Posting this for Noemi:

On Naomi’s porch are TWO sets of postcards: Askew-specific postcards for Askew, and generic postcards for Nancy Guy. Please work on one set at a time. We have one set of alphabetical names and addresses for each. I will send them to you in sections, e.g. Askew A-C, depending on how many you want.

We will send out images of the Askew and Turpin cards with the addresses. The wording has to be exactly what is in the Askew cards in the image. We’re not doing Turpin yet; this is just how the images came. Nancy Guy will use the same format. Askew is House of Delegates – District 85 (see his postcard) while Guy is House of Delegates – District 83. (Normally I would use the abbreviation HD, but I’m going by our Askew example.)

Do not address these to generic voters; they are going to specific people who haven’t voted yet. Do not affix stamps! We will send the stamps as part of the package of postcards we’re sending to Virginia. Bring your finished postcards with your loose stamps (if you don’t have stamps, we’ll donate ours) to the meeting at Naomi and Andy’s on October 6.

If you can’t make that meeting, put them through Naomi and Andy’s door slot on or before October 6. (We don’t want completed postcards mixed up with blank postcards on Naomi and Andy’s porch.)

Again, use Askew-specific postcards for Askew: generic postcards for Nancy Guy. Keep them separated! Do not affix stamps; just include loose stamps with your postcards. Do not put completed postcards back in the box. Bring them to the meeting or put them through the door slot. Deadline is Sunday, October 6. Thanks, Noemi

Attendance:

Naomi
Steve
Mary
Andy
Jeff
Noemi
Jane
Alice
Babette
Bruce
Bill

Education:

Gerrymandering – Bruce will post information about this.

Voter Suppression – Andy discusses the ways various states are making it difficult for people to register to vote. Wisconsin has a Voter ID card but makes it nearly impossible to get. In Georgia you can get something at the DMV office but there are no DMV offices in Atlanta. Some states are using felon disenfranchisement to prevent people from voting, and some legislatures are trying to overturn voter initiati ves that limit disenfranchisement. In some cases having the same name as a convicted felon can trigger this.
Steve says good places working on voter suppression in case you want to give some money: The Brennan Center at NYU, the ACLU, and Campaign Legal Center. Abrams in Georgia and Gillum in Florida are working on this, too, but their websites are skeletal.
Naomi says The Future is Female is working on the Senate rather than the House.

Action Items:

We finished the last postcards. Sister District is requesting a final push on the three campaigns in Virginia. Sister District will have very specific instructions for these. They will be on Naomi and Andy’s porch, but don’t start these until Noemi and/or Jeff post the instructions. They will make Tony the Democrat’s instructions look like a piece of cake, but we’ll need all of you we can get on this. The deadline for returning these is our next meeting, October 6.

If you want to fax representatives, Naomi and Andy have a fax machine you can take advantage of. You can also text RESIST to 50409 (note: Noemi tried that and was able to send only to her own rep and senators).

Future Actions:

We’re waiting for Lauren Underwood to get back with us about a fundraiser.

Steve says a WaPo study says it’s most effective to target districts that the Democrats won.

Bruce says SB1 has still not been signed or vetoed by Governor Newsom.

Michael Altschul is giving out cards saying “Elmwood Indivisible invites you to support democracy” if you want to pass some of those to your neighbors.

Next Sunday is a dim sum event. Naomi will post info about this.

Thanks to all of you who dropped off postcards while Andy and I returned once more to DC. We are looking forward to seeing many of you at our next meeting this Sunday, Sept 22, 4:30-5:45 at our house. We have been given a fairly complicated postcarding task for Virginia. We will go over in some detail at the meeting as well as educate ourselves about voter suppression. Please bring any info you all have about the best groups fighting voter suppression.

The California Indivisible statewide call Wednesday emphasized an urgent need for phone calls to Gavin Newsom from as many Indivisible members as possible asking him to abandon his announced plan to veto SB-1. The bill, authored by Senate President pro Tem Toni Atkins, would ensure California’s authority to preserve our clean air, clean water, biodiversity and safe workplaces in the face of unprecedented threats and rollbacks from the Trump administration. On Friday, Newsom signaled he was giving in to big agriculture and other SB-1 opponents.  Multiple environmental groups, including the NDRC, Nature Conservancy, and the Sierra Club are urging him to reverse course, and with enough additional flak from Indivisibles, he might just do that. So…

Call Governor Newsom’s office at  (916) 445-2841 and insist that he sign SB-1 and not veto it! 

The ask: Go to Virginia the weekend before the 11/5/19 election (or more days if they can).

Our discussion of gerrymandering became a discussion of voter initiatives, since that is generally the only way that states adopt nonpartisan redistricting commissions–legislatures don’t do it, usually.  There are a lot of states that allow voter initiatives, but they are mostly in the west.  An excellent source of information on which states allow them, with a state by state compilation of the rules that apply to them, is a website published by the University of Southern California Initiative & Referendum Institute . There is also a useful Wikipedia article.

 

 

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!