the start of the series, our group already had great relationships with traditional partners. But because we were expanding our conversations into new issue areas like Black maternal health and Medicaid expansion, we wanted to connect with the people who were best equipped to speak to those issues instead of relying on the folks we’ve been elevating in past town halls.
Sometimes, this meant we had to literally Google people who lost loved ones to COVID or faced hardship because their state had not expanded Medicaid, and cold call them. The key lesson here? We were able to confirm 35 story-tellers, partners, and experts because we made it easy for them to participate.
We gave new advocates all of the materials they needed to share their experiences—including talking points and social media toolkits—and set a very accessible bar for partnership for folks of all advocacy experience levels.
After wrapping the last episode of What’s At Stake: with a conversation about COVID in the context of pre-existing conditions, we set the stage to immediately apply our newly expanded digital platform to bring attention to a pressing legal battle for health care. Just last week, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in California v. Texas, the Republican lawsuit aiming to dismantle Obamacare.
On the morning that arguments began, we joined forces with a coalition of partners and advocates to livestream their COVID-safe rally in front of the Supreme Court. With speakers, storytellers, poets, artists, and dancers, the rally came together to underscore the human importance of health care at a critical moment when the ACA is in jeopardy of being repealed. The live stream of the event was watched by more than 15K viewers — and continued to get seen afterward.
Though Joe Biden has been declared president-elect and the 2020 election is finally wrapping up, the fight to protect the ACA continues. And so long as we’re battling this pandemic while we keep up our fight for the ACA, we’ll be here to keep sharing our lessons learned.
Rosemary Enobakhare is the Campaign Director for Health Care Voter, a national grassroots campaign focused on protecting our right to quality, affordable health care by fighting repeal attempts and working to lower prescription drug prices.
