From WeAreHereToStay.org
September Meeting
El Dorado Progressives General Meeting
Sunday, September 10, 2017, 3 to 4:30 p.m.
El Dorado County Fairgrounds
100 Placerville Drive, Placerville, CA 95667
In the Organ Room
Come early to sign in, sign various petitions--and to snack and chat.
Healthcare Workgroup
The Healthcare Workgroup will be having its monthly meeting on Monday, September 11th at 7:00 p.m. at the El Dorado County Office of Education, 6767 Green Valley Road at Missouri Flat, Placerville, Room B2. You're invited to come 6:30 to share a snack and conversation before the meeting. We hope you'll come find out what we're planning to educate our community about regarding access to healthcare, what is at stake, and what our options are.
Our next Healthcare Rally will be Friday, September 15th in Downtown Placerville, from 5:30-6:30 p.m., meeting in the parking lot by Cozmic Cafe on Main Street. All are invited to help show our community we care about healthcare and want it improved, not taken away.
The Reproductive Healthcare Subgroup will meet September 18th at 6:30 p.m. in the Raley's Placerville (166 Placerville Drive) meeting room to discuss how to distribute teen wallet cards on reproductive services in our area.
We STILL Have a Dream
We had an impressive turnout at the August 28 candlelight vigil in solidarity with Charlottesville and Heather Heyer. A very long line of sign-carrying marchers stretched from Benham Park to the Courthouse on Placerville’s Main Street. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a Dream” speech was read aloud on its 54th anniversary. Songs were sung. Candles were lit. The drivers of passing cars honked in support. It all began with de-escalation training and discussion at the park beforehand. All around it was a successful showing and effort. Congrats to EDP!
Boycott of Driscoll's Berries: Workers Solidarity Workgroup project
The Workers Solidarity Network Workgroup has started a campaign in support of the Driscoll's Berries Boycott, in solidarity with Al Rojas of Sacramento LCLAA, and organizer/activist Fatima Garcia. We will have petitions at the EDP General Meeting on September 10. Please sign! Our next workgroup meeting will be at Totem Coffee, 312 Main Street, Placerville on September 24th, at 4pm. We will be finalizing plans to take our campaign into the stores of El Dorado County. We welcome all to participate!
Help Pass AB249! Money Out of Politics Workgroup
By now, all ED Progressives should have heard of the California Disclose Act, AB249 (formerly AB14). What you may not understand is how important passage of this bill is to holding clean elections in 2018. If passed, it goes into effect January 1, 2018 and will be in place for the 2018 elections. Affecting only ballot measures, it requires that the true funders over $50,000 of political ads will be disclosed on those ads, in legible font. Remember in 2016 we had no less than 17 ballot measures for voters to figure out? And 95% of the time, whoever spends the most money, wins. Is this what we call democracy?
We have until September 15 for the bill to pass. It now faces a vote on the full Senate floor and then goes back to the Assembly for a concurrence vote. It requires a two-thirds majority vote--very hard to achieve. After that, Governor Brown has until October 15 to approve.
AB249 has support of over 300 organizations and leaders, including California Democratic Party, and the Justice, Green, and Peace and Freedom parties. Also, League of Women Voters, Common Cause, and other “good government” organizations.
Who isn’t supporting it? The California Republican Party has not stepped up for transparency and disclosure, unfortunately. But several free-thinking individual Republican representatives are considering supporting the bill.
Though it seems a no-brainer (who wants to go on record to continue deceiving and confusing voters??), this bill will pass ONLY WITH THE LOUD SUPPORT OF GRASSROOTS CITIZENS. Over 90,000 Californians have already signed petitions in support (including over 45,000 paper petitions).
What can EDP folks do in the next one-and-a-half weeks to get this vital bill passed?
- Go to www.yesfairelections.org and sign the AB249 petition, even if you have signed it before. (This triggers an email to your representatives).
- While at the website, sign up to volunteer (consider training on CallFire to make phonebanking calls to Clean Money supporters in key districts).
- Go to facebook.com/California Disclose Act and sign the AB249 petition, even if you have signed it before.
- Call your Assemblymember/Senator and demand he support AB249. While all three ED County representatives are Republican, Assemblyman Kiley (District 6) is open-minded and considering supporting the bill. Assemblyman Bigelow (District 5) and Senator Gaines (District 1) just need to know their constituents are demanding transparency.
Please join the small but mighty EDP Money Out of Politics activists in passing AB249!
EDP Members: Our County, State, and Nation Need Your Energy and Your Ideas
If you’ve ever said to yourself, “El Dorado Progressives could do great things!” or “Gee, why don’t these people...” then YOU are a person we need to hear from. We need you to share your ideas, your dreams, your hopes and your energy. We will be conducting a short series of meetings over the next few weeks to brainstorm with people just like you who are eager to see change, but not able to abandon their family or career to pursue. Together, we can move mountains...and political goalposts!
There has been an amazing explosion of membership in El Dorado Progressives. In a mere ten months, we’ve grown from two to over 1,800 Facebook like-minded adults! Our founder, Sean Frame, has been the principal sparkplug that ignited this fire, and he has picked a few people to form a steering committee. But, these few leaders are overwhelmed by the potential we represent. We’re living in a world full of opportunities to make a major and distinct difference but there are so many opportunities we’re overwhelmed. WE NEED YOU to share your dreams and aspirations with us, to help us focus on what we should be doing FIRST, what we should be putting MORE of our effort into, and what we should just leave to others to achieve.
Here’s how it will work:
1) Identify yourself as a thinker and/or a doer. Send a simple email to EDPbrains@gmail.com and give us name, phone number, and best time(s) to call.
2) Someone will call and ask you a few questions, and perhaps recommend a face-to-face meeting. We’re looking for important nuggets of ideas (aka “partly-baked ideas”) that we can collaborate on to evolve.
3) We’ll start a series of meetings, where we will all explore the most exciting, productive, and engaging ideas together, look at the pros and cons of each, and build a list of principles that we will hone into action items.
4) We’ll publish those action items for all the membership to see; begin the process of building the resources needed to implement those ideas; and forge our EDP into the best model of success. This will be our road map to the future. It will be public, it will engage as many members as possible in the implementation and execution, and your best ideas will emerge into the light of day.
Be part of the EDP “revolution.” Send a short message to EDPbrains@gmail.com and let us call you back. Let’s start our baby steps toward rebuilding our democracy together!
Enrollment for 2018 Affordable Care Act
Enrollment for 2018 Affordable Care Act (ACA / Obamacare) starts November 1and ends December 15. Trump has cut the ADVERTISING funds to announce when people can enroll.
Dates verified here: www.healthcare.gov/quick-guide/dates-and-deadlines
Cuts verified here: trump-administration-cuts-funding-for-health-care-sign-ups
EDP Stands with Standing Rock #noDAPL
On August 26 in Nevada City, our own Nick Kalbach interviewed a prominent leader in the Standing Rock #noDAPL effort. Chase Iron Eyes' daughter was one of the youth who began what is now an international movement against extractive technologies. Chase speaks eloquently, himself threatened with five years' imprisonment, in 7 minutes of Chase Iron Eyes.
If you were or are moved by Standing Rock Opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, please sign the petition to free the 863 Water Protectors at the General Meeting on September 10th or online. They are innocent of these trumped-up charges. "Trumped-up" indeed. Native Americans’ and their allies' bold efforts to stop pipelines is worth our support, especially since renewables can replace fossil fuels.
The seven minutes of clarity between Chase and Nick bring us up to date as to why Standing Rock #noDAPL is significant for the world. When a private paramilitary company joins with a governmental agency, they can call protesters "terrorists." The heinous North Dakota's police actions against unarmed water protectors resulted in the 863 arrests that the lakotalaw.org petition is designed to overturn. Please sign and ask your personal network to sign, too.