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Making it happen: Week 18
ICG volunteers Pennie Burns, Linda Chamberlain, Tom Hons, Mary Peters, and Kathy Pickering wrote and funded or stamped 200 SwingLeft voter engagement letters this week. Woohoo! Gold stars on collars!
To keep making it happen, WE NEED HELP on funding for stamps. The cost for our 10,000 letter project is $6500, including printing, envelopes, and (the big one!) stamps. Please DONATE if you can.
APPLY NOW: ICG Steering Committee
ICG is looking to add to our leadership team. Interested to learn more about what the Steering Committee does? Get in touch and we can discuss it. Interested in applying? Apply to ICGO@ICGOregon.org, and please tell us:
1. What would you like to see our Indivisible group focus on this year?
2. What issues or [types of] actions would you like to champion?
3. What resistance/advocacy actions you’ve taken in the last year have been most meaningful to you?
Policing: the road to reform
Protests continue around the country against police brutality and the white supremacy that underpins it. As if the murder of unarmed blacks were not bad enough, police in many cities have attacked protesters with tear gas, pepper spray, flash-bangs, rubber bullets, clubs, and so on. Americans are demanding police reform.
Last week the House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020, essentially along party lines. Greg Walden voted against it. The bill now heads to the Senate, where Mitch McConnell has already promised its demise.
Republicans in the Senate instead proposed a Police Reform Bill that, among other things,
- doesn’t ban police chokeholds,
- doesn’t create accountability for police misconduct, and
- does contribute to the extreme militarization of our police forces.
Sen. Ron Wyden delivered a powerful floor speech against the Republican bill.
And how about in Hood River? Fortunately we are not in the news for egregious police brutality, but many citizens have expressed an interest in learning more about what our police do, what their policies and procedures are, and how citizens feel about their personal safety and about the police. In their last two meetings, City Council has discussed the need for a review of these areas, including outreach to hear from citizens, and is making a plan to move forward with a review.
ICG’s upcoming quarterly meeting, to be held by Zoom on July 14 (see calendar above) will be a forum to discuss ideas, interests, and concerns regarding policing in both Hood River city and county, and in the wider Gorge area, and to determine how we might participate in the review and any needed changes. Please join us for this important topic!
Inconceivable & Treasonous
Last Thursday the NYT and WSJ wrote that Russian operatives had offered bounties on US soldiers during the Afghanistan peace talks, and that the administration had been briefed on this development back in March and had chosen not to respond to the information. The Trump administration denied that Trump had been briefed. Ned Price, a national security expert who worked at the CIA for eleven years and who left rather than work for Trump, was asked if it’s possible that intelligence officials knew that Russia was paying militants to target US and allied troops and they chose not to tell the president, vice president, or acting Director of National Intelligence. His answer: “That’s virtually inconceivable.” Also virtually treasonous.
It turns out that Trump got a written briefing in February, and the topic was discussed by the White House’s National Security Council at an interagency meeting in late March. The AP now reports that “top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans.” The Trump administration spent this entire period cozying up to Russia, willfully ignoring the situation.
If you are feeling overwhelmed, distressed, angry, !#@wtf?!%?!*!, that is understandable. More will unfold.
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We’re all-in for CHANGE in 2020. Can you help fund our SwingLeft letter-writing project to register/engage voters in the 12 “Super States?" It will run through October and cost over $4000 (for postage, printing, supplies). Thanks for considering!
