Seriously. Can we expel her NOW?

“YES” to H.Res.260 – “In the Matter of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

One of the takeaways from the first hearing on the January 6 insurrection was no surprise – the violent seditionists believed they were attacking law enforcement officers at Trump’s behest. “…all of them were telling us ‘Trump sent us.’ It was nobody else. It was not Antifa. It was not BLM.

These domestic terrorists were not in any doubt as to what Trump had asked them to do.

On July 23rd, after media representatives were removed from the room, Trump’s QAnon-whisperer – Marjorie Taylor Greene, suggested that Alabama residents meet their community’s “trusted messengers” – “the doctors, the faith leaders, community leaders and others who are working to get people vaccinated, save lives, and help end this pandemic” with a “2nd Amendment rights”-style” welcome.

Is there any reason to doubt that some Alabama residents will do exactly what she asked? That her words are a tragedy waiting to happen?

ALGOP chairman John Wahl was alarmed enough to put out this statement: “The Alabama Republican Party did not host or sponsor the event with Marjorie Taylor Greene, and therefore have no firsthand knowledge of the comments made.

Hey, Mr. Wahl, the American people are tired of “hosting” her too, but there’s a constitutional solution for this.

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] and want Rep./Speaker of the House [___] to expel Rep. Marjory Taylor Greene per H.Res.260 for advocating for domestic terrorism. In a private “just-among-us-friends” speech on July 23rd, she suggested that “trusted messengers” going door-to-door to answer COVID-related questions from Alabama residents be met with firearms. It is no surprise that the press was deliberately removed before her speech or that the AL GOP now disavows all knowledge of her comments.

Continue reading “Seriously. Can we expel her NOW?”

This eviction issue is actually a judge issue.

  • Action #1: Thank Biden for jumping in head-first, despite all his legal advice.
  • Action #2: Tell your representative to get back to Congress and pass H.R. 4791, the “Protecting Renters from Evictions Act, of 2021.
  • Action #3: Thank Rep. Cori Bush!

The various judgements against the CDC’s moratorium by Trump appointees in lower courts and the temporary reprieve by our GOP-dominated Supreme Court signals a far more dangerous fight, i.e. the weaponization of the “nondelegation doctrine” against what far-right conservatives call “the administrative state.”

Action #1: Thank Biden for jumping in head-first, despite all his legal advice. It’s time he expanded SCOTUS.

Continue reading “This eviction issue is actually a judge issue.”

Two urgent Ventura County actions…

ACTION #1: Send a letter to our Ventura County Board of Supervisors to support the recommendation of indoor mask wearing.

ACTION #2: ZOOM – Call in to the Ventura County Fairground Board regarding gun shows- Tuesday, July 27 (9:00 am)

ACTION #1: Send a letter to our Ventura County board of supervisors to support the recommendation of indoor mask wearing.

(VC Star) “Citing rising COVID-19 infections and the spread of the delta variant, Ventura County public health officials are urging residents to wear masks indoors in public places whether they are vaccinated or not.

While vaccines remain our best tool against COVID-19, masking in indoor and crowded outdoor settings will help us curb the spread of this latest wave of infection,” said Dr. Robert Levin, Ventura County’s health officer, in an advisory released Monday.

COVID-19 case rates have increased across California since the state’s full economic reopening on June 15. Ventura County’s COVID case rate grew to 4.5 infections a day per 100,000 people for the week ending July 10 — nearly four times the rate a month earlier. Levin said county data shows unvaccinated people are 22 times more likely to become infected and hospitalized than vaccinated residents.

Please send a letter to our Ventura County Board of Supervisors to support the recommendation of indoor mask wearing given the impact of the delta variant – Meeting is Tuesday, July 27.

Continue reading “Two urgent Ventura County actions…”

“Hello, I’d like to speak to the man behind the curtain.” Let’s talk to Rupert Murdoch.

Action #1 – Continue to de-FOX-ify your life.

We have, like many groups, advised people to cut off their unwitting financial support of FOX News, a right-wing propaganda machine masquerading as a media empire. And as there’s more than one way to attack this issue, so we offered a variety of options here.

Meanwhile, the poison continues. Tucker Carlson, who promotes white nationalist viewpoints on his widely watched show, gave a sympathetic and unquestioning platform to Charles Murray, a social scientist who uses racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor. Meanwhile, a report released last Friday by the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters showed that the majority of vaccine-related segments that Fox News aired over the past two weeks “repeatedly fearmongered about and downplayed the need for continued vaccination campaigns.”

So what do we do now?

In 2019, the Intercept published an article: “The Problem at Fox News Is Not Just Tucker Carlson — It’s the Murdoch Family Who Owns and Controls the Network: It’s not enough to criticize the racist anchors on Fox News. The Murdoch family is responsible for what happens there. Let’s talk about them

…It’s absolutely correct to direct our anger at the terrible people we see on Fox and the terrible things they say, but they are not the worst culprits or the most powerful ones. Remember the Watergate-era saying, “follow the money”? Do that with Fox News and you’ll quickly realize that the people responsible for its hateful programming — the people who can shut it off in an instant but don’t because they approve of it or are too cowardly to take a stand against it — are Rupert Murdoch and his heirs, who founded and own a controlling stake in the network’s parent company.

In fact, let’s talk to Rupert...

Action #2 – Write an email, a letter or a postcard to Rupert Murdoch. Copy his son.

Continue reading ““Hello, I’d like to speak to the man behind the curtain.” Let’s talk to Rupert Murdoch.”

Mon 8/3: COVID-19 is airborne and that changes everything! Thank your local essential workers & businesses for keeping you safe from anti-maskers.

(2) actions to help grocery employees below! 

Update:

Anti-maskers just had a workshop in Ventura County…

Despite reports that GOP voters are now paying attention to the newest COVID studies, Ventura County residents were dismayed to learn that there was a workshop this weekend at the Simi Valley “Republican Values Center” to instruct local anti-maskers on how to “firmly assert your right to enter public spaces, shop, and go about your business” and to use tools to “effectively counter opposition.” Although assuredly an improvement on the open warfare at the doors of supermarkets, these “tools” will undoubtedly spread misinformation, including outdated science, distortions of HIPAA, ADA laws, and the Constitution, entitled privilege and racism, strategies for deliberate deception and a misunderstanding of the nature of “freedom” itself. (Check out “Deeper Dive” below for discussion of anti-masker mythology.)

Why anti-maskers’ attitudes are so dangerous to those who are actually immunocompromised.

Continue reading “Mon 8/3: COVID-19 is airborne and that changes everything! Thank your local essential workers & businesses for keeping you safe from anti-maskers.”

Wed 5/13: Ventura County’s Mask & Gown Brigades update and related news.

Beautiful masks made by a local volunteer!

Meet the four health care professionals who stood in silence on May 1!

doctors on the street

Watch their video interview here. Many will recognize these awesome local professionals and how lucky Ventura County is to have them.

  • Listen to the message of care and empathy that brought them in front of hundreds of yelling, angry anti-lockdown protesters. (See previous post on protest here.)
  • Listen to what they seeing in their health care facilities, for children, adults and the families of patients.
  • Listen to what they are learning about this disease.

Continue reading “Wed 5/13: Ventura County’s Mask & Gown Brigades update and related news.”

Thurs 5/7: Join in – Day of Action to support the Essential Workers Bill of Rights!

Today, May 7th, millions of people and over 50 national organizations, including Indivisible, will take online action and demand Congress support an Essential Worker Bill of Rights. This Bill of Rights would cover nurses, health and home care workers, domestic workers, truckers, janitors, grocery workers, farm workers, warehouse workers child care workers and transit workers. If we’re loud enough, we can help ALL #ProtectEssentialWorkers. Join in!

𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐞!

Action #1 – Call your House Rep.

Minimal call scripts to House members: I’m calling from [zip code] to ask Rep. [___]  to release a bold & comprehensive relief bill that includes an Essential Workers Bill of Rights that includes fair compensation. This would include hazard pay, real job protections, paid sick leave, child care workplace protections, health care, and that these protections be given to all working people, no matter their immigration or contractor status. Continue reading “Thurs 5/7: Join in – Day of Action to support the Essential Workers Bill of Rights!”

Mon 5/4: Ventura County’s Mask & Gown Brigades update and related news!

Taking our medical professionals’ lives for granted…

Some of Ventura County’s amazing health care workers took time out last Friday to remind us what’s at stake here. None of the hundreds of protesters raging about “Freedom!” could replace any one of those four doctors on the median in a medical emergency. Across America, over 9,200 health care workers have tested positive for coronavirus and at least 27 have died. Health-care providers are literally risking their lives to save ours. What if they just stopped showing up?

Although the Health Care Foundation for Ventura County has organized an incredible volunteer task force, including the Mask and Gown Brigades, and those who provide meals, temporary shelter and equipment, every one of us has a role in stopping COVID-19 and protecting our medical professionals – simply by following the social distancing and shelter-in-place orders from our county and state public health experts. For the impatient, “Stage 2” of reopening CA businesses starts this coming Friday. Worldwide COVID stats here.

A “thank you” to volunteers,  and how you can join in…

  • Do you want to help make gowns? Go here.
  • Do you want to make masks for Ventura County’s essential workers? Go here.
  • Volunteer opportunities and equipment needed in Ventura County: here.

Continue reading “Mon 5/4: Ventura County’s Mask & Gown Brigades update and related news!”

Tues 3/24: “Cruel and unusual” – Law enforcement and punishment in a pandemic.

Quote by Dr. Ranit Mishori, a professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine and medical adviser to the group Physicians for Human Rights. “

Action #1 – Tell ICE to stop sucking up supplies of surgical masks needed for real emergencies.

ken

ICE has recently ordered 45,000 N95 surgical masks so that agents can be protected when they round up undocumented people, prior to putting them into jails where they will become vulnerable to COVID-19 infection. Nearly half of immigrants detained by ICE have been accused of no crime other than civil immigration violations, and many probably would not have been held under previous administrations. Rep. Omar stated “Immigration detention facilities, even before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, have been breeding grounds for illness. For detainees who are immunocompromised or otherwise susceptible to the worst consequences of contracting Covid-19, holding them in detention may be literally a matter of life or death.

Please contact Amanda Stought and ask her to reconsider her order and to ask ICE to stand down during until this pandemic is over.

Minimal script: Good [morning] Ms. Stought. You may have noticed the pandemic in the news, and the associated lack of PPE gear (personal protective equipment) for medical professionals and first responders. Please consider that none of the people your ICE officers arrest deserve a coronavirus death sentence. Keep your officers at home, safe with their families during this lockdown like everyone else and send all your N95 masks to hospitals where they’re desperately needed.

CONTACT: Email her at amanda.stought@ice.dhs.gov and/or leave her a call at 202-732-2544.

Action #2 – Release ALL non-violent offenders, including detained immigrants.

Continue reading “Tues 3/24: “Cruel and unusual” – Law enforcement and punishment in a pandemic.”

Wed. 3/11: #FlattenTheCurve – Apparently it’s all up to us!

We love that the wonderful volunteers who join us at voter registration tables, at census education events, at voter outreach efforts like postcard and letter writing, at citizenship fairs and at polling stations, become trusted messengers of factual information about civic matters for their friends and family. With that in mind, we’re sharing this report by Julie McMurry, MPH, an assistant professor of rare disease genetics at Oregon State University in the College of Public Health, because it covers every base we can think of. 

Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Continue reading “Wed. 3/11: #FlattenTheCurve – Apparently it’s all up to us!”