Our Message about Brandon Williams Made the News
IMV's Press Statement about Rep. Williams Made the News
IMV had a big win last Friday when The Daily Sentinel published a front page article about Brandon Williams hosting Mike Johnson in New Hartford for a $1000 per person breakfast--and used our press release quotes from IMV and Citizen Action in full. If you haven't seen it, you can read the article here.
At our IMV meeting on Sunday, we explained that the time and location of the event last week were not good for holding a protest, but our press statement, issued with CNY Citizen Action, did the job anyway. We called attention to how out of touch Williams is with the community and constituents he is supposed to represent ($1000 is a month's rent!) and asked why he won't just meet with constituents and listen to them in free public forums.
More Updates from Our IMV Meeting Sunday
We had a full room--more than 50 in attendance--at the New Hartford library
We worked in small groups on our questions for congressional candidate interviews to be held in April.
We had reports on Brandon Williams' Christian Nationalism from Jen DeWeerth and Anat Shenker-Osario's Persuasion Messaging from Kathy Wojciechowski.
Sarah Reeske talked about the importance of flipping house seats in NY and Indivisible's new Neighbor2Neighbor tool, which helped flip NY03 earlier this month.
Dick Meili reported (with great humor as usual) on the productivity of the LTE group over the past year, and encouraged people to continue to write those letters!
Please mark your calendar now for our March 2024 IMV meeting: Wednesday, March 27th, 7-8 pm on Zoom. We are not meeting on the weekends because we know everyone needs those days for petitioning, especially with unpredictable weather. Thanks to everyone who has been coming to the monthly meetings. We've been generating energy and ideas for this major 2024 election year (see below for info on the congressional redistricting). We will continue to work together on electoral politics at the federal, state, and local levels as Indivisible Mohawk Valley, no matter how lines chines and change!
Climate Crisis Working Group Action
Please Call And Thank Assembly Member Marianne Buttenschon!
Please call Assembly Member Marianne Buttenschon and let her know how much you appreciate her co-sponsorship of the Packaging Reduction & Recycling Infrastructure Act: A.5322-B. With her co-sponsorship, a majority of the assembly members have now co-sponsored the bill. Once a majority have co-sponsored, it makes a bill much, much more likely to get to a vote and get passed. This is one of the big pieces of legislation that the IMV Climate Crisis Working Group has been meeting with AM Buttenschon, and other legislators, about for the last two years. (For information about plastic and health risks, read here.) Constituents’ calls, emails, and lobby visits matter. Please take the time to thank the Assembly Member for her co-sponsorship.
Possible script if you are Marianne Buttenschon’s constituent: Hi, this is (your name and your town). I am one of Marianne Buttenschon’s constituents and a member of Indivisible Mohawk Valley, and I want to thank the Assembly Member for co-sponsoring the Packaging Reduction & Recycling Infrastructure Act, A-5322B. This bill matters to me and is an important first step in reducing the plastics in our environment.
Possible script if you are not Marianne Buttenschon’s constituent: Hi, this is (your name and your town). I am a member of Indivisible Mohawk Valley, and I want to thank the Assembly Member for co-sponsoring the Packaging Reduction & Recycling Infrastructure Act. This bill matters to me and is an important first step in reducing the plastics in our environment.
Also, a big thank you to IMV CCWG member Alan Cole for attending the Beyond Plastics Lobbying Day this week to continue the work of moving the bill toward passage. IMV is a member of Beyond Plastics, which is the environmental group working to pass the Package Reduction and Recycling Act and the Bigger, Better Bottle Bill. In other good news, the Package Reduction bill passed out of the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee and on to the Senate Finance Committee, another step in moving the bill towards becoming law.
Indivisible Actions To Take Today
Demand that Sen. Schumer and Sen. Gillibrand oppose all extreme MAGA policy riders. What sort of things are those MAGA extremists trying to include in a government funding bill? Attacks on reproductive freedom, the LGBTQ+ community, and vulnerable asylum seekers; rollbacks of gun violence protections; and more. We cannot allow our Democratic senators to give in to these extreme demands.
Sign up to volunteer with our new electoral program -- Project 2024: Majority Over MAGA. Through this new electoral program, we will be rolling out tools to ensure Indivisibles all across the country have the opportunity to make a difference in the highest-priority races in the country. This will include tactics like phonebanking, postcarding, and direct-to-voter texting along with our groundbreaking community canvassing strategy: Neighbor2Neighbor. Sign up to be the first to know when we launch our tools in your area.
Write an LTE about Kate Cox, Brittany Watts, and the harsh reality of Republican abortion laws. It’s easy to focus on the political reality of Republicans’ inhumane abortion laws and forget the real impact. Whether it is Kate Cox having to fly out of state to receive life-saving care agreed upon by her doctor and the courts, Brittany Watts facing potential criminal charges for experiencing a miscarriage, or families across Alabama being unsure about the future of IVF, these draconian bans impact real lives. Make sure your community knows about the actual cost of Republican extremism.
Write an LTE about the MAGA plan to privatize Medicare. Trump intends to make Medicare Advantage the default program for all newly eligible Medicare participants. Medicare Advantage plans regularly deny coverage for essential care and patients covered by it are more likely to die in the month following major cancer surgeries than patients who have traditional Medicare. What does that mean: Republicans would put our lives in jeopardy to line the pockets of private investors. Write an LTE today to let people know about Trump’s latest threat.
Redistricting Update from Jon Lipe
Big news! On Wednesday, the state legislature passed and Governor Hochul signed a new congressional map for New York State. The map is similar to the one proposed by New York State’s Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) two weeks ago, but quite different from the map used in 2022. These new districts will be in use through the 2030 election.
While the 2022 map included all of Oneida County, Madison County, and Onondaga County in the 22nd Congressional District, this new map splits Oneida County into two districts, with the southern half of the county in NY-22 (currently represented by Brandon Williams) and the northern half of the county in NY-21 (currently represented by Elise Stefanik).
The towns in the new NY-22 are Whitestown, Westmoreland, Vernon, Kirkland, New Hartford, Augusta, Marshall, Paris, Sangerfield, and Bridgewater, as well as the southern tip of Verona and the entire City of Utica. Everything north of Westmoreland and Whitestown, including the entire City of Rome, is in the new NY-21.
The new NY-22 now also includes the cities of Auburn and Cortland. It changes from a seat with Democrats having a 20,000 voter registration advantage over Republicans to a 30,000 registration advantage. In 2020, the voters of this new district chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump by 11 points.
The new NY-21 includes the northern half of Oneida County and the entirety of Herkimer County, as well as several other counties in and around the Adirondacks. It is a seat that favors Republicans — the voters here chose Donald Trump over Joe Biden by 16 points. Democrats have won this seat before — Democrat Bill Owens represented the area in Congress from 2009 to 2014 —but defeating incumbent Elise Stefanik would be very difficult. (*See note below)
For our allies south of here, NY-19 remains largely unchanged. This is the seat where our friend Josh Riley is running to unseat Republican Marc Molinaro and it includes Ithaca, Binghamton, Norwich and areas east. The voters here chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump by 5 points and Josh Riley has an excellent chance of winning in November.
As of February 29, petitions can be circulated for congressional candidates in these new districts. Registered Democrats from anywhere in the state can serve as witnesses for petitions for any Democrat, but they can only collect signatures from voters who live in the correct district. For example, a Democrat from Rome could go to Westmoreland to collect signatures for a NY-22 congressional candidate, but they could not collect signatures for that same candidate in Rome, because Rome is in NY-21.
As of today, Republicans have a 219-213 advantage in the House of Representatives. There are four districts in NYS that voted for Joe Biden and are represented by a Republican— including NY-22 and NY-19. Flipping those four seats alone would be enough to give Democrats the majority and make New Yorker Hakeem Jeffries the Speaker of the House.
*Editor's Note: Want some energetic motivation to talk to voters about just how terrible Stefanik is and how she is hurting her constituents and destroying democracy? Check out this North County/ADK radio interview with one of the authors of the new book, White Rural Rage, about which Paul Krugman wrote this week.
March is For Petitioning!
We wish everyone the best of luck in petitioning in the coming month, and not just on St. Patrick's Day!
If you want to help petition but are not connected with your local Democratic committee and don't have petitions yet, please contact IMV (IndivisibleMV@gmail.com)--we can help you get started. Registered Democrats can petition not only for congressional candidates but also for state assembly and senate candidates, judicial delegates, and state committee delegates. (If you're registered as Working Family Party, we can help you connect to carry WFP petitions as well).
We hope to meet the Democratic candidate challenging Brian Miller for the 122nd Assembly district, Adrienne Martini, at an upcoming IMV Meeting.
We have been getting to know the candidate for State Senate challenging Joe Griffo in the 53rd, James Meyers, at our last few IMV meetings. James did a great interview this week on 95.5's "The Hot Seat on Monday. You can check it out here.
On Thursday, President Biden will deliver the State of the Union address. Before you turn that on at 9 pm, you are invited to join in an Upstate NY for Biden-Harris SOTU Pre-Party on Zoom, and at 8 pm, to join Indivisible’s Unrepresentative Call, where we strategize about how to flip the districts the Biden won in 2020 but that are currently "represented " by Republicans--including NY22. Both meetings require pre-registration.
And every week, you are invited to join our IMV community on Zoom at CAFE Fridays. See the Zoom link below.
Let's take action together: Democracy is not a spectator sport.
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