Let's Tell NYS Leaders What We Want

Indivisibles across New York will join together for a virtual State Lege Conference on Thursday, February 17th at 7-8:30 pm!  Register here.

In March, Governor Kathy Hochul, Speaker Carl Heastie, and Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins will bring their respective budgets--moral documents that reflect values and priority investments--together and create the final budget for the upcoming year. March is a strategic month for advocating hard for funding that helps every day New Yorkers. How will they know what we want to be included if we don't tell them?

Don't miss this opportunity to be part of a statewide conversation with Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins at this event. We will also hear from Nina Luo from the Working Families Party, who will focus on the medium-term vision for winning legislative priorities like healthcare for all and more now through 2025. Invest in Our New York (IONY--remember all those letters we wrote and sent to voters last year?) has a presentation to show us about how now, with the financial surplus thanks to last year's progressive tax wins, is the right time to invest in our communities. Then we will talk next steps in our plan to get priorities included in the budget.

Please register now for this amazing state lege conference on February 17th at 7-8:30 pm!

Will You Write a Letter to the Editor?

It's time to write Letters to the Editor on a host of timely topics. Are you willing to give it a try?  Here is a list we're recommending:

• Support President Biden’s commitment to nominate the 6th woman to the Supreme Court and first Black woman

• Call out racism by the Republicans around SCOTUS nominee. Indivisible has a resource about that. https://indivisible.org/.../pushing-back-right-wing...

• Redistricting process is complete. Keeping the House and the best chance for passing the popular features of the Biden agenda depend on electing more Democrats to the NY delegation.

• Utica will be in the new NY19 congressional district and should welcome getting to know Rep Antonio Delgado.

• If you live in the new NY21, Stefanik will face a strong Dem challenger. There are many reasons why she should be defeated.

• Rachel May will run in a newly drawn state senate district 55 that will include Utica and more of Oneida county. This is awesome.

• Read more books, don’t ban them.

• Next month the state budget must include these things: $15B for climate; fair wages for home care; $40M for campaign matching funds; and funding for polling locations on college campuses.

• Fully support the House’s January 6th Insurrection commission or call out the RNC for their ridiculous declaration that the insurrection was "legitimate discourse."

• Support Restore Forward in Ava, a new initiative by Black Women’s Blueprint.

• Caroline Reale is doing great as a county legislator for New Hartford.

• Please get vaccinated if you haven’t yet; it's the key to economic recovery and ditching the masks

• Bye-bye Claudia Tenney!

Here's information on writing a letter to the Utica OD or the Rome Sentinel. But don't forget the smaller newspapers in your town or village including The Waterville Times and My Little Falls, If you have any questions or want someone to review your LtE or provide some edits or help researching your topic, email IndivisibleMV@gmail.com.  
 

Health Care for All in New York 

Progressives across the state continue to push hard to get more health care into the state's budget and pass the NY Health Act, and IMV's working group on Health Care is no different.  Call your state legislator and make sure they know that you want every New Yorker to have access, and your want the cost of health care and prescription drugs brought down.  Click here to use the easy tool to place your calls to state leaders setting the course of the budget talks. Then mark your calendar for IMV's Health Care working group next meeting on March 2 at 6:30 pm.  

If you are new to organizing for health care in New York and want to learn more, or connected to the wider coalition, you can sign up to attend a Truth Commission Town Hall on Health Care in New York.  The event on Tuesday, Feb. 22 is from 6:30-8:30 pm and is sponsored by The Poor People's Campaign of NY/Hudson Valley, NY Health Act, NYPAN, the Labor-Religion Coalition of NY as well as Physician and Nurse organizations in support of affordable health care.  Sign up here. 
 

Climate Crisis Work Group Update

The Code Red for Climate continues, and we can't let up on our weekly calls to urge our representatives to take action. Please click here for phone numbers and short scriptsto make your calls. Calling takes just a few minutes, and the more people who call, the louder our message will be.

In addition, the group encourages everyone to learn more about going fossil-fuel free with heat pumps from John and Maggie Reilly through the virtual tour of the whole house system they have installed in their home. The tour is Feb. 27th at 2 pm. You can register here.

Indivisible Rural Summit: Register Now 

It's time for Indivisible's Rural Summit, "Winning Rural Hearts and Minds,"  so block out your afternoon on Saturday, Feb. 26th, 12-4 pm.  The first 250 registrants for the Rural Summit will receive a hot chocolate kit in the mail to start our breaks with a sweet treat. Just drop the hot cocoa into your milk of choice and enjoy!   There's a limited supply of hot chocolate, so REGISTER NOW (with your shipping address) to make sure your kit arrives by the summit on February 26.  Our rural vendor will thank you.  If you live in or near a rural area or want to work to reach out to areas where progressive messaging struggles to find a home, this is the meeting for you.  
 

Youth Inside Albany Programs Seeks Nominations

The League of Women Voters, Utica/Rome Metro Area is seeking nominations of high school sophomores, juniors and seniors from Oneida and Herkimer Counties for the 22nd annual Students Inside Albany conference. The conference, scheduled for May 22-25, 2022 in Albany, is sponsored by the League of Women Voters of New York State Education Foundation and is designed to increase students’ awareness of New York’s governmental process. This interactive conference brings together high school students from across the state to learn about the process by which citizens can participate in the policy making arena, including tours of the Capital and opportunities to shadow their representatives in the Senate and Assembly.

The conference will feature highly informative workshops, including: Media Perspectives on Public Policy Issues, How Does NYS Government Work? and Tips for Being a Successful Citizen Lobbyist. For those students selected to represent Oneida/Herkimer Counties, all expenses are covered, including travel, overnight accommodations and meals during the conference. Applications are due by February 22, 2022. For information on the application process contact the League at youth@lwvuticarome.org. For more information, contact Dawn Laguerre at 315- 266-7548 or email her at laguerremedia@gmail.com.

Meet and Greet for NY19 Congressman Delgado

If you live in the new NY19 (includes Utica, New Hartford, Kirkland, Marshall, Paris, Augusta, and Sangerfield in Oneida County), you are lucky that you're going to have an amazing progressive Democrat representing you. He still needs to win re-election in 2022, and to do that, he needs to get to know his new Democratic constituents! Anthony Brindisi is hosting a meet and greet event for him. Here's an invitation in case you have not seen one.

Prepare Now for the NYS Budget Push and Petitioning Ahead

The months of February and March will be very busy for IMV activists. We will be pressing and pushing for our top priorities to be included in the NYS state budget. That will mean lobby visits and calls to leaders and legislators. We'll spend time at our statewide conference call on Thursday, Feb.17th and our IMV meeting Sunday, the 20th prepping on the issues and planning our actions. We're aided in this work by our many statewide coalitions: Indivisible NYS, NY Renews, IONY, and many other groups. We need to go into the month of March clear on our priorities for spending, and ready to make the asks of our representatives in Albany.

February is also the time to learn about candidates running in 2022 so that we are ready to help with petitioning to get them on ballot lines in March. As we know, but many of our neighbors don't: candidates don't magically appear on ballots. We do the legwork, often knocking doors, in order to put them there. Please set aside some time in March to volunteer, whether for lobby visits and other actions related to the NYS state budget or petitioning, or hopefully, both.

Central New Yorkers know how to lift up a vision of what the world can look like in the future that is almost impossible to imagine in the snow and ice and cold. Now's the time when progressive activists lift up a vision of our political future: What would it look like if the unexpected billions in additional revenue in NYS's budget was spent to make our state more equitable and sustainable? What would it look like if we invested in people and their homes and schools and hospitals and transportation and renewable energy instead of billionaire boondoggles? And what would it look like if we elected people to represent us who shared our values instead of people who subvert elections, ban books, and lie about science? What would it look like if we won big in November?

It's easy to get overwhelmed by bad news every day. Instead, let's roll up our sleeves, and make political activism local, bite-sized, and fun! See you on the state conference call Thursday night!

Follow us on Twitter using @indivisiblemv and of course our Facebook page and IMV Activism Group.