Rally today for CCIA & Racial Justice
Rally for CCIA & Racial Justice
Today Friday May 14 from 4 -5 pm we're having a special PASS THE CCIA Rally/Silent Protest devoted to the Climate Crisis along with the Black Lives Matter stand in Clinton on the Green. We want to thank Rachel May for co-sponsoring the CCIA bill along with encouraging other legislatures to co-sponsor the bill. We will also be doing the event next Friday, May 21st, same time same place.
Bring your signs, or show up to hold our big CLIMATE and CCIA signs. It's fun to be outside and socialize with each other, and hear all those honks from the traffic. Make sure you call your state legislators and tell them to pass the bill--and if your state senator is Rachel May, call to thank her!
Make Calls Now on State-Wide Bills
There are just a few weeks left in the NYS legislative session. Please call your state Senator and Assembly member today and tell them to pass the following bills by June 10:
Your Assembly Member:
NY Health Act: A6058
CCIA: A06967
Democracy: A1115
Your Senator:
NY Health Act: S5474
CCIA: S4264A
Democracy: S309, S284A, S286A
Here is an explainer from Common Cause on the democracy bills that make elections more transparent.
Take Action on the NY Health Act
Want to know more about the NY Health Act? Tuesday, May 18th, 6-7 pm, join community groups, health advocates, and State Senator Rachel May for a virtual Central New York Healthcare Town Hall to discuss the urgency of passing the New York Health Act as part of our state’s pandemic recovery. The New York Health Act has majority support in both the state Assembly and State Senate. We have until June 10 to pass the Health Act. During this event, we will hear how guaranteed healthcare is a critical racial justice and economic justice struggle and we will take collective action to call on state legislative leaders to make passing the New York Health Act a priority in 2021.
Insist that your state legislators pass the NY Health Act. Use this tool from the Campaign for NY Health to contact them. Sen. May is a longtime co-sponsor but everyone else needs to hear from you.
Share your healthcare story with the Campaign for NY Health.
Write a letter to the editor - many resources (and media contact info) here.
Sign the petition to #PassNYHealth
Volunteers are needed for phone banking every Monday and Thursday in May at 6 pm. RSVP here (scroll down to the date you want).
IMV's Health Care Work Group meets the second Thursday of each month.
Vote for School Board & Budgets Tuesday
Remember to vote on your local school district board of education and budget on Tuesday, May 18th. The voting times are set locally, so check your local school district web page for times and location. Most district polls are open at least 12 noon-8 pm, but some earlier or later. There are contested elections in Clinton, Rome, and Utica, and there were candidate forums in the past couple of weeks that featured the candidates. This past week, IMV Steering Committee was pleased to provide the technical support for the League of Women Voters' Utica School Board Candidate Forum. School board elections matter. Make sure your neighbors and friends don't miss this important vote either.
For the People Act: Indivisible Letter to Schumer!
IMV signed on last week to an NYS Indivisible statewide letter to Sen. Schumer about S1. Congratulations, to Sarah Reeske, our statewide organizer, who mobilized sign-ons across the state, and IMV Katy Timpano who participated in the statewide group that drafted the letter. That impressive effort was reported in the national publication, The Hill: "In New York, 70 groups aligned with the progressive group Indivisible sent a letter to Schumer saying they wanted him to bring the bill to the Senate floor by the end of the month, arguing the legislation 'can’t move forward unless you start taking aggressive measures to push it through the Senate.'"
"Schumer hasn’t taken a position on getting rid of the filibuster but floated that Republicans blocking the For the People Act could force the Senate to “evolve.” He’s said he’ll give it a vote by August," according to The Hill. Sarah Reeske reports that Julietta from Sen. Schumer’s office said she would lobby hard internally for the S1 floor vote to go on the calendar before May 31st even if that means the vote happens in June.
Rural Radio: Let's change the message
Are concerned about how strong Trumpist messaging is in your community? Fox News is not the only one to blame; those talking points also come from rural talk radio. Rural indivisible groups across the country are working to counteract these messages by calling into these local talk shows. Could such an effort make an impact in the Mohawk Valley?
According to Betsy Briggs, who lives in Herkimer County, "It would take, ideally, 5-6 of our group members minimum, and not all of them would be callers. Some would record, some would research issues. The callers could be critiqued for ideas and feedback on how a particular call went. The idea is for a few of us to start calling in as a 'regular'. These shows love having callers as typically only 2% of listeners call in, and it reduces their need to fill air time. The idea is to call in and at first just sort of massage their egos and be very neutral, but slowly move to asking questions about certain positions and then, gradually, introduce a more progressive way to think about certain issues."
Come join 3M Indivisible in this special conversation specifically for rural NY groups about the Indivisible Rural Caucus’s talk radio program on Wednesday, May 19th at 7-8 pm. Here's the link to register.
Celeste Friend: Campaign Volunteer Request
We have our first specific candidate request for volunteers! Let's hope there are many more to follow. This is the message from Celeste Friend, who is on the Utica Common Council:
"As you know I'm running for re-election and I hope you will be joining our campaign again this year. We are planning on running the same sort of energetic, fun, progressive campaign we ran in 2019. We only have one opponent this time, so we need all hands on deck. Our weekly canvassing events will begin in mid-July. But we will be having a fun volunteer event before then, and will be offering some VAN training in June. Please fill out our Volunteer Form today. Just follow this link."
Letters to the Editor
Congratulations to Judy Jerome and Sarah Reeske who had letters to the editor published in the past week. Judy's letter in the Utica OD was about why she supports the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Sarah's letter in the Rome Sentinel was about canceling student debt. Its appeal was to regular people, conservative or progressive.
Let's keep those letters coming! Letters are needed immediately to push on the passage of the NY Health Act and CCIA at the state level, as well as S1, S51, and S4 (John Lewis Voting Rights Act) at the federal level.
How to Have Anti-Racism Conversations
The South Pod is hosting a half-way event on Saturday, May 15th at 12-5pm called “Tools for Anti-Racism Conversations with Friends & Family.”
Do you have racism skeptics among your friends, family? Over the course of the last four years, have you felt the urge to pull away from them in an effort to avoid uncomfortable conversations or because you couldn’t stomach their beliefs? Then this training is for you. Join Dr. David Campt, and his colleagues from The Dialogue Company and learn how to directly impact “racism skeptics” as well as how to increase your ability to positively influence the people within your sphere of influence. Register here.
Tenney is Still a Narcissist and Other Musings:
A Note from the Editor
Every day my Facebook account lets me know that I have Memories. For the past few months those memories have been filled posts and pictures from 2017 and 2018 when we were just launching the group that became IMV, when we held pickets and rallies around climate, democracy, human rights, fighting tax cuts for the rich and defending the ACA from Republican assaults. We protested Tenney's deploraball and we held Care for All protests where ever she showed up. We coined the term #OneTermTenney with our fellow #NY22 activists and we pressed her on every possible issue leading up to the 2018 election.
On May 13th in 2017, following her vote to replace the ACA with the Republican ACHA (which ultimately failed in the Senate), the Utica OD quoted Rep. Tenney as saying, "I really don't care about maternity leave. I don't care about prostate care." She didn't and she doesn't. She is a narcissist just like Trump, Stefanik, and the rest. She cares nothing for the well-being of her constituents unless they have big dollars for her campaign or fly thin blue line flags and attack trans children and poor people.
We got rid of her once, and we'll do it again. But for now, we need to continue to strengthen our infrastructure as a grassroots progressive group.
We need to do that by changing the story in our community. That means writing letters to the editor about the positive impact of Biden's policies. It means calling in to local talk radio and talking about our values effectively and learning to more effectively with friends and relatives from an anti-racist perspective.
We also do it by building a strong political action community. That means showing up for climate or health care working group meetings as well as our monthly IMV meeting. One of the best ways is to show up for Friday CAFE or the weekly Friday rally and bringing a friend with you so we strengthen and build our social networks of progressive local politics.
Finally, we work on elections to build political power and win. Local elections are where we have the most impact. Which campaigns are you working on this summer and fall? For example, we're committed to helping Karen Stanislaus become the person of color to win a county-wide race in Oneida County in history. A Black woman who shares our values could be elected Oneida County Family Court Judge! We have candidates running for city and town council as well as Oneida County Board of Legislators. They need our help, and we need to strengthen our campaign volunteer skills. Join us at our IMV meeting on Sunday, May 23rd 3-4:30 pm to plug in.
Vote Tuesday, and check out our calendar so you don't miss out on IMV activism. It's local, bite-sized, and fun. --Jen DeWeerth
