This week was a roller-coaster in so many ways: here at Bigtent we’re still digesting the coup attempt in D.C., and we’ll surely discuss it more in our next newsletter. But let’s not forget the other big news: the Senate flipped blue!
History was made in Georgia this week. Years of on-the-ground organizing flipped Georgia blue this November and fueled two runoff elections that resulted in two Blue wins on the Senate level as well. Bigtent was honored to be included in efforts with several organizations to recruit 36 organizers to create dozens of videos that collectively garnered over 3.1 million views, over 562,000 likes, and tens of thousands of both comments and shares. “I feel like all the hard work that was put into inspiring others to vote helped,” says Joshua “Skunky” Kim, a Georgian creator on TikTok we’ve been working with. “We not only helped elect the first Georgian Black senator, but we helped all of America.”
Of the 36 digital organizers, 30 were from Georgia, allowing us to directly reach young Georgians who helped elect Reverend Warnock and Jon Ossoff. Many young Georgians were first time voters, like Skunky, and came from all corners of the state.
“The diversity of influencers and platforms proved essential in reaching young Georgians,” says Raphie Orleck-Jetter, an essential member of Bigtent’s outreach team. “We worked with drag queens, influencer families, students, young people, and national political voices. We drew from the Collab Crib and Valid Crib, two brand-new, all-Black influencer houses in Atlanta, started by Keith Dorsey. Contrary to other TikTok houses, their mission includes social and political change, starting with grassroots efforts in their own home city.”
Bigtent didn’t stop there. We turned our digital organizers into field organizers, sending two Georgian TikTokers to knock on doors in Gwinnett County to make sure every voter has a chance to cast a ballot. These organizers, Leon Ondieki and Ermani Monét, worked extra hard on the final weekend before the election, focusing on registered voters who hadn’t yet cast a ballot in the runoff and using social pressure techniques to urge them to vote. Ondieki, a freshman at UGA, saw the power of social pressure when he was making viral general election TikToks, and applied his video skills into canvassing as part of our work together. Their canvassing videos (here, here, and here) serve as entertaining examples of youth organizing.
As Ermani told us right before she went canvassing, “Being a part of this campaign with Bigtent means being apart something much larger than myself—it means being a part of a historical moment and I am truly grateful.”
You can take a look at some of our highest performing videos from our campaigning by clicking these screenshots:
Aiden Zhane’s fashionable voting reminder (30k views, 5k likes, 67 comments)
Ernysia Stafford’s lip sync (25k likes, 152 comments)
George Lee’s educational explainer (15k views, 2k likes, 50 comments, 30 shares)
Shaianne Perkins’s romantic fake-out was the top performing video in terms of shares (356k views, 43k likes, 1400 comments, 1000 shares)
And last but not least, the top performing video in terms of views was Melissa Ong’s dance-centric call to vote (852k views, 94k likes, 1000 comments and 700 shares)