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An Opportunity to Strategize Together: How Do We Stop Trump?

By paulgibson51 on January 9, 2017 • ( 0 )

At Our Town Hall this Saturday, we will meet in groups to have deep conversations about the variety of strategies we can best utilize to stop Trump. We will also discuss developing a strong base in Santa Fe to advance a progressive agenda locally. This blog also includes good news on the impact of our advocacy in NM. Progressives have awoken. Read on.

ACT-4-TODAY: Send an email to at least five Santa Fe friends and invite them to come to two events (more details below): 1) Saturday’s Town Hall for a discussion of how we resist the Trump Regime effectively, and 2) Moral Monday, (Not Our) President’s Day, at noon on Feb 20 at the Roundhouse. By bringing friends, you will help form an activist alliance that will nourish your involvement and deepen your friendships. To RSVP and get more info for the Town Hall Click here. Then when your friends say, “sure let’s do this,” ask them to RSVP, too. To RSVP and get more info for Moral Monday Click here.

SHARE-4-TODAY: Paste this message into a FB post: “Today I invited five friends to a Retake Our Democracy Town Hall Meeting on Sat, Feb 11 3:30-5:30 at the Center for Progress & Justice. Retake Our Democracy is a tremendous organization and I encourage you to check them out. They keep you informed about all that is going on related to resisting Trump and advancing a progressive agenda in Santa Fe: retakeourdemocracy.org.”

The share part of this action is almost as important as reaching out to your friends. It will prod your followers to think in terms of what more they could do, it will introduce them to Retake, and who knows, they may decide to join you.

Roundhouse Hearing Schedule. Click here to get an updated schedule of hearings at the Roundhouse today, tomorrow and next week.

Good News in NM. Yesterday, progressives won race after race in school board elections across the state, with wins for progressives or defeats for Tea Party candidates in Albuquerque, Anthony, Gallup, Los Alamos, Las Cruces, and Santa Fe. In Santa Fe, George Gamble won a seat on the SFCC board, and Kate Noble took a seat on the Santa Fe Public School Board. In addition to stellar results, turnout was in some cases double the turnout two years ago, perhaps a sign of an awakening giant. Click here for a full report on school board elections from our friends at Progress Now NM.

Papen Withdraws SB 182. Sen. Papen should have been embarrassed to have tried to advance this entirely disingenuous effort to clothe a fire sale of 6,600 acres of public land to the fossil fuel industry as an early childhood initiative. But Retake Our Democracy and a slew of progressive lobbying organizations did their job and she withdrew it yesterday, stating that she had been barraged with emails and calls. Yesterday, I reported on how GOP reps in the US Senate and House are receiving a similar barrage. I have a hunch: Trump is so clinically obtuse, he will continue to incite a movement that will start to feel a sense of power, even as we are totally without actual legislative power in Washington, and soon we will see an erosion of support from his GOP cronies. I think this begins during (Not Our) President’s Day weekend with members of Congress facing irate constituents back home and returning to Washington with a different view of reality.

Retake Our Democracy on KSFR: 11am Saturdays. I recorded the second Retake Our Democracy show yesterday afternoon, sitting down with three really wonderful Dreamers: Hector Alvedano, Jared Estrada, and Christian Farfan. They described their families’ migration to the US, their lives here, and the heartrending challenges they face. You read about this in the news, but to hear it straight from those living under such a veil of anxiety really motivates you to want to ensure that the Sanctuary resolution is passed. On the Feb. 18, I will be interviewing Glenn Schiffbauer, Green Chamber of Commerce, and Kim Shanahan, Santa Fe Homebuilders Assoc, to discuss the economic impact that would result if our local immigrants are swept up in a mass deportation effort. Make sure your voice is heard by calling your City Council members. Click here for speaking points and the dates and times of two key City Council meetings coming soon. One of those meetings is Monday, Feb. 13 at 7pm before the Finance Committee. Making your presence felt at these meetings will be very important, and bringing a few friends with you will make it more fun. Don’t be lulled into thinking this is a slam dunk; there are Councilors still on the fence.

Town Hall, Sat., Feb 11. Click here to RSVP. This is a really important meeting. We are now four months into the Trump reality and just under one month into the Trump presidency. We are starting to see the terrain, the dynamics, and our capacities. Every day, new national organizations emerge with different strategies, most of which make more sense for people living in state’s with GOP representatives. Click here for a great Nation summary of the new initiatives that have emerged, including SwingLeft, which we have adopted, and several of which we have developed our home town model. Reviewing this article will be a good primer for informed participation in our discussion at the Town Hall, where we will gather in groups and sort out what feels right for us. With the exception of encouraging supporters to embrace SwingLeft and reach out to friends and family in other states, Retake has put most of its energy into State and local efforts where we have more clout. But anyone paying attention to the news can’t feel comfortable with a local-only strategy when in Washington it isn’t the swamp that is being drained, it is our core values. There must be ways that together we can develop a NM-style national strategy. Join us and let’s figure it out together. Click here to RSVP. And please, please, please, bring friends.

Moral Monday, Feb 20, noon-2pm. RSVP here. Our Moral Monday, is scheduled for (Not Our) President’s Day at the Roundhouse. We have an extraordinary event planned. Aside from a stellar line up of music still being finalized, we have an array of speakers committed to helping us Forge New Alliances and Find a New Common Moral Ground. Speakers include: Marcela Diaz, Somos Un Pueblo Unido; Viki Harrison, Common Cause; Mariel Nanasi, New Energy Economy; Bianca Sopoci-Belknap, Earth Care; Ernest Kavanaugh, Santa Fe Community College Student Leadership Coordinator; Hector Alvedano and Christian Farfan, local Dreamers. The event will be kicked off by internationally recognized poet, Lyla June Johnstone, a descendent of Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and co-founder of The Taos Peace and Reconciliation Council, You will hear a constant theme: our issues may differ, but the values and moral base are the same. We need to exit our silos and embrace our common ground. Environmentalists must march with election reformers; our dreamers must march with our Muslims; and all of us must learn from the indigenous cultures whose values we have ignored for centuries.

After hearing from these inspiring voices, we stage a Die-In. We ask all of you to come wearing black, and at the end of the speeches we will lie down and symbolically die. Logistics are being worked out as to whether we die in the rotunda or outside by the stage, but as we lie down, there will be chalk lines of our bodies, crime scene tape, and other artistic reinforcement of our message: policy and budget decisions based on dollars and cents make no moral sense and translate into death. There is little difference between the plans being hatched in Washington by King Donald and those insisted upon by our Queen Susana. Refusing to reverse loopholes that have long benefited corporations and the 1% in NM — which then requires more cuts in rape crisis funding, SNAP food programs, and healthcare services — will cost lives, and is the local equivalent of Trump’s efforts to eliminate the ACA, VAWA, and cut Social Security and Medicare. They both lead to death. We will symbolize that death by dying together because the marriage of King Donald and Queen Susana has so severely constrained the options that this is our reality. It is essential that we directly tie Gov. Martinez’s policies with those of Donald Trump because they both represent the same morally bankrupt, me-first, America-first, Corporations-first value structure. And we refuse to accept that. So join us on Monday, Feb. 20. The Die-In will last 5 minutes, and then we’ll be resurrected by some great music. RSVP here for our Moral Monday event.

If you would like to be involved in creating art and visual imagery for the event, Bobbe Besold, artist extraordinaire, is willing to help with the preparation of the imagery, but we need another artist or two and some eager volunteers to help with this . We also need someone on the day of event to help distribute and collect these signs, as Bobbe will be out of town. Reply to this post if you are interested.

The Third Reconstruction by Reverend Barber. A Pot Luck Book Group, March 9, 5:30pm-7:30pm. Reverend William Barber’s book has inspired so much of the thinking behind Retake Our Democracy, plus it is an inspiring tale of how a small number of people can galvanize a community, and in his case, a state and nation. So much to learn in such a short, easy read — 135 pages. Click here for a summary of Rev. Barber’s 14-point fusion politics plan. And Click here to RSVP. It will be a great discussion. Call Collected Works–(505) 988-4226–today to order as it may take a week, but it will only take a day or so to read. Bring something nutritious and yummy that serves 3-4 folks. I highly encourage you to invite 2-3 friends to read the book and join the discussion. This event is about forming community, and that community will be stronger, richer, and more sustainable if you bring friends. We will follow up on this with a book by Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land, an excellent investigation into the lives of people most of us rarely touch, the deep rural south. At our Mar. 9 meeting we will have the group pick a book for the May meeting. So come with suggestions.