Today’s post includes a guide to effective Roundhouse lobbying with guides to how the tax and revenue system works, how to contact your legislator, & how to track bills that are important to you. Also included are updates on actions, including another trip to the City Council to support Somos Un Pueblo Unido’s Sanctuary resolution. This post is essential if you want to be active and effective.

Retake Our Democracy is going to play an active role in citizen advocacy (lobbying) at the Roundhouse this session. An Action Team has been meeting to organize and coordinate this work and has developed a strategy through which all of you can be active and have your voice heard. Click here to find a comprehensive guide to effective lobbying, including links to guides for effective citizen advocacy, contact information for NM legislators, guides on the tax and revenue system, a summary of New Mexico Progressive Coalition’s ten legislative priorities, and a summary of how Retake Our Democracy will be lobbying in the 2017 session. This page is not something to digest in one sitting, but rather should be a resource for your ongoing activism. Save the url and revisit it as you become active. The page will be updated periodically.

The single most effective action you can take to advance progressive legislation in NM is to reach out to friends you have in other parts of the state.The most effective lobbying is when constituents reach out to their own legislator and come armed with specific information supporting bills. Let’s face it, Santa Fe is pretty progressive and most all of our legislators are reliable advocates for progressive legislation. We need to find another way to have an impact. So I am issuing a very specific challenge:

• Make a list of all of your friends who live in other parts of the state — especially important are those friends who live in rural or conservative parts of the state;
• Make a habit of forwarding our blog to these friends and ask them to sign up to get the blog and get active. To be effective at this, you may need to make a few calls to reinforce the messages in your email.
• Be strategic about this work. Initially target friends and family who are progressive and who you think may be willing to get active and/or who may have friends in their community who they could activate.

Retake is developing a community organizing toolkit and protocol that will help a small group of individuals grow an activist hub in their community and begin to take action in their neighborhood, city, and state. We have individuals signed up for our blog from 14 counties of the state. We will use this as a starting point, but to escalate this process we need you to reach out to friends and family. So please, make outreach to your friends a part of your activist routine. It is the only way we expand our base. Retake is also seeking volunteers to do outreach to individuals from other counties who have signed up to get active. We want to help them implement strategies from a new Retake Our Democracy Organizer’s Guide that is almost finished. It will help people in these communities grow their own activist hub. If we are to have an impact on the Roundhouse, we need to cultivate activism in rural NM and cities not-Albuquerque or Santa Fe. Reply to this email if you want to get involved.

A Personal Expression of Your/Our Values. I thought I’d share this wonderful yard sign that a volunteer developed in ABQ and was selling at the NM Progressive Coalition’s excellent organizing meeting yesterday. It is a personal statement of our values. Nicely done, I think. Is there a graphic artist out there who could replicate this kind of sign for Retake Our Democracy?

Read on for a series of meeting and action announcements for the coming week.  

Action Team Mtgs. This Week. A reminder that our Non-Violent Direct Action Team and Research Action Team are both meeting in separate rooms at 1420 Cerrillos on Tue. Jan 15 at 5:30. All are encouraged to attend, but if this is your first meeting, please arrive 15 minutes early so you can be briefed and be ready to contribute.

Stand for the Affordable Care Act

I am no fan of ACA, feeling that it fails to stand up to pharma and continues to force all of us to pay more for our coverage so that CEOs can make millions. But ACA did benefit millions of Americans.

Sunday, Jan. 15: Democratic leaders are calling for a “day of action” on Jan. 15 to mobilize grassroots opposition across the country to Republican plans to “end Medicare as we know it and throw our health care system into chaos.” Click here for information about Jan. 15 events in Belen at 11 am,  in Albuquerque at 1 pm, and in Santa Fe at 2 pm. Click here for information on this national effort.

Friday, Jan 20, 6pm-7:45pm: UNM’s Domenici Center for Health Sciences Education. What is Medicare for all? An Evidence-Based Presentation on Single Payer and the Future of US Healthcare will be presented by Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH and David Himmelstein, MD, Professors of Public Health at CUNY School of Public Health and Lecturers in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Go to Single Payer Workshop for details, precise location, and how to get more information.

Rally to Protect Greater Chaco from Fracking!

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s plans to auction off the Greater Chaco region for fracking. With Chaco Canyon at its heart, the Greater Chaco region of northwestern New Mexico is irreplaceable. The Bureau of Land Management has been opening the door for the oil and gas industry to frack closer and closer to this culturally vital landscape. On January 18, the agency plans on auctioning off yet more lands for fracking.

Together with our Indigenous allies, we’re standing up to say enough is enough. If you have time, join us afterwards at the New Mexico State Legislative Session opening to call on our public officials to stand up for Greater Chaco.

WHAT: Call on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to cancel plans to auction off Greater Chaco lands for fracking

WHEN: Tuesday, January 17, 2017, 10:00 – 11:00 AM

WHERE:  Santa Fe, New Mexico, Bureau of Land Management State Office, 301 Dinosaur Trail Road

Click here for more information.

Women’s March on Washington – Santa Fe Style

January 21, 2017, 11:00 am – 2:00 pm. Bataan Building (northside), 400 Don Gaspar Ave, Santa Fe, Begin on the North Side of the Bataan Bldg on W. De Vargas between Galisteo and Don Gaspar. March to the Roundhouse for a series of speeches. See route at left. Almost 2,000 folks have RSVP’d. Show solidarity. Be there. Retake Our Democracy is a co-sponsor. To sign up and get more information click here.

Please respond to this email if you can volunteer for any of the following:

• Circulate in the crowd outside the Roundhouse, distribute flyers and collect sign-ups—we could use at least 5 people to do this;
• Staff a table in the rotunda from 8am-10am, 10am-12pm, 12pm-2pm, or 2pm-4pm.

Santa Fe Sanctuary Resolution to be heard by City Council Committees. Voted on Jan 25

Read this important resolution HERE. Please call or email your City Councilors to ask them to co-sponsor. Send Councilors Villareal and Maestas your thanks for working with Somos Un Pueblo Unido and others to introduce this critical measure to protect our community. Come out on the 25th to show your support. Retake Our Democracy is a proud signatory in support of this resolution and we encourage all of you to contact your City Council reps and attend on the 25th.

• Finance Committee 1/17/17
• Public Safety Committee 1/24/17
• City Council 1/25/17

Categories: Actions, Activist Organizations, Boycotts, Civil Disobedience, Justice, State Budget, State Elections

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