|
ATTENTION: Caucus Meetings Will Be Conducted Remotely Until Further Notice
|
|
|
|
|
Election of the 2021-2023 Executive Committee
The election for the 2021-2023 Rhode Island Democratic Women's Caucus Executive Committee is now underway.
The voting period runs until Wednesday, February 24, at 5pm, ahead of our February General Meeting. The new Executive Committee will be introduced at the February General Meeting of the Caucus.
Your Ballot Has Been Sent to You Via Email
Voting members of the Women's Caucus will have received an email at 7:00pm on Thursday, February 12 from invitations@mail.electionbuddy.com with the subject heading "Vote now: Rhode Island Democratic Women's Caucus - 2021 Executive Committee Election."
If you did not receive an email with the ballot, please check outside of your Primary inbox tab in other tabs, such as "Promotions," "Updates," "Social," or "Forums" in Gmail, and check in your spam/junk folder. If you still cannot locate this email, contact Jessie Kingston at potterkingston@gmail.com for assistance.
If you didn't receive a ballot, and you believe you should have, we can add you. As a reminder, here are the criteria for Voting Members:
-
Woman/femme identifying person
-
Completed a full membership form
-
In the RI Board of Elections data as a Democrat
-
Registered as Women's Caucus member up to 48 hours before election began (Tue, 2/9)
Remaining Timeline for the Voting Process
- Feb 11 - Online ballots made available; email with link to ballot sent at 7pm (check your inboxes)
- Feb 24 - Ballots are due by 5pm
- Feb 25 - Women's Caucus February General Meeting--Election winners will be announced and introduced
Candidates for the Executive Committee
You can view the full list of candidates and see links to their applications at our website. If you missed the "Meet the Candidates Night" event, where candidates spoke to the Caucus for 5 minutes each, you can view that on our blog.
The Voting Process
Due to Covid19, we cannot come together to vote in person, as we have in the past. Instead we are using an online voting system called "Election Buddy." A brief tutorial on our online voting system is available at our blog.
As this is a brand new process for all involved, we ask for your patience as we employ this system for the first time. Thank you in advance!
Many Thanks to All Who Helped!!!
A HUGE thank you to the hard work of our "Ad-Hoc Nominations Committee for the Executive Committee Elections" and those who helped them: Jessie Kingston, Clara Read, Jeanine Calkin, Tanya Glover, and Linda Ujifusa (plus her son, Jamie--it takes a village!). We greatly appreciate all of your hard work.
And big shout out to our Membership Chair Joanne Dadamo who took on the MASSIVE project of vetting our very large contact and membership lists so we could input the official voting members into our online voting tool, Election Buddy. Thank you, Joanne!
|
|
|
OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION
|
|
|
|
|
Support for Raising the Minimum Wage
At our January General Meeting, we were joined by Georgia Hollister of the Rhode Island Working Families Party to discuss legislative efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15.
Recently, our Chair, Liz Gledhill, gave testimony in support of the current bills regarding raising the minimum wage. You can read her testimony at our blog.
Stay tuned for further action items on this issue as it makes it way through the RI Legislature!
|
|
|
|
Help Improve RI Legislative Rules
From The Womxn Project: "The House Rules committee is considering a package of bills aimed at improving and creating structures and systems to ensure accountability and a more open, accessible, and transparent process that allows for meaningful input from the public. It does not address all of our concerns, but would make incredible and important progress."
To help support this initiative, they ask that you to publicly state your support to show people are paying attention and that you want to see these changes made. TWP's Jocelyn Foye gave testimony to the rules committee on Jan 14. Look for more opportunities as the legislative season continues.
Read the Womxn Project's #TransparencyForChange open letter at: https://thewomxnproject.org/transparency-in-government/
|
|
|
|
Meeting Agenda Items - Suggestions Welcome
Do you have something you'd like to address at our next General Meeting? We are always open to adding topics of interest for the Caucus to our agenda. If you have something you want to share with the Caucus, let us know.
Please email RIDWomensCaucus@gmail.com with details, and we will look to make time in the meeting agenda for you.
|
|
|
|
Watch Our January General Meeting
Our January General Meeting featured Georgia Hollister from RI Working Families Party, Chief Judge and former State Senator Donna Nesselbush, Treasurer Seth Magaziner, and Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea.
We also passed our new bylaws and discussed the upcoming Women's Caucus Executive Committee Elections.
Watch the meeting at our blog or on our Facebook page. You can also read the meeting minutes.
|
|
|
|
Not Receiving Emails?
Some people have reported that they're not receiving our emails in their Inbox and only able to view our communications via the links we post to social media. Here are some actions you can take to ensure you receive our communications directly to your inbox:
- Add "ridwomenscaucus@gmail.com" to your email contacts to ensure delivery
- Search for "ridwomenscaucus@gmail.com" in your email search box, then drag any email from us into your Primary Inbox. This will "teach" your email carrier where to send our communications.
- Search for "ridwomenscaucus@gmail.com" in your spam folder and move any email from us there into your Inbox. You may also have to confirm that our email messages are not spam.
- If these steps do not work, please message us at RIDWomensCaucus@gmail.com to double check that we have the right information for you.
|
|
|
Upcoming RI Democratic Women's Caucus Meetings
(all in-person meetings are cancelled until further notice
stay tuned for information on these and other events)
- Thu, Feb 11, 7pm - Online ballot emailed to Voting Members for Executive Committee Elections
- Wed, Feb 24, 5pm- Final day to complete Executive Committee online ballot
- Thu, Feb 25, 7pm - February General Meeting; new Executive Committee announced
|
|
|
|
The Rhode Island Democratic Women's Caucus seeks to impact government and political processes in order to ensure equality in power, influence, and economic status for those who identify as and with women. We will do this by (a) recruiting and supporting candidates in all levels of government and (b) advocating for Democratic principles consistent with the Democratic Party platform.
|
|
|
|
|
|
