Help Assemble Brindisi Lawn Signs

Brindisi Lawn Sign Party Today 5:30 pm

Please join IMV this evening 5:30-7:30 pm at the Pavilion, 1 Cherrywood Circle (off Route 5, Clinton) to assemble more Brindisi for Congress lawn signs.  It's an in-person, masked, socially distant, outdoor event!  Bring your family members or friends and a lawn chair.  There's a lot of lawn, so we can spread out.

This event is good news!  It means that all the signs we assembled in July have been distributed, and there is already demand for more.  If you are looking for a sign for yourself or a neighbor and don't know where to find one, join us this evening to assemble them, or email Libby Militello at elizabeth@nydems.org to find out your nearest pick up point. 

Many people have been asking about Biden-Harris signs. There are some local Democratic committees in the process of ordering signs. This will help us get the Mohawk Valley blanketed in signs by mid to late September.  In the meantime, we encourage people to support the campaign directly by ordering one for your lawn at the Joe Biden Store.  You're essentially making a donation, but as we know, it's for a good cause!

IMV Climate Crisis Workgroup Meets Monday

Our Climate Crisis Work Group holds its August meeting over Zoom at 6:30 pm, Monday, August 31.  This is our largest work group in IMV, and there are many places where you can plug in if you are concerned about the issue of climate change.  The agenda include conversation about how racism and climate crisis intersect, the status of the CLCPA and CCIA and NY's Restore Mother Nature Bond Act, which the Governor pulled back because of the budget situation. To get the Zoom meeting information or if you have any questions about IMV's Cimate Crisis Workgroup, please contact Maggie Reilly (margaret_reilly@mac.com) or Jennifer Geiger (jgeiger777@gmail.com).

#AllThingsVoting Meeting Sunday 3-5 pm

If you are interested in how to get the word out to voters about absentee ballots and early voting, want to make sure our local voting and GOTV operation is solid, and are ready to roll up your sleeves to help set up IMV's plan and our website landing page, then please join us this Sunday, August 30th at 3-4 pm for our #AllThingsVoting meeting.

Action of the Day: THRIVE Resolution

This past Wednesday, on the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Indivisible held a national call to present a plan for comprehensive COVID national economic recovery.  Our next step is to ask our MoCs to co-sponsor the THRIVE resolution, which will address the four key issues: mass unemployment, public health, racial injustice, and climate change, in the next recovery bill.

The call script is waiting for you.  Just fill out the form with your phone number, and Indivisible will connect you with Rep. Brindisi and then with Sens. Gillibrand and Schumer.  Let's ask them to be leaders by co-sponsoring the THRIVE Resolution.  

Of course, we also continue our other important Actions if you have time to make more calls today:

1) Tell Sens. Schumer and Gillibrand to act now to save the Post Office
2)  Also ask them to Pass the Heroes Act NOW.
3) Take Action in Support of Black Lives.

Even in election season, we never forget that we must always use our "Constituent Superpower"--our elected representatives are motivated to listen to us because they want to get re-elected.

Going "All Out" to Contact Voters, Even When You Can't Go Out: Paula's Story

Like many IMV activists, Paula Hart finds herself in a high risk category (over 65, chronic illness, or family member with compromised immune system), and doesn't go out to events or even stores.  She has not let that stop her.  When IMVers rallied at the local post office in New Hartford last Saturday, Paula stayed on social media to Tweet about the event and other grassroots protests to protect the Post Office and voting by mail. Paula regularly attends IMV's CAFE Friday so she can talk politics with compatriots while she writes Vote Forward letters or postcards to local voters. However, the biggest impact she's had in elections, she says, is in texting voters in key races across the country.

This summer, Paula joined Color of Change PAC in Florida (an Indivisible partner) to text Black voters about state attorney candidates in Orange and Broward Counties.  "The leaders doing the training were great. The even played music for us while we were texting. It was exciting because a Black woman, Monique Worrell, won her primary in Orange County.  I felt like I was participating in a historic moment."

Paula has also texted with Common Cause NY, Flip the West in Montana, and will be doing some texting in coming weeks with the Women's March.  Many of these efforts are similar to the one that Indivisible is running now to phonebank, textbank or write letters to voters in the most critical districts and states.  Anyone can sign up to train and volunteer.

Paula has a message for all of us who are staying safe in these times but refuse to sit on the sidelines when so much is at stake: "Even if you can't get out, you don't have to be a spectator!  Participate in democracy." 

How to Get Involved in Voter Contact Efforts

If you are ready to participate in direct voter contact efforts, join IMV for CAFE Friday this morning.  IMV encourages all our members to volunteer on behalf of local candidates (State Assembly and Senate) and in key races across the country, and most importantly, to keep #NY22 Blue by volunteering with the Brindisi campaign.  It's going to be a tight election against #OneTermTenney, and the calls we make now will help us find out who we need to reach during Get Out the Vote in October. The Brindisi campaign expects to add text banking to its volunteer calendar soon. In the meantime, sign up now for a phone banking shift.   We include upcoming local phone banks in the calendar below, but you don't have to sign up for phone banks only in your own city or county.  You are welcome to sign up for any phone bank that fits your time schedule.  Some people even feel more comfortable calling voters in counties farther afield; it's a personal preference. Sign up, and make your calls! Early voting starts in eight weeks so there is no time to lose! Remember, democracy is not the hate-filled, lie infested, no solutions, no platform RNC hellscape that Americans have watched on TV this week.  It's all of us, talking to voters and helping them get their absentee ballots. It's all of us, texting and phonebanking on Zoom.  It's all of us, doing the work to bring about the racially and economically just world we want to live in, a world with better systems, policies, elected leaders, and hope for a healthy country and planet."Democracy is not a spectator sport."  Of course, in reality, it is not a sport at all.  And now it's life and death.  It's the survival of our democracy, and our families.  So: phone banking, text banking, letter writing.  If not us then who?  If not now, then when? 

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