Today’s post is short, with a request for donations for children living in fear, poverty and poor health in Palestine & then a pivot to an update on the state of the national election with encouragement for you to do whatever you can these last 12 days.
As Bad As It Is Here, It Is Far Worse in Palestine
But You Can Help
This is personal for me. I lived in Israel for almost two years back in the 70s. There is so much I love and admire about that nation. But there is so much of which I am ashamed, its treatment of Palestine being at the top of the list. We here in the US can’t exactly turn our backs, not just on what the Israelis government is doing to Palestine, but what we Americans are enabling them to do through our uncritical support and billions in aid.
- In the Gaza Strip, Israeli military operations in 2008, 2012 and 2014 have blighted the lives of thousands of children.
- In the 2014 conflict alone, 232 schools were damaged and 29 schools were totally destroyed.
- An estimated 24,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed by Israeli authorities since 1967.
- In the 2014 Israeli military operation on the Gaza Strip, nearly 1000 children were permanently disabled.
Today, we offer you a chance to provide aid to those who are suffering from the actions of the Israeli and US governments by contributing to the most vulnerable of those living in Palestine, those children who were born into this oppression and have lived their entire lives imprisoned by it.
Think back on your childhood; now imagine coming home to find your home demolished; now imagine going to school and finding that it has also been destroyed. This is daily life in Palestine. Today you have the opportunity to provide direct assistance to those children…..children. And your support will be matched dollar for dollar.
Join Santa Fe for Justice in Palestine in responding to the crisis in Gaza. Generous supporters will DOUBLE your donation.
Your emergency contribution to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) will support families and health workers confronting the COVID-19 outbreak under occupation and siege. Your donation will help MECA and their partners:
- Distribute urgently-needed food parcels to the most vulnerable families
- Protect people from Coronavirus with prevention supplies and information
- Prepare to treat people who may become infected
- Provide home visits and medicine for people with serious chronic illnesses
- & more to meet the urgent needs in Gaza
In response members of the Santa Feans for Justice in Palestine have donated and procured a matching grant to MECA, which will double all contributions to MECA up to $10,000.00 by Nov. 3rd. MECA has put up a special page to solicit donations for family food packages and sanitation kits as well as to support of local clinics, Food packages last up to two weeks for large families-calories counted per person to assure enough nourishment. Could you help with a donation to MECA, which will be doubled because of the matching grant. The video below is only 2 minutes and outlines the work MECA performs.
Click here to make a contribution.
Your $25 becomes $50, Your $50 becomes $100
12 Days. An Update on Where We Stand &
A Suggestion for Motivating You to Do More
First, the graphic below gives you a good idea of where we stand as of 12 days before the election. The table below looks promising but note that if Biden only wins all the states in which polling has him up by 6+%, he will fall short and Trump will have another four years. On the positive side, if Biden wins all of the states in which polls currently have him winning by 3+% he will earn a 100 electoral vote margin, a landslide. But there is not much margin for error here. With twelve days left, it is imperative that we keep working and even redouble our efforts. Below the table I will let you know what I did to motivate me to a higher gear.
I was thinking about what I would write today. I’ve spent months cajoling you to donate and make calls. How do you keep folks engaged? I knew I wanted to lay out candidly the status of the election and so the table above. I figured you didn’t need to hear any more about how awful our President is and how badly we need to defeat him. But I thought that perhaps it might help if I asked you to make this race a bit more personal. So I took a moment to do this one little exercise.
I wrote down five very personal things that I can’t do right now because of Trump or COVID: seeing our kids; seeing the grandchild I’ve seen but once and that Roxanne has still never seen; going to the Plaza with hundreds of others and dancing with joy; getting on a plane and going somewhere, anywhere; having a joyous dinner with a dozen friends and weeping with joy.
Then I wrote down the things our nation can’t do under Trump and those things it hasn’t done even before Trump: a Green New Deal; massively taxing the rich; reparations and reconciliation with our indigenous communities and our commuities of color; creating a genuine path to citizenship; universal healthcare; addressing Covid by following best public health practices.
I spent about 2 minutes making the lists and with more time, would likely adjust them, but the exercise made the point. We get none of this if on Nov 3, Trump prevails and we get none of it for at least four years. I thought about the last four years and sat in a kind of stupor wondering how I could possibly endure more….and I am not a person of color; I am not a person living in poverty or remotely economically vulnerable; and I do not live in fear if a state trooper pulls me over because of tailight being out. So many live in that world.
And there is 12 days left. Many of you are fully engaged, committing dollars and time to an extraordinary degree, to you I give so much thanks. Last night we had our alternate week Transformation Study Group Zoom meeting and one person after another spoke of thier texting, calling, and contributing. It was truly inspiring. These folks have largely set aside their daily routines and made the electon that routine. With 12 days remaining, is it possible more of you could do the same?
Do the exercise above, if you think it will help. And to those of you have not done much at all figuring thousands of others are engaged and active, it is your turn. Please, get in the game. Do your own list and then use our GOTV strategy to make damn sure that we have no regrets on Nov. 4.
We can’t know the impact of what we do, but we have 12 days.. There is no one to get this done but us folks. Links below.
- Election Strategy. Includes a brief description with links to the strategies below.
- GOTV Strategy. Simple strategy for reaching out to a couple dozen friends to ensure they have a plan to vote and to encourage them to reach out to a couple dozen of their friends to do the same thing;
- NM Legislative Races. Provides the priority races and contact info for how to help get some great candidates become legislators….most importantly, Neomi Martinez Parra….Here is a place where your involvement, just yours alone, could turn a close election. State legislative elections can be won or lost by a few dozen votes. Last night I heard from one of our Transformation Study Group members how he texts out scores of texts each day. Another spoke of making calls for Neomi, with half of the calls being answered and leading to good conversations.
- National Races. With links to organizations who can direct you to swing states or key Senate races. They all need help.
Time to step up, my friends. There is just too much at stake. And maybe it will help if you just make it personal. Let’s do this.
And then on Nov 5, let’s celebrate together.
Election Zoom De-Brief, Thursday, Nov 5, 6:30-8pm with Neomi Martinez Parra, Harold Pope, Pam Cordova, Carrie Hamblen and a handful of other great Dems. If only there were a way to sit together and watch the election results. Thankfully, national and swing state polls point to a decided win by Biden, but 2016 memories linger and so at 5pm Nov 3, I expect many of us will be pacing nervously with the TV reporting on turnout and Trump voter-suppression efforts. I actually can’t even begin to imagine how anxious I will be….best not to think about it, until it is upon us.
Using our webinar zoom platform, we can “elevate” up to 100 of you at a time, to be visible and to speak and we will figure out way to have lots of commentary from you. This will not be a scripted interview format like prior zooms. We’ll offer opening remarks, let our featured Dems have a minute or two to thank you for your support and exult in their victories and then allow banter, stories and thoughts on what’s next.
In solidarity and hope….and eager anticipation,
Paul & Roxanne
Categories: Election, Political Reform & National Politics
Thanks, Paul. Making this personal as well as public is painful but also motivating I’ve been making calls and texting since September but last week just had to pause and breathe. That exercise you shared has helped re-motivate.
I’ve been learning more and more about U.S. foreign policy, thanks to motivation from Veterans For Peace. To the list of things our nation has not done, I’d like to add: anything remotely resembling democracy-promoting, human-welfare centered foreign policy.
Wouldn’t it be great if we became the only empire in world history to VOLUNTARILY step down from hegemonic dominance, for the sake of all life?