Take Action

Help Lead Indivisible Austin’s GOTV Work

We are ramping up our voter engagement and mobilization push for the 2018 election and we’re looking for a number of volunteers who can help lead this exciting phase of our work! Everyone knows how important the 2018 elections are, with so many key challenges at stake. Indivisible Austin is developing our midterm field program in conjunction with Indivisible national’s statewide plan, and will use their voter outreach tools to organize canvassing, phone banking, texting, and more.

We’re looking for folks who have the following interests, skills and abilities:

• Commitment to Indivisible values: we defend democracy, resist authoritarianism, hold our elected officials accountable, and fight back against the administration’s horror-show policies especially in the areas of healthcare, immigration, and gun violence prevention
• Enthusiasm to change the face of power in Texas and in Congress
• Flexibility, both in terms of time and attitude
• Past experience leading canvassing, phone banking, and other activities is an awesome bonus!
• GOTV work is most likely to take place in the evenings and on the weekends. Occasional weekday/daytime availability is helpful but not required.

Interested? Let us know by emailing our Treasurer Tony Weber at tony@indivisibleaustin.com

Two more ways to #SaveSCOTUS

1. Come to the rally on Tuesday between 11 and 2. Join us at the intersection of 8th & San Jacinto to amplify the movement to #SaveSCOTUS from Trump’s extremist nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Yes, our senators are named John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. But there’s good reason to gather: history shows that mass constituent pushback is the only way to stop a Supreme Court nominee, and gathering together this Tuesday will facilitate many actions—like contacting friends and family in other states—to keep Austin plugged into the #SaveSCOTUS movement. In preparation for the rally we need your help too—email shane@indivisibleaustin.com if you can bring supplies or volunteer:
   • Supplies: poster board/cardboard, water/drinks, megahorns, postcards/letters, pens and markers
   • Volunteer roles: chant leader (directly-impacted people strongly preferred); voter registration; video/photography; social media; performers—such as singing, improv/acting, wearing a costume, creating an art piece there; possible translation services (Spanish, ASL, etc.)
2. Phone bank with voters in Alaska and Maine. Here’s a great way to contact voters in states that have Senators not named John Cornyn or Ted Cruz. In other words, potentially movable senators like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. (Shifts appear to be closed for now, but go ahead and add your name; this fight is far from over.)

Tell Your MoCs: It is unacceptable that Trump’s policy is still separating families

Trump’s Executive order failed to end the zero tolerance policy and family separations continue, The number of family detention centers on the border is increasing dramatically. Any action taken by Congress to ameliorate this crisis must be grounded in established child welfare principles and must ensure children are not further exposed to traumatic situations that jeopardize their health, safety and wellbeing.

For an examination of how Trump’s policies have some of the worst impacts on women and girls, read this take in the TribTalk from one of our board members.

Policy Recommendations for all MoCs:

1. Support the Keep Families Together Act (S.3036 / H.R. 6135), which prohibits government agencies and contractors from removing immigrant children from their parents. All Democratic Senators and nearly all Democratic House Representatives (including Lloyd Doggett and Beto O’Rourke) have co-sponsored.
2. Institute True Alternatives to Detention. Family prisons endanger children’s health and safety and cost millions of dollars to maintain. Congress should reinstitute the cost-effective Family Case Management Program which allowed families to be freed with supervision and ensured 100% of families attended their hearings in court.
3. End Family Separations, Reunite Families, End the Zero Tolerance Policy. Congress should focus on pressuring the administration to end its unnecessary family separation practices and zero tolerance policy and devoting resources to helping parents reunite with their children.
4. Expand Access To Counsel. Congress should expand access to counsel for children and their parents to ensure they have the opportunity to present their asylum claims and seek relief from persecution and life-threatening violence.
5. Preserve Current Protections for Children and Due Process in Asylum Law. No reform should weaken the current asylum laws in the United States, weaken protections for unaccompanied immigrant children, expand immigration detention, limit due process or otherwise make it more difficult for families to establish they have a valid claim for protection.

BONUS: Help reunify children separated from their families at the border by donating to pay for airfare, hotel, and personal items for children and parents released from detention

Events

• Monday, Jul. 16, 6:30-9 PM, Wildflower Church (1314 E Oltorf St) – Undoing White Supremacy Austin holds a combined general body and campaign planning meeting focused on Austin Policy Department and Association accountability (Facebook event)
• Tuesday, Jul. 17, 11 AM, Sen. Ted Cruz’s Austin Office (300 E 8th St) – #SaveSCOTUS Rally and Office Visit (Facebook event)
• Sunday, Jul. 22, 5:30-7:30 PM, Journey of Faith United Methodist Church (7301 CR 110, Round Rock) – Shut Down Hutto effort holds biweekly campaign meeting (Facebook event)

Action Spotlight: London Hates Trump Too

Congress Critter of the Week

Rep. Lamar Smith continues to fail to meet even the lowest of standards this week. He spent some of his time last week making the despicable argument that the Bible doesn’t argue on behalf of immigrants, on the pages of Brietbart of all places. I won’t link to that website, but you can see the words Smith strung together here. Rather than address the fact that our government is tearing children from their parents and putting them in cages, he spends the entire article tilting at the strawman of “amnesty,” quibbling of the specific definition of words, and of course narrowly citing Romans 13: 1-7, the favorite passage of Nazi sympathizers, antebellum slave owners, proponents of apartheid, and British loyalists during the American Revolution. I’d say it was a new low, but I don’t want to bend down that far.

 

Your Moment of Zen

Last week we featured sled dogs—but IATX can’t choose a favorite animal. This week, enjoy a very talented feline musician:

Funding the Fight

You made it! You’re all the way at the bottom of the email, but if you look back at the top you’ll see something very important: Help Lead Indivisible Austin’s GOTV Work.

We have to knock on doors, call, text, mail, organize and build community throughout Central Texas to do our part to bring some accountability and decency to DC and to our own capitol here in Austin.

You know how important this is. Be a part of the solution by supporting our efforts NOW so we can bring change in November.