Attendance:

• Naomi
• Mimi
• Ann
• Janice
• Babette
• Bruce
• Jane
• Mary
• Jeff
• Noemi
• Andy

Four things to do for impeachment:

1) Naomi will take her ironing board to Ashby and College with Carol Fridays from 5 to 6 p.m. She will take postcards and printouts from Tony. As it gets dark earlier, it will have to be earlier in the day.

2) Andy is trying to think of ways to pressure Republicans in Congress. Maybe we could send thank-yous to those who have cracked a little. WaPo has an ongoing tally at https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/politics/impeachment-support-house-democrats/. The NYT article at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/politics/trump-impeachment-congress-list.html is from October 10.

3) Bruce says national Indivisible suggests signing up to make calls to people in key areas.  The webpage is https://act.indivisible.org/signup/impeachment-senate-calls/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=link2_groupleaders&t=10&akid=54868%2E822731%2Exr7UGh. It will come up with Bruce’s name, but you can click on a link to put in your own name for the calls.

4) Write to Democratic holdouts. See links above.

Virginia Elections

Bill has been watching this. Virginia is quite tight, and the Republicans are really moving. The NRA is putting up big money against Nancy Guy. We have no postcard addresses left for Virginia, but we can do letters through Vote Forward. You can get started at https://votefwd.org/. These need to be mailed Tuesday, October 29. Make sure you follow the instructions and use the return address they give because they want to keep track of bad addresses.

Our next meeting is right before the Virginia election. Naomi is thinking of setting her house up for phone banking and texting that day. Watch for further information about that.

East Bay Activist Alliance is doing phone banking at the following times.

• Oct. 23, 1-4PM, Phonebank at Sports Basement Berkeley with Indivisible Berkeley
• Oct. 26, 1-4PM Phonebank at Sports Basement Berkeley with Indivisible Berkeley
• Oct. 27, 1:30-4:30PM, Phonebank in Redwood Heights/Oakland with Democracy Action East Bay and EBAA

They’ll also have special GOTV Phonebanks in Berkeley, Oakland, and Dublin/Pleasanton Nov. 2-5.

We’re still taking donations for the Virginia candidates. Five people have given a total of $400 so far for the current drive. The money goes to the three candidates in Virginia.

2020 Elections

Everyone in California is flush with money except T. J. Cox. Valadao, the Republican who previously held the seat, has outraised Cox. He outraised Cox the last time and lost anyway, but it was very very close.

The other one we’re interested in is Ammar Campa-Najjar, who ran against Duncan Hunter in 2018 and nearly won.

Naomi thinks we need to focus on one or two California races.

The Senate is more of an issue than the House in 2020. Naomi thinks we should pick one or two races. Possibilities include Arizona, Alaska, and Iowa.

Postcards

Noemi says Tony the Democrat is still doing the Kentucky statewide slate.

Janice says Grandmothers in Action is doing postcards. See http://www.grandmothersforabrighterfuture.com/

National

Bruce says national Indivisible is still wrestling with how to deal with a presidential primary endorsement. Their questionnaire for the candidates is about 23 pages. They did add one of Bruce’s suggested questions.

Naomi is going to get a copy of their book from Mrs. Dalloway’s. The title is “We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump”. Bruce says they’ll be promoting it at Book Passage. You should reserve online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/leah-greenberg-and-ezra-levin-we-are-indivisible-tickets-76485725865 if you want to go to that. Remember that the more preorders they get, the likelier it’ll land on the NYT bestseller list for publicity.

Next Meeting

The next meeting is Sunday, November 3.

Attendance

Naomi
Andy
Judy
Babette
Bruce
Mary
Noemi
Jeff
Bill

Education and General Discussion

Judy met with Nancy Skinner, trying to get her to sponsor a bill to repeal a provision requiring sheriff candidates to be police officers.

Naomi and Andy had coffee with Ammar Campa-Najjar. He’s the candidate who got 48.3% of the vote running against Duncan Hunter. This district is our best chance at flipping another California Congressional seat in 2020. Darrel Issa is thinking about running in this district because Hunter is weak. Ammar thinks he (the Democrat) has a good chance either way because Issa would be a carpetbagger, and Hunter wouldn’t benefit as much from the confusion with his father as he did the last time. Naomi told him to come back later because we’re prioritizing Virginia right now.

Andy talks about how and why Trump is pushing nonsensical consipiacy theories about Russian interference in the 2016 .

Bruce talks about the book “We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint For Democracy After Trump”. If they get enough pre-orders, it can get on the NYT best-seller list. The proceeds go to Indivisible’s new “Save Democracy Fund”. Info at https://book.indivisible.org/

Indivisible has a 5-minute ‘Impeachment Daily’ video on Twitter and YouTube. The first episode is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvxAX8eIT_I.

Indivisible has a 72-question questionnaire for presidential candidates. It’s currently a draft. Bruce suggested some questions about education.

Naomi put a new thermometer on our website because we reached the goal with the earlier one. The current goal is $1,000 for the Virginia candidates we’re supporting. If it gets to $1,000, we might raise it to $1,500.

Action Items

From Andy’s discussion:

1) Pressure the New York Times to improve their coverage of Trump’s disinformation campaign. They should present facts as facts and lies as lies rather than practicing both-siderism. We need a drumbeat of the facts. Information about letters to the editor is at https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014925288-How-to-Submit-a-Letter-to-the-Editor . Here is Andy’s suggested wording:

Experts in authoritarianism agree that rather than impose their own version of events as truth, today’s dictators are promulgating fake news in an attempt to make readers abandon any attempt to discern the truth, and to rely on the Strong Leader instead. Your recent headlines accept incorrect or even nonsensical claims uncritically, even when they are refuted in the stories themselves. This initial misimpression is not doing your readers a service.

2) Make sure we don’t help feed the beast. Media Matters made a list of companies advertising on Fox. This worked with Breitbart, but Fox is trickier. The list is at https://www.mediamatters.org/these-are-fox-news-leading-advertisers.

3) Talk it up with other Democrats. We need to keep the morale up.

Postcards

We completed postcards to 150 addresses for Agnew and Guy since the last meeting. We did 200 more for Guy at this meeting. That’s all we have right now for Virginia. Tony the Democrat is currently doing the slate of Kentucky statewide offices.

Next Meeting

The next meeting is Sunday, October 20.

Posting this for Noemi:

On Naomi’s porch are TWO sets of postcards: Askew-specific postcards for Askew, and generic postcards for Nancy Guy. Please work on one set at a time. We have one set of alphabetical names and addresses for each. I will send them to you in sections, e.g. Askew A-C, depending on how many you want.

We will send out images of the Askew and Turpin cards with the addresses. The wording has to be exactly what is in the Askew cards in the image. We’re not doing Turpin yet; this is just how the images came. Nancy Guy will use the same format. Askew is House of Delegates – District 85 (see his postcard) while Guy is House of Delegates – District 83. (Normally I would use the abbreviation HD, but I’m going by our Askew example.)

Do not address these to generic voters; they are going to specific people who haven’t voted yet. Do not affix stamps! We will send the stamps as part of the package of postcards we’re sending to Virginia. Bring your finished postcards with your loose stamps (if you don’t have stamps, we’ll donate ours) to the meeting at Naomi and Andy’s on October 6.

If you can’t make that meeting, put them through Naomi and Andy’s door slot on or before October 6. (We don’t want completed postcards mixed up with blank postcards on Naomi and Andy’s porch.)

Again, use Askew-specific postcards for Askew: generic postcards for Nancy Guy. Keep them separated! Do not affix stamps; just include loose stamps with your postcards. Do not put completed postcards back in the box. Bring them to the meeting or put them through the door slot. Deadline is Sunday, October 6. Thanks, Noemi

Attendance:

Naomi
Steve
Mary
Andy
Jeff
Noemi
Jane
Alice
Babette
Bruce
Bill

Education:

Gerrymandering – Bruce will post information about this.

Voter Suppression – Andy discusses the ways various states are making it difficult for people to register to vote. Wisconsin has a Voter ID card but makes it nearly impossible to get. In Georgia you can get something at the DMV office but there are no DMV offices in Atlanta. Some states are using felon disenfranchisement to prevent people from voting, and some legislatures are trying to overturn voter initiati ves that limit disenfranchisement. In some cases having the same name as a convicted felon can trigger this.
Steve says good places working on voter suppression in case you want to give some money: The Brennan Center at NYU, the ACLU, and Campaign Legal Center. Abrams in Georgia and Gillum in Florida are working on this, too, but their websites are skeletal.
Naomi says The Future is Female is working on the Senate rather than the House.

Action Items:

We finished the last postcards. Sister District is requesting a final push on the three campaigns in Virginia. Sister District will have very specific instructions for these. They will be on Naomi and Andy’s porch, but don’t start these until Noemi and/or Jeff post the instructions. They will make Tony the Democrat’s instructions look like a piece of cake, but we’ll need all of you we can get on this. The deadline for returning these is our next meeting, October 6.

If you want to fax representatives, Naomi and Andy have a fax machine you can take advantage of. You can also text RESIST to 50409 (note: Noemi tried that and was able to send only to her own rep and senators).

Future Actions:

We’re waiting for Lauren Underwood to get back with us about a fundraiser.

Steve says a WaPo study says it’s most effective to target districts that the Democrats won.

Bruce says SB1 has still not been signed or vetoed by Governor Newsom.

Michael Altschul is giving out cards saying “Elmwood Indivisible invites you to support democracy” if you want to pass some of those to your neighbors.

Next Sunday is a dim sum event. Naomi will post info about this.