democracy

Notes from the 2/15 meeting

/ Andrew J. Lazarus / Leave a comment

I reported on the relatively favorable forecast for the House and the key Senate races. The most contentious California race, among Democrats, is the primary to take on David Valadao, the Republican in CA–22. The candidates are Randy Villegas and the more conservative Democrat Dr. Jasmeet Bains, who appears to be the favorite of out-of-area Democratic leadership. Conversely, Villegas is the favorite of Democratic leaders in the district, Dolores Huerta, and our colleague Mary Boergers, who leads the Berkeley chapter of Central Valley Matters. There will be a Villegas fundraiser this Friday, 5:00–7:00. If interested, you can sign up here.

Note that Sister District has renamed itself States Win, so that is how I will refer to it from now on. With the exception of a Michigan special election, they have not picked any races yet. They are playing in more states than last cycle, including Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina. We’ve written postcards or raised money in those states before. Nicole Zambrano has left States Win for grad school; Ariana Ybarra replaces her as the West Coast Organizing Manager. She warned me, they are fond of phonebanking.

Volunteers for roles in Indivisible Elmwood:

  • CA Indivisible – Bruce
  • National Indivisible and Vote Forward — Sally
  • Indivisible Berkeley & Indivisible East Bay — Estella
  • States Win — Martha
  • Central Valley Matters — Ann O.

[Martha and Estella: I will be granting you author permission for this website. I believe everyone else who volunteered has it already.]

We distributed 100 postcards encouraging turnout for the North Carolina primary. No need to bring them back here, unless you need some stamps.

Our protests have grown to over 100; ICE murders served as a a recruitment tool. They are currently 4:15–5:15. We will revert to 5:00–6:00 after the Daylight Savings switch.

Indivisible Berkeley is organizing a new weekly protest at MLK & Russell, Wednesdays 4:30–5:30 pm. Starts March 4.

Minutes of the May 11 meeting

/ Andrew J. Lazarus / Leave a comment

Overview of Virginia: we are paired up with Del. Michael Feggans again, and we have in a request for a Zoom with him where we can ask him questions. The campaign is hoping this meeting will also generate some donations. As soon as we know the date for the Zoom session, we will pass it on and everyone can invite their friends. Meeting our candidate is a lot of fun. We committed to write 500 postcards, but as of now, Sister District has no Feggans addresses and asked us to write for Del. Nadarius Clark (running in an adjacent Tidewater district) instead. The 2025 elections in Virginia look good. The Republican candidates are making no pretense of Youngkin-like moderation, and they are arguing amongst themselves over their Lieutenant Governor candidate, who is openly gay. (Their gubernatorial candidate is against same-sex marriage.)

We talked about our Friday protests. People are enjoying them quite a bit. Last Friday we handed out several hundred action flyers—people love them! We talked about adding some new items to the protest and for this week 1) Naomi is putting together a songbook so we can sing together on one corner and 2) Ken will be recruiting for the June 14th protest. We will also add some new button styles and hand out some stickers (very popular to put on laptops). The band will be back though perhaps not this coming week. Everyone should continue to pass on word about the protests. We can always use more participants. We also talked about perhaps in the future adding another flyer distribution point, such as the Downtown Berkeley BART station.

For the action part of the meeting we wrote postcards for next Tuesday’s Scranton City Council election and some of us wrote to the Florida Bar asking for Pam Bondi to be investigated.

Notes from the February 9 meeting

/ Andrew J. Lazarus / Leave a comment

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

  1. Courage is contagious: How to be brave and mentally stable
  2. Support vital media  [copy of the handout will appear here after beautification]
  3. Recruitment of activists: Goal 3.5% of the population
  4. Daily political flossing: Many, many actions to choose from
  5. 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.