Nancy Guy is hanging on by 18 votes. Every dollar and every postcard of ours for that campaign was vital. And Andy Askew won–hurrah. We won the Kentucky Gov. as well so those postcards were well sent. A painful loss for Cheryl Turpin but Virginia is blue and we have lots to celebrate so
PARTY Sunday, Nov 17th 4:30-5:45 with happy food and drinks.
Lots of interesting down-ballot wins as well — we’ll review and celebrate them all. Also some number crunching about turn-out –a snack for every vote.
Five-minute Actions to Help Interned Immigrant Children At the U.S.-Mexico Border
| Many Americans are concerned about the health and wellbeing of immigrant children held in detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border, but some concerned people have limited free time and feel that they cannot respond effectively to this situation. I have found some ways for them to express their support for immigrants in less than five minutes a day. |
| Signing a petitionJeff Merkley, a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, has an online petition for reuniting immigrant families at the border.http://www.jeffmerkley.com go to reunite immigrant families. (can search for “merkley immigrant families”)The ACLU, saying that separating families is inhumane, has a petition at:https://www.aclu.org/action/You can find other petitions with a search—“reunite immigrant families” |
| Making a donationYou can donate your frequent flier miles to Lawyers for Good Government to help cover travel expenses for immigrants and refugees as well as for attorneys working pro bono to represent them. You can also make a financial donation.http://www.lawyersforgoodgovernment.orgAfter immigrants leave the detention centers, many stop at—Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley in McAllen, Texaswhere they receive food and clean clothing. You can make a general financial donation or go to their Amazon wish list.http://www.catholiccharitiesrgv.orgThere are many non-profits asking for online donations. Be careful. You can check their qualifications at—www.charitynavigator.org |
| Contacting your representative and senatorsCalling—Call the Capitol Switchboard 202 224 3121Open 24 hours. You give them your zip code, they connect you to appropriate offices.Sending email, writing letters—https://www.usa.gov/elected-official for contact information. |
| Being supportive of immigrantsRAICES—Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Serviceshas a Cartas de Corazon program. In Texas, RAICES distributes greeting cards with supportive handwritten messages (in Spanish) to immigrants. Volunteers buy blank greeting cards, write messages (provided by RAICES) in them, and mail the group of cards to Texas. Names and addresses of volunteers are not on the cards. https://www.raicestexas.org/volunteer/go to “remote volunteer activities” |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
The next meeting is Sunday, November 3.
Lots to talk about and do in this dangerous period.
Hurrah for us on leaving Facebook. Time to help others do so as well. It may seem impossible, but if you want to see how seemingly impossible social change is done, look at Hochschild’s book Bury the Chains where he points out that when the abolitionists started their campaign, slavery was as central to the British economy as cars are to ours. Replace the word cars with Facebook. We can break the chains.
Naomi
Andy
Judy
Babette
Bruce
Mary
Noemi
Jeff
Bill
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.
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.
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.
The next meeting is Sunday, October 20.
We covered many topics at our meeting yesterday and Jeff will be posting complete notes soon, with info about how to contact the New York Times about weak both-siderism reporting complete with some Andy verbiage, how to avoid feeding the Fox beast and more. Meanwhile, our final Virginia fund-raising thermometer is posted and I wanted to report we FINISHED all the postcards. It means a great deal to me that we gather together to encourage each other in the face of the evils we are fighting. Thanks so much and onward!
Indivisible Book. In Thursday’s Indivisible national webinar Ezra Levin made a pitch for pre-ordering the new book We Are Indivisible: a blueprint for democracy after Trump, co-written by Ezra and Leah Greenberg. It will be out Nov. 5; if there are 5,000 pre-orders it will immediately appear on best-sellers lists and generate national attention and reviews. It’s $27; proceeds from its sale go to Indivisible’s new Save Democracy Fund, a project to support Indivisible’s pro-democracy reform work at state, federal, and presidential levels.
Impeachment Daily. If you aren’t already swamped with impeachment news, you can now watch the Impeachment Daily on YouTube. The first episode is here, presented by Meagen Hatcher-Mayes, Indivisible’s Director of Democracy. During the webinar, Meagan stressed the role Indivisibles played in bringing more Democrats around to support for the impeachment inquiry and the importance of continuing grass-roots pressure as the process moves forward. Prepare for a national Day of Action when the articles of impeachment are finalized.
Indivisible Elmwood 