Doug Pagitt discusses his group’s mission of “mobilizing people of faith to make the common good their voting criteria,” with a focus on how progressive religious activists are now taking action to oppose the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda and frequently violent ICE raids targeting communities of color.
SCOTT HARRIS: We begin our program this evening by welcoming to counterpoint, Pastor Doug Pagitt, executive director of the national organization Vote Common Good. Pastor Pagitt, thank you so much for making time to come on our program tonight.
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Oh boy, what an honor to be with you and just hearing you talk about what’s going to be on the docket for the show tonight, it’s really a great honor to be a part of this conversation.
SCOTT HARRIS: Alright, well thank you. I hope you get to listen and I wonder if we could begin by—it is a fascinating organization that you had up Vote Common Good and I’m not sure many of our listeners are familiar with the details. Tell us about the group Vote Common Good and the work and your colleagues do there. And also of course I’d like to know how you came to lead this organization as well.
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Yeah, well thanks for your interest in what we do. It might be a bit of a shock for people to hear the fact that last 35 years I’ve been a pastor inside the evangelical tradition of Christianity and there’s a little subset of evangelicals that are progressive people politically and socially and culturally. Not all evangelicals are conservative. There’s a large group that are of course, but for a lot of us, we recognize that there’s a lot of religious people, especially Christians in America who would really love to vote for Democrats. And part of our work is to help those people find a place and the confidence to start voting for Democrats because for a lot of religious people, especially Christians and evangelicals and Catholics, they just feel really outside of the Democratic political movement. Many of them have spent much of their life inside the Republican version of politics and they’re really sickened by what they see in the Trump administration and from current Republicans and are looking for a place to find a new political home. So we help those people as well as others find a home inside a political movement of the common good that helps ’em connect with Democratic candidates all across the country.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thanks for that, Doug. On Nov. 6th I read a news story, and you’ve probably seen this too. I know many of our listeners are familiar with this story that came out in just less than a week ago. Federal Judge Sarah Ellis said in court that the use of force by federal agents over the past several weeks in the city of Chicago shocks the conscience. And she said it had infringed on the constitutional rights of protesters, clergy journalists and members of the community who have tried to document immigration operations, including the well-known abductions we’ve seen. The physical attacks on anyone the agents suspected of being undocumented and or the accused or anyone they accused of interfering with their operations. I know you’ve paid very close attention to what’s going on with these deportations, the mass deportation campaign Trump promised in his election in 2024. How do you describe what we’ve witnessed with Trump’s mass deportation campaign targeting primarily communities of color with masked ICE agents?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Yeah, it’s really quite despicable. We frankly have watched over the last two and a half years, Trump regime promised that it was going to target immigrants, that it was going to attack the religious rights of many people in this country. And then when he took over power of the presidency, has done exactly what he promised and many of us were just horrified at his election in light of the fact that he had promised to do these things and act so cruelly. And to watch the Trump administration attack not only immigrants, but anyone who chooses to speak up for the rule of law. It is those actions that show what an unbelievable hypocrisy there is in the current Republican and MAGA movement calling for the rule of law. Not only that, they believe that only their version of religion and religious liberty should be protected. They will pepper spray. They will shoot pepper balls at clergy and other people.
They will restrict any religious activity of protesters and at the same time try to act as if they’re a party that wants to protect religious freedom in this country. And it’s really quite terrible. And our organization, Vote Common Good has worked very aggressively around the issues of immigration and border practices and what it takes for people to be in this country with legal status. And the Trump administration frankly is just opposed to all of that. And it is, as the judge said in that particular statement, “It shocked the conscience and frankly it is un-American.” And I’ll tell you, I try not to be overly inflammatory, but there is no presidential administration that has acted more un-American than the Trump administration from Inauguration Day until today. It is counter to that which the American people have wanted to depend upon for centuries.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that. Pastor Pagitt. I know and you referred to it, there was one incident in Chicago where an ICE agent standing on a roof shot at very close range, shot a pepper ball to the head of Rev. David Black. I believe he’s a Presbyterian minister. And I couldn’t help but think that these folks are not doing these kinds of outrageous acts just by happenstance, but they’re trying to normalize this behavior. And I wonder to what end do you think they want to bring this country in terms of normalizing the violence from masked secret police?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Yeah, look, it has been a tactic of police agencies and ICE agents under frankly the Trump administration, but also under Democratic administrations. I mean, look, one of the things we have to acknowledge is that the movement of border protection and Border Patrol into Homeland Security way back 25 years ago, nearly now after 9/11, militarized the border protection and Border Patrol. And that has created a two-and-a-half decade culture of militarization. And it is rather dangerous from every border crossing in this country to the major cities under the Trump administration. And it’s really something that Democrats should be looking into at every level and should be calling out is that we do not need border patrol agents and ICE agents to be militarized and trained with military counterinsurgent activities. It is just simply the overextension of a violent military action of these forces.
And we have to look at it. Look in Minneapolis four years ago, I was pepper sprayed wearing a collar as a clergy trying to allow people to protest the murder of George Floyd. Was knocked to the ground pepper sprayed as a clergy person by Minneapolis police because that Minneapolis police force was also militarized. And when these police forces see themselves as an occupying military force and they see American citizens as their enemy and they treat them in such a way, it is so fundamentally un-American. At the basic narrative of the First Amendment is the right of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to protest your government. And this Trump administration under its first term and in this term has chosen to violate free speech, freedom of religion and the right to protest. And these are things we have to speak up on every time they happen. And I really appreciate that your program and that other people are taking these kinds of issues seriously.
SCOTT HARRIS: I think our listeners will be very interested to hear more about your group’s rapid response action plan for faith communities around the country to protect immigrant communities being targeted by Donald Trump’s secret ICE police force. Tell us about that if you would.
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Yeah, thanks for asking about that. Our organization has faith leaders and communities of faith all over the country, more than 5,000 of them that have taken seriously their call to protect immigrants in their community. And we’re not saying that they should allow people to stay in the country if they don’t have legal status to stay in the country. That’s a decision every community has to make. But these are communities that have committed themselves to being sure that if someone’s going to be removed from the United States, that it has to happen under the legal process. It shouldn’t happen in moments of crisis. It shouldn’t happen in secret and it shouldn’t be done under coercion. So what we’ve done is created a resource kit that allows churches, mosques, synagogues, but primarily churches around the country to equip themselves to know what they can do to protect immigrants in their community.
And you might think that this is most important only in major cities, right? Minneapolis or Chicago or Boston or LA. But the truth of the matter is in many smaller communities, many rural communities, churches are the only group that can organize enough to protect the immigrants in those communities. And the Trump administration very quietly is targeting places where immigrants work. They will target food processing plants. They will target places where there’s crops that need to be picked and they’re targeting these communities. And very often in these smaller towns and smaller communities, churches are on the front line. And so we’re helping communities that are faith communities to know what their options are because frankly, a lot of churches, they have no idea. They have never thought of themselves—if they’re the local Presbyterian church or the local evangelical church or Catholic church, they never thought their job was going to have to be to stand up for the rule of law against the federal government.
And frankly, the fact that the federal government stands in opposition to the rule of law in the eyes of many of these faith leaders is so shocking that we knew we had to put a toolkit together for them to know what it is that they could do. So if people are interested, they can go to our website and download it. It’s a PDF format and spells out for people what it is that are the legal rights of churches and the legal rights of people who are in this country regardless of their immigration status to be shown the full due process of law before they’re expelled from the United States.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that. Let me reintroduce you to our audience. This is Counterpoint. My name is Scott Harris here on listener supported WPKN in Bridgeport. And we’re speaking tonight with Pastor Doug Pagitt, executive director of the group, the national group Vote Common. Good. And Doug, I did want to ask you about your mass alert system utilizing the WhatsApp phone app. How important is that for communities who are consciously trying to alert vulnerable communities about ice agents and the kind of abductions that are going on in streets all over the country?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Yeah, look, immigrant communities all over the United States know that the use of the application WhatsApp, which a lot of people may or may not be familiar with, but it’s a way that people without using their phone number and using encrypted communication over the Internet can be in touch with one another. And that has been incredibly important for people to know how they need to move and operate so that they can receive the full due process that’s available to anybody who’s in the United States.
So it’s a veritable underground network that is reminiscent of other times in the United States and around the world when people of good conscience and goodwill are having to utilize communication techniques to be able to keep people safe from otherwise lawless activities, even if those lawless activities are taking place by people who have the authority of the government behind them. So WhatsApp networks are extremely important for people and it’s how a lot of people in the immigrant communities stay in touch with each other anyway outside of just the issues around immigration alerts.
But this is a way that people are able to communicate to one another and know where their children can be and where their loved ones are and how it is that they can stay safe as they seek the counsel that they need. And I’ll also add, look, pastors and church communities can only do so much. In a lot of these communities, they really need lawyers. They really need people who have standing with the court and understand how court systems work to even explain to immigrants sometimes that they don’t need to appear just because an ICE agent tells them that they have a subpoena. ICE agents cannot deliver subpoenas. That’s not part of their role. So there’s so much misinformation and there’s so much bluster that the Trump administration is utilizing in its confusion techniques to confuse people about what they need to do in moving forward. So part of our work is to help people understand what the legal requirements are for immigrants and people who are advocates speaking on their behalf.
SCOTT HARRIS: I know these electronic app alert systems are effective and I know that because the Trump administration, I believe they threatened Apple to take down one of these app alert systems off their website where people were down hundreds of thousands that were downloading these things. But yeah, it really does seem that they are effective and that’s what the concern in the Trump administration. Doug, I did want to ask you, under Trump’s second term, churches, schools and hospitals are no longer off limits to ICE agents or any kind of immigration enforcement raid. How does that affect the people you work with in churches across the country? Is there growing fear about the kind of jeopardy, the pastors, the staff of the church, the congregants? Are they fearful about the consequences for themselves if they stand up for immigrants?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Yeah, great. Great point. Look, the United States has never said that churches or schools or hospitals have a different legal standing for immigration raids or immigration authorities. But there’s been in practice the commitment to not violate churches, schools, and hospitals. That’s been in agreement and been a way of practicing. And like so many other norms in our society, the Trump administration has just blown through these. And part of the reason we’re so proud to talk to you and anybody else is we want to raise the level of public outcry and public shame. And if an ICE agent wants to go into a school or a hospital or a community of faith, they should be met with the level of scorn that that deserves. So the public pressure has always been the only thing that has protected these spaces and places from the long arm of the federal government.
And we think that needs to return. So if somebody has a place of sanctuary and a place of protection for spiritual protection or for medical protection or to protect their children, that commitment needs to stay there. And we all need to raise our voices because this is what the Trump administration wants to do, is to eliminate all of the voices that would speak out in opposition to this administration. And look, they have watched major universities bow their knee. They have watched law firms bow their knee to the Trump administration and the Trump administration has made our media bow their knee to their demands, pay them millions of dollars and follow along in their leading. And churches and communities of faith are one of the places that will not bow their knee to this. administration. Look, the American people have to stand up to this administration, whether that’s in rallies or in protests or in places where they just simply will not kowtow to the bullying techniques of this administration.
We are still in this country, a country that is governed by the will and the consent of the governed. And we need to raise our voices against this administration and not buckle like law firms have done and media companies have done and universities have done.
And it breaks my heart to say that, right? Because for a long time we believed that those parts of our society, the civil parts of our society would stand up against regimes that want to act in these totalitarian ways. And now we’re needing for ordinary citizens and communities of faith and schools and hospitals to have a backbone and stand up against this administration. And we have three more years of this before this administration crumbles. And the devastating effects now that is, if people get out and vote on Election Day and turn out and mobilize and vote against regimes and political movements like the MAGA movement that sees all of this as not only their common practice but somehow their God-ordained activities. And it is heresy as a Christian and it’s un-American, I will say as a citizen to watch the administration behave in these ways.
SCOTT HARRIS: Pastor Pagitt, how would you assess the response of faith leaders of all denominations across the country to Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign that you’re very involved in resisting? Have you been satisfied with a response or are there a lot of people just with their fingers in the wind not really responding at all and just trying to duck for cover?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: It’s been a bit of both. I’ve been very proud to see the level of response of many faith leaders and faith communities that in previous times have stayed silent. And one of the things that we see going on is that many people in the evangelical movement, which frankly is the largest religious movement in America, there are more evangelicals and more evangelical churches than any other religious tradition in America. So it is the largest and many of those people are doing what we refer to as quiet-quitting Trump. So they’re not being bold in their statements, they are being silent in their leaving. And we recognize that some communities have to do it that way. They have to just stop supporting this administration and become silent and others can become much louder. So both of those things are happening. You see some of the evangelicals that used to be very supportive of Trump becoming less supportive and you’re seeing many of the progressive faith leaders become much louder.
And both of those are having great impact. And look, the Trump administration is more concerned about the religious community in this country than they are almost to any other group. And when you get the religious community in this country to move against the Trump administration, that will have significant impact on the decisions that they’re making. So that’s part of the work that we know is important to us. We know that not every part of the democratic structure can work with religious communities and that’s something that we know at Vote Common Good is important for us and many of the other organizations that do this kind of work to be able to do.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that. I did want to ask you about what is your group Vote for Good’s plan for the 2026 midterm election? Apart from there being concern among many Americans about Donald Trump’s plan to possibly interfere in the election, cancel the election altogether or the military to intervene to change the outcome, which becomes ever more real with the deployment of these National Guard troops all over the country. What work will you be doing to influence how religious voters in particular cast their ballots in November 2026 that many political observers say is a pivotal election for the continuance of democracy in this country?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: The number of times in my life I’ve heard someone say this is the most important election of our lifetime is numerous. And many of us have heard that. And it is again, true this time. This again is the most important election of our lifetime and we are working with Democratic candidates all across the country, especially running for the federal House and for Senate. And we are helping those candidates connect with faith voters in their area. We need every part of the Democratic system to be engaged with candidates. And this is the hard part, Scott. This is the heartbreaking part. There’s probably only 30 to 50 congressional races that are actually up for grabs. Every single congressional race has an election in this coming November, Nov. 6, every one of them, 419, all of them. But there’s probably only 30 to 50 that are actually up for grabs.
So we have to all work in those 30 to 50 races and flip the control of the House of Representatives, and the Senate away from the MAGA movement that is so fixated on doing whatever Donald Trump wants them to do. So we’re working in those races, cupping them, connect the faith voters. And look, it’s a pretty simple calculation for a lot of these candidates with faith voters. Democrats have spent the last 40 years not paying attention to religious voters in this country. It just sadly true. In fact, some people, some of your listeners will know about a thing called the Voter Access File, the VAN file. It’s sort of how candidates know who’s a Democrat and who’s a Republican or who’s a potential voter for them. And for Democrats, they don’t keep track of religious identity in that voter file, so they don’t even know how many religious voters there are in their district.
Where on the other hand, Republicans tend to sort in their first or second sort by religious identity. So the Republican party has become increasingly organized around religious identity and Democrats have become less organized around religious identity. And it’s one of the reasons that you’ve seen over 40 years, something like 60 percent of evangelicals voting for Jimmy Carter in 1980 and then 16 percent voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016. What happened in those 40 years? It wasn’t only what Republicans did, it was also what Democrats stopped doing, which was reaching out to religious voters. So we help Democratic candidates make contact with religious voters in their districts. And many of the districts of those 30 to 50 that I mentioned that are actually up for grabs, those districts are disproportionately religious voter districts. So if you can move or 10 or 15 percent of the religious voters in those districts to vote for Democrats rather than Republicans, it makes a massive difference in the outcome of those elections. So that’s the kind of work that we do. We do this kind of advocacy work, but we also do on the ground work in those districts, helping Democratic candidates connect with faith voters and faith leaders and overcome the bias that exists in the voting patterns.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Doug, thank you so much for spending time with us talking about the work you do at Vote Common Good. And we’re out of time, unfortunately, so I’d like to stay in touch with you, have you back, talk more about the things that you are working on with immigration, the ICE raids, the organizing of church communities around the country. But do leave our listeners with a website or any other information you want to leave about your group Vote Common Good.
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Thank you, Scott. We really appreciate the time with you today. Votecommongood.com is our website and people can find all the information there and find ways to be involved. Maybe they might even want to volunteer in one of these communities. We have way for people to be part of what we call an action group. No matter where they live in the country, they can choose one of the races to be involved in so they can get signed up to be put on a list and then start sending emails and text messages or go into those districts and actually engage in on-the-ground activities if that’s something they find interesting. So they can find all that again at votecommongood.com.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you so much for all you do and for spending time with us. I definitely want to be back in touch and have you on the air to talk more about the things that you are working on across the country. Appreciate it.
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Have a good evening. Thanks so much.
SCOTT HARRIS: You too. Bye-bye. That’s Pastor Doug Pagitt, executive director of the national organization Vote Common Good.
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