ACTIONS FOR WEEK OF MAY 24

Dear Concerned Citizens,

Let’s do some talking this week. I mean talking to our elected officials.  And you know what we should be talking to them about? Voter Suppression, of course. We need to have both the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Advancement Act passed. Oh, and Statehood for DC as well. And there are some other important bills. So what I am asking you is this: will you call Senator Durbin’s office and call Senator Duckworth’s office (phone numbers here) and use the following script:

 Your script: 

Hi, I’m from [ZIP] calling/writing about several issues. I’d like Sen. [NAME] to: Pass the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act (S. 745) to expand broadband access to all communities. 

Support the American Families Plan to reform tax codes, SNAP policies, and access to higher education.  Pass S. 1, the For the People Act, which enjoys broad bipartisan support, will limit dangerous voter suppression efforts, and will establish sensible national standards for reforms like enfranchising returning

citizens and election-day registration. 

 

And will you call your Representative as well? Don’t know who it is? Look up your House representative here. 

Your script: Hi, I’m from [ZIP] calling/writing about several issues. I’d like Rep. [NAME] to: 

Pass the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act (H.R. 1783) to expand broadband access to all communities. 

Support the American Families Plan to reform tax codes, SNAP policies, and access to higher education.

Pass the bipartisan Postal Service Reform Act (H.R. 3076) to ensure the financial stability of the Postal Service, which employs more than 600,000 people and provides crucial infrastructure for rural America.

 

MAYBE all you have time for this week is to sign some petitions, and if that is the case, we have several we’ll suggest and here they are.

 

POSTCARDS

How about some gratitude in the form of a written postcard? Tell Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D–AZ) and Maricopa, AZ County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) why you are grateful to them for standing up for the integrity of the 2020 election in the face of an unsubstantiated county vote audit.

Addresses:

KH: Office of the SOS, 1700 W Washington St. Fl 7, Phoenix, AZ 85007

SR: Recorder’s Office, 111 S. Third Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85003

 

And don’t forget we are writing postcards to first time progressive voters in key swing states right now.  Do you want some postcards to write on your own? OR do you want to be part of our next in-person postcard writing party?  If so, email us at westernfrontindivisible@gmail.com

 

PHONEBANKS

You can phone bank to activists in key states to encourage them to urge their senators to pass the For the People Act. There is training as well as support on Zoom throughout each phone bank.  Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays & Saturdays, 6-8pm (ET). Now through June. This is through Common Cause and the signup link is here.

 

MAKE A COMMENT

The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council is seeking public input on a series of recommendations to the Biden Administration to address environmental justice issues across the United States. Air and water pollution caused by coal mining, toxic coal ash spills, and natural gas pipelines are a few examples of such problems in our region. These issues often impact low-income people and people of color the most, and there is a strong need for communities impacted by fossil fuels to build vibrant, diversified economies.

Public comments will be accepted in writing until May 27. To submit a written comment, email whejac@epa.gov.

STATE AND COUNTY ISSUES

A new study released by the Violence Policy Center reveals Illinois ranks fifth in the nation in black homicides. 86% involved a gun. The study underlines the inherent equity issues of gun violence and the urgent need to address this crisis. Black men, women, boys, and girls were only 14 percent of our nation’s population, yet accounted for 50 percent of all homicide victims.  Lawmakers can address this crisis by passing the Block Illegal Ownership And Fix The FOID (BIO) policy in Springfield today.  The BIO policy would require mandatory fingerprinting for all FOID cards and universal background checks, keeping guns off our streets and away from dangerous individuals.  It will also make investments in community-based mental health resources in the communities that experience the most gun violence. Click this link to take action.

CEJA CAN’T WAIT  

Last week, residents from across Central and Southern Illinois travelled to St. Louis to rally outside Ameren's headquarters in support of the Clean Energy Jobs Act. You can watch this short clip of the rally here  CEJA will hold utilities like Ameren accountable - tell your legislators to pass the bill this month! http://bit.ly/cejacantwait

IN THE COUNTY

The Indigenous Peoples' Day Coalition is close to getting Cook County to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day, but is not quite there yet. We need as many e-mails as we can get (let's try to break 1,500!) sent to the Cook County Commissioners before Monday, May 24th at 2 PM! At the moment, we only have 5-6 votes of 17 and we need 9 for this change to be made. Here is the link:

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/make-indigenous-peoples-day-a-reality-for-cook-county

 

CALENDAR FOR THE WEEK

24 MON

11 AM - 1 PM

Please join Newtown Action Alliance Monday, May 24 - from 11am-1pm CST. We will be asking Senate Democrats to heed Sen Tammy Duckworth's request that her colleagues support the $5B in funding for community violence prevention in Biden’s American Jobs Plan and for their support in ending the filibuster. You do not have to join for the whole time - just join us when you can. Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/.../tZYtdumtrD8oGdVz8b7Ripo2frlf5…

 

7 PM  Climate Working Group

Join National Indivisible's 2021 climate working group! This working group will bring together Indivisibles from across the country to coordinate federal and state advocacy efforts around climate justice issues.

https://indivisible.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEsdOiqqT4iH93i4vMjY8uiT-XmHAZNEGHO

 

25 TUES

George Floyd Day of Action

It’s the Anniversary of George Floyd’s death. There are a number of related actions you can take on this day. Go to this link to explore them:

https://justiceforgeorge-takeaction.carrd.co/

10 AM  Coffee Klatch

Join us. We’ll talk about all that’s happened in the year since George Floyd’s murder, and also, look forward to what we will do in June. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83139042809

 

6:30 PM  VIRTUAL TOWN HALL

Join this meeting from Swing Left for a briefing with S1  Lead Sponsor Sen. Merkley to hear updates on how we'll get this transformative bill passed--I'm sure he'll share updates on how leadership is taking Manchin's statements, and how we can best bring him and all moderate Dems around. Here’s the link to sign up.

 

26 WED

5:30 PM Truth Brigade Call 

A new campaign will be launched this week and you can be one of the first to know about it. Learn how to tell the truth on social media (and in person).

7:30 PM  Truth Brigade Illinois meets for a half hour.  We’ll be talking about using the Story function on Facebook and also will have a brief overview of the new national campaign.

8:00 PM Illinois Indivisible meeting. Find out what’s happening in the state as well as national updates. Here’s the link for both meetings:  https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAvduGgqTkrEtxqOTu4wgkXiTrhnKAETSBF

 

27 THURS  

7 PM

 Monthly Rural Call  

Once a month, rural Indivisibles and organizers all over the country join together to troubleshoot problems and celebrate successes; receive rural-specific information and trainings to benefit rural advocacy; and learn how National Indivisible supports rural organizing across the country! 

 

7PM

 STORYTELLING WORKSHOP

To pass the For the People Act (H.R. 1/S. 1) – the boldest and most sweeping bill in decades to realize the promise of our democracy – it is important that as many Americans as possible know we can protect the freedom to vote and limit big money in politics! There are still many Americans who do not yet know what’s at stake for our democracy and our communities if we do not act – we must change that. Storytelling is a powerful tool for engaging and energizing people around a cause.

Join this host meeting to learn how to host your own “Our Democracy Story” storytelling workshop in your community! We will talk through step by step how you can host a workshop that uses the power of personal storytelling to educate and energize others around the For the People Act - even folks who have never thought about or been involved in democracy work before!  Sign up here.

28 FRI

12 - 2 PM

Be part of #FilibusterFriday with our own Social Media Storm. We’ll have a Zoom room open if you want to join that way. Here’s the link. You don’t have to join us by Zoom, but can start tweeting and posting on Facebook on your own.  Here’s a link to a toolkit to help. Please note especially resources and possible posts re For the People Act.  Or you can  follow us on Twitter or follow us on Facebook and share our posts or cut and paste and share as your own.

4:30 PM

It’s Happy Hour time and this week we’re going to watch Suppressed 2020 as a group and then talk about it.  Here’s the Zoom link for the meeting. Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86720199867 Meeting ID: 867 2019 9867 If you can’t join us for this screening, why not watch it sometime this week. Here’s the link for this film on YouTube.

 

WOW!  There’s lots you can do this week. But make sure you do something restorative for yourself as well. Here’s what I do.

 

And I have one last request. Would you consider donating to Western Front Indivisible?  We need resources for our postcarding programs as well as other meeting and program expenses.  We have until the end of the month to meet our $500 goal, which will be matched by Indivisible.  Right now we are $100 short of our goal.  Will you help us?  You can donate through Act Blue by going here.

 

If you want to hear more late breaking news on things we should be concerned about or acting on, please join our Facebook group or to follow us on Twitter.  And email us at westernfrontindivisible@gmail.com if you have questions or concerns.

Keep on growing,

Etta

For Western Front Indivisible

 

PS  If you would like to submit items for the Action List, please email them to westernfrontindivisible@gmail.com by Saturday at 5 PM

 

 

 

A Letter from Ezra and Leah About Our Democracy

 posted by Etta Worthington   I am posting this letter that came from Indivisible co-founders Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg

Where we’ve been 

We started the year strong -- with the House passage of the For the People Act. This flew under the radar at the time, but it was actually a really big deal! It’s extremely common for representatives to vote for bills in a divided government, knowing they’ll never become law, and then get cold feet once there’s a unified trifecta (see: Republicans’ decade-long effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act). We were worried earlier this year that the bill might get watered down or blocked entirely, but that didn’t happen -- in fact the For the People Act got strengthened a bit this year. That’s a real success.

More good news: the bill was given the label “S.1” in the Senate -- the number traditionally reserved for the majority party’s top priority bill. And that bill has 49 cosponsors -- all but one member of the Democratic caucus are affirmatively in support, and the lone holdout (Manchin) has not vetoed the bill, but merely raised a few concerns. This is enormous. Traditionally, big complicated bills that face unified GOP opposition do not get similarly unified Democratic support like this so early on in the process. This too is a real win.

Finally, the Senate held a full committee hearing back in March on the For the People Act, and they held a “markup” on the bill just this week. A markup is where senators get a first stab at amending the bill in committee before sending it to the floor for a full senate vote  -- and every Democrat on the committee voted in favor of sending it to the floor. This too is a real win. 

This feels good, right? Things are proceeding as planned? OK, so here’s where we start running into issues. 

The real enemy is time 

Forget the discouraging things you’ve heard about Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, or even Mitch McConnell. The real enemy of the For the People Act is time. We’re running out of time for basic policy and political reasons. 

On the policy front, it turns out that it takes a fair amount of time to actually implement a piece of legislation after it’s been passed. That’s all the more true for the For the People Act, which is designed in part to undo the damage caused by the avalanche of GOP voter suppression bills at the state level. When we talk to election administration experts, they advise us that many provisions of the democracy reform bill, such as the anti-gerrymandering independent redistricting commissions, will take significant time to implement ahead of the next midterm elections. These experts tell us things start getting dicey if we fail to pass the bill by the end of this summer. In other words, if you want to actually prevent the GOP from gerrymandering and voter-suppressing themselves into a majority next year, you can’t delay the For the People Act much beyond the summer.

Compounding the issue is the political time crunch. The House of Representatives goes on the longest recess of the year at the end of July. They won’t be fully back until September 20th. When they get back, they’ll have additional urgent matters on their plate: the end of the budget year, possibly a fight over the debt ceiling, and infrastructure and care economy reconciliation packages we’ve heard so much about. All of these things will take demand to be prioritized, and will likely eat up what few legislative days there are left in the year. It’s hard to see space for democracy reform this year after the August recess.

Take all that together and you've got a pretty clear picture: either we pass the For the People Act before August recess, or we don’t get another shot this Congress. In other words, we’ve got about two months to pass democracy-saving legislation before it’s too late.

How the legislative fight will play out 

Ok, so we’re racing against the clock. And in this race, we’ve got various opponents that could slow us down.

When the For the People Act goes to the floor, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will rally his Republican colleagues to filibuster it. He may succeed in killing it outright, or he may simply succeed in delaying it to death -- but make no mistake, stopping the For the People Act is widely reported to be McConnell’s top priority this congress. Last week we learned that a hundred conservative leaders meet every single week to coordinate the opposition (here). Just this week, every single GOP senator voted against the bill in committee. 

But it’s not just McConnell and the GOP that could slow us down. While almost every Democrat senator has vocally supported reforming the filibuster to pass the For the People Act, senators Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Manchin (WV) have not. It’s easy for cynicism and defeatism to set in when thinking about this. Don’t fall into that trap. Successful bills regularly face public opposition from key senators during the legislative process. But senators change their positions all the time, in response to pressure or in exchange for concessions -- it’s a huge mistake to take their position today as the final word. Is their current public position good? No. But it’s not game over.

At the end of the day, it will be up to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to rally the troops. Majority Leader Schumer certainly says the right things -- “failure is not an option.” He gives impassioned speeches and tweets forceful tweets in support of the For the People Act. Earlier this week, the Senate Democrats held a closed-door meeting to discuss the future of the For the People Act. We heard from multiple sources that Schumer made clear his intent to get the For the People Act done by August, come hell or high water. It was reported (here) that Sinema asked him what the strategy was, and Schumer responded that the plan was for Senate Democrats to stick together.

That is indeed the only plan that has any chance of success. The For the People Act will be filibustered. And that’s the moment the Senate Democratic caucus will face a choice: do we let the Republican minority, representing 41 million fewer Americans, veto our agenda and tank our best chance at protecting our democracy? That’s the moment they’ll all get together and talk to each other, and -- hopefully -- take a deep breath, look each other in the eyes, and agree to move this thing forward however they need to.

If we are successful, this will all come to a head in July. And it’s going to take a LOT of pressure from the outside, because plenty of Democrats still think that this is optional, nice-to-have, not something that their constituents will judge their success on. They need to face the reality -- we can make these reforms, or we can watch our democracy collapse around us. 

Where does that leave us? 

Let’s review:

• We know almost every Democrat supports the For the People Act. 
• We know the holdouts aren’t lost causes. 
• We know that, for policy and political reasons, August recess is the deadline.
• We know Schumer has at least said he plans to get this done by August.
• We know that McConnell and his allies will do everything possible to kill the bill.
• We know that if we fail, the GOP will likely rig the 2022 elections and beyond to win back power.

OK, so what can I do? 

We’re working with Indivisibles in West Virginia and Arizona, and they know they’ve got a job to do. But what about everyone else? 

Well, let’s go back to that point about the Democratic caucus. Because the reality is, each of these folks don’t make their decisions in a vacuum. They talk to each other. Literally; they have lunch together every Thursday to talk strategy. When legislation passes, it’s because passionate advocates in the Senate helped organize and pull their colleagues along. When it fails, it’s because a decent chunk of the caucus, even folks who would totally have voted “yes” if the bill came to the floor, didn’t actually prioritize getting it done. 

If we’re going to pass this bill, we need every Senator who’s currently supporting it to feel in their bones that this bill MUST. PASS. The way they’re going to feel that is if you make them feel that.

At Indivisible -- as activists spread across the country in every state right now -- it’s our job to make it impossible for senators to ignore us in this moment. We did not spend four years resisting Trump to elect a Democratic trifecta that would cave to forces that allowed Trump to rise. It is their responsibility to pass this bill. It is our responsibility to make them do it.

So that is what we will do. We were heartened by the last survey question we sent out asking what Indivisibles are doing to help save our democracy. From postcard parties to light brigade actions to congressional office call-chains to candidate recruitment to anti-misinformation projects. This is inspiring important work -- this is indeed what democracy looks like. We hope as we look toward this summer deadline for the For the People Act, the Indivisible movement will not just continue this work, but will come together with one loud, nationwide, unignorable voice to demand a real democracy -- of, by, and for the people. 

In solidarity,
Ezra & Leah
Co-Founders, Indivisible

PS: For this newsletter, we’re focusing on the For the People Act because it is mostly likely to pass first, but anybody following us knows we’re working hard on D.C. statehood and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act too.

Here's a Way to Fight Voter Suppression--Let DC Be a State!

 And here is what you need to do to make sure that happens.

Tell Senate to Pass DC Statehood

American democracy is built on the promise that all people should have a say in our federal government through elected representatives who can then create and execute laws on behalf of the people. However, that is not the case for the 712,000 people who live in the District of Columbia, who lack equal voting rights compared to their neighbors across the country. In fact, D.C. residents lack a voting representative in the House and have no representation in the Senate at all. Making D.C. the 51st state would go a long way towards making the legislative branch more representative of the country as a whole.

To make it to the Senate floor, the bill must go through a few procedural steps. Call your Senators and demand that they support:

1. A committee hearing on D.C. statehood as soon as possible;

2. A committee markup on the the D.C. statehood bill as soon as possible; and

3. Eliminating the filibuster so that we can pass the D.C. statehood bill on the Senate floor.

We must take all these steps as soon as possible. Call your Senators and ask them to support these demands. We cannot let anything get in the way of D.C. statehood. 

• Senator Duckworth | DC: 202-224-2854 | Chicago 312-886-3506 | Email Sen. Duckworth or call another office

• Senator Durbin | DC: 202-224-2152 | Chicago 312-353-4952 | Email Sen. Durbin or call another office

Script: Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m calling from [ZIP CODE] with Indivisible Chicago. I’m calling Sen. [SENATOR NAME] to urge them to pass the D.C. statehood bill now. D.C. residents deserve control over their own city and budget, and to have two Senators and a voting-member in the House to represent them in Congress. Will [SENATOR NAME] commit to doing everything in their power to ensure Democrats hold a hearing on the bill, then hold a committee markup, and finally, eliminate the filibuster and vote YES on the bill’s passage? Every step must be taken to ensure D.C. statehood passes this Congress.