By September 30 — just a few weeks from now — Congress needs to decide where to appropriate government dollars for next year’s budget. And right now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is making a backdoor play to steal money from other federal organizations — including hundreds of millions of dollars from FEMA, the agency that coordinates disaster response efforts — and use it to continue to fund their hateful and cruel actions with no oversight. This is abhorrent. Full stop. And we need to get as loud as we can to ensure that ICE does not get any more money to fund their racist operation. Can we count on you to stand up for immigrants and refugees during our Defund Hate Week of Action? Here’s the details about the event(s) happening closest to you: What: “We all Belong Here”- ISF Defund Hate Day of Action When: Friday, September 13th, 4:30 p.m.  Where: Harry Bridges Plaza, in Front of the Ferry Building, Embarcadero, SF, San Francisco, CA You can RSVP Here.What: Border to Border With Love Collage & Action Night #DefundHate When: Tuesday, September 10th, 5:30 p.m.  Where: IFPTE Local 21 Oakland Office, 1440 Broadway, Suite 610, Oakland, CA You can RSVP Here.Indivisible is an official member of the Defund Hate Coalition, and we know that stopping this flow of money is critical to stopping Trump’s racist and hateful anti-immigrant agenda. This is a really important place to put our people-power. We hope you’ll join us.In solidarity, Indivisible Team  P.S. If you aren’t available for this event, check out our Defund Hate Toolkit for some other important ways you can take action to stand with immigrants and refugees.

I am happy to report that we reached our goal of $2,000 for our three Virginia candidates. Everyone is still welcome to spread the link around and gather more donations. Our candidates are counting on us.

1. Thanks to Noemi for a very helpful posting on postcards (just below). It is time to get those pens out and writing again.
2. Our next meeting is this coming Sunday Sept. 8, 3:30-4:45 at our house.
3. At our meeting we will have some educational presentations about how to fight gerrymandering. Bring all your questions.
4. We will also do a last set of postcards for Virginia.
5. Finally, we will work on our plans for upcoming events, including a fund-raiser for Lauren Underwood.
6. This should be a very interesting event.

Rock the Congress
Saturday, September 7, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm
Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St., Berkeley
Events engage new and experienced activists and facilitate collaboration among progressive grassroots group leaders to win elections. Rock the Congress is a Super PAC whose mission is to maximize collaboration among progressive groups to win elections.
No one will be turned away due to lack of funds. If the ticket fee represents a hardship for you, please submit a request for sponsorship here.

Postcards for Democrats is ongoing! There are always special elections coming up all across the country. Check out https://postcardstovoters.org/.

If you want help connecting to Tony the Democrat, or need pointers to get started on this, or are daunted by his admittedly dense emails, or are feeling frustrated in your efforts, or just want some !@#$% addresses or postcards or postcard stamps, Jeff and I are here for you.

The worst part of joining this project is something you will have to do only once: that is taking a picture of your inaugural postcard and sending it to Tony for approval. Since we’re in the neighborhood, we can even do that for you, but we will need to do it from your phone or computer. Once done, you’ll never have to do that again. If you’ve already done that, you’re in!

In response to a question at our meeting on Sunday, these are the three candidates we are supporting for the Nov. 5, 2019 election in VA. They are from the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area.

House of Delegates candidates:

• Alex Askew, District 85. https://alexaskew.com/

• Nancy Guy, District 83. http://guyfordelegate.com/

State Senate candidate:

• Cheryl Turpin, Senate District 7 https://www.turpinforsenate.com/

• Thanks to all who came to our meeting!
• We are (as of this writing) $300 short of our commitment to the Virginia 2019 statehouse elections. You can contribute by clicking the thermometer above, which shows how close we are to our goal. We are supporting three candidates: one for State Senate and two for the House of Delegates (Assembly) seats overlapping that Senate seat. Cheryl Turpin flipped a Delegate seat in 2017, with our help. This time, she is trying to flip the State Senate seat, while Alex Askew is running for the seat Turpin is relinquishing. Nancy Guy is running for the other Delegate seat. If we win these three we will have one Democratic hold and two flips R to Dem. ACTION ITEM: Send around our ActBlue Link above to help us reach and surpass our Virginia goal.
• Bill Marthinsen is helping with the postcard campaigns for Sister District, which include the our Virginia races. Noemi Levine is helping anyone who isn’t set up with Tony the Democrat and his postcard campaigns. Judy Stacey will listen in on the Indivisible California State Strong calls. ACTION ITEM: Anyone needing help or info about these projects can post a comment below.
• We should be postcarding for the North Carolina special election, as well as Virginia. Note that the Virginia postcards need legal disclaimers. ACTION ITEM: At our next meeting we’ll be doing Virginia postcards. If you want some addresses before the meeting, ask in a comment below and we’ll send you some. OR write some for Tony’s campaign in North Carolina for upcoming special election.
• Bill reported that the intern we sent to Virginia has returned to California to start college had a great time, and we should continue this program. ACTION ITEM: Anyone want to help build up the intern program?
• Hold the date: weekend of November 16–17, Rep. Lauren Underwood (IL–14) is fundraising in the Bay Area. We are likely to host.
• Get well soon to Ann Overton, who had a severe fall.
• NEXT MEETING: Sunday Sept 8th, 4:30-5:45. We’ll learn about fighting gerrymandering and write some postcards as well as plan our November event with Lauren.

We resume action this Sunday, August 25th 4:30-5:45 at our house. Lots to organize for fall action. Looking forward to seeing everyone again.

Make the Resistance Delicious!

Chocolate Tasting

with Alice Medrich

Sunday, September 15, 2019, 3-5 pm

Author, pastry chef, and teacher Alice Medrich is one of the country’s foremost experts on chocolate. Since 1976, when her renowned shop, Cocolat, opened and her first dessert feature appeared in a national publication, Alice’s innovative ideas and recipes have influenced a generation of confectioners, pastry chefs, and home cooks. 

Alice will lead us on a journey to learn:

 What a sweet way to flip Virginia!

Sunday, September 15, 2019, 3:00–5:00 pm

 

East Bay Activist Alliance, an affiliate of Sister District Project, is comprised of volunteer activists and organizations in San Francisco’s East Bay. We help flip and hold winnable districts red-to-blue by supporting high impact, strategic campaigns where state legislative seats, voting rights, and Congressional campaigns intersect.

After partisan gerrymandering was given a green light by the US Supreme Court in June, our hopes for federal corrective action dimmed.  But there’s much to be done:

In the courts: Key players like the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, and the Campaign Legal Center are working on lawsuits in where the state constitutions or legislation give leverage against gerrymandering.  They will also be challenging states where racial gerrymandering is masquerading as “political.” All these groups deserve our financial support.

With State Ballot Initiatives: 26 states allow ballot initiatives that establish independent, non-partisan commissions for redistricting.  These need to be state level initiatives, but the same non-partisan groups  (Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, and the Campaign Legal Center) offer support, legal advice, and how-to guides. After fair vote coalitions mounted extensive grass-roots campaigns, five states passed such initiatives in 2018.

In State Electoral Campaigns: State legislatures and governors are the key actors in drawing electoral districts, as the GOP realized in launching their infamous REDMAP strategy in 2010.  Democrats aren’t asleep this time, and their counter-effort is led by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), headed by Eric Holder and supported by Obama. Obama’s Organizing for Action group has joined NDRC to create the All on the Line Campaign, whose volunteers will bird-dog the redistricting process in each state.  The NDRC coordinates with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) and the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) to elect Democrats who have pledged to support fair electoral maps. The NDRC record: 61% wins in 230 state races targeted in 2018.  Joining these groups is Emily’s List, which is committing $20 million to 500 state legislative races.

In Federal Election Campaigns.  With passage of HR-1 in the House, congressional Democrats are committed to supporting non-partisan redistricting, and the NDRC is asking all Democratic candidates from president down to sign a “Fair Districts Pledge.” Winning the Senate and Presidency would allow HR-1 to become law and at some point would lead to a different Supreme Court.

With Long-Range Reforms: There are strong arguments for enlarging congressional districts and using ranked-choice voting to select 3-5 House seats each, giving representation to every voter instead of  the current winner-take-all system.  This idea, backed by FairVote and others, has been put into a proposed Fair Representation Act initiated by Virginia Democrat Don Beyer. After 2020 maybe?

With Grass-roots Activism: Activists around the country that pushed for HR-1 are partnering with all the groups listed here; check out our Indivisible resources on fighting gerrymandering.

1. Can someone volunteer to shepherd the Origami event forward while we are out of town? When we return it will already be August 18th.
2. For those of you who want to stop by, we are sitting Shiva for Andy’s father this Wednesday evening from 7:00-9:00 pm at our house.

Andy’s father died early this morning so we are in Washington DC and therefore have to cancel the meeting set for tomorrow, Sunday July 28th. We will be sitting shiva one night this week and will let everyone know when it is set. Luckily we have some time before our event in August to prepare. Naomi