To save people from scrolling down, I have added links to some recent pdfs (for example, our Media Diet) to the “Links” Page. (On a computer, you can also access this at the top of the page.)
Notes from the 2/23 Elmwood meeting
We will have a recurring visibility event at College & Ashby from 5:00 to 6:00 on Fridays, starting this Friday 2/28. Bring signs!
Economic Boycott: Buy nothing Friday, February 28, all day.
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.
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.
Better photos of our College & Ashby rally
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.
Use the “Contact” link above to request a subscription to this site. You will get an email for every new posting, including the upcoming meetings. We had so many members at our last meeting, I have set up an RSVP system. Please let me know if you are coming by accepting the event at Mobilize. I will use the signups to alert people of the meeting location.
New visitors: Scroll down for our recommended Resistance Reading Diet and other PDFs of possible interest.
Update: By popular request, today’s handout.
Not my President’s Day protest
National Indivisible has called for non-violent protest this Monday. We will be at the corner of College & Ashby Monday February 17, noon–1:00, holding signs (BYO) and giving out action items (e.g., Congressional phone numbers to call). Bring your favorite placard and join us!
The Resistance media diet
I’ve reformatted the media diet that was given out at the last meeting, adding links. (I deleted a few art journals; you can get them from Naomi if you want.)
Notes from the February 9 meeting
Record attendance! The Resistance grows. Welcome new members.
Some other local Indivisible chapters: Indivisible Marin claims 10,000 members. Zoom meetings and action items. Indivisible East Bay has monthly meetings, sometimes in person, large scale action items. Indivisible Elmwood has in-person meetings bi-weekly, returning politics to a socially-engaged experience. We also do action items: postcarding, joining phone banks, fundraising, and sidewalk presence. (Our meetings alternate between two members’ houses. We realize that yesterday’s meeting was crowded. We may set up an RSVP system.)
Anyone who wants to post to this blog: email me, and I will authorize you. If there is interest, I will also explain how to post.
February 9 agenda
- Courage is contagious: How to be brave and mentally stable
- Support vital media [copy of the handout will appear here after beautification]
- Recruitment of activists: Goal 3.5% of the population
- Daily political flossing: Many, many actions to choose from
- Future meetings: learning about social media, BlueSky, vital readings, action items
Yesterday’s handouts are available in the post right below this one.
We also wrote nearly 400 postcards for Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford.
Handouts from the February 9 meeting
This came into our inbox from author Susan Austin. (Naomi fixed the phone number: this one is correct.)
Here are some specific requests we can make of our Senators.
We have postcards and addresses for WI Supreme Court
Our candidate is Susan Crawford.
This is one of the most consequential elections of the year, to retain our 4–3 majority. Among other accomplishments, the Court nuked one of the two most extreme state legislative gerrymanders in the country, where one year Republicans attained a veto-proof supermajority with fewer total votes than the Democrats. (North Carolina also has an extreme gerrymander, where the State Supreme Court may award the 2024 Supreme Court judicial election to the loser on some-or-another pretext. Best guess is that the most moderate Republican on that court will follow the law instead of his party; the other three are definite weasels.)
We Choose to Fight
Unless you’ve been forcefully tuning out the news, you must be experiencing some of the horror/panic/disgust we’re feeling at the blitzkrieg of Trump nominations and wondering what, if anything, can be done.
Indivisible, the national organization, is organizing “We Choose to Fight” actions at senators’ offices—something not everyone can do at this point. But phone calls and emails to Senate offices are still worth doing this week. Below is an email we sent (in slightly different versions) our Senators today, based largely on these resources from Indivisible. You might want to contact them as well. Both Padilla and Schiff have spoken out in hearings on Vought and Patel, so we start by thanking them. Here is our email, (with parentheses for the Padilla version)
Dear Senator Schiff (Padilla),
I appreciate your outspoken opposition to Kash Patel’s nomination as FBI director (Russell Vought’s nomination as federal budget director). We need real leadership from Democrats in the Senate on this and on what amounts to a fast-moving coup attempt by Trump and his allies.
Our democratic institutions can only survive this authoritarian onslaught if those of you in leadership positions act forcefully to block this attempted blitzkrieg. This could involve: denying a quorum by walking out whenever Republicans don’t have 51 votes in the chamber; blocking unanimous consent to force Republicans to take the longest possible route for each step of the confirmation process; using all 30 hours of debate on Patel (Vought) and other MAGA nominees to expose Project 2025, Musk’s Treasury takeover, the funding freeze and the mayhem at the FBI; forcing roll-call votes, quorum calls, and procedural delays to slow everything down; refusing to vote for even moderate nominees while this power grab continues; and making the case that this is a constitutional crisis requiring all hands on deck.
There is real fear in your constituency that Senators may try to appear “reasonable” to the MAGA steamroller and allow it to roll on. You can offer reasonableness once the money and power grab is stopped, but at this critical moment, you need to make the case loudly and publicly about why you’re blocking this coup.
Your constituent,
