Activism in the time of COVID, or how I stopped worrying and learned to love phonebanking at home

Deadline: Start now, wherever you are –

We get it: You want to up your political activism, but COVID-19 has you worried and thinking maybe you should avoid “non-essential” meetings. Or maybe staying home is your happy place anyway? We’ve got news for you: political work is not “non-essential”! But you don’t need to leave your favorite handwashing station to fight the Ignoramus-in-Chief who told this country they should go to work if they’re infected and that the spread of the coronavirus is “contained.” Let’s “contain” his damage – here are a few options:

What you can do:

Phone bank at home: As Swing Left says, this is a great way to “win elections from the comfort of your own home!”

• It’s easy to phone bank from home, and the voter contact rate is 20-25% (yes, that’s high). Ready to get started? Email rov@peopledemandingaction.org
• Want to know more about “virtual phone banking”? Check out Swing Left’s great short informational/training video.

Text bank from home: Don’t like calling strangers? Don’t like being on the phone at all? Texting is just as important, and relatively easy once you get set up. We’re working closely with a couple of great organizations:

• Indivisible National’s Payback Project 
• Text with Resistance Labs
• More: Check out this document with general info about political texting, and a list of even more groups you can text with

Write postcards or letters from home: Writing and getting personalized, individually written postcards or letters has a certain something that touches people in these days of mass market mailings. P.S. If you’re artistic or even a doodler, this is literally a canvas – well, at least card stock – for you!

• Want to write postcards from home, or in small groups with friends? Email  fiona.IndivisibleEastBay1@gmail.com and we’ll give you complete instructions, scripts and addresses from one of the groups we work with. 
  • You’re welcome to supply your own stamps and postcards (make sure you check what kinds of postcards are appropriate), or order them from USPS here and here. 
  • If you can’t get your own stamps or cards please get in touch! We can help you get what you need. 
• You can also sign up with Postcards to Voters or with Vote Forward to write to voters from home or at a small gathering you organize.

Check out our partners! We’ve been working with organizations doing all of the above work, and more, for a long time, way before mega-viruses took over the headlines. Check out our article for many great options to take action.

Join us on Slack! The online chat platform Slack is where we at Indivisible East Bay talk about important issues, share information, plan events, and more, even when there’s no virus going around! Email info@indivisibleeb.org and we’ll send you an invite. Not sure what it’s all about? Here’s a handy tutorial about Slack.

Come Zoom With Us: To replace IEB in-person meetings and gatherings for the foreseeable future, we’re going to start using a conference call app called Zoom. This will let us share video and audio of our presenters with you; you’ll be able to participate through a voice call and a live chat, and you’ll also have the option of watching by video. If you’ve never Zoomed, you can learn all about it at our article. 

Help support our work: We’re buying hand sanitizer and wipes for our volunteers who want to have a few family and friends over for political activities, and to cover some expenses we’ll have as we work to offer alternatives to in-person gatherings. As always, we don’t donate to political campaigns but we do use your donations to fight the Evil Empire in many different ways, including supporting our weekly activist newsletter with over 3,000 subscribers (not one of them? Sign up here!) If you’re able, please donate at this link.

Rubber Duckie, Wash Your Lyrics poster, made by William (@neoncloth) 

Heidi Rand contributed to this article