by Nancy L.
You may be avoiding the news completely (wise choice!). If not, every day you’re hearing some new horror that the next administration will visit upon the country. But now that the initial shock of what we’re facing has worn off, Indivisible East Bay members are figuring out just how we’re going to throw down for many righteous fights.
As an Invisible group, we’re taking cues from INDIVISIBLE: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO DEMOCRACY ON THE BRINK: Strategies, Tactics, & Tips For How Everyday Americans Can Fight Back Together Wherever We Live. One way to boil down the guide is to highlight three central goals of our activism:
- Block and delay as much of the MAGA agenda as we can
- Use what results from MAGA policies to spark backlash, divide the MAGA coalition, and build our own coalition
- Capitalize on backlash against MAGA to notch wins for our side
Check out how Leah Greenberg, co-Executive Director of Indivisible, talks about the power we all have. How, specifically, are IEB members going to mobilize that power? At the end of November, we held the first meeting in a two-meeting series of planning sessions (you can read about the November meeting here). Here was our primary takeaway from that first session:
IEB members are ready to rock and roll. In almost every group, people spoke about wanting to know where they can plug in. Based on that feedback, we are structuring our December 7 meeting around launching three Action Teams focused on some of the top issues people are most passionate about: climate, immigration, and health/bodily autonomy.
And on December 7, we met to do just that! About 75 people came in person to Dimond Branch Library, where three pairs of facilitators led break-out groups designed to launch the three action teams. We are developing the teams very intentionally, starting with drafting Team Charters (a method designed to enhance team effectiveness, as recommended by PowerLabs, a capacity-building organization that “helps organizers design and run people-powered campaigns”).
The break-out groups accomplished a lot. Each one:
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- Developed a draft Team Purpose (which will form the cornerstone of the Team Charter)
- Identified assignments that team members can take on that will become the inputs into specific team goals. While each team ended up with a tailored list of assignments, the starting list for all groups included these four:
- Identify other groups (local, state, national) that the [NAME] Action Team can partner with
- Identify specific threats to [our issue area] detailed in Project 2025
- Use the new Indivisible Guide to aid in our team’s strategy development
- Use the Indivisible Blue State toolkit to develop ideas for mobilizing at local and state levels
- Put their names down on team rosters, as well as their preferred assignments
Each team will meet twice before IEB regroups for our first All-Member Meeting of the new year, on January 25. In these meetings, teams will refine their Team Charters, and hear report-backs from team members on their assignments. The research and thinking that team members do as part of their assignments will then inform specific actions that the team can take the lead on.
For each of these teams, IEB is committed to:
- Offering members pathways for taking effective and strategic action
- Not reinventing the wheel: we will learn from the information, research, and experience already out there.
- Partnering with other groups (local and state, and possibly national as well) that are already doing the work (part of not reinventing the wheel!).
- Building community and finding joy in the work
If you’d like to join any of our three Action Teams – or just want to learn more – fill out an interest form and team leads will reach out to you!
And please join us at our first All-Member Meeting of 2025, on Saturday, January 25th. We’ll have lunch, updates on our Action Teams, and more scheming for how we’re going to throw sand in every MAGA gear within reach! Sign-up link is here!
