- Bruce: Report on Indivisible Berkeley and National. We officially endorse Joe Biden, as we committed to endorse the nominee. There was a request to find Nancy Pelosi’s and Dianne Feinstein’s fax numbers. Feinstein’s DC office: (202) 228-3954. Interestingly, Pelosi does not put a fax number on her website, but I find one on a right-wing site urging people to show her the error of her ways. (202) 225-8259
- Judy: The action item for the Board of Supervisors meeting is below. [There appears to be an agendum on this same Santa Rita money grab at the Berkeley City Council meeting, where I suspect the outcome is not in doubt —Andy]
- Bill: EBAA now up to seven interns. Review of Michigan races. More here.
- Naomi: All quiet on the Tony the Democrat front. We are out of Christy Smith (CA-25) addresses. We have to get ready for texting and phone banking. Bill reported that phone bank volunteers report people are less annoyed at getting calls now that they are shut in. Naomi got help from Commit to Flip Blue for texting training.
- Andy: A book report on Hiding in Plain Sight. I found the book disappointing in some ways. The two strongest points are the first-person narrative of living through what I call the adjunctification of the economy, where careers are replaced by a sequence of low-paid, no-benefit gigs. Also, what wealth Millennials are able to accumulate is wiped out by student loans and by the loss of their savings and upward transfer of wealth in the aftermath of the 2008 bank collapse. The second strong point is the importance of keeping track of what was once abnormal that becomes normal. The most egregious example may be the unprecedented role of failson Jared and Ivanka. Their presence anywhere near levers of policy show that America is not a meritocracy. I promised links to several articles which I thought showed a more sophisticated understanding. Those will follow. (I am glad to lend out the book to anyone interested.)
Urgent Action item from 4/26 meeting
The full minutes will go up later, but we wanted everyone to have a chance for an Action Item today.
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors meets tomorrow and the agenda again includes a continuation of the previous meetings’ request from (how-did-we-get-this-fascist?) Sheriff Ahern for more money for Santa Rita Jail as the major component of COVID–19 response.
Judy Stacey posted the full story earlier. Board Prez Richard Valle is the swing vote. His contact details are below. A sample script is at the earlier link.
District 2: Richard Valle (Board President, everyone contact) richard.valle@acgov.org ; 510- 272-6692
Agenda and Link for meeting tomorrow: Sunday 4:30-5:45
Agenda:
Update from Bruce about national and state Indivisible
Update from Bill about the internship program and how we can support it
Update from Judy on Sheriff Ahern actions
Update from Naomi about political actions: 1) high-value postcarding, 2) activating texting (my adventures this week with Commit to Flip) and 3) low hanging fruit fundraising to support the Sister District campaigns–time for our auction? Also, short report on voting issues for upcoming election.
Analysis by Andy of how Sara Kendizor’s analysis and a few topflight media articles help us organize our political actions for maximal efficiency
Link:Join Zoom Meeting
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EBAA internship report
To Indivisible Elmwood
I have been working with East Bay Activist Alliance (https://www.eastbayactivistalliance.org/) on developing an intern program to support state legislative races in critical states.
We choose states and races based on impact at multiple levels as follows: an eye to flipping legislature to end gerrymandering, to support up-ballot races within the state like Governor or Attorney General, to support up-ballot federal races like for the US House or US Senate (either to hold a seat or flip one), and to support the Democratic presidential candidate with a significant number of electoral college votes. We are picking the state races by whether or not they are conceivably flippable. We aim to help push them ahead in the end. We do not pick sides in primaries because we want to support local choices.
We have chosen to work in Michigan because we have relationships there from work two years ago when we helped flip a state senate seat and a state house seat in Oakland County, a formerly segregated county immediately outside of Detroit. We will be working directly with four campaigns there, two holds and two flips. We are currently helping two other campaigns to flip, but only in the early part of their campaigns. We will work with two campaigns in North Carolina and one in Arizona (AZ legislative district 6 which includes Flagstaff).
In each of the past two years, we have had one intern, first in Michigan then in Virginia. Thus far this year we have seven interns who are working now because of the Covid quarantine. They are all working in Michigan on 5 legislative races, helping StateWide Indivisible Michigan (SWIM), and a national campaign, One Fair Wage (https://onefairwage.com/about/). They are working remotely to help campaigns. Some of the work is phone banking, other actions involve research for the campaign or data gathering of one type or another. The interns are very enthusiastic and want to learn about political campaigning and flip things Democratic.
Our Michigan candidates at this time are Padma Kuppa (https://www.electpadmakuppa.com/), Laurie Pohutsky (https://housedems.com/pohutsky), and Julia Pulver (https://www.juliapulver.com/). Our Arizona candidate is Coral Evans (https://www.coralevansaz.com/). We have not finalized the NC races that we will support, but we plan on taking on two.
EBAA has a new website, and it offers a broad view of what we do. It connects to all Bay Area political activities some of which may be of interest to some of you. Our full service offer to campaigns is our expertise and our structures for fundraising, phone banking, text banking, post carding, canvassing, and supplying an intern.
EBAA is a completely volunteer organization, no paid staff, but a lot of very talented and knowledgeable activists. We can also use any local support, funding and actions that you and others can offer. So please, check out the website and see what’s there. If you have questions, feel free to contact me (bill.activist@gmail.com or 510-220-5239). I think that the fundraising link will take you to the Giving Circles effort that we are using to replace the activity-based fundraising was used before.
Thanks for all that you all do!
Bill Marthinsen
Just how incompetent is our COVID–19 program? (Very)
I haven’t pasted the Financial Times graphic for deaths recently.
Basically, no country except the USA still has accelerating (positive slope) daily death count 42 days into the epidemic. Sweden, Canada, and Brazil (which are three of the grey lines on the chart) are accelerating, but only on about day 30. They have a chance to turn the corner in the next 12 days. Whether they will, given the wretched response of Sweden and Brazil, is another question.
Meeting invitation for April 26
They may be opening up in Georgia (Georgia GOP: If you can’t beat ’em, kill ’em), but here, we are still on Zoom.
Topic: Indivisible Elmwood
Time: Apr 26, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
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Password: 616432
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Book update
I splurged on a signed copy of Hiding in Plain Sight, which delayed its arrival until Thursday coming. I’ll have it read by Sunday, but I won’t be able to pass it around. My previous post has links to other ways to get the book, if anyone is interested, including non-paper versions. It’s now a NY Times bestseller.
Excerpt. Excerpt of her earlier, pre-election, book, Tales from Flyover Country.
The contrasts of the NY Times
First, a poignant story that would never have gotten the same reach—it’s viral now—published in any other source.
From “A Beloved Bar Owner Was Skeptical About the Virus. Then He Took a Cruise“
“He said, ‘Don’t you think this is fishy? Do you know anyone who has it? Do you know anyone who has died from it?’ And I said, ‘Dad, I don’t know anyone now, but give me a week and I bet I will.’”
And in a week, she did.
The same edition also features the following, from their chief Washington correspondent: “No Fight Over Red Ink Now, but Virus Spending Will Force Tough Choices“. Remarkably, in a 30-year career, the writer has not yet figured out that deficit hawks act only against Democratic Party programs, with particular vigor if People of Color stand to benefit. On tax cuts for the rich, they are silent. On the basics of what Paul Krugman calls the Herrenvolk Welfare State, they are silent. Yet I didn’t detect any sense of sarcasm or even wonder here.
Republican concerns about deficit spending — once an animating force of the party — seemed to have evaporated when President Obama left the White House.
But, fear not, the writer is not abandoning the punditocracy consensus that the budget must be balanced. He concludes,
There is no choice now, but tough decisions are ahead.
I don’t think I have to tell you who is supposed to suffer from the tough decisions. It won’t be the billionaires.
Tel numbers and script for calls to BOS
My prior post only included email addresses for the supervisors and I didn’t include a sample call script. Here are both
Call and Email script to reach out to Board of Supervisors:
My name is ___ , I’m calling urge you to deny the sheriff’s $85 million budget proposal on Tuesday. We’re in public health crisis, invest taxpayer dollars in healthcare and housing!
The coronavirus has reached Santa Rita Jail. Please immediately release people now. Any budget decision that prioritizes incarceration over healthcare puts all of us at risk.
FUND HEALTHCARE NOT HANDCUFFS
Board of Supervisors Contact Information:
District 1: Scott Haggerty scott.haggerty@acgov.org ; (510) 272-6691
District 2: Richard Valle (Board President, everyone contact)richard.valle@acgov.org ; 510- 272-6692
District 3: Wilma Chan. wilma.chan@acgov.org ; 510-272-6693
District 4: Nate Miley. nate.miley@acgov.org ; 510-272-6694
District 5: Keith Carson. Kcarson@acgov.org ; 510-272-6695
URGENT ACTION: Ask the Board of Supervisors to Fund Health Care, Not Incarceration
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors, at its upcoming meeting on Tuesday, April 21, will consider a request from Alameda County Sheriff Gregory J. Ahern for an additional $255 million over the next three years for the stated purpose of increasing staffing at the Alameda County Santa Rita Jail in Dublin despite the continuing decrease in the jail population. This is precisely the wrong way to spend County money, especially during the pandemic. Rather than giving the Sheriff more money for fewer prisoners, the Board of Supervisors should recognize that COVID-19 is spreading exponentially at the jail where the rate of diagnosed inmates per capita is 14 times the rate of recorded positive cases in Alameda County as a whole.
Instead, there is an urgent need to release as many inmates as possible and to fund healthcare, housing, and reentry programs, not more incarceration. Please call or email the Board of Supervisors, urging them to reject the Sheriff’s request for additional funds. It is particularly important to contact Supervisor Richard Valle from southern Alameda County, in addition to your Supervisor. If you have friends who live in Valle’s Second Supervisorial District (the cities of Hayward, Newark, and Union City; the northern portion of the city of Fremont; and a portion of the unincorporated community of Sunol), please pass this email to them.
Contact your member of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors below:
- Supervisor Scott Haggerty
- Supervisor Richard Valle
- Supervisor Wilma Chan
- Supervisor Nate Miley
- Supervisor Keith Carson
Not sure who your County Supervisor is? You can look up which district you live in here. You can also sign up to give public comment at the meeting, which will be live-streamed. Instructions for participating in the live stream are here.
Indivisible Elmwood 