“Wake up, America!” #BLM protests & other antiracist, anti-fascist & pro-democratic things to do…

Dec. 3: It’s a Biden/Harris Thursday!

Vote Forward Letters, New Georgia Project, Emails re: election lawsuits & Parler, Call legislators – Pass HEROES!, Call NEWSOM – Listen to the CA Black Democratic Caucus! Watch out for oil company petitions!

Events/Actions happening today!

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; It must be demanded by the oppressed.” ~ MLK

  • We’re putting up information on local protests and actions by others we’re finding from informal sources. These listings are not endorsements nor guarantees as to time/place/type of protest or participant safety. Events can and have already been cancelled without notice.
  • UPCOMING EVENTS!
  • NEED HELP? CAN YOU GIVE HELP? “Giving and receiving during this pandemic season.” – Volunteer and donation sites in Ventura County.

12/1-10 – CAMARILLO – “New Blanket Drive for Farm Workers” LULAC de Camarillo (business hours)

(https://friendsoffieldworkers.org/) This holiday season, let’s help our farm working community with the immediate need of providing new warm blankets to these families! 

LULAC de Camarillo is partnering up with the City of Camarillo Government and the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office help meet this need. 

If you are unable to purchase a blanket, but you would like to help, you can make a tax deductible contribution to Friends of Fieldworkers, Inc., 

Continue reading ““Wake up, America!” #BLM protests & other antiracist, anti-fascist & pro-democratic things to do…” →

Wed. 12/2: We’re being targeted again by big business, this time in Ventura County! Don’t sign the oil industry’s petition to pollute.

#1- SHARE with others you know on social media!

Share information, and sign up to counter inaccurate messages from paid petition gatherers!

(Action shared from CFROG and DoNotSignvc.com) Since Nov. 13, paid signature gatherers have been circulating petitions at big-box and grocery stores, to repeal recently-enacted county requirements that oil companies comply with up-to-date environmental practices for all new wells, no matter how old their original permit. To accomplish their goal of gathering 50k signatures (30,913 min.) before Dec. 10th, a group of oil producers from outside our county, mainly funded by Aera Energy a Shell-Exxon corp., and California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA), are pushing the message that your support will save jobs, make gas cheaper, and help the economy. These claims are untrue or misleading. Please warn others about this campaign on your social media. Use the link: DoNotSignVC.com. CFROG has created great graphics for Twitter and Facebook in both English and Spanish here.

Continue reading “Wed. 12/2: We’re being targeted again by big business, this time in Ventura County! Don’t sign the oil industry’s petition to pollute.” →

Mon. 11/30: Tell the Senate to pass the HEROES ACT now!

Right now the GOP is trying to flip the script, saying that House Democrats are responsible for the hold up of stimulus funding.. But the same Senate that gave $1.7 trillion in tax breaks to our richest, proposes crumbs for us, and MORE COVID liability protection for their corporate funders. (See: “Tyson Managers Suspended After Allegedly Betting If Workers Would Contract COVID“.) Time to start “skinnying” things up for the 1%!

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Sen. [___] to immediately pass the HEROES Act, along with improvements shown to be necessary as this national emergency deepens. While the Senate has been malingering in their duty to “promote the general Welfare,” 20% of Americans now face food insecurity, a level equivalent to the Great Depression and 40 million people are in danger of being evicted into the twin dangers of the pandemic and winter. At the same time, states are having to cut back on essential services, which will harm the most vulnerable, including children. Here are basic minimums the Senate should secure to put us on the track to recovery.

Continue reading “Mon. 11/30: Tell the Senate to pass the HEROES ACT now!” →

Taking back our power during the holidays.

Thanksgiving is the traditional starting bell of our season of mass consumerism, the intensity of which is analyzed by investors and the stock market to determine the economic health of our nation. (“FALSE!” says Robert Reich, here.)

However, this year is profoundly different. Not only are we having to negotiate whether or not we can gather with loved ones safely, we face a wildly changed economic landscape, where, in the richest nation on earth, 20% of us face food insecurity, a level not seen since the Great Depression. Those photos of rows of cars, waiting at food banks, those are 21st- century version of earlier soup lines.

(Left) Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone (Right) Image from San Antonio Food Bank line.

A record 80 million of us banded together to overthrow an incipient dictator. If we thought of our holiday spending as an S.O.S. (Save Our-Selves) action, we would work to return money to the economy in ways that help ourselves and fellow workers, instead of enriching the offshore accounts of billionaires.

(Are you in need? Can you help others? Go here for local assistance and donation/volunteer opportunities..)

Stop throwing your money “into the Amazon” – Join the #BlackOutBezos” campaign.

Continue reading “Taking back our power during the holidays.” →

Expand what this holiday can be.

It’s way past time to meld the wildly inaccurate backstory of Thanksgiving, our family-oriented secular feast day, with a more truthful version of our country’s colonialist history.

(Calagtour.org) “Thanksgiving can be a time of celebration, gratitude and sharing. It is also often a time when people assist the most vulnerable in our communities, through donations to food banks, volunteer service at missions and shelters, and similar acts of compassion coinciding with the start of a difficult cold season for those without adequate resources. That said, it can also be a time of remembrance and mourning in Native American communities… 

…Consider centering Thanksgiving messaging around social and environmental justice by sharing resources for learning about the authentic history of Native Americans, contemporary Native American peoples and communities in both urban and rural areas, and supporting the growing Indigenous food sovereignty movement among Native Americans to reclaim and restore their food systems througheco-cultural restoration and self-determination.”

Change up what you watch today…

Continue reading “Expand what this holiday can be.” →

Tues. 11/24: Gov. Newsom – Do the right thing! (Update 11/25)

Choose either Lee or Bass to fill Harris’ seat!

We, along with over 20 CA indivisible groups and the CA Indivisible Green Team, have joined the Black Caucus of the Democratic party in calling on Gov. Newsom to fill Kamala Harris’ senate seat with another well-qualified, progressive, Black woman. Now we’re asking for you to add your voice as well.

Representation of minority voices is important in a legislature that is still 79% white. Women are 51% of the population, but are only 24% of the Senate. When VP-elect Harris leaves for the White House, Newsom’s choice could mean a possible future with exactly ZERO Black women in the Senate.

Considering the huge contribution of Black women in securing the presidency of President-Elect Joe Biden, and the proximity of two excellent choices, Representatives Barbara Lee (CA-13) (full disclosure – Indivisible Ventura is a BIG FAN of Rep. Lee), and Karen Bass, it would be unconscionable for Newsom to select another candidate.

Here are two scripts. Choose one, choose both. Make sure he hears us!

Minimal Script: I’m calling from [zip code] to ask Gov. Newsom to appoint a well-qualified Black woman, such as Rep. Barbara Lee or Rep. Karen Bass, to replace VP-elect Kamala Harris’s Senate seat. It is important to all of us that that Black women continue to have a voice in the Senate. 

Continue reading “Tues. 11/24: Gov. Newsom – Do the right thing! (Update 11/25)” →

Giving and receiving during this pandemic season.

“Why should there by hunger and privation in any land, at any table when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life?” – Martin Luther King, Jr., 1964

Updated 11/23/2020 – We will continue to update with new opportunities as they come in…

BLM-VC Canned Food Drive – thru Mid-December.

Collecting until mid-December, Cajun County Cafe (665 S Ventura Voad, Oxnard) & Ray’s Exclusive Cuts (1051 Patterson Rd., Oxnard), or call 818-641-2396 to arrange pick up. Organized by @blmventuracounty

NEW! The organizers also need donations of personal hygiene items, as they would like to give out care packs to the unhoused people who come. Socks, masks, toothbrush, toilet paper, wet wipes, feminine hygiene products, etc…

COVID testing information

Free, confidential COVID-19 testing is available to every Californian that needs it. Appointments are required. (CA state website here with locations and registration information.)

Continue reading “Giving and receiving during this pandemic season.” →

Wed. 11/18: Lindsey crossed a line. (Updated 11/19)

Call him out! Demand he step down.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, fresh off winning another six years of legislative obstruction on our dime, must have imagined himself to be invincible, able to subvert democracy with a single phone call. Before chatting with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, perhaps he was dreaming of his reward – standing next to Trump on a stage as his new imaginary vice president, part of an equally imaginary 2024 presidential re-election campaign.

He never would have guessed that a fellow Republican (along with more than one witness!) would call him out, but he was wrong. (See “Lincoln Project.”) Serious observers of politics, both lawyers and legislators, are calling him out now too. (See below in “Deeper Dive”.)

Now it’s our turn.

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Sen. [___] to know, that after suffering four years of Trump’s destruction of our government, we have zero tolerance for any election corruption. I believe the allegations by Georgia’s Republican secretary of state and I want Sen. [___] to call for Senator Graham to step down from the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee until he undergoes a thorough investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. If he has violated any federal or Georgia state laws, I furthermore expect Sen. [___] to act to have him expelled.

More script if you want it: This is not just my own opinion. Experts on ethics and election law agree. I’m sharing this letter from Walter Shaub, the former Director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and others to this effect. (Verbally, you can reference the letter as “tinyurl.com/Lindsey-crossed-a-line” or in an email: https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/11121-ethics-complaint-against-senator-lindsey-o-graham)

Continue reading “Wed. 11/18: Lindsey crossed a line. (Updated 11/19)” →

11/13: “Dear Tim…Please rethink this whole “Parler” business…

We’ve had enough. After reading Media Matters article on Stewart Rhodes and Alex Jones, and watching the linked video describing a proposed attack on our capitol, we are not allowing another corporate giant to enable a platform promoting lies and fomenting violence, without protest. Apple, a company whose corporate vision is “to make the best products on earth, and to leave the world better than we found it” is promoting an barely-moderated app, “Parler”, which is fulfilling its promise of becoming another toxic cesspool.

Read more about what’s on the Parler site here.

Write an email to CEO Tim Cook…

This is the outline of the letter we sent to him at tcook@apple.com. Its really long, but you can write a much shorter one, or just a couple of lines. Just make whatever you do sound like you.

Continue reading “11/13: “Dear Tim…Please rethink this whole “Parler” business…” →

Tues 11/10: “Jones Day, Hands Off Our Ballots – Do the right thing!” Updated: 11/17

Write a comment to lawyers suing over the elections. Theirs is an unAmerican effort to destroy public confidence in our elections.

(wapo) “Law is a profession, but these mega-law firms are also big businesses. Like any business, they can be held accountable by the public — and by their other customers — for how they choose to deploy their considerable resources. It’s not out of bounds to criticize those who agree to bring cases that could be so damaging to our democracy.“

“Of course, there is something painful and unpleasant about making life uncomfortable for someone familiar, especially a professional colleague. There is also something deeply uncomfortable about calling out someone you know for immoral conduct. But our constitutional order depends on people doing just that. Scholars have identified professional networks as important guardians of norms: Government officials and elites abide by norms in part because they fear approbation or repudiation by their professional and social networks if they do not. Yet those networks are now sending the signal that their members have nothing to fear at all—because they will never be held accountable for participating in cruel and destructive policies.” – U. of Michigan law professor Leah Litman.

The lawyers know it’s wrong. Many lawyers in these large firms know these nuisance suits are wrong, possibly sanctionable, but at the very least embarassing to their reputation, but their bosses are deeply intertwined with the Trump administration. What they are doing cannot be compared as participating in a criminal defense. But you can’t run a law office if everybody leaves.

(The Hill) “The newspaper (New York Times) interviewed several lawyers at Jones Day and Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, firms representing Trump’s campaign. According to the report, lawyers from the latter law firm have held meetings to voice their discomfort with what they are being tasked to do (i.e. create election lawsuits.) The Times reported that one lawyer quite his job in protest.“

Continue reading “Tues 11/10: “Jones Day, Hands Off Our Ballots – Do the right thing!” Updated: 11/17″ →

Georgia on your mind? Write GOTV postcards to their voters!

First, a gratuitous earworm placement of one of our all-time favorite artists…

Postcard Option #1 – Postcards to Swing Voters!

We have reached our capacity, and we thank everyone who’s contacted us! But reaching our own limitations doesn’t mean you can’t help!

While we tussle with getting 17,500 postcards to their new homes, you can get started now by contacting Postcards to Swing States DIRECTLY. The only difference is that you’ll be providing your own postcards and postage.

  1. Pick a quantity and buy your postcards here. (50 card minimum)
  2. “Postcards to Swing States” will email you voter addresses and instructions.
  3. Buy enough $0.35 postcard stamps.
  4. Write the short message as shown below below (We do LOTS of postcards!)
  5. Send on Dec. 26 – 28th.
Continue reading “Georgia on your mind? Write GOTV postcards to their voters!” →