This blog includes a link to an article in The Nation that describes what may be coming (not pretty); at our Saturday Town Hall we will discuss how to put pressure on your representatives who are heading home next weekend; now more than ever, we need to reach out to our friends in other states; Microaction.us is a national website listing Retake among other major national initiatives.
Today, there are two Act-4-TODAY Actions. One takes less than 5 minutes and can increase the safety of our Santa Fe immigrant neighbors. Do you have something better to do with those five minutes?
ACT-4-TODAY: Protect our immigrant neighbors. Expand Santa Fe’s Sanctuary program that right now has gaping holes. Holes that can shred families. Click here to find speaking points, a summary of the resolution, and phone and email addresses for your City Councilors. Contact both of them right now by phone and by email. Use the speaking points to help you frame your personal message and tell your Councilor that the restaurant food they eat is likely prepared by an immigrant, the house in which they live was likely built by an immigrant, the hotel room in which their friends stay was likely cleaned by an immigrant. This will take you five minutes. Please do it now.
SHARE-4-TODAY: Paste this message into a FB post: “Today I called and emailed both my City Councilors telling them to vote to expand Sanctuary policies in Santa Fe. FB friends, please use the link below to get speaking points, background on the resolution, and phone and email contacts for all City Councilor members. Please share this post and link: https://retakeourdemocracy.org/somos-un-pueblo-unido-call-to-action/.
I repeat this action because it appears not many of you did this:
ACT-4-TODAY: Contact five Santa Fe friends and invite them 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 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. Jono Manson, John Kurzweg, and Consuelo Luz are among the confirmed performers, and more speakers have been added, including from the ACLU and Masjid Al Rahma Mosque. It is (Not Our) President’s Day, so likely you have the day off. Join us.
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. RetakeOurDemocracy.org 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. Use this link to find out more about the Town Hall and to RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/413879812281083/
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. This morning some critical tax reform bills will be discussed and voted on in the House Taxation and Revenue Committee. These hearings will last all morning and there is also one this afternoon. If you’ve got some time, go down and show your support for bills that would increase taxes on the wealthy and provide relief to low-income families. Make a habit of checking this link daily as committees are where the action is and schedules change quickly. We do our best to keep up. Thanks to Pat Bartels in ABQ for daily updates!
Sunday, Feb 12, 2-4pm, 1420 Cerrillos Rd. Santa Fe. Come to make signs and other artwork we will use at the “die-in” planned for our Moral Monday on Feb 20 at noon. Supplies provided. Create card board tombstones and posters and bring friends.
New Open House Activism Event, Mon., Feb. 13, 4 – 7 p.m. Join with others writing letters, making calls, sending emails, and planning other actions to advocate for NM’s Health Security Act, at the home of Margaret Lubalin, 2957 Viaje Pavo Real, in Santa Fe. Drop by for a half-hour, an hour, however long works for you. Bring your kids. Get them involved. The Health Security Act supplies coverage regardless of age, income, employment, or health status. It’s a plan that will actually save New Mexico hundreds of millions of dollars. Click here for more details and to RSVP.
The Events & Opportunities page has been update with more actions, events and opportunities, click here and check it out.
Before you dive in to the very sobering article below, strengthen yourself with the reality that a national movement is developing such as this country has not seen since the Civil Rights movement. As Rev. Barber has pointed out: the success of a movement should not be measured by legislative defeats, but by the swelling growth of the movement. Each day we grow. Recall Wednesday’s post, The GOP is Getting Seriously Rattled, and consider that next week at this time GOP representatives will be facing angry Town Halls throughout the Country. They know Nov. 6, 2018 will be a day of reckoning, so keep calling and emailing friends and family in other states using this link. Whatever else you do today, reach out to friends afar and get them active, give them tools. Reach out to friends nearby and ask them to come to our Town Hall. Our only hope of forestalling what is described in the article below is to come together as a community and take action.
If you want evidence that Retake Our Democracy is having an impact, I got an email yesterday from someone in Taos who has now organized 85 people into a group using Retake’s tools, blog, and strategies. On a national level, Retake is listed among 25 national organizations on microaction.us with a link to our Personal Action Toolkit, among some pretty big name organizations: 350.org, PDA, ACLU, and Indivisible. Microaction.us is a great site with information on a wide variety of national issues.
The Nation magazine offers a sobering perspective, pointing out that “despite the sound and the fury of the last two weeks, almost nothing has yet actually happened.” Muslim refugee ban aside, this is largely true. And that ban has been reversed by the Court, pointing to one strategy, a legal one, that might well be our most important tool of resistance.
The Nation goes on to note that “few of his cabinet appointments are truly functional yet. That set of billionaires and multimillionaires are either barely confirmed or not yet so. They haven’t even begun to preside over departments filled with staffs that instantly seem to be in chaos, living in fear, or moving into a mood of resistance.”
“Or put another way, if you think the last two weeks were news, just wait for the wealthiest cabinet in our history to settle in, a true crew of predatory capitalists, including a commerce secretary nicknamed ‘the king of bankruptcy’ for his skills in buying up wrecked companies at staggering profits; a Treasury secretary dubbed the “foreclosure king” of California for evicting thousands of homeowners (including active-duty military families) from distressed properties he and his partners picked up in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown; and the head of the State Department who only recently led ExxonMobil in its global depredations. As a crew, they and their compatriots are primed to either dismantle the agencies they’ll run or shred their missions. That includes likely head of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt, a man long in the pay of big energy, who seems determined to reduce the EPA to a place that protects us from nothing; and a fast-food king who, as the new labor secretary, is against the minimum wage and would love to replace workers with machines.” Click here for the full article.
This is the challenge we face. But the alternative to resistance is acquiescence, and acquiescence means ceding our future to these bastards. Don’t do it. Call friends and bring them to our Town Hall on Saturday. Together we will talk about how best we can resist this regime and how we can make Santa Fe a sanctuary city and a city of justice. One of our supporters, Bryant Lane Avery, offered up some sage advice about remaining calm and focused amidst the Trump frenzy. Click here and breathe.
In Solidarity,
Paul & Roxanne
Categories: Actions, Activist Organizations, Healthcare, Healthcare coverage, Immigrant Rights, Sanctuary, State Budget
Let me go a little further down the emotional path. We all have them and they are central to our essential being. They can be used to our detriment or to our betterment. Yesterday I purchased a new American flag (made in America) that I will proudly display. We are the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave and it is time that we show it. For too long we have allowed the bullies to claim to be the true Patriots. Their courage being demonstrated by behaving as brutes backed up by guns, god and beer. We have reacted by ceding to them symbols of freedom and courage because they turned them into symbols of imperial power and intimidation. Let’s steel ourselves for the hard work ahead and support each other and seek strength from our unity. Trump is relying on fear and hate …. don’t give in to fear or despair or violence (as hard as that may be for some of us). Yes we want the best strategy that our diverse minds can deliver but those minds will always be driven by our emotions. Let’s call upon the best of our emotions, including courage, to guide us.
Here is an article by a climate scientist that talks about the need for scientists to use their emotions and get out of their comfort zones of dry facts. It too talks about the need for courage in stepping out to deal with crises.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/science/to-my-fellow-climate-scientists-be-human-be-brave-tell-the-truth-20170207?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20170210
Thanks again to Paul and Roxanne for the continued holistic approach to social change we are making by coming together
I never use the title president and he has declared himself king and am not using that either
I never expected him to last four years
Best to use the power of my thoughts to an advantage instead of accepting what is expected
And we must take out the global corporate coup whose focus is to further enslave and rape the planet. So it is not about one guy.
Its about us all going deep into our comfy or not so.comfy constructs about money and management of resources and make a stand
All human rights are at stake, life on planet Earth is at stake and she will speak out if we don’t.