7-4-2022 Newsletter

 

Image from the Brennan Center for Justice On this July 4, we are as sad, scared, and angry as you are as we ponder the state of our country. This edition briefly highlights aspects of our fragile democracy and how we can strengthen it. Each of us has an essential role to get out the vote to defeat right-wing extremist ballot measures and candidates. Our democracy is at stake. Please stay in the fight and do what you can to repair our country. -- INCO Leadership Team:  Bebe Michel, Carmen Hammersmith, Cheryl Conway, Eric Halperin, Kathleen Macdonald, Ken Potter, Laurie Caplan, Mary Beth Cottle OUR PATH FORWARD "This doesn’t just mean “vote harder.” It means contesting every level of power, all the time, including local elections, judicial selections and administrative rule-making. It means drawing people into a community that will make continuous struggle seem rewarding rather than depleting." --Michelle Goldberg, "Lessons From the Terrible Triumph of the Anti-Abortion Movement," New York Times, June 27, 2022 "In a world that had been dominated by a small class of rich men for so long that most people simply accepted that they should be forever tied to their status at birth, a group of upstart legislators on the edges of a continent declared that no man was born better than any other. "America was founded on the radical idea that all men are created equal." -- Savor the rest of this heartfelt reminder of our country's birth and purpose by historian Heather Cox Richardson.  CALL TO ELECT JAMIE MCLEOD-SKINNER AND OTHER WESTERN PROGRESSIVES  Indivisible Deep Canvassing Training and Phonebank Thursday, July 7, 2022   •   5pm-8pm PT, on Zoom SIGN UP HERE. We'll call voters to support Jamie McLeod-Skinner (OR-05), Katie Porter (CA-47), Mike Levin (CA-49), and Mark Kelly (AZ-Sen) Deep canvassing is a proven method for persuading and moving voters to action, even across lines of ideological difference. For this phonebank, we will be talking to voters about abortion access. We must connect voters' support for legal abortion with the need to vote for Democrats who will fight to restore our federally guaranteed right to abortion. Hosted by “The Fight for Body Autonomy and More” local Facebook group.   THE RADICAL ACTIVIST SUPREME COURT  "In the one term Trump’s three justices have been on the court, they have decimated the legal landscape under which we have lived for generations, slashing power from the federal government, where Congress represents the majority, and returning it to states, where a Republican minority can impose its will. Thanks to the skewing of our electoral system, those states are now poised to take control of our federal government permanently."  -- Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, June 30, 2022 “(T)he court sets us further down a perilous path in forcing states to entangle themselves with religion, with all of our rights hanging in the balance.” -- Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissent after SCOTUS decision, quoted in New York Times, June 27, 2022 “Vast areas of the law, established over the course of decades, [have been] washed away by a court over a few months.” Stern recaps the damage done in the first full term of the Court’s reactionary super-majority:     •  The constitutional right to abortion: gone. •  States’ ability to limit guns in public: gone. •  Tribal sovereignty against state intrusion: gone. •  Effective constraints around separation of church and state: gone. •  The ban on prayer in public schools: gone. •  Effective enforcement of Miranda warnings: gone. •  The ability to sue violent border agents: gone. •  The Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases at power plants: gone.'" -- Mark Joseph Stern, Slate; quoted by Robert Hubbell, "We have made it through the worst," July 1, 2022 Cartoon by Peter Kuper, NewYorker.com, July 1, 2022 THE NEARLY SUCCESSFUL COUP Why we must help Democrats win more Congressional seats in November "If the Republicans had a majority in the House, there would be no committee (investigating January 6). The majority of elected officials in that party are not only eager to sweep this insurrection under the rug, they still pay fealty to the would-be dictator who fomented it. We have had far too much silence. Far too much complicity. Far too many lies." -- Dan Rather, "Steady" newsletter, June 28, 2022  "Cassidy Hutchison, senior advisor to Mark Meadows, testified before the January 6th Committee on Tuesday. Her testimony provided sufficient evidence to indict Trump for seditious conspiracy and made clear that Trump is an emotionally unstable person not fit to occupy the presidency. I urge you watch her testimony in its entirety (starting at the 5:30 mark): Select Committee | Testimony of Cassidy Hutchison. A transcript of Cassidy Hutchison’s testimony is here: NPR, Transcript of the sixth Jan. 6 committee hearing." -- Robert Hubbell, "The Dam Breaks," newsletter, June 29, 2022 The House Committee investigating Trump's and the GOP's attacks on democracy will reconvene their hearings in July. The committee continues to receive and study new information about the roles of Trump, government officials, and other Republicans in their ongoing attempted coup. For excellent perspectives about the Supreme Court, the attempted coup, and more, read the newsletters from Robert Hubbell and Heather Cox Richardson on Substack. LEGALIZED MISOGYNY “Every woman has been deemed lesser. Every woman has had her citizenship degraded,”  -- Moira Donegan quoted in Molly Jong-Fast, "Roe Rage," The Atlantic, June 27, 2024 "We have entered an era not of unsafe abortion but of widespread state surveillance and criminalization—of pregnant women, certainly, but also of doctors and pharmacists and clinic staffers and volunteers and friends and family members, of anyone who comes into meaningful contact with a pregnancy that does not end in a healthy birth.... In the states where abortion has been or will soon be banned, any pregnancy loss past an early cutoff can now potentially be investigated as a crime." -- Jia Tolentino, "We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe. We’re Going Somewhere Worse," The New Yorker, July 4, 2022 "A radical minority of Americans wants to make an example of women who have sex outside marriage, women who compete with men in the workplace, women who are independent and who cannot be controlled. That’s part of why birth control is likely their next target. That’s why the same movement that claims to care about babies is so uninterested in the health and lives of the people who bring them into this world, and so hostile to the policies that would support those children and their families after they are born." -- Mara Gay, "The Republican War on Sex," New York Times, July 2, 2022 A recent New York Times article provides resources and strategies for post-Roe resistance. If you can't access this article, contact incoregon@gmail.com for an email copy of the article.   JULY 2, 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2. Celebrating that bill, he said, "“The purpose of the law is simple. It does not restrict the freedom of any American, so long as he respects the rights of others. It does not give special treatment to any citizen…. “Its purpose is not to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions—divisions which have lasted all too long. Its purpose is national, not regional. Its purpose is to promote a more abiding commitment to freedom, a more constant pursuit of justice, and a deeper respect for human dignity.” WRITE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY The key to Democratic victories in 2020 elections is increasing voter turnout. Please sign up to get out the vote for pro-democracy candidates. For prepped or blank postcards, stamps, or information, contact incoregon@gmail.com. WRITE TO VOTERS • Postcards To Voters:  Handwritten postcards sent to Democrats to get out the vote. PTV provides scripts. Sign up at the website or at join@TonyTheDemocrat.org.  • Vote Forward:  Personalized letters sent to under-represented and/or minority communities to get out the vote. You print the letters and add a few sentences.  • Postcards To Swing States:  Progressive Turnout Project provides the postcards, scripts and addresses to rally Democrats to vote. WRITE AN LTE Write a Letter to the Editor (LTE) - Write a few sentences or more, up to 250 words. Send to editor@dailyastorian.com, along with your name, address, and phone. WRITE TO YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS How will your Members of Congress know what you want if you don't tell them? Send a postcard, write an email through their websites. Even better - call and speak to a Congressional staffer, or leave a message. Here's contact information for Senators Wyden and Merkley, Congresswoman Bonamici, and for other elected officials.. HAPPENINGS  Thursday, July 14,  INCO South County Community Group meeting, via Zoom, 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm. Please RSVP to Kathleenannmacdonald@yahoo.com by Wednesday, July 13 for your Zoom link. This group meets monthly on the second Thursday. Saturday, July 16,  INCO Astoria/North County Community Group meeting, via Zoom, 11 a.m. - noon. ZOOM LINK: If you haven't attended an INCO Astoria/North County meeting before, contact incoregon@gmail.com by July 15 to get the Zoom link. This group meets monthly on the third Saturday. INCO Write to Voters (WTV) - on hiatus until September 9. INSIGHTS “As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” -- William O. Douglas (ed.), The Douglas Letters: Selections from the Private Papers of Justice William O. Douglas Comments, news, and photos to INCO at incoregon@gmail.com.  Resources and other information at www.incoregon.org and www.indivisible.org. Encourage others to sign up for the INCO newsletter at our website or here. Look for the INCO column in Hipfish Monthly. We're on Facebook, too. INCO Weekly Newsletter July 4, 2022