Wed 4/22: “A Peoples’ Bailout” – Part 2.

Action – Call your legislator and demand that funding to put people first be added to this COVID-19 stimulus bill.

The Senate passed a new $484 billion coronavirus relief package yesterday. The bill includes another $310 billion bail out of small- and medium-sized businesses for the PPP program (see corruption issues below in “Deeper Dive”), $60 billion for emergency SMB grants and loans, $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion to fund a new coronavirus testing program. However, it’s still missing some important values:

No money to save the US Postal System
No money for protections to frontline workers.
No money for secure elections.
No money for immigrants.
No money for additional economic support to an out-of-work population
There was no money for health care for newly unemployed workers.
No rules to make sure companies maintain payroll.
No money for states and cities.

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Rep. [___] to vote “NO” on any bill that neglects to include funding for the US Postal System, secure elections, protections for frontline workers, continuing aid to out-of-work people, access to health care, and rules to make sure companies maintain payroll.

More script if you want it: I specifically want Rep. [___] to include the ABC Act, the Health Care Emergency Guarentee Act, the Vote/Safe Act, Elizabeth Warren’s Election Protection Plan, the Paycheck Guarantee Act, S. 3565 – Small Business and Consumer Debt Collection Emergency Relief Act and provide our postal system the cash grants and loans it needs. Continue reading “Wed 4/22: “A Peoples’ Bailout” – Part 2.” →

Wed. 4/22: Happy Earth Day! Make a call to your state legislators and share your best resource-saving tips!

Action #1: Call Governor Newsom and tell him to stop all fracking permits now!

For the first time since last summer, CA’s oil and gas regulators CA Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, has issued permits for fracking – to Aera Energy, a joint venture of Shell and ExxonMobil, for “well stimulation” for 24 Aera wells in two Kern County oil fields.

$3-4 fracking$

In a bizarre twist considering how this type of expensive drilling operation affects air quality and human health, the Aera spokeswoman Cindy Pollard stated “These permits come at an especially critical time as the nation is dealing with a public health crisis unlike anything before.” Continue reading “Wed. 4/22: Happy Earth Day! Make a call to your state legislators and share your best resource-saving tips!” →

Tues. 4/21: Beyond calling your legislators everyday…four resistance actions you can do from home.

Virtual Day of Action for Christy Smith/phonebanking until May 12th!
Write postcards for Christy Smith!
Indivisible Ventura’s “Third Thursday” GOTV postcards for voters in AZ.
Donations, both money and LEGOS, are needed for our immigrant community!

Action #1: Indivisible Virtual Day of Action for Christy Smith for Congress! Join in this Saturday April 25th at 2 p.m!

Join our good friends at Grassroots Democrats for this remote phonebanking event to GOTV (Get Out The Vote) for this Indivisible-endorsed candidate. The special election for CA-25’s congressional seat is coming up fast and they need a lot of help to elect Christy Smith and keep this district BLUE.

Are you free this Saturday at 2:00? Sign up here!

Can’t make the Saturday event but want to make calls? Go here to sign up to phone bank for Christy – training is included and shifts are available from now through 8 pm on May 12th, Election Day! Join a huge network of Ventura County progressive voters in making 20 calls for Christy every day between now and May 12th.
Continue reading “Tues. 4/21: Beyond calling your legislators everyday…four resistance actions you can do from home. “ →

Mon. 4/20: Indivisible together, we must demand more.

Update: Sign up for the #ProtectOurVote virtual townhall on Mon, Apr 20 (tonight!) @ 8pm ET to hear from Sens. Warren, Klobuchar, & more: http://lil.ms/3vjq/4c0x0w

Action#1: Phone Action – Demand that your legislators prioritize a coronavirus “People’s Bailout.”

Congress has now passed three coronavirus-related response bills. While these bills have temporarily filled in important gaps in our paid sick leave, unemployment insurance, and health care systems, they are grossly insufficient given the magnitude of the current crisis. What’s worse, in return for helping people who are desperately in need of support, Trump and his Republican allies demanded hundreds of billions of dollars in unaccountable corporate bailouts and a bizarre $170 billion dollar tax giveaway that chiefly benefits around 43,000 millionaires and billionaires.. Really.

This crisis isn’t over and the Senate could vote on the deal that supposedly fixes all the gaps in the previous bills soon – possibly in a pro forma Senate session today, and a House vote on Wednesday. While they are rightfully putting more money towards small businesses, we need to continue demanding help for the individual people and families who both staff business and patronize them — in other words, we need a People’s Bailout.

We must demand that our legislators consider the interrelated crises of wealth inequality, racism, and ecological decline, which were in place long before COVID-19, and now risk being intensified. This is a time to be decisive in saving lives, and bold in charting a path to a genuinely healthier and more equitable future through a just recovery.

Minimal Phone Script: I’m calling from [___] and I want Rep./Sen. [___] to make sure the next coronavirus response bill includes the following (add any points from the email script below that are especially important to you.): Continue reading “Mon. 4/20: Indivisible together, we must demand more.” →

Fri. 4/17: Shock therapy – Money follows values. The GOP just gave billions to millionaires. They gave pocket change to safe elections.

Sometimes, when dealing with huge amounts of money, it helps to graph it out…

Action #1: Call your legislators today and make sure they hear you!

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court voted absentee, their citizens were denied that right. Sally Field, a friend & social justice warrior, recites Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent on the Supreme Court of the United States ruling. Help us demand universal #VoteByMail for every person in the US.” – Brave New Films

Brave New Films joins with Indivisible, Stand Up America, MoveOn, FairFight, and We can vote to ask that our lawmakers pass $4 billion dollars in funding along with Senator Warren’s Election Protection plan to ensure that every eligible voter can safely cast a ballot. The November election is coming up fast! Continue reading “Fri. 4/17: Shock therapy – Money follows values. The GOP just gave billions to millionaires. They gave pocket change to safe elections.” →

Thurs 4/16: Shock Therapy: The GOP has tried to kill our Postal Service for decades. Trump and the pandemic may finish it off. Call your legislators!

Quote by Michael Hiltzik, LA Times

“The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people.“ – 39 U.S. Code § 101(a)

Action #1: Call your legislators to say to “Fund the Post Office NOW.”

Question: If the GOP and Trump want to run the Postal Service like a business, why don’t they treat it like any other business?

The Postal Service is suffering, just like other businesses during this pandemic. It’s had “a $13 billion revenue loss due directly to COVID-19 this fiscal year and a $54.3 billion additional losses over ten years.” Its employees are on the front lines, providing essential services to the rest of us and now 693 of their 630,000 workers have tested positive for COVID-19, more than 6000 are in self-quarantine and several have died. So why won’t the GOP and Trump step up to help them? After all…

They’re handing $500 billion to other money-losing businesses, including those who’ve abused stock buybacks, those that pay no taxes, and those that have even killed people, like Boeing.
They don’t force the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, CDC, FDA, FEMA or other agencies to make a profit.
They don’t force corporations, even government-backed ones like Boeing or Raytheon, to pre-fund their health-care for 75 years! That’s insane.
They don’t force other businesses to keep doing unprofitable things, like delivering any letter in the US for a flat rate of 55 cents or stop them from adding services their patrons need. (like banking!)
They’re handing $170 billion tax cut to millionaires and billionaires on the off-chance it might trickle down to a business, and not to an offshore bank.

Answer: Because they both want to kill it. Continue reading “Thurs 4/16: Shock Therapy: The GOP has tried to kill our Postal Service for decades. Trump and the pandemic may finish it off. Call your legislators!” →

Wed. 4/15: Gown-Brigade volunteers! It’s time to IRON! Instructions included here!

Quick links:

Join the Mask-making brigade for VC health care workers (now at 4871!): here
Volunteer opportunities, including those for healthcare workers, in Ventura County: here.
Want to be part of the new Gown Brigade? Send your name, address, email and cell phone number to hcfvc@ventura.org

(Information below from Amy Towner, CEO – Health Care Foundation for Ventura County.)

Mask Brigade update.

We had 255 masks donated on Tuesday. Pictured here are some cute ones from Ventura County Probation Department’s Pamela Henderson. She said this was so much fun! Gina and I have done mass passing out of masks to essential workers throughout the county and it’s been fun to see some masks that you have made being sported all around the county. I am asking employees to thank you so I can post on social media, We can not let our guard down and we still need more masks so thank you for continuing to sew especially since we had 33 new cases as of tonight.

Gown Brigade update.

For those new to the Gown Brigade – Welcome! Today, we had our first drop off shipment at Gina’s. With 12,000 trash bags, that’s a lot of ironing. So glad we have an army of community sewing and ironing for our community safety. The message is clear, in Ventura County, we are not ok with sitting around not having basic PPE for healthcare or people. Our community has been extremely resourceful and not waiting around for others to fix the problem.

Attached are the instructions for making the hospital gown from plastic bags.

Continue reading “Wed. 4/15: Gown-Brigade volunteers! It’s time to IRON! Instructions included here!” →

Wed. 4/15: A note from the Speaker of the House.

Dear Democratic Colleague,

This Easter Weekend provided me with a time for deeper prayer and reflection. This is an unbearably sad time with all Americans sharing the same devastating experience: we are grieving for those who have died from the coronavirus, we are fearful for our health and especially the health of our loved ones and we are heartbroken for our children who are unable to be in school and with their friends.

As Americans, we are suffering from pressures of economic hardship. All of us want to resume the precious and beautiful lives that America’s unique freedoms provide. We will overcome this moment, but success requires one fundamental from which all actions will follow: we need the truth. To succeed in this crisis, we must insist on the truth, and we must act upon it! Continue reading “Wed. 4/15: A note from the Speaker of the House.” →

Tues 4/14: Taking care of our essential human resources…

Action #1 – State: Call your state legislators to approve the “California Farmworker COVID-19 Relief Package.

For those of us lucky enough to shelter at home – we can order a box of organic strawberries online from a Ventura County farm here, for example, or here. But they can’t be harvested digitally. Farmworkers have to show up in person to do their jobs, often without access to adequate healthcare, or the ability to maintain social distance, leaving them vulnerable to contracting COVID-19.

On April 9th, Assemblymember Robert Rivas (D-CA30) introduced the five-bill “California Farmworker COVID-19 Relief Package” to protect the health, safety, and economic security of agricultural workers and prevent disruptions to the nation’s food supply.

Continue reading “Tues 4/14: Taking care of our essential human resources…” →

Mon 4/13: Deadline today, 5pm. Comment about PG&E to the Wildfire Safety Advisory Board.

Photo from full report here.

Action: Write a letter to tell the Wildfire Safety Advisory Board that PG&E is on the wrong path again.

Apparently today is “WRITE LETTERS DAY!” PG&E has stated that they would like to use their antiquated, expensive, wasteful and counterproductive method of stripping out all trees near their lines, versus replacing their own equipment with safer versions.

We have just been informed about an opportunity to communicate with the Wildfire Safety Advisory Board about what PG&E should be doing to prevent the next out-of-control fire.