The right wing takes care of its rising stars. When an up-and-coming Republican candidate runs an impressive race and falls short, there’s an entire industry waiting off stage for them with no-show fellowships, inflated speaking gigs or fat book deals with conservative imprints. Then two or four years later, the guy runs again, wins, and is off to a decades-long career. The left, meanwhile, hangs its talent out to dry. And since insurgent candidates tend to come from working class backgrounds, that can stunt the growth of talented people who might otherwise have long careers ahead of them.

Kerri Evelyn Harris’s run against Senator Tom Carper in September 2018 attracted national attention and shook the Delaware political machine to its core. It fell short, and since then, she’s been campaigning for allies in Delaware and in states in the region, and this week was arrested in Washington, D.C. as part of mass civil disobedience against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Yet she’s been offered no paid work, and that’s not sustainable for somebody like Harris, an Air Force veteran and parent who lives,  like most of the country, paycheck to paycheck.

But she has a story to tell, and it’s one the country should hear, so let’s get her a People’s Book Deal. Harris is the daughter of civil rights activists and enlisted in the Air Force after 9/11. She was eventually medically discharged after complications from the anthrax vaccine, an under-covered scandal in its own right. Since then, she’s been an auto-body mechanic, fried chicken at a local gas station, a community organizer and a Senate candidate. Kerri understands the urgency of change, she understands the need for solutions that move working people, and she understands that there is a place in Congress for everybody’s voices and interests to be represented.  Kerri Evelyn Harris has a memoir in her that needs to be written, and Strong Arm Press, a progressive crowdfunded publishing house, is excited to be partnering with her on it.

Help make it happen by contributing below. Donors will be thanked by name in the acknowledgments, and all contributions will go to Harris and toward production of the book.

It gets better: Laura Moser, a longtime writer and editor who ran for Congress in Houston earlier this year, will edit Harris’s book. Help make it happen.