Launch the North Carolina Democratic Service Corps

Dear Friends,

I, along with a couple other people I trust, including newly-minted(!) Chapel Hill Town Council Member Wes McMahon, are launching a new organization called the North Carolina Democratic Service Corps. Beginning here at home (Orange County), and slowly expanding to key battleground counties of our state and areas where we need to increase voter engagement, it’s going to work to develop models for providing free direct services, and connecting people with the resources they need as a service intermediary, while, critically, flying the Democratic flag.

Corps Objectives:

Bridge the gulf between electoral work and community service/mutual aid. The Corps is our attempt to learn how to address what we believe to be a serious problem in American politics: the gulf between electoral work and community service/mutual aid. Why each is typically so removed from the other is a long and very interesting story that my one editor reviewing this email draft will kill me if I try to go into in full, but it involves such riveting things as federal tax code and some very well-intentioned reforms coming out of the 1968 Democratic Party Convention to end the old patronage system and weaken local “party machines.” (Please ask me about it, and consider reading The Hollow Parties, an excellent book published the summer of 2024).
Provide direct services and connect people with services they need. Our already threadbare social social safety net is being cut to pieces under MAGA. More people are struggling. Those who were already struggling are struggling more. The Corps will provide some services folks need, and link people with assistance that already exists — leveraging political assets and field strategies to do so.
Develop year-round service models that can benefit local parties. I believe, biased as I am as First Vice Chair, that our North Carolina Democratic Party, along with many of our county parties are national models for effective year-round organizing and voter protection. I believe there’s a need, however, for an organization with its own very modest, independent funding sources to pilot/experiment with service models for the ultimate benefit of our Parties, which are in so many ways operating at 100% capacity. As we grow, we plan to partner with the Parties and good campaigns to extend the models we find to be successful.
Provide voting resources to the hardest to reach. There is nothing more effective than talking to people directly, one on one, when it comes to voter education and empowerment. Even at our best though, there are many people we struggle to reach. The Corps will offer robust voter education to the folks it helps, and send every single person it helps a fridge-friendly voting guide, every year at the same time, emphasizing the ways in which Democrats on their ballot are working to get people what they need not just to be okay, but to thrive.
Offer modest, stipended work to the many local folks who found their federal jobs/federally-funded jobs helping people. The Corps will offer some modest, stipended work to the many local folks who found their federal jobs/federally-funded jobs helping people destroyed by the Trump administration, and offer some good occupation for the many, many other folks, including students, struggling to find work right now, and for folks who want to pair their electoral organizing under a Democratic banner with service work under a Democratic banner.
Provide more clients for good service organizations. The Corps will also attempt to be a help to the very good service organizations in our community who are the best at what they do — for instance, providing food for those who need it — by directing more people to those organizations, using, in part, good field organizing practices from electoral politics.

How this will work:

The Corps will develop and promote, through a lot of shoe leather, sweat equity, and relationship-based outreach, a general and particularized menu of free services based on community need. Some services will be direct services, like academic tutoring, resume/job application review, and walking people through the process for applying for public assistance. Some services will be intermediary, like directing people to trusted organizations providing food for those who need it.

The Corps is led by an Executive Director — Wes McMahon — who with a board of advisors builds out service offerings and then goes to work marketing and actually providing those offerings on a one-on-one basis, alongside a clutch of stipend and volunteer Corps Members (stipended folks provide a minimum of 16 hours a month, volunteer a minimum of 8). Wes was working for the U.S. Refugee Admissions program in the U.S. State Department until the refugee resettlement program was gutted early this year. He was recently elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council, and brings a decade of organizing work in North Carolina as a board member of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence (NCGV), and as a founder and first board chair of the NCGV Action Fund, a 501(c)4 dedicated to engaging voters on the issue of gun violence prevention in competitive districts.

After the Corps develops a set of services to offer that make sense in one area, it will expand through partnership.

The Corps is not a 501(c) tax-deductible organization. It is an LLC that operates like a nonprofit. It cannot be a 501(c) organization, though, because its purpose is service while flying the Democratic flag. Money goes to paper, website, paying staff and the stipend Corps Members—and similar activities with an intentionally modest budget.

Down the road, the Corp will enter into agreements with Party organizations to help them provide services under the Party flag. It won’t be looking to make money off those organizations, and will only charge those organizations what it must under our current law.

What we need to get started:

Around $10,000 a month, ideally in recurring donations, though we’ll take whatever to get started. Donate here, or write a check to NC Democratic Service Corps and send it to P.O. Box 1017, Chapel Hill, NC 27514. Your donations won’t be tax deductible for the reasons explained above. But hopefully you understand why this project is important to undertake as Democrats. All donors will get a monthly report back on our efforts.

Folks interested in joining the Corps. Just respond to this email–make sure you include your phone number–and we’ll write back or call you with next steps.

As I hope is evident from this long email, we’d be very enthusiastic to tell you more about all this on a one-on-one basis. Give a holler any time. 919.619.5467 (Jonah) or 410.302.7434 (Wes).

Jonah Garson