At Home with ICE

70 days till we have our say!

Stay active (if you are not on vacation!) and let’s all charge ahead recharged!

Check in with Indivisible tomorrow night.

Thanks to our friend Laura Conwesser:

Make sure that you are registered to vote by checking HERE. You can also get information about deadlines for registering, early voting and applying for mail ballots at the same link. You can verify your polling location; often it is different for early voting than it is for election day. When you have all your information, share the link with everyone you know: text, email, social media, all of the above.

If you have candidates you think are in particularly tight races and might be underfunded, send them a donation. Lots of little donations add up. If you are able to knock on doors, there are many groups participating in huge Get Out The Vote efforts. You can find ones near you HERE.Click on the canvassing tab if that is what you want to do, or phone banks if that works better for you. Both are incredibly effective. If you prefer to write to voters, that’s great, too. You can do that from the comfort of your own home. I have mentioned Vote Forward before, but the need for letter writers increases as we get closer to election time. You can also write postcards with the excellent Center for Common Ground. The National Education Association will send you 25 postcards, already stamped, to get you started. You can find out more about that as well as information about larger efforts HERE. It is all important. Please pick your lane and do something.

For those of you who are up for an amazing experience, Common Power sends teams all over the country to knock on doors for candidates. They have set up their schedule for the Fall. I am planning to go on several of these trips and have done many in the past. I highly recommend volunteering with them. If you would like to hear more about my experiences, please feel free to reach out to me. They are also looking for donations to underwrite canvassers who need some assistance with the expenses. For those of you looking for a shorter-term commitment, you will find canvasses near you at

https://www.mobilize.us/

.

In support of voter rights, there will be a March on Washington next Friday August 28, sponsored by The National Action Network, the Drum Major Institute and the Rev. Al Sharpton. It is being supported by the King Family, Indivisible and many other organizations. Speakers announced to date include Bernie Sanders and AOC. You can find out more HERE.

Trump has made it clear that he will not play by the rules in this, or any other, election. That is not how he rolls. Therefore, we need to be ready for whatever he throws at us. Indivisible is putting together an election protection program which seems to be focused on educating the electorate. That can certainly be very helpful. Another group is putting together election observers in 47 states. You can find out more about that HERE and sign up to participate HERE. Local Democratic Parties are setting up election monitors. A friend of mine is training people in Iowa. If you are interested, let me know. In NYC, Hands Off is planning to do election observing. More about that in the ICE protection section. Keep reading. I would assume that the ACLU and NAACP will announce programs soon. Rest assured that the legal minds are preparing to counteract election shenanigans. Mike Lindell lost his primary by 11 percentage points and still says the voting was rigged. As of yesterday, Trump was defeated in 23 court cases where he sued to have access to voter rolls. He won 0. Support the ACLU, Democracy Docket​, Democracy Defenders and all the other groups that are preparing the lawsuits to protect our vote.

Speaking of the ACLU, they are asking us to sign a petition to stop the increasing use of FLOCK and other license plate readers. Everywhere you go, you are being watched. It is completely unacceptable. This is Big Brother on steroids.

Another ACLU request concerns a related issue concerning the invasion of our privacy. When Congress is back in session, they will be voting on the Combatting Organized Retail Crime Act (CORCA). It is being sold to the public as a fight against shoplifting, but it is very much in the same vein as FLOCK. It is tool that is being used to spy on all of us in our day to day lives, specifically when shopping. Please sign this petition, too.

Opposition to data centers is growing around the country. Current numbers say that around 75% of Americans don’t want them built in their towns. New York State has already passed a moratorium on building new data centers. Pennsylvania has legislation ready for a vote. Please ask your governor and state legislatures to enact a three year moratorium on new large data centers HERE.

One of the many nightmare scenarios being financed with the obscene amounts of money that Congress has allocated for ICE is the use of gloves that give electric shocks. ICE announced plans last week to spend up to $20 million to buy electric-shock gloves for its agents. The G.L.O.V.E., or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter by Compliant Technologies, allows agents to “deliver a pain stimulus” to an individual to “gain compliance.” Despite being touted as “nonlethal,” the gloves pose significant danger; according to the company’s own manual, the shocks “may cause or contribute to death or serious injury.” The NAACP and LULAC (the oldest Latino rights organization in American) are asking us to contact our Senators and HOUSE MEMBER and tell them to do everything possible to prevent this inhuman torture. You can also write to your representatives HERE. Why not do both! You can also write to your representatives about the horrible abuses being done at detention centers run by GEO Group and CORE Civic.

Indivisible is asking us all to delete our DoorDash accounts. For years, DoorDash has turned a blind eye to ICE’s harassment of their immigrant delivery workers. Now they are actively supporting a bill (H.R. 9720) that takes away local control over taxes and fees in Washington DC. DoorDash doesn’t want local control given to such a liberal city which is attempting to put a 20 cents surcharge that will go to support under fed families in DC.

If you have any funds invested at Fidelity, Schwab or Vanguard, please take this opportunity to tell them that you are very unhappy about their blocking customers from directing donor-advised fund grants to SPLC, a member of the Coalition on Human Needs, cutting off lawful donations based solely on criminal allegations that have never been tested in court. HERE

With the blessing of the Supreme Court, Trump has ended Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians. The impact on these communities is huge. The State Department has a Level 4 DO NOT TRAVEL to Haiti advisory on their website. Haitians who fled horrific conditions and have lived here for years are now being rounded up in preparation for deportation to a country we acknowledge is unsafe. The first deportation flight to Haiti landed in Port au Prince earlier today. We are living in the upside down. Those who are not being detained yet are unable to continue to work; their work permits were contingent on their TPS. They have no way to feed their families or pay their rent. SEIU Local 1199 has started a fund to give some financial help to healthcare workers who are no longer able to care for their patients. If you have the ability to contribute, you can do that HERE. There is a bill that has already passed the House to reinstate TPS.This bill will come up soon in the Senate. Please call your Senators and tell them to support S.4814. If you live in NY State, you can also send a letter to Schumer and Gillibrand HERE.

If you live in the NYC area, you may already be aware of the increased presence of ICE on our streets. Corona, Queens and Inwood in Upper Manhattan have been hit particularly hard. It will likely get worse, so now is the time for us to all stay alert and connected. Hands Off NY has set up a system of group chats so that we can all be informed when ICE is nearby. This may sound alarmist and insane, but remember what happened in Minneapolis. Local organizing like this prevented ICE’s damage from even worse than it was. Save the ICE reporting hotline to your phone 229-304-8720. Please call that number if you see anything that looks suspicious. The easiest format for reporting anything is SALUTE which is explained further HERE. For those of you who want even more information about how to keep our neighbors safe, you can get it from New York Immigration Coalition.

Amazingly, the Democratic National Committee actually voted to support ending ICE. Sadly, many of our elected Democratic representatives are not yet ready to say that, including the leaders of the Dems in the House and the Senate. Please write to your representatives now and urge them to take the actions that the party as a whole supports.

In the past, I have suggested leaving comments at Regulations.gov concerning proposed rule changes. There are two important ones to act on now. The first concerns a move by DHS to change the way some asylum seekers apply. For those who are able to file affirmatively through USCIS, the process is non-adversarial. They don’t appear in a courtroom with a judge and a prosecutor trying to find holes in their story. It is a much simpler interview. DHS is now trying to move more of those people to what is called a defensive application at EOIR or immigration court, which is far more demeaning and under the Trump regime has a much higher percentage of asylum denials. Please enter your comments HERE.

The other comments are regarding proposed changes to the Head Start program. Check HERE for a full explanation of what is planned and how to comment. Head Start has helped young children across the country for more than 60 years and should be allowed to continue.

If you watch PBS television or listen to public radio, you have surely heard their pleas for donations. Government funding for public media has been decimated. There are many actions you can take in addition to the usual donations to get at least some of these cuts restored. HERE

I am going to close this out today with a quote from Toni Morrison in an interview with Charlie Rose. “If you are only tall because somebody’s on their knees, then you have a serious problem.” If you want to see it in a slightly fuller context, and in Morrison’s own glorious voice, YouTube.

Thank you all,

Laura