We have some attractive new postcards to give out, too.

• When (not if) TJ Cox calls, discourage him from running. Bryan Osorio seems like a stronger candidate.
• Keep up the pressure on Sen. Feinstein to not forget her support for S.B.1. (Even Sen. Manchin is now on board, reluctantly.) Her D.C. fax is (202) 228-3954.
• Postcards for Virginia has added multiple new campaigns. All of our VA campaigns—Alex Askew, Nancy Guy, and Dr Ben Moses—are now available from their site. I also have Moses addresses; I will ask how to be sure we don’t duplicate efforts. (I have a larger list than Postcards4VA.)
• Activate America (formerly Flip the West) is running postcard campaigns for the seven California districts that we flipped in 2018, four of which were lost in 2020. They supply a script, which sight unseen I will bet won’t fit on a card, and are especially looking for people willing to write in Spanish.
• Speaking of long scripts, the Moses campaign sent a mere page-and-a-half script. My sample postcards had a cut-down version, with bullet points emphasizing his veteran status, his work as an ICU doctor, his support of health care for all, and his desire to develop rural Virginia. I wanted to go off-message and add that his opponent is a drunk and a poacher, but was persuaded some voters may see those as positives.

At the usual place.

We slid the meetings a week on account of the Independence Day Holiday. So, we meet tomorrow. Agenda: action plan though November 2021.

Vote Forward has a letter-writing campaign.

Postcards for Virginia have added campaigns. Ben Moses has been added to their list, but you can also get Moses addresses directly from me!

We have not raised that much for the EBAA Intern (Fellow) Program. Reminder, for this it’s best to send us a check (or checks) made out to Friends of Alex Askew, Guy for Delegate, or both.

The indictment of the Trump Organization reminded me of a cartoon I saw at least fifty years ago. The Internet doesn’t forget! Found it! As David Frum puts it, the scale of the Trump Organization frauds is more befitting a crooked dry-cleaner than a purported Real Estate Tycoon.

• 

On July 7 from 6 to 7 pm a large group of progressive Bay Area organizations will host a Deadline for Democracy Rally in Oakland at the Frank Ogawa Plaza in support of S-1, the For the People voting rights act.  The event is sponsored by Indivisible East Bay and Indivisible SF, in partnership with East Bay Activist Alliance, Indivisible Sonoma County, Indivisible Livermore, Rise Up To Action SF, and the Wellstone Democratic Club. 

Speakers at the include: Elisha Crader, Nor Cal Organizer from Working Families Party; Bruce Hartford, 1960s Field Organizer for  Dr. Martin Luther King in Alabama/Mississippi, webspinner for Civil Rights Movement Archive; Queen Jackson, grassroots leader with Community Change Action and MoveOn; Rebecca Kaplan, Oakland City Council Member-at-Large and Vice Mayo; Janani Ramachandran, social justice lawyer, artist/activist, running for CA State Assembly, and Aisha Wahab; Mayor Pro Tempore & City Council Member of Hayward.

The Oakland rally is part of a national Deadline For Democracy effort by Indivisible and 70+ other organizations during the July congressional recess to demand that lawmakers act urgently to defend democracy and pass the For the People Act by August. There should be significant media coverage.  You can sign up to attend at here.

Bruce Jackson approved, on our behalf, a letter sent by numerous progressive California organizations to Sen. Dianne Feinstein. You can find the text in his post below. The letter has gotten quite a bit of press, as seen in Bruce’s post.

Unfortunately, we continue to see stories that suggest Sen. Feinstein has memory issues. ACTION ITEM: It is worthwhile to FAX Feinstein and/or Padilla a short letter urging them to support voting rights including S.1 and the John Lewis Act.

There is an election this June 29, only in Assembly District 18 (parts of Oakland). This is a special election to fill the seat Rob Bonta vacated when he was appointed State Attorney General. You can sign up to be a poll worker here. Younger workers are especially useful. If they can’t work on June 29th, encourage them to sign up for the next election, which will be in November.

I talked for some time about the Manchin Kabuki Theater. Manchin’s Voting Rights Bill has been pared down to essentials that can be opposed only on totally dishonest grounds. (That isn’t so true of H.R.1/S.1.) Seeing how Republicans are still refusing to accept it is a learning experience. Which way he goes is hard to say; there are not any clues. Today, unfortunately, his partner in waffling, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, wrote a ridiculous pro-filibuster piece in the Washington Post (no link on purpose). As far as anyone can tell, there is literally no agenda she finds more important than approval from the Republican Party. If we can go +2 in the 2022 Senate elections, Sinema and Manchin lose all their leverage.

Sally and I talked about Bryan Osorio’s Zoom call. Osorio has declared for CA-21. He is young and earnest. (He also, surprisingly, does not speak good Spanish: his parents thought it was important for his future to use English at home.) Demographically, he may be a better fit than ex-Rep. TJ Cox. The district is extremely close. We will, of course, be working for whoever is the candidate. It will help if he develops some gravitas in the meantime. We will include Osorio in our fund-raising starting in a month.

Bill Marthinsen talked about the revised East Bay Activist Alliance Fellow program, who, unlike interns, will receive a stipend. The best way to do this is through the campaigns themselves, sending them checks marked for “EBAA Fellow”. The candidates, as in the last cycles, are Alex Askew [checks payable to Friends of Alex Askew] and Nancy Guy [Guy for Delegate]. To support the Fellows, send your checks to us and we will forward. (We will add Askew and Guy to our thermometer, but money donated directly at ActBlue will not count towards the Fellowships.)

ACTION ITEM:

Write a Giving Circle email. Here is an example, based on one from Jody Lerner.

Dear Friends and Family,

I am asking you to join me in supporting Alex Askew and Nancy Guy, Delegates in Virginia, who are up for re-election this year. Perhaps you’re tired of election stuff. I know I am. I hate to be a downer, but our democracy is in jeopardy, and that’s not hyperbole. We don’t have the luxury of ignoring the incessant attacks on our electoral process.

With gratitude for all you do, (Your name)

At yesterday’s IE meeting I agreed to report back on the Indivisible East Bay (IEB)zoom meeting with Sen Padilla’s leg director that I attended today. IEB holds regular (often monthly) meetings with both CA Senators’ leg directors. Some of these are attended by reps from other Indivisible groups. In CA and nationally, many Indivisible chapters do the same, as well as holding regular meetings with Congressional Reps and with state legislative electeds and/or their staff. I have been attending many of these meetings over the past 3 years or so. Two remarkable IEB policy wonks prepare detailed memos with questions and pitches on current legislation that serve as the basis for these conversations. I have forwarded the memo from today’s meeting to Andy so that he can either post or forward it to anyone who would like to see a copy.

Today’s meeting started by emphasizing the For the People vote tomorrow. Josh reported that Sen Padilla personally, and the Democratic caucus generally, have been in intensive convo with Mancin throughout the week-end. As we know, we are not going to win this without modifying the filibuster graveyard. However, Mancin has moved to support a compromise version of For the People, and it appears that tomorrow there will be the “moral victory” of 50 Dem votes. Various strategies about how to proceed after that are being discussed. A bumpy road at best.

Today’s meeting also discussed a long list of domestic and foreign policy issues. The memo is below.

On Monday, June 21, 2021 a group of over 100 progressive organizations, including Indivisible Elmwood, sent a open letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein.  It urges her to “publicly acknowledge that our democracy is in danger,” and support abolishing or reforming the 60-vote legislative filibuster in order to get the election legislation, known as the For the People Act, passed through the Senate.  The letter has drawn media attention: here’s a link to a Politico article. Text of our letter:

Dear Senator Feinstein,

We, the 101 undersigned advocacy, civic, environmental and labor groups in California representing over 288,000 of your constituents, ask that, in advance of this week’s procedural vote on the For the People Act, you publicly acknowledge that our democracy is in danger. We also ask that you publicly affirm that you will do everything in your power to help pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act through all means possible, including, if necessary, through abolishing, reforming, or providing an exception to the Senate filibuster.

While in the past you have expressed openness to these possibilities, on June 10th, you were quoted in Forbes as stating, “If democracy were in jeopardy, I would want to protect it,” but “I don’t see it being in jeopardy right now.” Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, responded aptly to your statement by saying, “We live in a two-party system. One of the parties is anti-democratic. The other is not sure that’s a problem.”

We are dismayed that such a considered and thoughtful Senator as yourself could fail to perceive the danger of the current moment to our democracy and our country. Below is a partial list of clear indications that our democracy is in serious jeopardy:

• The Big Lie of election fraud has led to:
  • At least 86 lawsuits being filed as part of a broad based attempt to overturn 2020 election results and increase funding and support for the Big Lie;
  • An unprecedented attack on our Capitol on January 6;
  • The introduction of at least 389 bills this year to restrict voting rights in 48 states
• The passage of more than 20 laws this year that will make it harder for Americans to vote. Some of these new laws even allow partisan legislatures to overturn valid election results. Additional voter suppression laws are likely to be enacted soon since many legislatures are still in session; 

• The belief held by 56% of Republicans, according to a May poll from Reuters/Ipsos, that the results of the 2020 election were the result of illegal voting or election rigging;
• The rise of hate crimes to their highest record in a decade, according to the FBI; Further, hate crimes against Asian-Americans rose 164% between May 2020 and May 2021, according to a recent study by California State University-San Bernardino.

• Our democracy is drifting toward authoritarianism:
  • Those with the most knowledge on the topic – historians, political scientists, former officials from both parties, and experts in tyranny – are all raising the alarm that our democracy is in serious danger;
  • Post-census gerrymandering alone could cement generation-long minority rule in multiple states and in both Congress and the Presidency.

We know remedies are available in the form of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act of 2021. These critically important bills would restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and would protect our precariously fragile democracy from voter suppression and intimidation, extreme gerrymandering, and potentially even partisan nullification of the results of free and fair elections.

Since you co-sponsored both bills, we know that you fully understand the crucial nature of their respective provisions to the protection of our democracy.

These pro-democracy bills would require the Senate to amend an arcane rule called the filibuster since they run counter to the GOP’s stated anti-democratic interests and will surely not reach the 60 vote threshold. This rule, which is not written in the Constitution, exists to sabotage Senate proceedings, not to ensure democracy. The notion that it promotes bipartisanship only applies when both parties are vested in an outcome that benefits our country and its people. As uncomfortable as they may be to confront, the obstructionist and antidemocratic actions of the GOP make clear that democracy itself is subordinate to their desire to obtain and hold power.

Over the past seven months, scores of Indivisible chapters and other groups across California have brought this perilous situation to the attention of you and your staff via tens of thousands of phone calls, in dozens of meetings, in numerous op-eds, media briefings, protests, and postcards. We also sent you a letter on March 15 that was signed by 70 groups representing over 82 thousand of your constituents asking you to vote to end or reform the filibuster in order to pass the “For the People Act” and other critical legislation in the coming year.

We were gratified and reassured by your public statements in March and April indicating a new willingness on your part to change the filibuster should we see it being abused by the Republican side of the aisle, especially as it pertains to passing the For the People Act. However, your statements on June 10 contradict these earlier commitments.

Now that we have seen the obstruction of a bipartisan commission to examine the origins of the infamous attack on the Capitol and other bills supported by the majority of voters such as the Covid Relief Bill and Paycheck Fairness Act, the situation is clear. Our democracy is in jeopardy.

The hour is late. The risks posed by inaction and paralysis are irrefutable. Legislation must pass this summer if we are to counter the mortal threats to our foundational right to vote. We have discussed, informed, negotiated, and respectfully asked for action as your constituents. Now, in addition, we appeal to you as Americans who love our country and who believe in the promise of our democracy.

Senator, it is time for you to stand up for democracy – for yourself, for the citizens of California, and for the United States of America. Again, we ask that, in advance of this week’s procedural vote on the For the People Act, you publicly acknowledge that our democracy is in danger. We also ask that you publicly affirm that you will do everything in your power to help pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act through all means possible, including, if necessary, through abolishing, reforming, or providing an exception to the Senate filibuster.

Sincerely,

(Signed by Indivisible Elmwood and 100 other progressive organizations)

Saturday 2-3 on Zoom, meet Brian Osorio, Mayor of Delano now running again Valadao in Congressional District 21

https://www.mobilize.us/osorioforcongress/event/396076/

Saturday 3-4 join Janice for the closing of her art show at the Moss Galley, next to the Elmwood Theater

Sunday 4-5 our next Indivisible Elmwood meeting at our house. Agenda: update on voting rights with next steps, update on the meeting with Osorio and update on Virginia and special update from Bill about the intern program in Virginia. Lots to discuss and some action items.

Click to donate

Our ActBlue site is currently supporting Virginia Delegates Alex Askew and Nancy Guy, and would-be Delegate Dr Ben Moses. You can split evenly or choose another allocation.