Political Action/Volunteering in 2019

[jaygee]

I’m interested if anyone has set any goals or thought about what they want to do or continue to do in 2019 around political action or volunteering. H and I are trying to figure out our plans. Well, him more than me because I’m starting a new, instense job and he basically works part time.

I thought it would be cool to share ideas and passions here.

[jaygee]

I’m going to continue my work in dog rescue. We aren’t going to foster any more because we have a 2 dog max, but I will work on advertising the dogs on social media and doing application screening. It’s a passion of mine, but it’s difficult. The work is a little messy and disheartening and the organization I work with is a one man show and that one man is a flawed human who makes helping him a little difficult. His hearts in the right place, but I have to be a little careful about how involved I get.

Other than that, I would like to explore getting more involved in something political. Either something with the border situation or maybe with gun control. I’m wondering how I can have impact with the time I have (which, frankly isn’t much). I have hesitated with getting involved with gun control stuff because I don’t know what the need/opportunity is here in CA where we have actual politicians that are actually doing things about the problems. I don’t know. That sounds dumb, but what would I be doing? For the border situation, I feel like I lack skills to be useful, I’m not fluent enough in Spanish, not a lawyer...I don’t know. I think I just need to jump in.

H wants to join a board, but he needs to figure out his interest areas first. Probably something environmental.

[Minerva]

My plan is to volunteer at the county nature preserve one day a week. I have naturalist and educator skills to offer and I know it would be good for my nature-loving soul as well. The preserve staff are well-informed about and active in regional development projects, so it would be a nice way to connect w/ the larger community. I still need to sort out care for the almost-two-year-old, tho.

[jaygee]

Dec 30, 2018 17:12:55 GMT -6 Minerva said:

My plan is to volunteer at the county nature preserve one day a week. I have naturalist and educator skills to offer and I know it would be good for my nature-loving soul as well. The preserve staff are well-informed about and active in regional development projects, so it would be a nice way to connect w/ the larger community. I still need to sort out care for the almost-two-year-old, tho.

That sounds amazing. It is such a good match for your skills and knowledge.

ETA: do you have a mom friend you could swap care with?

[Minerva]

Dec 30, 2018 18:23:32 GMT -6 jaygee said:

Dec 30, 2018 17:12:55 GMT -6 Minerva said:

My plan is to volunteer at the county nature preserve one day a week. I have naturalist and educator skills to offer and I know it would be good for my nature-loving soul as well. The preserve staff are well-informed about and active in regional development projects, so it would be a nice way to connect w/ the larger community. I still need to sort out care for the almost-two-year-old, tho.

That sounds amazing. It is such a good match for your skills and knowledge.

ETA: do you have a mom friend you could swap care with?

Maybe - that would be ideal! There are also a few very nice in-home DCPs in my neighborhood that do part time care.

[athn64]

I'm hoping to get more active locally. See if I can make some City Council and School Board meetings. I decided to put off running for a year or two so I can focus my energy a bit more and figure out what needs to be done. Still hoping to run for City Council in 2020 though.

[jaygee]

Dec 30, 2018 18:56:54 GMT -6 athn64 said:

I'm hoping to get more active locally. See if I can make some City Council and School Board meetings. I decided to put off running for a year or two so I can focus my energy a bit more and figure out what needs to be done. Still hoping to run for City Council in 2020 though.

That’s awesome!! A think a year of prep sounds like a solid plan.

[hawkeye2015]

I've been very involved with meetings for my local library lately. They are putting together a bond proposal for a much needed renovation. It's not something I have any real expertise in, but my son and I spend a lot of time there so I'm hoping I can help them secure the funds for improvements.

[dc2london]

I have my eyes on a school board member who is up this year and has got to go. We will also have our Commonwealth level elections this year.
I'm basically always in election mode.

My extra time and money for now will continue going toward Moms Demamd Action on Families Belong Together

[honeylemon]

I finally got my littlest in preschool starting in January. I’ll be volunteering at my cancer center as well as doing some training to become a mastectomy prosthetics fitter, but I’ll have some mornings free for activism. I’d love to get involved with my local Moms Demand Action chapter.

[jaygee]

Dec 31, 2018 13:08:04 GMT -6 honeylemon said:

I finally got my littlest in preschool starting in January. I’ll be volunteering at my cancer center as well as doing some training to become a mastectomy prosthetics fitter, but I’ll have some mornings free for activism. I’d love to get involved with my local Moms Demand Action chapter.

Eeekk. That is just the best honeylemon. Your experience as a survivor will mean so much to the people you help.

[dc2london]

Dec 31, 2018 13:08:04 GMT -6 honeylemon said:

I finally got my littlest in preschool starting in January. I’ll be volunteering at my cancer center as well as doing some training to become a mastectomy prosthetics fitter, but I’ll have some mornings free for activism. I’d love to get involved with my local Moms Demand Action chapter.

Oh please do!! I feel like I get a lot of "bang for my time buck" with Moms. It's a very effective organization.
Lmk if I can help

[dc2london]

I also joined a group called Showing Up for Racial Justice. They don't have a ton of events but I'd like to attend those that I can to listen and try to be an ally.

[jaygee]

Dec 31, 2018 13:47:20 GMT -6 dc2london said:

Dec 31, 2018 13:08:04 GMT -6 honeylemon said:

I finally got my littlest in preschool starting in January. I’ll be volunteering at my cancer center as well as doing some training to become a mastectomy prosthetics fitter, but I’ll have some mornings free for activism. I’d love to get involved with my local Moms Demand Action chapter.

Oh please do!! I feel like I get a lot of "bang for my time buck" with Moms. It's a very effective organization.
Lmk if I can help

Do you mind sharing a little bit of what you do for them?

[dc2london]

jaygee my role is a bit different since I'm in the leadership for my chapter.
But mostly we have monthly meetings where we discuss gun sense issues at hand based on legislation coming up on local, state and federal levels, we visit congressional offices and state houses, we hold vigils and rallies to promote common sense gun reform and we work to help gun sense candidates get elected (see: Lucy Mcbath and Jennifer Wexton). We also have speakers at some of our meetings --we have a retired ATF officer who joined our chapter and gives talks about discussing firearm use and racial bias with police departments, for example. I'm working to book a woman who gives age-based guidance on how to discuss lockdown drills, gun violence snd school safety with kids.

We also have a spin off org called BeSMART that helps parents safely secure firearms or jumpstart conversations about the presence and storage of firearms in other homes (e.g. before a playdate).

[jkjacq]

I really want to attend the next moms demand meeting but so far I’ve only been invited to one. It was about 30 minutes away at 730 on a school night so I couldn’t go.
I’m not coherent after about 815 at night during the week hopefully the next is at a better time

[dc2london]

Dec 31, 2018 18:50:27 GMT -6 jkjacq said:

I really want to attend the next moms demand meeting but so far I’ve only been invited to one. It was about 30 minutes away at 730 on a school night so I couldn’t go.
I’m not coherent after about 815 at night during the week hopefully the next is at a better time

Look for events in February as we approach the first anniversary of Parkland

[stringy]

Bumping this because suddenly I'm involved in local politics! My neighbor and I started a petition to our town asking them to take control of a parcel of land that is currently mostly a parking lot, that sits between our neighborhood and 4 of our schools. Without this they are being pretty secretive about plans and timelines of the whole area, including infrastructure development - and when the current lease is up there are developers in line to build condo monstrosities on it. Just about everyone in town would love some kind of rec center to go there.

We got 100 signatures in 36 hours last weekend and we are presenting tonight at the board of selectman meeting, and its on the Town Meeting warrant for April.

We are completely realizing how little we know about how municipal politics work, especially with our parliamentary new england ways. But its amazing how its a bunch of old white guys lining their pockets at the top, just like it seems to be everywhere. But all we have to do is mobilize the parents to actually show up to town meeting and it'll be a piece of cake (passing our petition, getting the whole thing into what we want is another step).

Once we get through tonight, we also plan to start educating ourselves and then our peers (young middle aged working parents with children, which is like 80% of our town) on how we can make change happen.

[Uncaripswife]

Feb 4, 2019 13:58:54 GMT -6 stringy said:

Bumping this because suddenly I'm involved in local politics! My neighbor and I started a petition to our town asking them to take control of a parcel of land that is currently mostly a parking lot, that sits between our neighborhood and 4 of our schools. Without this they are being pretty secretive about plans and timelines of the whole area, including infrastructure development - and when the current lease is up there are developers in line to build condo monstrosities on it. Just about everyone in town would love some kind of rec center to go there.

We got 100 signatures in 36 hours last weekend and we are presenting tonight at the board of selectman meeting, and its on the Town Meeting warrant for April.

We are completely realizing how little we know about how municipal politics work, especially with our parliamentary new england ways. But its amazing how its a bunch of old white guys lining their pockets at the top, just like it seems to be everywhere. But all we have to do is mobilize the parents to actually show up to town meeting and it'll be a piece of cake (passing our petition, getting the whole thing into what we want is another step).

Once we get through tonight, we also plan to start educating ourselves and then our peers (young middle aged working parents with children, which is like 80% of our town) on how we can make change happen.

Awesome!

[stringy]

Does anyone here have any deep knowledge of town meetings, New England style?

Similarly any knowledge of if remote/online voting on any level has been tried anywhere on any level?

My above petition failed this week, because it was voted on at 11:30 pm on a Tuesday, with about 150 people (out of a town with 14k registered voters) left in the room. We are looking to change the way its done.

[richard]

Apr 4, 2019 7:16:39 GMT -6 stringy said:

Does anyone here have any deep knowledge of town meetings, New England style?

Similarly any knowledge of if remote/online voting on any level has been tried anywhere on any level?

My above petition failed this week, because it was voted on at 11:30 pm on a Tuesday, with about 150 people (out of a town with 14k registered voters) left in the room. We are looking to change the way its done.

I have no knowledge of how this works. Does anyone that's at the meeting get to vote on a proposal?

I've only ever lived places with a city council and the ordinances come from the council members.

[stringy]

Apr 4, 2019 20:04:34 GMT -6 richard said:

Apr 4, 2019 7:16:39 GMT -6 stringy said:

Does anyone here have any deep knowledge of town meetings, New England style?

Similarly any knowledge of if remote/online voting on any level has been tried anywhere on any level?

My above petition failed this week, because it was voted on at 11:30 pm on a Tuesday, with about 150 people (out of a town with 14k registered voters) left in the room. We are looking to change the way its done.

I have no knowledge of how this works. Does anyone that's at the meeting get to vote on a proposal?

I've only ever lived places with a city council and the ordinances come from the council members.

Its a historical thing, the moderator was excited to announce that this was my town's 200 somethingth town meeting, from back when it would be the local folks (white male landowners, I assume) coming together to make decisions.  So it is literally a public meeting in the HS auditorium where you come in and vote on the issues.  for many of them you literally vote by saying Yay or Nay, out loud. Next to your neighbors.  They just started using clickers as well for more contested ones.  Its very parliamentary. Its ridiculous. There are 14k voters in our town, and that 400 ppl came out the first night of the meeting was a "good turnout".  The agenda with articles is mailed to everyone the week before. Few people read it.  You vote on the town budget and the school budget and you can get citizens petitions on the agenda for a petition with not many signatures. So because of that it often goes 2-3 nights, from 7 pm until almost midnight.    I'm sure you can think of all of the accessibility problems with that format, so pretty much, elderly, parents of young kids, anyone who works nights...has no chance of showing up.

[stringy]

You guys! I have to tell ppl who may get it. After being unfairly voted down last week- the selectman who we met with and who was extremely unhelpful throughout our petition process...just suggested at a meeting that the select board sit down with the owners of the land in question to discuss next steps. This is huge. We made enough of a stink that they are taking some kind of action!!

[jkjacq]

Apr 8, 2019 18:01:45 GMT -6 stringy said:

You guys! I have to tell ppl who may get it. After being unfairly voted down last week- the selectman who we met with and who was extremely unhelpful throughout our petition process...just suggested at a meeting that the select board sit down with the owners of the land in question to discuss next steps. This is huge. We made enough of a stink that they are taking some kind of action!!

!!!!!!!

Yay
!!!!

[jaygee]

Apr 8, 2019 18:01:45 GMT -6 stringy said:

You guys! I have to tell ppl who may get it. After being unfairly voted down last week- the selectman who we met with and who was extremely unhelpful throughout our petition process...just suggested at a meeting that the select board sit down with the owners of the land in question to discuss next steps. This is huge. We made enough of a stink that they are taking some kind of action!!

Amazing!! This is inspiring.