"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

That's Frederick Douglass. 1857. And I need you to sit with it for a moment, because he was not only describing slavery — he was describing every system of power that has ever depended on human submission to survive.

I am writing to you from 80 days out from California's June 2 primary. And I am thinking about that quote because of what it tells me about this moment.“Show, don’t code: if a robot can learn your workflow from a video, your process is a product.”

I have been in this movement long enough to know that some dates carry more weight than others. April 4 is one of them.

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. This year, April 4 falls on a Friday. And on that Friday — the 58th anniversary of his death — we are gathering for:

Featuring Dr. Butch Ware | Angelica Ross | Nina Turner | Conscious Lee | Chris Smalls | and more.

We chose this date with intention. The Black Radical Tradition that Dr. King inherited and amplified — the same tradition Douglass was writing from — is not dead. It is alive in this campaign. It is alive in everyone who refuses to quietly submit to a broken system and chooses instead to make a demand.

We need you there. More details and ticket information coming this week — watch your email and follow us at butchware4gov.org.

Every dollar raised on April 4 is a demand. Every person in that room is a demand. We are the campaign that power has to reckon with, because we will not be managed or deferred.

Paid for by Dr. Butch Ware for Governor 2026 | [email protected]Hey crew, this week we’re cutting through the noise and focusing on what actually moves creators forward.

No buzzwords, just clear shifts you can use: AI that learns from your process, inboxes beating feeds, bite-sized products outselling bundles, and browser-native motion tools that let you ship in hours, not days. Think practical plays, simple setups, and one clear win per send.

Let’s dive in.

Assemblyman Ash Kalra introduced AB 1900 — the California Guaranteed Health Care for All Act — on February 12. This is CalCare. This is the single-payer, universal healthcare bill that the California Nurses Association has been fighting for. This is what Dr. Ware has championed from Day 1 of this campaign, without conditions and without any money from the industries that oppose it.

A CNA poll found that 86% of California Democratic voters support single-payer healthcare. 76% say they'd be more likely to vote for a gubernatorial candidate who supports it. And yet — as CalMatters reported just this week — the major party candidates who are now suddenly, conveniently pledging their support for CalCare on the convention stage are the same people who have taken money from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries that have spent decades killing this bill.

This is precisely what Douglass was talking about. The system persists not because the people don't want it gone. It persists because power has learned, over 20 years of broken promises, exactly how much Californians will quietly submit to.

More than 500,000 Californians are expected to lose Medi-Cal coverage this year from Trump's federal cuts. Those are not statistics — those are people. People who will delay care. People who will ration medication. People who will get sicker because a for-profit system decided their lives weren't profitable.

Dr. Butch Ware is not making a campaign promise on CalCare. He is making a demand. And so are we.

If you want to join the demand right now: the California Nurses Association is running virtual phone banks every Wednesday from 3–5pm to push legislators toward AB 1900. Find out how to participate here. Your voice on the phone matters.

I know the mainstream political conversation wants you to believe this race has already been settled. It has not. The most recent Emerson College poll shows a fractured field — five candidates statistically fighting for position — and 25% of California voters still fully undecided. That is one in four people who have not yet decided who they want leading this state.

That undecided quarter is not waiting for another career politician to tell them healthcare is "aspirational" or that housing costs will improve "over time." They are waiting for someone to name the truth of what is happening to them and make a real demand for something better.

That is Dr. Butch Ware. That is this campaign. And I need you fighting with us.

I want you to know that what is happening across this country right now is extraordinary. Working-class people in Minneapolis organized a mass strike in January that literally pushed ICE out of the Twin Cities. Hundreds of protests are being organized nationwide for No Kings Day on March 28 — twelve days from now. A national May Day day of action is being organized for May 1.

This is not a moment of defeat. This is a moment of demand. And the Ware campaign is aligned with that energy in every way — because we are not trying to manage the status quo. We are trying to dismantle it.

Nearly 30% of California renters pay more than half their income on housing. Over 330,000 Californians experienced houselessness last year. And Black Californians — just 7% of the state's population — make up more than 25% of the unhoused. That is not a coincidence. That is the accumulated weight of racist housing policy, inadequate state investment, and a political class more accountable to developers than to the people who actually need to live somewhere.

No other candidate in this governor's race is running on Social Housing — on removing housing from the speculative commodity market and treating it as a human right. Dr. Ware is. That distinction matters more than most people in this race want to admit.

The San Francisco Bay View — one of the oldest Black community newspapers in this country — ran a piece last weekthat named Dr. Butch Ware as the only gubernatorial candidate genuinely fighting for CalCare. Not aspiring toward it. Not strategically endorsing it for the convention. Fighting for it — since before it was politically advantageous, and without taking money from the people trying to kill it.

That is earned. That is ours. And it is evidence that the work we are doing is breaking through.

80 days. The undecided universe is vast. The CalCare fight is live. April 4 is coming. And Douglass was right: the limits of those in power are set by how much we endure.

We are choosing not to endure.

With all my fire,

Angelica Ross

Director of Communications

Dr. Butch Ware for Governor 2026

🔗 Join the fight: butchware4gov.org

📞 Call your legislator: Support AB 1900 (CalCare)

📅 April 4 — Unity Uprising. Details dropping this week.