By Jia Tolentino
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| The surge of sign-ups for Swing Left, a progressive organization aiming to identify competitive congressional districts, reflects an energy on the left in search of an outlet. | PHOTOGRAPH BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY |
On January 18th, the Twitter account for a new political organization posted its first tweet: a link to swingleft.org—a neatly designed Web site where you can plug in your Zip Code to find the nearest U.S. House district whose seat was, in the most recent election, decided by a small margin—along with the message “Let’s get to work.” The Swing Left campaign, which aims to win the House for Democrats in 2018, quickly went viral. The comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted “Start thinking mid term elections now – this makes it CRAZY easy,” with a link to the site. As the roughly three million people who came out for the Women’s March on Saturday made colorfully evident, an enormous, amorphous bundle of progressive energy in the country is searching for an outlet or three. By January 22nd, a hundred thousand people had signed up to receive Swing Left updates. That number has since more than doubled. In addition, ten thousand people have filled out a form on the site to offer their skills in a volunteer capacity. The Web site has been shared on Facebook nearly three hundred thousand times.
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/swing-left-and-the-post-election-surge-of-progressive-activism
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