Last Saturday, IEB held its first All-Members Meeting (AMM) of 2025. And what a meeting it was!
Over 150 people signed up to attend. While we didn’t get an exact headcount, it was apparent that almost everyone who signed up showed up. It was one of the largest attendances we have ever had!
We took that to mean that — after the inevitable depression (despair?) resulting from the election outcome — our members were ready to re-engage and take the fight to the opposition. We were ready to supply the tools to do so.
While our members are ready for action, all of us know what an emotionally difficult time this is, as we watch the chaos and cruelty unfold. We wanted to make space for feelings at the meeting as well, so our wonderful IEB members Eve and Leslie facilitated an activity in which those at the meeting each chose two pictures that were scattered about the hall: one symbolizing unpleasant feelings we are having; the other symbolizing pleasant feelings. Folks gathered in threes and shared what the pictures meant to them. Judging by the chatter in the hall and the reluctance for people to end their conversations and return to the full group, this activity offered welcome catharsis for our membership!
Appropriately, this was also our 8th Anniversary meeting. IEB was born in January 2017 — in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election. And here we are — still fighting — in the wake of the 2024 election. To celebrate, we had cake!
The core of the meeting were presentations by the leaders of our four action teams. They explained the function and accomplishments of each group — and encouraged those in attendance to sign up for at least one of them (you can sign up here by clicking on the links below). The goals for each group are to throw sand in the gears of attempts to undo progress we have made — and even find some ways to move forward:
- Immigration
- Health and Bodily Autonomy
- Climate Change
- Online Information: This is a new addition to the action teams list. Its focus is on “story-telling” via social media. We cannot simply respond to the narrative that Trump and the GOP promote in an increasingly right-wing dominated media landscape. We need to generate and spread our own narrative — hopefully engaging those who are still open to be persuaded. That is what this group intends to do. If you’d like to join, make a request at info@indivisibleeb.org.
We also led a breakout group to brainstorm the possibility of launching study groups. In these groups, members can do research, strategize, and serve as advisory committees to the action teams and to IEB as a whole. The initial two options to get the group rolling were:
- Standing up to Fascism in California. How might Fascism show up locally/statewide? What specifically is likely to happen? What are the threats of authoritarianism we might face? We need to understand and prepare for this before we can combat it.
- Tactics Renewal. It’s generally agreed we need new forms of political action to meet the current challenges we face. But what should they be? (Breakout participants were most interested in working on this topic. Stay tuned for more info as this study group gets rolling!)
Finally, we had a presentation by IEB member Larry B. on our ongoing coordination with California State Strong to support and promote bills in the California legislature. To sign up, go to the Indivisible California StateStrong website. Also, when accessing IEB Slack, please add the #ca_state_issues channel, as that’s our place to coordinate. This is a perfect time to join, as we’re about to be nominating bills in the state legislature for the statewide coalition to focus on for the year.
After the presentations, we divided into break-outs, where attendees could learn more details about their preferred team(s).
Recognizing that there are limits to what IEB can accomplish on its own at the national level, the emphasis of all of these groups is on state and local actions (although our special guest, Aaron McCall from CA EnviroVoters, let a Climate Action Team breakout group about all of the possibilities of throwing sand in the gears at the federal level!). For a national response, there is of course Indivisible National — as well as numerous other like-minded political organizations. The national response remains critical — as it becomes increasingly clear that all the warnings about fascism and autocracy that permeated the 2024 campaign now seem, if anything, an underestimate of what Trump and his cronies intend to do. Meanwhile, we here at IEB will mainly try to “hold down the fort” in the Bay Area and all of California (which has a larger economy than almost all other countries in the world!): As California goes…so goes the nation!
