The ACLU will work with our People Power activists to make sure civil rights issues, specifically racial justice, are front and center in the next administration and Congress as well as on the local level. We will work on a holistic policy platform that aims to convert our country’s history of systemic inequality into a future of systemic equality. This will include key pieces of legislation on voting rights, criminal justice, and marijuana reform and reparations. The best way to get involved is to sign up. We need everyone’s help to bring true, lasting political and economic equality to all people.

Rebecca Davis, founder, grassroots voting activist organization Rally + Rise

I think a very big issue for 2021 could be voting rights; protections, expansions, and coming up with a strategy for dealing with a Supreme Court that’s shown itself to be pretty hostile toward protecting those rights.

My advice to anyone recently activated by a specific event—whether it was the George Floyd killing, COVID, or the 2020 election—is to shift your mindset around activism. How can you treat it like a habit (rather than a response), so that it becomes a regular part of your life? Look at how you hold yourself accountable to, say, working out or meditating, and apply that to activism. Finding whatever it is that’ll motivate you to keep doing the work is the best thing you can do to set yourself up for channeling your energy into new (or continued!) forms of action.

The sheer number of people who have taken action in some way for the first time—from attending a protest to phone banking for a candidate—keeps me optimistic. Once people realize that, yes, activism is for them, that it is something they can do, I think they’re more likely to start viewing events and issues through that lens of: Okay, what can I do to impact this and how do I get involved? I’ve seen that from new Rally+Rise members this year, and it’s so inspiring and motivating.

This year has been brutal for our psyches, and I’ve been incubating ways to feel more empowered. One of those ways is by creating a data tool modeled after the original “Green Book” that’s focused on creating a standard of care for Black lives. Once businesses pledge to uphold those standards, they’re listed in this directory, and then it’s up to the consumers to sort of hold them accountable. We’ve partnered with MoCADA, we’ve partnered with Protect Black Business, we’ve partnered with a policy firm called Pink Cornrows to bring the data tool, which will hopefully be open to the public in the spring of 2021, to life. There are already existing standards of care when it comes to property ownership; when it comes to what type of establishment you operate, whether it’s a bar or a clothing store. We’ve a spectrum of non-safety, and we’re not taking it anymore.