Category: Get Involved

indivisibleebadmin Events, Get Involved, Meetings, Our Impact, Uncategorized, Volunteer Opportunity, Who We Are

Canvassing: a win-win for you and the candidates

By Ted Lam

I confess. I’m obsessed with following the forecasts for the November 6 midterm elections. For the past several months I’ve been regularly checking FiveThirtyEight’s “2018 House Forecast” and “Who Is Winning the Race for Congress” poll results — sometimes as often as two or three times a minute just to make sure I have the latest results. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I immediately reach for my phone to check the latest news and FiveThirtyEight.com’s forecasts.

Why do I do this? Because the outcome is so consequential. When November 7 arrives, the last thing I want is to have that sinking feeling I had in 2016. But I also realize that just checking the latest forecasts, no matter how often I do it, is not enough. I need to do something more. Every day I wonder how I can best make a difference between now and November 6 — something that may help me sleep a little better at night. For me, the answer is: canvassing.

That’s why I’ve registered to canvass on October 6 in Sanger in support of TJ Cox, running for Congress in District 21. TJ is a charismatic and progressive Democrat running against incumbent Republican David Valadao.

Last March, I joined a few other IEB’ers on a weekend trip to canvass for TJ in Mendota. It was an enriching experience. During our initial training, TJ himself showed up to give us a pep talk. When we finally set out to canvass we were joined by close to 30 volunteers, mostly from the Bay Area. 

Most Mendota residents work in the local agricultural industry. It’s a close-knit community that cares very much about family. As I walked around with my canvassing partner Rae, we were struck by how warm and friendly everyone was. We also noticed that many of garages were open, being cleaned and decorated with balloons. From making small talk, we learned that these parents were using the garages to host birthday parties for their children.

On the canvassing trail, we knocked on doors to verify who lived there. We read the script from our smartphones. After being initially reluctant (and possibly suspicious), the residents opened up to us. Most didn’t know who TJ Cox was. After we explained his positions, the vast majority expressed willingness to vote for him.

My memories of that weekend in Mendota are images of shy smiles from the very old to the very young, an invitation from a family to come back to enjoy homemade tamales during the Festival of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and of people who work hard and want opportunities for their children. These are good memories of a successful week-end of canvassing.

Join me on October 6 in Sanger and you can have that same positive experience while helping get a worthy progressive elected. Want to carpool? Email  me at indivisibleca11@gmail.com. I’m known for finding good food wherever I travel so you can look forward to a delicious lunch experience on Sunday, like this excellent Mexican restaurant we discovered in Mendota. 

Canvassing in Mendota

Canvassing and phone banking are the top two most effective ways to contact voters and make the Blue Wave happen. We need your help! What you can do:

  • Find IEB phone banks and canvassing trips and sign up at out our new “Volunteer to Flip the G-D- Congress” list & calendar. Also easily accessible on our home page
  • Sign up to get our weekly list of phone banks and canvassing trips
  • Learn the who, what, and why of canvassing and phone banking at our September 30 All Member Meeting at Sports Basement, Berkeley, from 1-3 PM. Hear from experts and sign up to help. We’ll also have demonstrations to demystify and show you how! Come, bring friends and spread the word. RSVP and details here.
  • Check out opportunities to canvass, phone or text bank, write postcards, and more, with these great organizations IEB works in coalition with: 
  • Join Indivisible Berkeley in phoning Nevada voters from home to help flip the critical NV Senate seat. Info & sign up here. Check out other IB events too.
  • See the East Bay for TJ Cox events calendar to support the CA-21 congressional candidate.
  • Canvass in CA-21 with Swing Left East Bay. Check upcoming events and sign up here.
  • Knock on doors to help flip CA-10 for Josh Harder. Info & sign up here.
  • Swing Left Contra Costa hosts monthly voter registration in Tracy (CA-10) on the 3rd Saturday of each month. Check their event calendar.
  • Canvass with Working America AFL-CIO in CA-10 (Modesto) and CA-21 (San Joaquin Valley). You’ll get excellent training and can then sign up for volunteer shifts.
  • Can’t canvass yourself? Donate to support one of the great groups listed above. You can even sponsor a canvasser in CA-21 by donating to Valley Forward, which helps employ people living in the district.

Ted Lam is retired from the USCG and currently works as a civil engineer.

 

indivisibleebadmin Actions, Contact, Events, Get Involved, Uncategorized, Volunteer Opportunity

Red to Blue HQ grand opening

By Ward Kanowsky

Representative Eric Swalwell (CA-15) hosted the grand opening of the “Red-to-Blue” headquarters at the IBEW Union Hall in Dublin, California on September 15, 2018.  The Hall is being made available through the mid-term elections to organizations who want to help GOTV (Get Out the Vote) through activities like phone banking and postcarding in battleground districts across the country.

At the grand opening, an overflow crowd had the option to phone bank in support of Jessica Morse, who is running against incumbent Tom McClintock in CA-4, or Colin Allred in Texas, or J.D. Scholten in Iowa. These were three of the “Future 40 Candidates” highlighted by Rep. Swalwell, a group of young, diverse candidates spread out across the country.

Future 40 Candidates

Indivisible East Bay has signed up to take advantage of the use of the Hall, with both postcarding and phone banking events planned on Saturday, October 6. More info and RSVP here. Hope to see you there!

Can’t make it, or want to find out other opportunities to help win back the House and Senate at the mid-terms? Check out our calendar!

Photographs by Ward Kanowsky. 

Ward Kanowsky is co-lead, with LeAnn Kanowsky, of the Indivisible East Bay CA-15 Team.

anngdaniels Actions, Federal Judiciary, Get Involved, Uncategorized

When abortion was illegal: Looking backward and forward at once

Have you heard the one about the back alley abortion?

Yeah, it isn’t a joke. And it sure as hell isn’t funny. It’s an actual question: Have you heard it? Roe v. Wade made abortion legal throughout the USA in 1973 – so as of the last census in 2010, slightly over 60% of the population never knew a time when abortion was illegal. And as the population ages, many of those people may never even have known anyone who lived through those dark, bloody times.

Federal judges on all levels are increasingly willing to deny women their reproductive rights. Appeals court judge and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh would have denied access to abortion for an undocumented teenager, writing that undocumented youth in custody are not entitled to “abortion on demand” – favorite words of the anti-choice movement. His view didn’t prevail in the appeals court – but will it prevail, sooner or later, in the Supreme Court?

All of this means it’s time to tell the stories. Again.

Let’s start with this chart:

The number of deaths from abortion has declined dramatically since Roe v. Wade.

Source: The Alan Guttmacher Institute, Trends in Abortion in the United States, 1973-2000, January 2003.

Remember, there is no way to give an accurate number of deaths from illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade, because abortion was a crime and a scandal and abortion deaths were usually covered up. The National Abortion Federation estimates up to 1.2 million illegal abortions per year, with thousands of women who died or were grievously injured from back alley or self-induced abortions. And hospital emergency rooms stopped seeing these patients after abortion became legal.

But as with anything, statistics don’t tell the story. Human stories tell the story. As one article said about gathering the stories of Holocaust survivors, “The act of absorbing history often requires peering backward and forward at once,” and stories of illegal abortion matter for the same reason: so that we understand, and so that we never go back.

We ask you to share these stories. Tell people who don’t know what it was like. Tell your elected representatives that you’re not willing to give up any of your reproductive rights, and you’re not willing to accept judges who would be willing to compromise them:

  • Sen. Dianne Feinstein: email; (415) 393-0707 • DC: (202) 224-3841
  • Sen. Kamala Harris: email; (415) 355-9041 • DC: (202) 224-3553

And if you have a story, or if you know someone who has a story, we invite you to share it here. All submissions will come to us anonymously and we will publish everything anonymously. It’s crucial to show how many of these stories there are – so that we keep there from being more of them.

  • It was an honest to God back alley abortion, in an honest to God back alley, on a dirty kitchen table covered with a not very clean sheet. He had alcohol on his breath and his hand wasn’t very steady. He told her to spread her legs and told her not to spread them next time, which he found very funny. She had an infection and was horribly sick but she survived and later had a family. Some of her friends weren’t so lucky.
  • He was successful and well-known and nearly fifty when his elderly Irish Catholic mother told him: when he was a toddler, she and her husband just couldn’t afford another kid, and she had an abortion. She had never told anyone before, but the Supreme Court kept issuing anti-abortion rulings and people were telling their stories – and she asked him to tell hers.
  • It was the 1950s. She and her friends were young working women in New York. They had the name of a doctor in Pennsylvania who was very expensive but was supposed to be clean and reputable. When anyone in their crowd needed an abortion, they all pooled their money and went without lunch for a while. And the women who went to him came back. She said she had no idea what they would have done if they hadn’t had jobs and a support network.
  • It was the 1940s. She and her husband were Italian Catholic and dirt poor, and they had several very young children and couldn’t afford another. The illegal abortion killed her. In those days, when a mother died, the father rarely raised the children; at least one of the little girls was brought up by relatives who treated her badly, and when she had children, she had never really had a mother of her own.

And more:

  • The Academy Award-nominated documentary When Abortion Was Illegal features powerful stories of women who had abortions, their families, and the health care providers who witnessed the devastating effects of illegal abortion. Available here in English and Spanish, for purchase or on Vimeo.
  • Actress Sally Field discusses her illegal abortion in Tijuana in her recent memoir, In Pieces, and talks about it in her September 11, 2018 NPR interview.
indivisibleebadmin Events, Get Involved, Meetings, Newsletter, Rallies & Protests, Uncategorized

Rising for Climate, Jobs, and Justice

By Nancy Latham

On Saturday, September 9, over 900 Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice rallies were held worldwide. Indivisible East Bay represented at the San Francisco rally, with some 30,000 (that’s the reported, but unconfirmed, number) others on a gorgeous day, starting with two minutes of silence and connection with the earth.

Rise for Climate Jobs + Justice, photo by Nancy Latham

There were songs and some short speeches, and then we marched from the Embarcadero to City Hall, where we ended with another two minutes of silence and reconnection. At City Hall, marchers also found a bustling resource fair. Our IEB table was in excellent company between Indivisible SF and Indivisible Berkeley (why should the Indivisibles be separated?!?)

Rise for Climate Jobs + Justice, IEB GC members Nancy Latham and Nick Travaglini

IEB Governance Committee member Nick Travaglini held down the fort for the entire day, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and GC member Nancy Latham joined Nick for the last two hours after the march was over. From 2 to 4 PM a constant stream of people stopped by to learn more about Indivisible and to sign up to get our weekly newsletter and participate in actions with us. We hope to see some of these new faces at the next All Member Meeting: September 30, 1-3 PM at Sports Basement, Berkeley. RSVP (free, of course) and details here. We hope you join us, too!

Rise for Climate Jobs + Justice, photo by Nancy Latham

Photographs by Nancy Latham

Nancy Latham is on IEB’s Governance Committee, and is a passionate member of the Resistance. In her day job, she works with non-profits, foundations, and government agencies that support greater equity and justice through initiatives in youth development, education, housing, and community development.

 

Heidi Rand Actions, Call Scripts, Get Involved, ICE, newsletter action, Public Comments/Regulations, Uncategorized

Help stop the jailing of immigrant children

Deadline – submit your comments at this link by November 6, 2018. Or copy the link into your browser:  https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=ICEB-2018-0002-0001 

As Hurricane Florence bears down on the Carolinas and Georgia, we learn that the administration has been stealing FEMA money to spend on jailing and deporting immigrants. Here’s another part of the unnatural disaster that is the administration’s immigration policy: a proposed rule by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that would permit migrant children to be jailed with their families for an indefinite period of time. The rule would throw out the current 20-day limit on detaining these children, and would also permit the administration to detain families in facilities that aren’t “state licensed,” as currently required. We only have until November 6 to comment on this dreadful proposed rule, so read up and act now!

The proposed rule would terminate the settlement agreement in Flores v. Reno, a long-established federal court class-action settlement that ensures the safety and proper care of minors in immigration detention. Among other provisions, the Flores settlement prohibits the government from detaining migrant children – whether they arrive unaccompanied or with their families – for more than 20 days.

Since Current Occupant’s June 2018 executive order ended his family separation policy, the administration has struggled to comply with Flores’s 20-day limit while simultaneously keeping families together and detaining them until their immigration proceedings are completed. In July 2018, federal judge Dolly Gee, who oversees Flores, denied the administration’s request to modify the settlement agreement to let them detain children beyond 20 days.

The proposed DHS/HHS rule is an explicit attempt to do an end run around Judge Gee’s ruling, and around the other protections in the Flores settlement. It would allow the government to keep migrant children locked up with their families indefinitely, pending deportation hearings; it would also allow the families to be housed in unlicensed facilities, while the Flores settlement requires only state licensed facilities to be used.

Please speak up NOW. Leave a comment at this link (do not comment on this article, please click on the link, or type this into your browser:  https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=ICEB-2018-0002-0001 ) for Proposed Rule Docket ID ICEB-2018-0002. The rule is titled Apprehension, Processing, Care, and Custody of Alien Minors and Unaccompanied Alien Children. You can also comment by email: write to ICE.Regulations@ice.dhs.gov (include DHS Docket No. ICEB-2018-0002 in the subject line).

Mix & match from these suggested points to include in your comment, and feel free to add your own thoughts:

  • Don’t overturn the long-standing Flores Settlement Agreement. No child should be held in jail indefinitely and in facilities that are not state licensed.
  • The long-established Flores Settlement Agreement is necessary to ensure that migrant children are treated humanely. Its limits on jail time and housing conditions must not be modified to keep children in detention longer than 20 days, or in unlicensed facilities.
  • Overturning the Flores court-ordered protections will waste billions in taxpayer money to jail children and their parents. This administration should uphold American values and protect children in its care, use humane options for release from detention, and provide families a meaningful chance to apply for asylum rather than implementing regulations to detain children indefinitely.
  • The indefinite detention of migrant children and families is inhumane and economically wasteful.

Watch the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s short video about the proposed changes to the Flores Settlement Agreement and possible impacts on the detention of immigrant children.

Read our recent article for background on the administration’s ongoing attempts to separate refugee families and imprison children. And see this article for other ways you can help immigrants.

indivisibleebadmin Actions, Get Involved, Our Impact, Uncategorized, Volunteer Opportunity

Phone-bank and canvass like the life of the Republic depends on it!

Summer is ending and it’s time to get serious about flipping Congress. We have a little over two months left to do everything we can to activate voters before the 2018 midterms. But don’t freak out, there are things you can do:

Those of us who know that Trump and everything he stands for must be RESOUNDINGLY REJECTED must do the hard work of advanced citizenship … It’s called organizing and absolutely every single one of us is capable of doing it. No matter your skill, experience, or background, no matter how little time you have to spare. Everyone can do something.

As you may know, Indivisible East Bay has partnered with Indivisible Northern Nevada on a special phone-banking and canvassing project to reach Reno voters who have registered non-partisan but are progressive on issues such as health care, civil rights, and immigration. We’re giving them the information they need to vote for a Senate candidate who shares their values. We’re also making calls to recruit local volunteers to help with these efforts. 

What you can do: sign up to canvass and phone bank!

Sign up here for IEB canvass trips to Reno:

Trips cover weekends, Saturdays and Sundays. We will be joining local Indivisible Northern Nevada volunteers and may be able to help with carpools and lodging.

  • September 15 & 16
  • September 29 & 30
  • October 20 & 21
  • October 27 &  28
  • November 3 & 4

Sign up here for phone banks sponsored by IEB:

We’ll also be calling voters in Nevada and recruiting volunteers here in the Bay Area to help us in Nevada.

  • Thursday 8/30, 6:30-8:30 PM, phone bank in Richmond
  • Sunday 9/2, 2:30-5:30 PM, phone bank in Rockridge/Temescal
  • Thursday 9/6, 6-8 PM, phone bank in East Oakland (near Mills College)
  • Sunday 9/9, 9/2 2:30-5:30 PM, phone bank in Rockridge/Temescal
  • Tuesday 9/11, 6-8 PM, phone bank in Rockridge/Claremont

We’re looking to expand our phone banks to all corners of the East Bay. If you don’t see one listed near you, please contact us to find out how to host one, or recruit a friend or neighbor to do so. We can provide all the support you need!

Sign up to phonebank with some other great local organizations to help flip swing districts in California:

You can even sign up to make calls to swing districts all across the country from the comfort of your own home! Sign up with Swing Left here. It’s even more fun if you invite some neighbors over!

 

Ted Landau Actions, Call and Email MoCs, Call Scripts, Events, Get Involved, Meetings, Our Impact, Rallies & Protests, Uncategorized, Who We Are

Stop Kavanaugh: rallying cry at IEB’s August AMM

It’s not just about getting out the vote on November 6, 2018. Yes, that’s critical. But there’s more than one front in our ongoing battle against Trump and his minions, so we gotta walk and chew gum at the same time! As important as the election — and with very long term implications — is the fight over control of our federal judiciary. A shocking statistic: Congress has already confirmed more of Trump’s nominations to appellate judgeships (24) in his first term than any other president going back to Reagan!

Right now, perched at the top of our judicial concerns sits the Supreme Court. The Republican-controlled Senate is pushing hard to get Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s uber-conservative nominee, confirmed as soon as possible. Hearings are scheduled to start on September 4 — with most pundits predicting that success is almost certain.

The good news is that “almost certain” means “not 100% certain.” This fight is still winnable … if we act like it!

All of which brings us to the Indivisible East Bay August 26 All Members Meeting. An overflowing house packed the room, with many of the 200+ people there showing up for their first-ever IEB event.

Fighting the Kavanaugh Nomination

For the top attraction, we joined with MoveOn’s Unite for Justice national day of action to promote the fight against Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Linh Nguyen, co-lead of the IEB Judiciary Team, delivered an impassioned presentation detailing exactly why we must push as hard as we can to delay or prevent the vote on Kavanaugh:

  • Linh gave a distressing overview of what we already know of Kavanaugh’s equally distressing record: his opposition to Roe v. Wade, his assertions that a sitting President should be exempt from any investigation, his support for unlimited pardon power for the President (even before defendants stand trial), his belief that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional, his opposition to climate change protection measures, and his support for vote-suppressing voter ID laws.
  • There’s likely much more, but it has been hard to find out; thanks to the GOP’s obstruction in Congress, only 6% of his record has been made available to the public!
  • Yes, Kavanaugh has stated that Roe v. Wade is “settled law.” But don’t be seduced by this admission! Saying the case is settled does not imply that Kavanaugh believes it was correctly decided. If he is confirmed to the Supreme Court, he could still act to overturn it — and probably would.
Linh Nguyen's presentation on Kavanaugh, photo by Catherine de Neergaard
Linh Nguyen’s presentation on Kavanaugh. Photo by Catherine de Neergaard

Linh also talked about the Judiciary Team’s efforts to coordinate with Indivisibles and other groups around the country to block other Trump nominees to federal courts — nominees who are too far-right, blatantly partisan, or unqualified to hold the lifetime positions. The Team’s work has paid off! Activists’ pressure has terminated the nominations of Jeff Mateer, Brett Talley, Matthew Petersen, and Ryan Bounds. These potential judges were exposed as racist, homophobic, and/or lacking in any judicial experience. While Trump appears to view these attributes as desirable, our opposition eventually forced an embarrassed GOP to abandon the nominees.

What can you do?

All of which bring us to … YOU, and what you can do to prevent further judicial disaster from becoming a reality.

First and foremost: contact your senators EVERY DAY by phone, email, or fax to voice your opposition to Kavanaugh. It doesn’t matter that they’re already on record as opposed to his confirmation — contact them (every day) anyway! Their staff tells us it helps immensely for them to hear our support. Otherwise, they only hear from constituents who disagree, making it harder for them to hold to their positions. That’s why, at the meeting, all attendees took direct action by making phone calls and writing more than 300 (!) postcards to Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.

IEB member Amelia hand-delivered 160+ postcards to Senator Harris
IEB member Amelia hand-delivered 160+ postcards to Senator Feinstein. Photo by Amelia Cass.

Please do the same…right now!

What to say:

My name is ____. I’m a constituent from [zip code] and a member of Indivisible East Bay. I’m calling to ask the Senator to vote NO on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I’m worried by his opposition to a woman’s right to choose, environmental and consumer protection, workers’ rights and common sense gun safety. His willingness to shield the president from prosecution and investigation is frightening. Kavanaugh’s nomination should be rejected.

  • Sen. Dianne Feinstein (email); (415) 393-0707 • DC: (202) 224-3841
  • Sen. Kamala Harris (email); (415) 981-9369 • DC: (202) 224-3553

Next: we can’t stop there. It’s essential that all 49 Democratic Senators are steadfast in their opposition to Kavanaugh — plus we need to get at least two Republicans to vote no. To accomplish this, we must contact Democratic voters in other states, particularly ones with vulnerable Republican Senators, encouraging them to voice their opposition to Kavanaugh and vote NO.

Three generations of resisters! Ellen, Meriam and Iris. Photo by LeAnn Kanowsky
Three generations of resisters! Ellen, Meriam and Iris. Photo by LeAnn Kanowsky

But wait, there’s more: Expanding on Linh’s call to action, IEB Governance Committee members Andrea and Charlotte offered additional actions you can take:

  1. Sign up for the IEB weekly newsletter. Each issue opens with 3 action items, and the actions are also listed on the Calls & Emails page of our website, and are featured on our Facebook page.
  2. Use social media to get the message out. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and post your support for IEB’s positions on your own social media pages, your Twitter feed or even on Nextdoor. Check out this perfect example of boosting the cause!
  3. Share these tips with your family and friends, especially those in other states, and ask them to take action.

The goal: make it so “expensive” for Mitch McConnell to twist arms that he abandons the effort to confirm Kavanaugh. We have the opportunity to win by running out the clock. If Kavanaugh is not confirmed by the end of the 2018 Congressional session, the nomination gets kicked back to the President, forcing a delay that could doom the appointment — especially if we win a majority of the Senate in November.

The ultimate symbol of America

While info and direct action to #StopKavanaugh was going full steam, kitchen science was also happening! IEB Wizard Ted Lam conducted extensive testing (yeah, noms!) to perfect a recipe for homemade Peet’s Major Dickason’s blend ice cream, and he let loose his team of IEB family members (his son Lucas and  volunteers extraordinaire Tiffany and George) to churn up 12 delectable quarts with a robin’s egg blue vintage electric ice cream maker.  

Tiffany, Lucas and George making ice cream for the resistance!
Tiffany, Lucas and George made ice cream for hungry activists! Photo by Heidi Rand

The action we take

George did double duty, and says that “after churning up resistance . . .  I mean ice-cream, I was posted post-haste to help out at the Postcards to Voters table.” Members flocked to write 100 postcards to Democratic voters in support of Audrey Denney and TJ Cox, running for Congress in California Districts 1 and 21. Both districts, largely rural and agricultural, are ripe to be flipped.

Aaaand that brings us full circle — back to the importance of the midterm elections, as we mentioned at the top of this article. Almost every problem we face right now will get better if we can end the GOP’s control of Congress; however, we need to continue keep making noise and applying pressure. Every phone call, postcard, and email counts!

 

indivisibleebadmin Actions, Events, Get Involved, Meetings, Our Impact, Uncategorized, Who We Are

Pleasanton Turns Up to Postcard

IEB Ale and Mail Postcard Party in Pleasanton
IEB Ale & Mail Postcard Party in Pleasanton – photo by Ryan Wilson

By Ward Kanowsky

Over 40 enthusiastic attendees from three progressive organizations participated in a very successful postcarding event on August 25 at The Hopyard Alehouse in Pleasanton.  Members from Indivisible East Bay, Livermore Indivisible, and the Tri-Valley Women’s March Action Group pumped out 374 postcards in support of TJ Cox’s candidacy for California’s 21st Congressional District, where he is challenging incumbent Rep. David Valadao. Mary McFarland from East Bay for TJ Cox shared that TJ has an engineering background and owns two agricultural businesses in the Central Valley.

There were also many constituents of Rep. Eric Swalwell at the event, and they wrote additional postcards to the Congressperson urging him to reach across the aisle to his colleagues who are not for the Farm Bill and tell them how important the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is to so many families in CA-15.

While Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website shows a 64% chance of Valadao losing to a Democrat, outreach still needs to be made to voters in the area. Hillary Clinton carried CA-21 by 15 points, but incumbent Valadao beat Cox in the June primary by 14,000 votes. If you are interested in helping out, visit East Bay for TJ Cox to see how you can get involved.

Want to find out more about, or join, IEB’s CA-15 team? Email us or contact @ward on Slack.

Ward Kanowsky is co-lead, with LeAnn Kanowsky, of the Indivisible East Bay CA-15 Team.

anngdaniels Actions, Call Scripts, Contact, Get Involved, Newsletter, newsletter action, State & Local Calls/Emails, Uncategorized

SB 10: A good bill gone bad

Action deadline: ASAP – We had hoped that state Senate Bill 10 would end money bail in California. Unfortunately, by the time it was passed by both houses of the state legislature, it codified many of the problems it was originally intended to cure.

Money bail keeps one in three people in jail after arrest because they can’t afford to pay bail – in California that averages $50,000! – or instead pay a big, nonrefundable bond to a private bail bond company. In other words, bail disproportionately keeps the poor and people of color in jail. The State Senate passed SB 10 but at the last minute, the Assembly amended the bill in ways to let local courts create their own systems to decide who can or can’t be released. Those systems can’t impose monetary conditions for release, but it’s easy to imagine situations in which local prejudices favor and disfavor the same people as under the current system. As San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi says, “this is not the bail reform California needs.” And with mere days to go in the legislative session, the Senate approved the amended version of SB 10.

What you can do:

MOST IMPORTANT: Tell Jerry Brown to veto SB 10.

Call: (916) 445-2841
email: leg.unit@gov.ca.gov
Tweet: @JerryBrownGov

What to say:

My name is _______________, my zip code is ____, and I’m a member of Indivisible East Bay. I am calling to urge Governor Brown to VETO SB 10. I support abolishing cash bail in California, but the amendments to SB 10 have changed it so that it isn’t real bail reform any more. It allows pretrial detention so that people who are arrested can be held without due process for nearly 2 weeks. It let judges decide who stays in jail based on their subjective determination, instead of giving them an objective risk assessment tool. Please VETO this bill, and tell the legislature that you want real bail reform instead.

Then, if you still have time: Please tell your state representatives that you’re disappointed that they voted for phony bail reform rather than the real thing.

What to say:

My name is ___, my zip code is ___, and I’m a member of Indivisible East Bay. I’m disappointed that you voted yes on SB 10. I support the abolition of cash bail in California, but the amendments to SB 10 in the Assembly let judges decide who stays in jail based on their subjective determination, instead of giving them an objective risk assessment tool. They allow pretrial detention so that people who are arrested can be held without due process for nearly 2 weeks. This isn’t real bail reform and you should have voted NO on SB 10.

Graphic: © ACLU of Northern California

indivisibleebadmin Actions, Events, Get Involved, Rallies & Protests

IEB Supports 2018 Prison Strike

Update: IEB members participated in an August 25, 2018 rally at San Quentin in support of the National Prison Strike; stay tuned for a first-person report.

On August 21, 2018, prisoners around the US began a three-week strike “demanding humane living conditions, access to rehabilitation, sentencing reform and the end of modern day slavery.” This strike, which involves work strikes, sit-ins, boycotts and hunger strikes, is in response to the April 2018 riot at Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina, during which seven prisoners died while guards waited hours to take action. The dates are significant: August 21st is the anniversary of the date on which Black Panther Party Field Marshal and prison activist George Jackson was killed by a prison guard in 1971; September 9th is the anniversary of the Attica Prison Rebellion, which erupted two weeks after Jackson’s assassination.

Indivisible East Bay is endorsing the strike and stands in solidarity with incarcerated people who suffer through the American penal system. In particular, we appreciate those who work to fight the wildfires throughout California for as little as $2 per hour. California has argued in court against releasing prisoners because it finds their cheap labor so valuable, which philosophically aligns with the legality of slavery under the 13th amendment. We cannot stand by as these workers are undervalued simply because of their conviction of a crime and imprisonment without a voice or adequate rehabilitation programs.

Therefore, we urge all of our members and others to stand in solidarity with those striking through September 9. IEB will periodically publish events that members can attend to support this effort, including one on August 25 at San Quentin. We also encourage members to spread the word about the strike and to ask elected officials to meet the 10-point list of demands, and to investigate root causes for the increase in incarceration rates in the US since the 1970s.

Bay Area National Prison Strike Solidarity Committee

Graphic credit Bay Area National Prison Strike Solidarity Committee.