Genevieve Thiers, founder of Chicago-based Sittercity, is behind a new progressive political organization that aims to create a new economic narrative that focuses on job creation in the time of automation, as a way to unite people from both sides of the aisle.
It's called Rise Movement. Cofounded by Thiers and Ellie Bahrmasel, a former campaigner and staffer for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Rise Movement aims to address the economic concerns of the disenfranchised by holding tech leaders accountable for creating new jobs, while maintaining a strong focus on equal rights for genders, races and sexual orientations, hopefully healing what has become a deep, painful divide between voters.
"What we are trying to do is reach across the aisle on both sides, Democrat and Republican, and say 'I think we’ve gotten too far apart," said Thiers.
What we are trying to do is reach across the aisle on both sides
Though it had humble beginnings--Thiers and Bahrmasel decided to start organizing the day after the election, and the first meeting was in a living room--they have vast ambitions beyond changing the narrative: They're currently defining their economic platform, working on elections reform, protesting presidential appointments, and offering protection to anyone harassed under new legislation.
Most notably, they're gearing up for the next round of elections: Rise Movement is currently identifying key races across the country from the local to federal level, where they believe they can have an impact and rally a voter base. They aim to have Rise Movement-supported candidates on the ballot by 2018.
The first step? Get to know the other side. They're holding "listening parties" across small towns in the Rust Belt, essentially focus groups to understand the concerns and motivations of voters across the political spectrum. They also just launched VoteSecret, a website where people can anonymously comment about who they voted for and why. "We believe the silos need to be broken down, because each side sees the other as the enemy right now," she said.
Thiers said she believes the groundswell of support for president-elect Donald Trump in the Rust Belt more so came from a place of economic frustration, than a disregard for diversity.
"We believe there’s a large group of those voters in the Rust Belt that do believe in basic things like human rights, gender equality, and the need for climate change action," she said. "We just think they might have been so angry and frustrated they ended up voting for Trump because he was different."
On the other end, Thiers is talking with think tanks and tech leaders in Chicago, New York and Silicon Valley to find ways to spur job creation, as economists have predicted five million jobs could be lost due to automation and redundancy in the next five years.
"Nobody is talking about this, and everybody should," she said. "If you want to align sides with different views, you have to align them with a common enemy, and that’s that we’re going to lose jobs at a greater number than we ever have before."
"If you’re smart enough to create self-driving cars, you’re should be smart enough to create new jobs for the disrupted," she added. "We’re calling it responsible disruption."
We’re calling it responsible disruption
Since the election they count over 2,200 people as supporters through social media and events, recruited 600 volunteers, hired two full time employees and opened an office space in Industrious Coworking. While Rise Movement has been bootstrapped so far, they just started fundraising. Already, they've thrown their support behind Foster Campbell, a Democrat running for Senate in Louisiana, who has a chance of being elected in a runoff December 10.
They're not the only splinter progressive movement that has popped up in the wake of the election--Brand New Congress, started by Bernie Sanders supporters, is aiming to run candidates for Congress in 2018. But Thiers and Bahrmasel say their tech-meets-politics approach has the ability to make change beyond one level of elections.
"Our vision for Rise Movement is a bold but achievable one, an America in which every person feels connected to and empowered to be a part of our Democracy," said Bahrmasel over email. "I hope to heal divisions and create connectivity and collaboration between people and organizations where it does not already exist. I want to provide people with a pathway for civic engagement and invite people to be a part of creating the solutions our nation needs to move forward. I want to bring empathy and humanity into a landscape dominated by fear, anger, and hurt."
