April 5 protests

Hands Off

We will have our Friday protest on April 4, but there are also nationwide protests on April 5. The Oakland protest is at Frank Ogawa Plaza, 1:00–2:30. San Francisco is at Civic Center Plaza, 1:00–3:00. Numerous other communities have protests planned, e.g. Orinda.

I’m writing this before the Wisconsin Supreme Court election has closed. However, the FL–06 special election is almost in the books. We didn’t win this Trump+30 district, but we overperformed November 2024 by about 20 points: looks like a single-digit win for the Republican.

This bodes well for Wisconsin.

[Update, 8:30 pm PDT] The Florida results slipped a little bit: we lost the Sixth District by 14 and the First by 15. In 2024, they were Trump+30 and +37 respectively. But, as you surely saw, we won in Wisconsin, with double-digit improvement relative to Kamala Harris’s campaign. The Democrats have much work to do, but perhaps this will push the doom-and-gloom columns away for a few days.

Dealing with DOGE 💩

Several members have brought to my attention Rep. Jamie Raskin’s (D–MD) form to make Freedom of Information Act requests of DOGE and its alter ego, the U.S. Digital Service. To save you a few clicks, I’m putting it below. Note that it appears to require a ”wet“ signature (for grumpy old fountain pen users like me, it really is wet) and goes by snail mail. Rep. Raskin asks that after you mail it, you also let his office know at this link. He promises to keep you updated. Whether he will also badger you for contributions, I can’t say. (He doesn’t need them; he is in a very Blue district.)

Oppose the continuing resolution

The House of Representatives just passed a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown. The Republicans lost one of their own, but picked up Democrat Jared Golden of Maine. (They didn’t need his vote.) It now moves to the Senate, where it needs sixty votes to avoid a filibuster.

Senate Democrats appear to be divided on what to do. Some seem simply unable to stand up to anything that Trump demands. That’s reserved for Ukrainians and Canadians. Alex Padilla is not currently listed as opposing the resolution, which does nothing to stop Elon and his Doggies from cutting whatever they want. Padilla’s contact information.

UPDATE: Padilla and Schiff are both committed No. Chuck Schumer, on the other hand, is rumored to be caving. The problem is not the Democrats leaders are too Left or too Right. They are too chicken.

I’ve been impersonated

Someone created a Nextdoor account two days ago in my name. It’s fake. It says we are being threatened for having a meeting, that Naomi is being investigated at Davis, etc. IT IS ALL FALSE.

I have reported the fake account, which has my picture from other social media, and suggest you do likewise.

Notes from the 2/23 Elmwood meeting

Short report about prior activities: We wrote 400 postcards last meeting and over 100 people turned up at our Not My President Protest last Monday (photos in previous post).

Current actions:

Sue Hildebrand, one of two Cal Dems staff members working on engagement joined us for a spirited fifteen minutes via Zoom. The useful part of her visit was explaining that the lowest level of the Party comprises the County Central Committees and we should get in touch with our County Committee to express concerns (good idea to learn who yours are!). Half of the Cal Dems budget ( 6 out of 12 million) goes to conventions and such. The other half goes to support candidates and field operations so they only can afford 2 full-time organizers. Hildebrand emphasized how little power Democrats have today.

Afterwards we split into three working groups.

I helped one group get on Bluesky, reviving my own account in the process. Bluesky is basically a drop-in replacement for what Twitter was before Musk turned it into xhit. Bluesky is growing. Musk’s right-wing sewer is not.

Twitter revenue chart

The second group did postcards for Susan Crawford in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, April 1st. We got our postcards from Activate America. There are also letters available from Vote Forward.

The third group is organizing a NEW branch of Indivisible Elmwood. Watch for more info here.

Next meeting is March 9.

Big protest in the Elmwood

Let me thank all of you who came, yelled, waved signs, gave leaflets to passerby. The troops are ready; the D.C. leadership is still mostly missing in action. My own iPhone photographic skills are modest. If you have some good pictures you’d like to share, please email them to me, and I can post them here.

Author with protest sign
Your author and his sign
Northwest corner, College & Ashby

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New visitors: Scroll down for our recommended Resistance Reading Diet and other PDFs of possible interest.

Update: By popular request, today’s handout.