Black leaders launch counter to Project 2025 in battleground states

(WASHINGTON) — A group of prominent Black Democratic leaders on Thursday unveiled Project FREEDOM, a new plan aimed at countering Project 2025, a controversial 922-page plan to overhaul the federal government led by a conservative Washington think tank and other politically aligned organizations.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly warn in campaign speeches that Donald Trump, if he wins a second term, wants to use the conservative blueprint to exert unprecedented presidential power and to do away with, among other things, the Department of Education and federal housing assistance and to cut or restrict the use of food stamps and other social welfare programs.

Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, calling some of the proposals “seriously extreme,” but its architects helped shape his Republican Party platform.

Project FREEDOM is designed to engage Black voters in four key battleground areas, the organizers told ABC News.

In the plan, first shared with ABC News, the group says in addition to policy, it aims to mobilize voters of color through town halls, community events, digital campaigns, and phone banks in Michigan, North Carolina, Las Vegas, and the Pennsylvania/Tri-State area.

Project FREEDOM, the leaders say, aims to provide voters with a substantial policy agenda for Democrats ahead of the November election in a clear and precise contrast to Project 2025.

Organizers say Project FREEDOM is based on four pillars: Freedom to Live, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Vote and Freedom to Thrive.

Freedom to Live is based on the idea that the Black community should be able to “live freely and without fear,” the group says. Organizers are calling for the passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act which was stalled by Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

Tamika Mallory, co-founder of Until Freedom, an intersectional social justice organization, told ABC News, “I think that the way to really engage voters to go to the polls, is to make sure that they know, we’re not just going for a celebratory vote. Instead, we’re going to the polls with our bag of demands with us.”

Mallory, says “We can’t sell the message of identity politics as the sole message to people who are suffering with income inequality, people who are suffering with challenges in the education system, people who just watched a video of Sonya Massey being shot in her face by a Springfield, Illinois, police officer.”

Massey, was an unarmed 36-year-old Black woman and mother of two, who was shot by former deputy Sean Grayson in her Illinois home. “What happened to Sonya Massey is probably one of the worst that I have seen in my career for 30 years,” Mallory added.

Freedom to Thrive calls for expansion of the Child Tax Credit, federal minimum wage to raise to meet inflation, and a pilot program for Universal Basic Income in low-income communities nationwide.

Freedom to Learn is focused on education, including canceling student debt and protecting Black American history in public schools.

Freedom to Vote is focused on strengthening voting rights, calling for the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and reshaping the U.S. Supreme Court.

Michael Blake, founder of Project FREEDOM and CEO of KAIROS DEMOCRACY PROJECT, ​​a program created to mobilize and engage young voters and voters of color, Blake said in a statement to ABC News, “Our Democracy is under siege and by a man and political machine that put themselves above all those in whom they detect ‘otherness.”

Blake, a former vice chair of the Democratic Party, added, “We cannot afford to forget the pain inflicted on our people throughout Donald Trump’s administration, and we certainly cannot afford the destructiveness a second term would normalize.”

The Democratic leaders said in a joint statement, “Make no mistake: Communities of color are the frontline communities targeted by the poison that is Project 2025’s Christian Nationalist vision for the future, and Project FREEDOM is the antidote.”