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!” →

Sun 11/8: Finding elections more interesting than you thought?

Volunteer with Scrutineers! Use your inner wonk for good!

Raise your hand: Who has learned more about elections since Trump took office, than they learned in high school civics class?

Oh, but there’s MORE! Check out the Scrutineers and their opportunities to help create trust in the integrity of our elections! If you are a detail-oriented person, and not frightened by words like “spreadsheet”, this may be the dream volunteer community for you!

Who or what are the Scrutineers?

“Scrutineers is an online community of people who care about the fairness and accuracy of US elections and are committed to doing what we can to protect the elections. We’re movement veterans, newcomers, and everything in-between. We’re a nonpartisan organization dedicated to ending voter suppression and ensuring secure elections. We’re here to LEARN, CONNECT, and ACT. ”

Now that the election is over, their project list for volunteers is being constantly updated. Some of the projects require you to become a membeer of Scrutineers ($1.99 – we are members!) and others don’t.

You can download their “Find a Project” app for Android or iPhone from here, or, as we have done, you can access the information through a computer. However, since we found the desktop interface a little confusing, we’re walking everyone through it here.

When the page comes up on a desktop computer, it just looks like the image of a phone, but you can enter your email address directly into it.

Continue reading “Sun 11/8: Finding elections more interesting than you thought?” →

Call it out!

You shouldn’t hesitate to speak up and seek help if something doesn’t feel right or you sense someone else is being intimidated. Voting should be stress-free, if not joyful. Call-out to the great people behind ‘Joy to the Polls,” including this group and these great dancers.

If you think you’re encountering or witnessing voter intimidation, call one of these numbers to get help and advice from a trained election protection volunteer. Take pictures or videos, and send them to SeeSay2020.com

Take a moment to program one or more of these numbers into your phone before you head to the polls.

Continue reading “Call it out!” →

“What the heck is a poll tape and why is it so important?”

Groups are looking for volunteers to photo/video poll tapes across the country.

Updated Nov. 1, 2020 – Revision of participating organizations.

This isn’t such a huge issue for us here in Ventura County. Not only are we doing a mail-in election because of the pandemic, in-person voters are using paper ballots that get placed into ballot boxes, just like in your 6th grade election for class president. (But that doesn’t mean you can’t help other precincts…)

Other CA counties do have poll tapes, and states are still using machines proven to cause serious problems. How serious?
Gore vs. Bush serious. Kemp vs. Abrams serious.

Bennie Smith, a financial software developer in Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes Memphis, was contacted by a candidate after losing an election they felt they should have won in their majority Black and Democratic district. However, for years, the winning candidates were overwhelmingly white and Republican. Who was electing these people?

Continue reading ““What the heck is a poll tape and why is it so important?”” →

Fri. 10/30: Note to self… Trump is NOT in charge of this election.

Quote: For those of us only remember part of the first line of Roosevelt’s inauguration speech of 1933 (our hand is up!), it’s worth reading the whole thing, which sounds like it could have been written yesterday.

#1 – Let’s take a breath here…

Our email and media feeds are flooded with potential election stealing and violence at the polls. Not only may these visions be overblown, but they may, in fact, be turning fear into a weapon against us, intimidating us from voting this criminal administration out of office.

Today, we were given permission from writer/observer R. Hubbell, to reprint his Oct. 28th article, to remind us the safeguards even a tyrant like Trump can’t touch. (You can subscribe to his great newsletter here.)

“It is a sad reality that our president is not elected directly by the citizens of the United States. For good or ill, the Framers of the Constitution created a body that we now refer to as the “Electoral College.” The Electoral College elects the president and vice president, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and enabling legislation. The Constitution and statutes provide that states may count votes from November 4th through December 8, 2020, with the latter date serving as the deadline for states to certify the selection of their Electors to the National Archivist. Six days later (December 14), the Electors meet in their respective states to cast their ballots in accordance with their state’s election results. For a general description of the timeline, see Congressional Research Service, “The Electoral College: A 2020 Presidential Election Timeline.” The election of the president becomes official on January 6, 2021 when Congress counts the votes cast by the Electors in their respective state meetings.

Continue reading “Fri. 10/30: Note to self… Trump is NOT in charge of this election.” →

Friends and Family Voting Toolkit – Beyond phone/textbanking.

#1 – Rethink voting as joyful. Share videos like these.

and this video.

#2 – Who do you know who doesn’t have transportation to a polling place or ballot box?

Continue reading “Friends and Family Voting Toolkit – Beyond phone/textbanking.” →