Hello OPAA!
Was that an amazing Saturday or what? I have heard personally from so many of my friends that they've never been politically active before, they've never marched or rallied or called a congressperson. But now they feel called to action, and they're going to stand up!
And we are standing up, OPAA! Our first coordinated action will be a group visit to our representative Mark De Saulnier's Walnut Creek Office. We are going this Wednesday, January 25th, at 2:30 pm, and we are going to 1) Thank him for standing with us and 2) Insist that he push hard on health care: no repeal without replacement.
What can you do?
1. Come with us this Wednesday to visit Mr. De Saulnier. The larger our group, the stronger our message. A group of us will meet at his Walnut Creek office at 2:30PM this Wednesday, January 25th. Reply to this email to RSVP and for more information
2. Help us from home: We need help identifying local journalists interested in coming with us too. Know a journalist? Are you a journalist? Want to recommend a journalist? Please email us with contact info. We are group sourcing this, so please don't hold back on information.
Also from home: PHONE CALLS!
Today, Monday, January 23rd: There’s one big vote up today:
Rex Tillerson, long-time CEO of ExxonMobil, for Secretary of State. Unsurprisingly he expressed skepticism about the dangers of climate change during his confirmation hearing.
Tomorrow, Tuesday January 24th: Two big votes up tomorrow:
Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. Sessions has regularly opposed civil rights legislation and he has extreme anti-immigration views.
Tom Price for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Price is a radical conservative and there are also unanswered ethical questions swirling around his nomination.
********Call Kamala Harris at (202) 224-3553 and Diane Feinstein at (202) 224-3841 and urge them to oppose Tillerson, Sessions, and Price!*********
3. We need people with personal stories about how important health care is to their families. If you have a personal story you'd be willing to share with Mr. De Saulnier or his aides, please let us know so we can focus time for you to speak.
4. Join us this Friday, January 27th: Training on how to be an effective phone caller : 10:30AM- noon. Reply to this email to RSVP & exact address. Location is very near St. Mark's church in Orinda, at a private residence.
Things are moving so fast - faster than we can always get emails out to the group, so we urge you to consider joining us on Facebook, or check our blog for action updates and our calendar for more events. Blog posts may be less frequent than Facebook.
Finally, we've posted Facebook community guidelines and I want to share this portion with our non-facebook members. Because we are looking to you to help define actions to stand up for the vulnerable or the environment here in California. We want to promote the good you want to do.
Our guidelines state, in part:
"Inspiring action: we built this community in order to act to protect our principles in the face of unprecedented threat, and to stand in solidarity with vulnerable members of our community. Action can - and should - happen at all scales: local, regional, statewide and national. Actions can include calling our senators, showing up at town halls, writing letters and attending marches. But let's not forget the vulnerable in our community: action can also be reaching out locally to support underfunded schools, provide aid to battered women’s shelters, bring work gloves and warm socks to day laborers in this cold wet winter.
Effective action is not diluted action, and we have a lot of fronts on which to fight. Last week, there were many messages urging us to tell our congress members to boycott the Inauguration. That might make a statement, yes. But if you have only a few minutes to make a call, a more effective use that time is to place calls asking your senators to stand against the worst cabinet nominees, or in support of health care.
This group draws on many sources of action, including our members of congress (MoCs), similar groups such Solidarity Sundays, Indivisible, My Civic Workout, and many others, but we hope some of the most creative actions will also come from all of us here. Do you have an inspired idea? We would love to share it. Just want to meet people for coffee to discuss an idea for action? We can post that too."
In solidarity,
Monika and Rebecca.
