It wasn't all bad: Despite election defeat, progressives scored big wins in 2024

For many on the political left, 2024 was disappointing.

Even as inflation ebbed, Americans still struggled with housing costs and necessary expenses. The U.S. role in enabling Israel's war in Gaza sparked protests in the streets and on college campuses. The far-right continued to target marginalized groups, most notably immigrants, transgender people and women. To top it off, the mid-summer excitement at Vice President Kamala Harris’ entry into the presidential race following President Joe Biden’s eleventh-hour exit petered out with the election of President-elect Donald Trump — again. 

But even as the political landscape appeared to grow bleaker, Americans still fended off at least some of the efforts to encroach upon their rights. At times, they even helped pass policies that not only protected core freedoms but could genuinely improve quality of life.

As they reflected on 2024 and looked ahead to 2025, when the Trump administration's ultraconservative agenda is poised to make their work harder, advocates behind wins in LGBTQ+, labor and reproductive rights shared with Salon how they successfully organized against legislative efforts to roll their rights back and planted hope for a better future. 

Abortion rights enshrined in seven states

Ballot measures seeking to establish or protect abortion rights were on 10 states' ballots this year as organizers fought to protect access and reverse bans enacted in the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. Seven of those states — Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York — would indeed pass measures to enshrine a right to abortion access in their respective constitutions.

Proposition 139 in Arizona provided a legal means to upend the state's 15-week abortion restriction and established state constitutional rights to abortion access until viability and afterward if a healthcare professional deems it necessary for the pregnant person's physical or mental health. The proposition also barred the state from penalizing any individual or entity "for aiding or assisting a pregnant individual in exercising the individual's right to abortion." 

Arizona for Abortion Access, a seven-group coalition of reproductive health, rights and justice organizations, including Reproductive Freedom for All and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, led the campaign supporting the proposed amendment, which took effect almost immediately on Nov. 25.

"The passing of Proposition 139 speaks to the broad support — across the entire state, across all political parties, and across voters of all different backgrounds — for reproductive freedom," Erika Mach, Planned Parenthood Arizona's chief external affairs officer, told Salon. "People want the freedom to make medical decisions with their doctor and family, without government involvement."

To place a constitutional amendment on the state's ballot, the coalition had to obtain signatures from 15% of registered voters in the state — just under 384,000 signatures — and file the petition by early July, according to the Arizona Secretary of State's website.

The group collected 823,685 signatures overall by the deadline, according to Healthcare Rising Arizona, an advocacy organization included in the coalition working for protections for healthcare workers and patients. Organizers then took to the streets, talking with Arizonans across the state to drive people to the polls on Election Day. Arizona voters approved the ballot measure with 61% of the vote.

Mach told Salon that organizers were "thrilled" when Arizonans "made their voices heard" at the ballot box. 

"With this victory, more patients and their families will have the freedom to make their own healthcare decisions free from government interference," she said. 

Planned Parenthood Arizona has since used the momentum from the ballot measure's success to kickstart its response to its state's new policy amid the uncertainty around how the Trump administration will approach abortion access. 

The organization joined other healthcare providers in filing a lawsuit in early December to strike down the state's 15-week ban on abortion, which after Proposition 139's passage now violates the state constitution. The ban, they argue, can't be justified by any state interest and deprives Arizonans of "agency, bodily autonomy, and the right to control their own futures." 

Minimum wage hikes and sick leave

The state of the economy quickly emerged as a key issue for millions of Americans, as many fed up with high living costs sought reprieve. Many voters believed Trump to be the solution, election night exit polls suggest. But a significant majority of voters in four states also voted to tangibly improve the quality of life for workers by approving state ballot measures that will expand labor rights or raise the minimum wage.

Missouri and Alaska both saw voters overwhelmingly choose to raise the minimum wage up to $15 by 2026 and July 2027, respectively, and adopt laws requiring employers to provide up to 56 hours of paid sick leave for workers. Meanwhile, 54% of Massachusetts voters also secured unionization rights for rideshare drivers, empowering them to collectively bargain for improved wages, benefits and work conditions. 

In Nebraska, a Republican electoral stronghold, the "Nebraska Healthy Families and Workplaces Act" passed with nearly 75% of the vote, creating a system that allows employees to accrue five or seven days of paid sick leave depending on the size of their workplace. Under the new law, which takes effect Oct. 1, employees will earn at least one hour of paid sick leave for every thirty hours worked. The act also prohibits employers from retaliating against workers for taking that sick leave.

The ballot measure's approval was a culmination of years of coalition building and grassroots organizing, according to Jo Giles, executive director of the Women's Fund of Omaha, a nonprofit advocating for gender equity and part of the Nebraskans for Paid Sick Leave coalition.

"We're grateful that this resonated with so many Nebraska voters who decided that it was important to care not only for themselves but for their neighbors," Giles, who served as a petition sponsor for the initiative, told Salon in a phone interview. "When unexpected things happen, it's wonderful to be able to have the ability to take time off, to care for yourself, to care for a loved one and still be able to get a paycheck — to afford things like rent and groceries and gas in your car — and still be able to live the life that you'd like."

The coalition took up the initiative after their earlier effort to raise the state's minimum wage succeeded in 2022, but the push to install a right to paid sick leave was about 10 years in the making. 

The ballot initiative campaign hit the ground running in the summer of 2023 with signature collection as organizers sought to fulfill Nebraska's statewide and county requirements to file a measure. By the end of June 2024, a month before the filing deadline, the coalition collected roughly 138,000 signatures, including 5% of registered voters in nearly 50 counties, Giles said. It also raised around $3 million in donations, per Open Secrets, to back the campaign and its mobilization efforts. Organizers spoke with Nebraskans about the value of paid sick leave, created educational materials and bought ad space to boost voter awareness.

While Nebraskans for Paid Leave organizers are still meeting to determine the workers' rights issue they'll pursue next, this measure's success "proves that the ballot initiative process is a successful one" and can bring change at the local and state level, Giles said.

Nebraska's labor win — together with the workers' rights successes in other states this year — shows that "ballot initiatives around the issues that directly affect the lives of individuals and the people that they care about" can be a powerful "motivating factor for people," she added.

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Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation defeated

As ads attacking Democratic candidates for supporting policies that protect transgender Americans flooded the airwaves this year, the American Civil Liberties Union also tracked nearly 600 anti-LGBTQ+ bills making their way through state legislatures. Those bills often sought to limit transgender Americans' participation in sports, restrict access to gender-affirming care and require educators to forcibly out transgender students in schools. 

But the vast majority of those proposals failed. Of the 574 bills the ACLU tracked, nearly 400 have been defeated in state legislatures, including 46 of the 55 bills advanced during the 2024 session in Oklahoma, which had the greatest number of such proposals of any state. 

Nearly 20 of the anti-LGBTQ+ bills were in Georgia, where organizers successfully worked to stall the progress of each proposal advancing in the state legislature. All were defeated by the end of the 2024 legislative session, which was one of the "highlights" of the year for Jeff Graham, the executive director of Georgia Equality, an LGBTQ+ rights advocacy organization that lobbied state lawmakers.  

The success "really speaks, I think, to the collective power of the LGBT community and our allies here in Georgia," he told Salon in a phone interview. It "would not have been possible without the dedication of so many parents and family members, specifically of trans kids, as well as educators and medical providers that really came out in defense" of the community.

Georgia Equality and other organizers focused their efforts on speaking with lawmakers and ensuring they had a "strong coordinated response" at every hearing, Graham said. Over the course of the session, advocates held a slate of one-on-one meetings with legislators, published a flurry of op-eds in state and local media, had members share personal stories in radio and television interviews, and held rallies with hundreds of protesters at the state capitol — all to drive home the impact that the proposed legislation would have on families and the healthcare system. 

The most memorable part of the advocacy experience for Graham was seeing the dedication from the parents of transgender kids, who took time from their jobs to organize at the Georgia legislature. He said he especially appreciated those who formed the dozen-strong core of the group's 50-person "rapid response team," which showed up almost every time they were called to attend a quickly scheduled floor vote or hearing. 

"We had people that were there at the legislature until after midnight on the last day of session, continuing to have meetings with lawmakers, continuing to talk about these issues," Graham said. "That is what really strikes me the most: the dedication of everyday people who are willing to have these conversations, to be vulnerable by sharing stories about their families and themselves."

Graham said that, under the Trump administration, he expects the fight for equality in Georgia and across the nation to be much harder. Trump has promised to ban trans women and girls from sports on his first day in office while his official campaign platform included policy proposals that would strike Medicare and Medicaid eligibility from healthcare providers that offer gender-affirming care to youth.  

With the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country, "it really is, it seems, some days a never-ending wave of hatred that gets thrown at us," Graham said. But people are responding to it, he added, noting that the success this past year shows the resilience of the LGBTQ+ community — not just in Georgia but "from coast to coast." He hopes seeing those wins will keep people engaged in the battle for equality. 

"If we recognize that we have been successful when nobody thought we would in the past, I hope that that will give people the courage and the resiliency and the determination to continue to show up for the fight," Graham said, "Because if we don't show up, we will lose."