Weekly Check In January 6

[tanaqui]

A Happy New Year to all our members and a big welcome to the new Congress!

The shutdown continues -- sympathies to all who are affected -- and Cheetolini continues with his tantrum, but there are signs that Republican Senators who are up for re-election in 2020 are vulnerable to pressure to pass bills coming from the House that don't include money for the Wall. (Thom Tillis (NC) has joined Cory Gardner (CO) and Susan Collins (ME) in calling for an end to the shutdown.) So keep up those calls if you can!

We still have plenty of other ongoing actions. Fannishly, creator sign-ups for Fandom Trumps Hate open today and just before Christmas rydra_wong called for us to "Support your local muckrakers". Plus:

Protecting the Mueller investigation
Encourage your senators to follow Flake's lead

Other Actions
Charity comic anthology to aid survivors of the Grenfell tower fire
Links on Voting Rights Movement
Donate to Honor Dr. Blasley as an Educator
Boycotting Broadcasters: for the latest actions, try JuddLegum, who often collates and tracks which advertisers are supporting channels like Fox and broadcasters like Tucker Carlson (among tweets about other political issues).

Housekeeping (the usual stuff)
Reminder that we now have a Friending Meme and a (locked) post where you can connect with others who live in the same area. We hope you find both of these posts useful!

We also have a suggestion post if there’s a topic that you’d like to see discussed but would like to ask the mods to look into. This can be anything from general information, or a how-to-do-a-thing, or something you may want to discuss as a community. Folks are welcome to post directly to the comm as always, but if you’re not comfortable/don’t have spoons, we can help too.

As we don't always get the time to pull things out of the suggestions post into their own separate posts, it may be worth checking every week (or tracking the post) to see if there's any new information you're interested in.

Also if you need help with tags, PM redbird, who is our tag guru. Both tassosss and I are very grateful for the help.

So, what have you all been up to in the last week or are planning to get involved in next week?

Poll #21075 The Week

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3

View Respondents

This week, I...

View Answers

called my one senator
0 (0.0%)

called my other senator
0 (0.0%)

called my representative
0 (0.0%)

called my governor
0 (0.0%)

called my state reps
1 (33.3%)

sent a postcard/email/letter/fax
1 (33.3%)

attended a town hall
0 (0.0%)

donated money to a cause
1 (33.3%)

attended an in-person activist group
1 (33.3%)

participated in phone/online training
0 (0.0%)

went to a protest
0 (0.0%)

signed up for alerts
0 (0.0%)

worked for a campaign
0 (0.0%)

did textbanking/phonebanking
0 (0.0%)

took care of myself
0 (0.0%)

not a US citizen but worked in solidarity in my own community
0 (0.0%)

did something else
1 (33.3%)

committed to action in the coming week
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[redbird]

I sent a tweet to my incoming Congressmember before she had an office phone number set up; now that she has one I've added it to my phone's contacts lists.

[teaotter]

If anyone is looking around for something to do, Postcards to Voters is still going strong! We've written for the Virginia state senate election on January 8th, and there are special elections coming up all year -- and that's before the Virginia state elections in November!

Right now, we're writing to get Florida Democrats registered for vote by mail. Voting by mail generally increases turnout dramatically, so even with a small % of signature problems it's definitely a net win.

You can go to postcardstovoters.org to check it out, or join by emailing Join@TonytheDemocrat.org.

[sara]

I spent yesterday at a training my union put on about how to lobby your legislators, and wrote up their tips here.