Glad to See You in September

With apologies to Walt Whitman: “We are large, we contain multitudes.” Indivisible East Bay sprawls across three congressional districts, two counties, and more than a dozen cities. Despite logistical struggles (“where should we meet!?”) IEB’s breadth is a strength – from west-most tip, Richmond, out to East County, our membership boasts a wide diversity of population, experience, talents, and views.

IEB is also a coalition group; many of us are in hyper-local Indivisibles, and we share with our “home teams” the ideas, info, actions and more that we gather from IEB’s awesome resources (the website, newsletter, teams and Slack channels). And that in turn expands our reach far beyond the people who have signed up as IEB’ers.

But distance and horrendous traffic dictates that most of IEB’s plotting, organizing and nuts and bolts work goes on via email or the online chat platform Slack.

Once a month, though, we get to see one another and welcome new people to the fold at our All Members Meeting. The September 17 AMM at the Oakland Library was a jam-packed two hours of catching up and meeting newbies, hearing reports on critical issues, and participating in breakouts. We started with a brief discussion about the August 27 Berkeley Rally Against Hate and what occurred afterward. Research Team lead Anne described her experience at the Rally; several people shared their views of the day and issues raised, including Antifa and how we can get more accurate information out to the public when the media at times seems interested only in focusing on incidents of violence.

Speaking for the hard-working Judiciary Team, Linh raised the alarm that the GOP Congress is careening toward packing the federal courts with far right-wing lifetime tenure judges. She explained the blue slip process, alerted us to GOP attempts to split the Ninth Circuit, and spoke a bit about how IEB is organizing to resist. Have experience with or interest in judiciary issues? Email linh@indivisibleeb.org or contact her on Slack: @linh.

CA-15 team co-lead Ward spoke about the Alameda County Community Food Bank (ACCFB), an extraordinary institution where he is a long-time volunteer. Ward hopes that many of us can attend the Food Bank’s event “How the Farm Bill Affects Hunger – and What You Can Do About It.” The Farm Bill, which funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known as CalFresh in California and better known as food stamps, is under attack – learn what you can do to defend it! The event will be held at the ACCFB Community Engagement Center on September 27 from 5:30 to 7 PM. More information and registration here.

IEB Governance Committee member Jiggy, also a member of Indivisible SF, told us about CA StateStrong, her ambitious new project that applies Indivisible Guide tenets and grassroots activism to Sacramento and our state and local representatives. She later led a popular breakout session to let people know what CA StateStrong is working on and to give an update on what happened in the legislature last week. If you’re interested, please subscribe to the CA StateStrong newsletter. Want to get more involved with the project? Fill out this form. On twitter? Follow @CAStateStrong and RT to help spread the word.  

At the other breakouts:

• Anne, Evan and Linh led a session for people excited to research and find more ways for members to use public comment periods to slow the administration’s rollback of protections in federal regulations.
• Seven “veterans” attended the Outreach to Organizations (OtO) breakout and gave the team updates on the organizations they’re liaising with, including the Alameda County Community Food Bank, Anti Police Terror Project, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, and Oakland Rising. The team added 350BayArea/350EastBay as a priority organization, and two people are currently exploring new organizations. If you have a relationship with an activist community organization that pursues policy changes at the federal, state or local level, OtO would love to hear from you (email Toni at ieb.outreach@gmail.com).
• Lynn and Heidi talked to several members about volunteering for IEB teams and projects. If you want to know how to volunteer with specific committees or teams email the volunteers team lead Andrea at andrea@indivisibleeb.org or ping her on Slack: @andrea. We were glad there’s much interest in helping out with the IEB newsletter, and we can always use more! For info, contact lead newsletter wrangler Ann on Slack: @anngdan
• The CA-13 Team lead met with members who were interested in joining the team and in supporting our efforts to bring important questions and concerns to Congresswoman Lee and her staff.
• Ward and LeAnn, who recently stepped up as the new CA-15 (Congressman Swalwell) team co-leads, met up with a fellow CA-15’er. They also got valuable advice from Kristen, valiant CA-11 (Congressman DeSaulnier) team lead.

With doom and gloom filling the news, from threats to our healthcare to the real risk of nuclear annihilation, it was inspiring and motivating to spend the afternoon with scores of people who share common goals to resist those threats and who are fighting together, indivisibly, for progressive values.