This Sunday May 12th 4:30-5:45 at our house (2745 Elmwood Ave) we will officially kickoff our next set of Blue Wave activities, starting with our fund-raising for Virginia. We’ll have our new buttons, new postcards and new energy. Please plan on attending. Bring all donations for our on-line auction and any friends looking to get active preserving our democracy. What we launch on Sunday is the Blue Wave that will take over the White House!

Bill

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2019 is an important election year in Virginia! Our plan is here.  To help flip Virginia blue, pick 1 action:

Donate to Virginia candidates:

Last week the national Indivisible organization launched an “Indivisible Pledge” and invited both grass-roots activists and Democratic presidential candidates to sign it.  As Rachel Maddow noted Monday, this has particular significance for the candidates, who must pledge to run constructive, issue-driven campaigns and actively support whoever emerges with the nomination (no sour grapes, 3^rd party threats, etc.).  But local activists who sign the pledge are also asked to “Do the work to beat Trump. We’re the grassroots army that’s going to power the nominee to victory, and we’ll show up to make calls, knock doors, and do whatever it takes.” It looks like this, rather than endorsing any one candidate (which most Indivisible chapters—including ours—rejected), is how Indivisible plans to impact the primary process.  Hurray!  Here’s the message from the national team:

Take the #WeAreIndivisible pledge. We’ve got 11 candidates and nearly 10,000 grassroots activists signed up. But this simple ask will take all of us to uphold. So, if you haven’t already, take the pledge and add your name. And if your local group is ready to commit to our weekend of action in July 2020, register your event on the map here.

Other Actions: We’re also asked to ask our member of Congress to support Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s Medicare for All Act and H.R. 1046, Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s bill aimed at bringing down drug prices, but Barbara Lee is already a co-sponsor of both. If you’d like to be heard on another bill she’s co-sponsored, there’s a link for a call asking her to resist pressures to water down  H.R. 6, the Dream and Promise Act!

There’s also a plea for cash, which the national effort will certainly need: “We’re doing everything we can to launch successful 2020 campaigns and advocacy nationwide. But phonebanking, organizing, training, and more take resources that are far from free — and we need your help to afford them. Please: we need you to chip in $30.00 or more to support Indivisible now and into 2020.”

Andy is out of town and I am sick so we are not having a meeting tomorrow Sunday April 28th. Our next meeting will be Sunday May 12th 4:30-5:45 at our house. Everyone now has two extra weeks to gather items for our “From the political past into our Democratic future” auction. I will be posting some action items tomorrow in place of our meetings and plan to begin regular M and F postings. If anyone has anything they wanted to present tomorrow, please post it to the group. See you all in two weeks!

The following urgent request is from Jiggy Athilingam, Indivisible Senior State Policy Manager. Note: Item 3 has been taken care of.

California’s clean energy future is at risk. Last year, we passed SB 100 to accelerate our renewable energy portfolio standard to 60% renewable by 2030 and 100% renewable by 2045. Now, special interests are trying to carve out loopholes and exemptions to weaken the law.

SB 386 (Caballero) would exempt two irrigation districts and allow them to count large hydro power toward the 60% renewable standard. If these two districts are allowed to count large hydro, they will have absolutely zero incentive to produce real renewable energy. What’s worse is that this sets a very dangerous precedent — it won’t be long until every district demands this exemption, which would completely undermine our path to a cleaner energy future.

SB 386 passed the Senate Energy Committee this week with the votes of moderate Dems and Republicans. It does not have to go to Appropriations and there is fear that it may get fast tracked to the Senate floor, as early as next week.

The SB 100 coalition is on emergency alert and needs our help.

Here is what you can do:

1. Call your state Senator. Since this could be headed to the floor, every Senator needs to hear from us. Look up their number here. Here is a call script:
   “Hello, my name is <NAME> from <TOWN>. I’m calling to express serious concern about SB 386, a bill that would effectively gut the renewable energy goals set forth in SB 100 by allowing large hydro dams to count toward the 60% renewable by 2030 standard. Climate change is an emergency and I expect California to lead the way in environmental reform, not undermine our own progress. Can I count on Senator <NAME> to vote NO on SB 386 on the Senate floor next week?”
2. Drop-in to your Senator’s office. If you have the time, grab a few of your group members and spontaneously stop by your Senator’s district office on Monday in person to ask them to vote NO on SB 386.
3. Sign your group onto the coalition opposition letter. The SB 100 coalition is submitting an opposition letter (text at the bottom of this email). To sign on, please email your name, group name, and group logo to djacobson@environmentcalifornia.org
4. Tweet about this to raise awareness. This bill has been moving quietly and we need to raise awareness about its dangers. Use the sample tweets in this toolkit and the graphics below. Sample social

This bill could move as early as next week so time is of the essence. Thank you for your activism!

In solidarity,

Jiggy

All of us have been consumed with learning every [unredacted] thing about the Mueller report this week.  Many of us probably agree with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who tweeted on the 18^th:   “Doing nothing when we are seeing blatant disregard of the United States constitution, to our ethical norms, is dangerous.” It’s not only up to Congress to hold Trump accountable, it’s our job to do so. #InvestigateNow #TimetoImpeach At this point Barbara Lee does not appear to be a co-sponsor of Tlaib’s resolution. We might help change that.

From Indivisible’s national team:

Congress must investigate now.

It’s our turn to put in the work to urge Congress to use their oversight powers to investigate Trump. Members of Congress (especially those who sit on relevant committees like Judiciary or Intelligence) should continue using their subpoena power to uncover the full Mueller report, as well as pursuing investigations related to Trump’s corruption, both during and before his time in office. There are a few ways we’re going to do that:

1. Call to support Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s impeachment resolution. Make a call to your MoC and tell them to co-sponsor Rep. Tlaib’s resolution (H.Res. 257) and begin investigating whether Trump should be impeached.
2. Send an email to support Rep. Tlaib’s impeachment resolution. Write up an email (or use our suggested text!) and we’ll send your letter to your MoC urging them to co-sponsor Rep. Tlaib’s resolution.

On the Ground: To The Other Side In Tijuana

I hope some of you and especially Judith will read this essay.

1. Bill explained that our old local CA13 Sister District group has been renamed East Bay Action Network and is now an affiliate of (and not a sub-group of) the larger Sister District organization. CA 13 is going solo in order to be able to engage in not only the activities forwarded from Sister District but also other actions that are not part of the SD mission. Most of us will not notice any difference in how our group functions and Bill will keep us up with anything we need to know about this reorganization.
2. We went over our two upcoming fundraisers. First, we will offer our Quite Evening at Home for June 11th, the night of the Virginia primary. Look for a sample invitation to be posted later this week–hoping that everyone will give their suggestions on how to improve it. We will then send it around to friends via email. For the second fundraiser, our Political Paraphernalia Auction, we will be able to host an on-line auction with 20 items (one item can actually be a group of items). Please bring all donations (old buttons, bumper stickers etc. to our next meeting. We will take photos for the auction at the meeting. The auction will go live after we have done as much as we can with the Quiet Evening. Funds raised by the auction will go to Bill’s intern program.
3. Judy gave an update about all the work going into replacing the Alameda sheriff. Bruce will be coordinating with Indivisible CA since they can be a big help with this vital issue. Judy will be posting information to keep us up to date. Thursday May 27th panel on Alameda County Politics at the Wellstone Club meeting, 7:00 Humanist Hall Oakland (This information will be repeated closer to the date of the meeting.)
4. We went over a possible button design. Andy will be printing out some samples for our next meeting so send any ideas on to him. We also reviewed the postcard plans. Hope to have them for our next meeting.
5. We wrote postcards for a study on voter turnout that Sister District is doing. We will certainly share anything we hear about the results of various postcard studies—though it may be a while since this was about getting voters out this coming November.
6. .

Josh Marshall posted an important piece on Talkingpointsmemo about some Democrats feeling discouraged. This came into my inbox just a few days after a note about Tony the Democrat dropping a campaign because he does not have as many people writing postcards these days.

If you are reading this, you are part of the solution, not the problem (as we said in the 60’s). The Virginia election is coming, Tony and Votefwd have Democratic campaigns in their sites. We are the ones who keep other Democrats from giving up. We are the energizing bunnies for our friends and those around us who get distracted from the main goal—electing every Democrat we can all the time all the way up to the White House.

We are the ones who will meet today to move forward on fund-raising for Virginia. We have a special postcard campaign in process as well. I am so looking forward to seeing you all–the ones who do NOT let down their energy. Discouraged?? No–we are too busy!