Chop Wood, Carry Water 3/26
Wednesday mini-edition
Hi, all, happy Wednesday.
Wednesdays are my day off, so here are just a couple of things to keep you going until tomorrow’s newsletter. Remember, you can find all kinds of call scripts at 5 Calls!
Activate America just launched a postcard campaign into New York’s 21st District, where incumbent Republican Elise Stefanik will be resigning to serve in the Trump Administration. Interested? Sign up HERE.
Special elections have notoriously low turnout, and that’s precisely when our collective efforts have the greatest impact.
My friends at the Visibility Brigade have created an addition to their Visibility Brigade Toolkit. It’s called “Operation Activate,” and it focuses on activating commuters and others in places where people congregate. They hope it can be used as a template across the country. I love the What You Can Do Right Now document they’ve created! Check it out!
Speaking of amplification, Jim Ryan of Terrible Swift Sword posted a great cartoon that “tries to explain just some of the ways that Elon Musk, and the other 813 billionaires who live in the US are making life so sh*tty for the other 340 million of us.” It’s great, and he’s made it easily printable so we can post copies of it around our neighborhoods. The cartoon is at the top of this newsletter and the printable version is here.
Need a lift? Please try to attend Indivisible’s weekly activism call. It’s simply the best. From them:
Process the news with Indivisible co-founders Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg this Thursday at 3pm ET/12pm PT. Every Thursday at 3pm, we take a step back to absorb the news of the past week, draw inspiration from the work Indivisibles and allies are doing all across the country, and talk about how we fight back. Register here.
Finally, an action request from a friend:
The Trump administration is proposing a new rule that would remove all trans health care from the type of required care from insurance plans on health care exchanges as well as Medicare and Medicaid, effectively banning the care from being included in these plans.
This on its own will be devastating to many trans people but will have downstream impacts of health insurance companies dropping trans care from private/company plans, impacting the whole market.
Much of the trans health care I receive is still not covered by insurance and it has been a huge financial hardship. Having none of it covered would be an immense cost that most trans people cannot afford, myself included.
The rule is under a public comment period until April 11th, so there is still time to pressure them into not implementing the rule.
Here is an article about the change and here is a link to the proposed rule and a place to leave public comments. Please do!OK, that’s enough for this “day off.” Easy does it, but do it, folks! Thanks! Talk tomorrow.
Two special elections in PA won by Democrats yesterday. One in Allegheny County that hasn't voted for a Dem since the 1980s! Maybe a sign that the tide is turning.
As part of his attack on America, Donald Trump has made a mockery of job experience when picking his cabinet and national security leadership. The classified data, casually exposed on Signal, is the result.
In normal times, heads would role. In times when loyalty to the leader is paramount, we the people need to stop the madness. Many of us will be joining protest marches on April 5. We need to convert these into a national strike ASAP.