Daily/Weekly Action Items - let's do something about it!

Politics and religion
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A smart and talented and very politically-motivated young friend of mine has been actively collecting a volunteer contact list and sending out a weekly email with action items.

If you’re anything like me, you’re looking for more answers to the question, “What Can I Do?” so I thought I would share the email here with my Qt3 friends each week.

Today’s email:

Within the next 10 days, Michigan and Wisconsin will begin sending out absentee ballots. North Carolina has already sent out 600,000 absentee ballots yesterday, which means… we are officially IN the 2020 election. This is really happening!

As always, if you know anybody else who might be interested in getting weekly small, easy calls to action to make a difference and help us win this election, send me their info or send them this LINK to fill out their details.

This week’s call to action is another fundraising effort where every dollar will go a long way. In 2018, Democrats flipped 12 (!!!) State House seats in Texas. This year, we only need to flip 9 more seats to flip the chamber blue, and Democrats are working hard to make that happen. Texas is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country, so gaining control of the State House will mean Democrats get a seat at the table for 2021 redistricting, which can effectively nullify Republican gerrymandering in Texas for the next decade.

This Fund will split funds between ten Democratic Texas State House candidates who are running in the closest races to flip GOP-held seats - these are all districts that Beto won in his 2018 Senate bid, so they are full of voters who are ready for change. Please consider matching my $20 donation - you can donate to the fund HERE.

If everyone on this mailing list donates $20, we can raise over $3,000 for these candidates - and in local state legislature and other down-ballot races, every dollar goes a long way!

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This is really well done. I’m already on a couple of similar mailing lists, but this one’s worthy too. In!

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Brilliant! Sent.

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Thank for the link. I’ve been meaning to donate to Texas state Dems, and this pushed me over the edge.

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This is a helpful thread, thanks!

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Here is this weeks’ email, subject heading “Eat, Pray, Defeat Fascism.” (lol)

Mail-in ballots are being sent out this week in 24 states, and have already been sent out in North Carolina - meaning half of the states in the country will be voting as of this week, including almost all of the key swing states. We are in the thick of it now, so now more than ever we really need to start ramping up our efforts to win this thing!

As always, if you know anybody else who might be interested in getting weekly small, easy calls to action to make a difference and help us win this election, send me their info or send them this LINK to fill out their details.

This week’s call to action is about community. Organizing is all about reach, and the easiest people to reach are those who are already in our personal networks and communities. This week, I want everyone to reach out to at least THREE contacts in their personal lives - friends, family, work colleagues, contacts in their phone, etc - and walk them through making a voting plan for themselves.

Try to focus on friends, family and contacts who live in swing states - and just to recap, that would be Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Ohio and Minnesota. And if you’re really feeling frisky, try to pick people who aren’t super involved in politics and who might not really be thinking much about the election just yet.

Feel free to use this Voter Guide to help them come up with a plan: confirming they’re registered to vote, requesting an absentee ballot, dropping it off in person, the works. Make sure they know exactly when and how they are planning to vote!

Thanks to everyone for taking part in this crucial work. Lots to be nervous about but it is efforts like this and people like you who are willing and interested in doing our part that makes me confident that we can win this thing.

Sounds reasonable enough and I’ll give it some thought, but this is a tough one for me.

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The latest weekly email. Chances are we all got a head-start and donated like crazy last night but here it is…

Folks… this one is rough. Just when we thought the stakes of this election and the next 45 days couldn’t be higher. The most important thing we have to keep in mind is… we mustn’t give in to despair and hopelessness. Authoritarians and fascists COUNT on cynicism, and a doom and gloom “it’s all over” attitude does nothing to help us defeat them. As AOC said on a livestream last night (which I recommend watching in its entirety): “I’m scared all the time. This moment and these moments are not about ignoring your fear… what you do with that fear, is that you look at that fear and you turn it into FUEL.”

The fight over the next 100 days (until the next Congress is seated on January 3rd) is going to be brutal, but there are a few paths forward here. Two Republican senators immediately went on the record to say they wouldn’t vote to appoint another Justice until the next President is inaugurated, meaning we just need two more to join them to block this. Democrats also have leverage in the form of upcoming budget negotiations - they can hold the budget hostage and shut down the government entirely if need be in order to prevent the Senate from confirming a new Justice. And the nuclear option… after we win the Senate and White House, vote to expand the Supreme Court to 11 seats and appoint two new liberal justices (the Constitution states that Congress has the power to determine the size of the court, and it has been changed in size 8 times over history before it landed on its current 9-judge lineup).

So in the meantime… it is imperative that we win back the Senate, with as wide a margin as possible. Democrats are in play in TWELVE Senate races this November (plus holding onto Doug Jones’ Alabama seat), and they are all winnable. Please consider matching my donation to the GET MITCH OR DIE TRYING FUND, which splits donations between these 13 races. Also, though it is tempting, please don’t bother donating to Amy McGrath’s campaign against Mitch McConnell - she is currently trailing behind Mitch by 12 points, and it is a waste of time and money to focus on an almost inevitably losing race. Let’s concentrate our efforts where we can win. Let’s DO this.

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Democrats deploying “the nuclear option” only to end up with a 6-5 Conservative majority where John Roberts gets to live out his wildest fantasies of appearing to America as the “reasonable swing Justice” is dumb as hell, and is also perfectly in keeping with 2020.

It says a lot about our current political discourse that even well-informed observers aren’t thinking through the most basic ramifications of their proposals.

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I agree that the specifics are debatable but I appreciate his primary message which is Do Not Give Up.

Fight the Good Fight!

Hope, Faith, Etc.

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If you are going to pack the court (err I mean establish a 21st Century Supreme Court to better represents the American people) You better make it at least 15 seats. So that if Breyer votes with the conservatives, you still have Kagan, Sotomeyer and the 6 new justices. making it an in 8-7

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I like you. Wanna meet my sister?

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Sure! is she single? I’m a former Republican, if we can convince working class folks that lowering the capital gains rate and eliminating the estate tax is good for them, then spinning court packing as a benefit is really a piece of cake.

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Here’s this week’s email…

Today, as I write this email, millions of Americans have already voted in the November election, with millions more yet to come. Early voting has commenced in about a quarter of states, with many more slated to join in the coming weeks. And signs are looking good for us in terms of Dems making up the lion’s share of early votes.

But despite all of that happening, millions more across America are unable to vote, due to myriad voter suppression tactics enacted by Republicans. One of the most egregious examples is in Florida , a key swing state that could end up determining the election outright. Florida counts its mail-in ballots really quickly and has a deadline to submit them all by Election Day, meaning that Florida will announce certified results ON election day itself. If Biden wins Florida outright… all of Trump’s games trying to steal the election by throwing away millions of mail-in ballots in other states won’t matter. He’ll have fully lost the electoral college right then and there, on election night.

So, we know why Florida is super important. Now let’s talk about voter suppression. The short version of the story here is: in 2018, a supermajority of Florida voters overwhelmingly voted YES on a ballot initiative to restore voting rights to former felons who served their time. This restored the right to vote to millions of Floridians - a whopping 5% of Florida’s electorate. But also in 2018, Florida voted in a Republican governor and secretary of state who have been doing everything in their power to overturn, undermine, or just outright ignore Amendment 4 and the will of the voters on this matter. Their latest successful attempt to block these citizens from voting is to institute a law that says that before their voting rights are restored under Amendment 4, they must first pay their outstanding court fees and fines, which can sometimes rack up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for individuals.

So what is our way around this? Well, to help pay off their fines, of course. The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition has been raising money to pay these court fees and fines so that millions of formerly incarcerated Floridians can rightfully re-gain the right to vote granted to them by their fellow Floridians in 2018. You can donate to the fund HERE - as always, I urge you all to match my $25 donation, but also encourage going above and beyond if you can!

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Missed a few weeks, the guy who writes these is a director of photography who is back on a professional film shoot in Ontario. Seems those are slowly resuming with Covid safety protocols in place. Anyway, here’s the latest email!

Folks… I don’t know about you, but it suddenly hit me the other day. Donald Trump the Republican party have weighed on our lives for nearly four years now. I think we all remember that night in November 2016 like it was just yesterday, and already starting to think, back then, about how much of a long slog it will be until we get an opportunity to vote them out and to take this country back – and how much pain and suffering and trauma would be inflicted upon this country in the meantime.

I think few people really imagined it would be quite as bad as it turned out to be… but here we are. intact, and fired up. Nearly 25 million people have ALREADY voted - an unprecedented, historic number that is going to make this election unlike anything we’ve ever seen in this country, in terms of civic participation and passion to vote. We don’t yet know what the results will be… but in the meantime, we still have a few opportunities to keep turning the tide.

As one of the last emails in this series, I wanted to take one final opportunity to highlight a couple of aspects of the election that are not getting quite as much attention as the Presidential and Senate races - and two funds where our donations can go a long way to making a big impact.

First - We have a unique and crucial opportunity to flip some key State Legislatures from red to blue. This is hyper important this cycle because in 2021, state legislatures will begin the redistricting process based on the 2020 census to re-draw congressional maps for the next 10 years. A huge Republican wave of state legislature flips in 2010 is what got us into this gerrymandering mess in the first place, and one of our most immediate ways out of it is to take back legislatures in Texas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania. You can donate to Vote Save America’s “F*ck Gerry (mandering)” fund HERE.

Second - Also flying WAY under the radar this year is the fact that we have a strong chance to EXPAND our already significant majority in the House of Representatives with a few key pick-up opportunities in various districts around the country. We also need to make sure we keep all of the seats we won in 2018 - and to that end, Vote Save America put together the House-Keeping fund, targeting 21 key House districts that they’ve identified as where donations would have the most impact. Donate to that fund HERE .

Alright! Home stretch, folks. Will be back next week with one final call to action - and then, the week after that… this’ll all be over (for now).

Thank you for all that you’ve been doing already, and let’s WIN. THIS. THING.

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Sharing another email…

Jesus this is really happening, isn’t it – SIX DAYS TILL ELECTION DAY

Hello again, friends,

I’m back in LA (filled out and dropped off my ballot first thing!) and it’s finally hit me - OH MY GOD this thing is in six days. Instead of freaking out, I’m channeling my energy into action, and want to encourage all of you to do the same.

First, I’m making calls through Vote Save America into Arizona tomorrow - please consider visiting THIS LINK and signing up for a phone or text banking shift in one of the six key battleground states. If you’re looking for help choosing, Florida and North Carolina are the tightest races at the moment and could probably use the biggest boost.

And if you’ve been reluctant to do a phone bank or text bank up until now… it’s never too late to start! It’s very much like going to the gym for the first time - daunting at first, but you get right into it as soon as you start. If anyone has any outstanding fears or anxiety about phone/text banking… reply to this email and I’ll happily walk you through it and give words of encouragement; it’s actually really gratifying and makes you feel accomplished and alleviates anxiety, I promise!

Additionally, I’ll be phone banking with this great progressive/leftist organization People’s Action this weekend - please consider JOINING ME for that as well.

Finally – and this is very important. The recommended deadline to send in mail-in ballots and still have them arrive on time due to the slowdown at USPS has passed, so for the next six days, please use your social media platforms or just reach out in your personal networks and make sure to encourage folks to DROP OFF their ballots in person. If they requested or automatically receive a mail-in ballot, those can be dropped off at drop boxes or polling places without waiting in line to vote in person!! We NEED to get this info out there to make sure every vote is counted.

Alright! Home stretch, folks… breathe, take it day by day, and let’s get this thing DONE.

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This week is going soooo slow.

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It is. But then maybe this week will mark the last few days of any sort of hope or optimism before we sink into the abyss so I guess I’ll try to enjoy (relatively speaking) the time?

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Here’s the final email! Some good ideas for last minute donations…

This is it. We’ve made it. Whatever happens on Tuesday, I hope we can all go into it feeling like we’ve done everything we can to ensure that we put a stop to the encroaching right-wing authoritarian fascism that has beset our country over the past four years, and has only escalated over the past few months. But I believe in all of the work that we and millions of other engaged volunteers around the country have done, and are continuing to do, over the next couple of days.

In the meantime, I wanted to reach out with ONE final email in case anybody was looking for a last minute donation opportunity that could really help put us over the edge in a few critical states. At this point, the most directly impactful monetary donations are to get out the vote initiatives, and there are two organizations doing incredible work that I just donated to, and encourage everyone to do the same:

  • Miami-Dade county in Florida is the key to a Biden victory there and there are a lot of outstanding votes to go get. Local organizers with Florida Watch are running a door-knocking campaign through Election Day. You can donate to it HERE .

  • Our Voice Our Vote Arizona is hosting “Party at the Polls” events in historically low-turnout communities of color during early voting and on Election Day in Arizona. These events will combine music, food, and free PPE giveaways, for the community. Additionally, people will be able to visit and cast their vote at the polling locations within walking distance from the party. You can contribute to these efforts HERE .

Let’s win this thing.

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Hold the phone! We’re not done yet!

I haven’t donated to the Georgia senate races yet… I was thinking of sending more money to Fair Fight, but the fund referenced below looks like a good one also.

Miss me? Hope everyone is still reeling from our historic victory earlier this month - and it was historic, as big a repudiation of an incumbent presidency as we’ve seen in 100 years. But like it or not, we still have work to do.

We retained control of the House - but control of the Senate remains up in the air, and will be decided by two runoffs for both of Georgia’s Senate seats that will take place on January 5th. This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime happenstance, and one that will have massive consequences regarding whether or not the Biden administration will have a partner in governance in Congress, or whether Mitch McConnell remains Senate majority leader and is able to block any and all legislation and sabotage the Biden admin before it even gets off the ground. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

But, we CAN win – because we just won Georgia in the presidential race. The voter base is there. We just need to get them to show up, one more time. I will share more resources and calls to action in the coming weeks, but for now, the most urgent task is to make sure the grassroots organizations on the ground in Georgia that have been organizing in the state for years and clinched us the presidential win have the resources they need to register new voters and pull it off again.

To that end, Vote Save America has organized a DONATION FUND that splits contributions between 14 amazing grassroots organizations that are going to be the key to winning these runoffs. As always, if you can, please consider matching my $25 donation (or exceeding it!).

Additionally, I will be writing letters this week to voters in Georgia through VOTE FORWARD , and welcome everyone here to adopt some voters in Georgia and write some letters in the coming weeks with me.

We can do this, folks. Now let’s finish the job.

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This is helpful, thanks!