Dear Friends,

Like many of you, I’m struggling with finding words and feeling a bit lost this morning. When Vice President Kamala Harris secured the Democratic nomination for president, she helped so many of us to feel something we have been starving for for nearly a decade: HOPE. Harris’ presidential campaign gave women, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQIA+ folks, and others a sense of hope. Today, that hope is imperiled by all that Donald Trump represents. I hope you get to take a quiet moment today to breathe as we start to grapple with who we are as a nation.

While I am grieving for the hope we lost last night, I have found that letting in some light and gratitude can help us start to heal. I am not trying to sound like a Hallmark card.

For me, today, the results in Colorado are a source of new hope.

While it is too early to call the pivotal Eighth Congressional District race, in Colorado we overwhelmingly protected abortion rights and marriage equality. We directly took on the intersection of gun violence and mental health with the passage of Proposition KK. We defeated the attempt to implement a radical voucher system designed to dismantle public education in Colorado, and we soundly defeated a billionaire-funded ego trip to monkey-wrench Colorado’s election system. We maintained our supermajority in the State House and our majority in the State Senate. Lastly, we held on to progressive majorities in some of Colorado’s largest counties.

In Colorado, despite it all we have hope. And gratitude.

The progress we model for the nation in Colorado would not be possible without our unique team of communicators, amazing volunteers, and issue-specific progressive partner organizations. I could not be more proud of our ProgressNow Colorado team. Over the last year, we elevated hundreds of stories through video, social media, and print; we assembled progressive Colorado partner organizations together to collaborate on messaging; and we spent the last several weeks before the election pushing out content that helped hundreds of thousands of Coloradans cast their ballots.

Over the next several weeks and years, we will need to once again find who we are as a nation; and I know it is likely a painful reckoning. But I will stand with you to keep fighting for all of you, for our future, our values, for our families and friends… and I am grateful to be able to do it in Colorado where year after year we set an example for the country.

I am eternally grateful for the privilege of living in our state.

Thank you for all you have done, all you are doing, and all you will continue to do.

In solidarity,

Sara