State Legislative Session is Heating Up
Time to Pass the CCIA
With the NY State legislative session scheduled to end June 10, NY Renews, NYS Indivisible groups, IONY (Invest in Our New York) Coalition, and the IMV Climate Crisis Workgroup are all turning their focus to the urgency of passing the CCIA (Climate & Community Investment Act).
Please join other IMV members taking action in the coming week:
1) Join NY Renews "One Month Left to Pass the CCIA" Meeting today at noon.
2) Attend a Zoom meeting with Assemblywoman Buttenschon Friday, May 14th, at 9 am to lobby her to co-sponsor and support the CCIA. Email jgeiger777@gmail.com to participate.
3) Write a letter to the editor about why NY should pass the CCIA.
4) Attend the weekly Black Lives Matter stand in Clinton on May 14 and May 21. Focus these weeks will be that we must pass the CCIA now because it is a racial justice issue. Here's the video that explains why.
It's Board of Education Election Time
IMV has cancelled our planned Meet the Candidates for School Board event because events are being held locally. Rome NAACP held a candidate forum earlier this week on Zoom. The League of Women Voters is sponsoring a Utica School Board Candidate Forum on Wednesday, May 12 at 7 pm. You can also meet the Clinton Central School District Board of Ed candidates and attend the budget hearing via Zoom on May 11, starting at 5:30 pm (see https://www.ccs.edu).
We encourage everyone to check out your school district website for information about budget votes and candidates and then VOTE on Tuesday, May 18th, noon-8 pm.
IMV Health Care Working Group Meets Thursday, May 13th
Do you care about the NY Health Act? Please join IMV's Health Care Workgroup on Thursday, May 13th, 7-8 pm. Find out what is going on at the federal, state, and local levels, and what we can do in coalition with other groups to get the public policy we need when it comes to health care for all.
Letters to the Editor Needed
IMV's LtE group had a great first meeting on Sunday, and we hope to see letters appearing soon in newspapers near you. Here's an excellent example of a letter about the NY Health Act that Brian Lothridge got published in the Rome Sentinel.
Letters to the editor are needed on CCIA, NY Health Act, as well as For the People Act, DC Statehood, and in support of the work that President Biden is doing on jobs, families, public health, education, and climate. If you have a draft and want an experienced LtE hand to take a look, please send it to IndivisibleMV@gmail.com. Someone from the LtE group will be happy to take a look!
Letter to Sen. Schumer
Our NYS Indivisible Organizer, Sarah Reeske, continues to get Indivisibles in front of Sen. Schumer on Zoom calls to push him to get the job done in Congress. Nearly 600 people attended a student loan forum with Schumer earlier this week. However, the window for the big stuff to save democracy is closing quickly. This week, IMV signed on to a statewide letter calling on the Majority Leader to do whatever it takes to pass S1 For the People Act before we lose this unique moment in which it could actually become law.
Here's the powerful letter which will be delivered to him on May 10th. Sen. Schumer: We need a floor vote by May 31st, and pass S1 by July 4th.
IMV Meeting Sunday, May 23rd
Please make sure you have our May meeting on your calendar for Sunday, May 23rd from 3-4:30 pm. We have a full agenda planned, with an update on Utica policing reform, and conversation about our plans for impacting key local electoral campaigns in 2021.
This will be the last Sunday monthly meeting for a while as we head into weeknight meetings for the summer. We'll collect some feedback from you at the May meeting about best times, and we'll start planning for Tuesday evenings, possibly outside at Cherrywood.
It's hard to have an irrelevant Fox News talking head corporate PAC funded Trumpist "representing" us in Congress, but we do. Still, we're not giving up. We're working with other Indivisible groups across the state to push the Senate Majority Leader, our senator, to save democracy. We're working with coalitions across the state to pass progressive budgets and legislation in Albany, and we're organizing ourselves to elect Democrats locally in 2021.
Let's keep going. Let's make political activism in the Mohawk Valley local, bite-sized, and fun.
