INDIVISIBLE Lambertville NJ / New Hope PA

Author: Indivisible Lambertville / New Hope

  • ILNH Statement on the Attack of the Capitol and Electoral College Vote

    ILNH Statement on the Attack of the Capitol and Electoral College Vote

    We, the volunteers of Indivisible Lambertville/New Hope, are deeply saddened by the insurrection and violence last night during the ministerial process cited in our Constitution to formally declare the next President and Vice President. We were sickened by the display of white supremacy, the lack of preparation and the actions by the Capitol Police to protect our democracy from an insurrection that had been publicly called for and incited by the 45th president. 

    Our work going forward has never been more clear. For the United States to truly become a nation of equals, we must work to elect officials that share the values of equality and justice for all in every level of our government. We must stay actively involved in our governance, holding officials accountable to meeting our values and needs. We must step up to run for office. We must partner with other groups to understand the needs of their constituents and to join forces  to get this work done. It was the efforts of people like Stacey Abrams and groups such as Black Voters Matter, League of Women Voters and others that turned Georgia blue and now gives Democrats control of the House, Senate and Presidency, albeit by slim margins.

    It is imperative that we now reach out to our legislators first in the House, to draw up and pass articles of impeachment of Mr. Trump from office, then in the Senate to convict and remove him. He is directly responsible for last night’s insurrection. We must prevent further damage to our nation that could occur over his remaining days in office, and prevent him from ever holding office again.

    We have much work to do, including remembering our own self care so we can stay strong throughout the marathon. Stay alert, stay active, but allow a moment to take a moment of breath and a sip of champagne on Jan 20th, and then turn our efforts to transforming America’s ideals into America’s reality.

    ————-

    Read the Statement from Indivisible.org

    Indivisible: Impeach, Remove, and Disqualify

    01/06/2021 

    Washington, DC — Today, the Indivisible Project released the following statement: 

    “We are calling for the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump from office, and his disqualification from holding future office.

    “We simply cannot just wait for Trump to leave office as his threat level to our democracy continues to increase. The House of Representatives must draw up articles of impeachment immediately, move quickly to vote on them, and send them to the Senate for a speedy trial, where Trump must be convicted and disqualified from ever holding federal office again.

    “In the wake of the coup attempt at the Capitol, Republicans must face an explicit choice as to whether or not they will fully and completely reject him, and ensure that he can never hold elected office again. Impeaching and convicting him is the first step toward reversing the tide of violence, insurrection, and white supremacist terror that he has incited, at the Capitol and beyond.” 

  • Capitol Hill Riot Spotlights Flaws in American Democracy

    Contributed by Amara Willey.

    The riot on Capitol Hill last week and the storming of the legislature’s building underscores what happens when the players in democratic societies do not follow their prescribed roles.

    True democracy is consensus-based, but that isn’t a viable form of governance in a large population, so we turn to the vehicle of voting, leaving us with winners and losers. Each of these groups has a role to play in a voting-based democracy.

    Uri Friedman wrote in the Atlantic in October of 2016, before the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, “Winners and losers of elections have essential responsibilities in functioning democracies. Winners do not exact revenge on their opponent by, say, abusing the powers of their office and jailing that opponent, as the Republican candidate threatened to do at the second presidential debate. Losers do not refuse to accept the results of a vote judged free and fair by a country’s governing institutions.”

    This sentiment was echoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the hours following the riot on January 6. “A fundamental rule of democracy is that, after elections, there are winners and losers. Both have to play their role with decency and responsibility so that democracy itself remains the winner,” Merkel said.

    The tacit understanding that our country’s continued democracy is dependent on requires that the majority respect and include the minority’s views and that the minority respect the institution of democracy and the dissenting role that it plays. This is how every level of government is intended to work, from the Supreme Court to local government.

    There have been other elections when one candidate or the other has had to act based on what was best for the country even when it wasn’t what was best personally or for their party. For example, regarding the 2000 election, Gore chose to concede for the good of the country. “Instead of making a concession speech, [I could have] launched a four-year rear guard guerrilla campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the Bush presidency, and to mobilize for a rematch,” he told The Washington Post in 2002. “There’s so much riding on the success of any American president and taking the reins of power and holding them firmly, I just didn’t feel like it was in the best interest of the United States, or that it was a responsible course of action.”

    So here we are four years after having elected a “disrupter” president, with what a number of politicians, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are calling “a failed insurrection.”

    “While lots of attention, money, and power flows to the winners, it is really the losers who are key to keeping democracy healthy,” writes Shaun Bowler, professor of political science at the University of California Riverside and a co-author of Losers’ Consent: Elections and Democratic Legitimacy. “Graceful concessions by losing candidates constitute a sort of glue that holds the polity together, providing a cohesion that is lacking in less-well-established democracies.

    It’s just this danger that Bowler warned against that prompted the unprecedented attack on the legislative branch and begs the question, how do we shore up our democracy after Trump?

    World leaders have condemned the riots and Trump’s part in them, including Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, saying, “The electoral system in the United States is archaic; it does not meet modern democratic standards, creating opportunities for numerous violations, and the American media have become an instrument of political struggle. This is largely the reason for the split in society now observed in the United States.”

    Nick Ottens wrote in the Atlantic Sentinel in October of five steps that Democrats must take to protect democracy. These include abolishing the electoral college and the power monopoly the Democrats and Republicans hold, putting Congress first, making it easier to remove the president, and creating states of the federal territories that are not represented in the Senate: American Samoa, the American Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and Washington DC, which would help to balance the less populous states that are included in Senate representation.

    Fixing a broken system will take time and may not be the first concern of President-Elect Joe Biden as he enters office amid an out-of-control pandemic and economic chaos. But perhaps the very difficulties the country faces will give America the opportunity to strengthen its democracy and unite its lawmakers.

    Writing in the Toronto Star, Nomi Claire Lazar called the riots “the last, best hope for American democracy.” An associate professor of politics at Yale-NUS College in Singapore and at the University of Ottawa, Lazar explained that Trump’s actions that incited the mob gave Republicans cover to eschew Trump and his politics. “Republican politicians needed and were desperate for some politically viable means of returning to the centre [sic]. They needed an excuse to separate themselves from Trump. And the siege of the Capitol provided just this chance,” Lazar noted.

    This sentiment was born out as several Republican senators, sheltering in place with Democrats in the hours between the breach of the Capitol building and the final electoral college vote, eventually removed their opposition to certification.

    Lee Drutman, senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America, suggested in an opinion piece, “Democrats need to support these pro-democracy Republicans, whatever that might mean — perhaps giving them leadership roles on committees, or opportunities to introduce legislation, or roles in the crafting of spending bills that could help them with their re-elections,” citing those Republicans such as Utah Senator Mitt Romney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who have criticized Trump and his tactics.

    What happened in Washington, DC last week was a spotlight on the disfunction of our democracy, and that is not going away on January 20th when Joe Biden is inaugurated. We need to stop thinking in terms of sides, of winners and losers, and work towards the idea that our government represents all Americans, or at least the 150 million voters who turned out in November.

    As President-Elect Biden said in response to the events on January 6, “The work of the moment and the work of the next four years must be the restoration of democracy — of decency, honor, respect, the rule of law, just plain, simple decency. The renewal of the politics that’s about solving problems, looking out for one another, not stoking the flames of hate and chaos.”

    Sources:

  • Has Democracy Won? Indivisible Urges Actions for Repair

    The events of the past week may have put a win in the democracy column, but just the win is tenuous and as of yet, not assured. Four years of the most dangerous president of our lifetime and maybe in all of American history, has shattered the illusion that our democratic way of government is a given and inevitable, and that America is a world leader to be respected.  It is not. 

    Yes, the good news is that Democrats will now control all three branches of government and work must begin to help remediate the damage. Yet, we cannot just walk away from the nightmare without accepting responsibility for change that helps close the loopholes and gaps that led to it. 

    To that end, Indivisible National is calling for a number of actions and reforms to right the ship. We are encouraged to be vigilant, in constant communication with our elected officials, and work towards the following:

    • Statehood for D.C. and self-determination for Puerto Rico and other US territories
    • Voting rights for all, including incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and young people. Restoring the Voting Rights Act and overturning voter ID laws and other suppressive laws that target communities of color
    • Reform the Supreme Court, to set the course for a less hyper-partisan process for selecting and appointing judges
    • Ensure a free and independent media by breaking up media conglomerates and by investing in public broadcasting 
    • Support the For The People Act (H.R. 1):
      • Requiring members of Congress, Vice Presidents and Presidents to divest their assets and disclose conflicts of interest, and Presidents and VPs to disclose their tax returns
      • Instituting strict revolving door requirements to keep corporate lobbyists from moving back and forth into government
      • Plans to fight racial and partisan gerrymandering at all levels of government
      • Instituting public funding for elections to reduce the power of corporate money in government

    More about HR.1

    HR.1 aka the For the People Act, was reintroduced into the new, 117th Congressional session on January 4, 2021 by John Sarbanes and co-sponsored by Nancy Pelosi and Zoe Lofgren. The bill was originally introduced in 2019 and passed in the House, but never taken up by the Senate. Now, with a Democratic-led Senate and President, the bill has a much better chance of being signed into law. Expanding on the easier to read bullets listed above, the key elements of HR.1 address:

    Voter empowerment and access – Through measures such as automatic voter registration, same-day registration, restoring the Voting Rights Act, protecting against improper purging of voter rolls, requiring states to upgrade and secure their election systems, restoring voting rights to those with past criminal convictions, providing adequate early voting opportunities, and preventing partisan gerrymandering through independent redistricting commissions, H.R. 1 helps ensure that everyone is included and represented in our democracy, and has unimpeded opportunities to participate.

    Money in politics – A constitutional amendment is needed to overturn the chaos that Citizens United and related decisions unleashed into our campaign finance system. H.R. 1 starts that process immediately. Additionally, it further stems the tide of big money in our politics by amplifying small-dollar donations through public financing, encouraging small-dollar donations through tax incentives, eliminating “dark money” by requiring disclosure of all political spending (including online ads), cutting off cooperation between candidates and super PACs, and empowering the Federal Election Commission to truly enforce campaign finance law.

    Ethics and corruption – Trump and his cronies regularly engaged in self-dealing, corruption, and conflicts of interest, without a single rebuke from the Republican-controlled Congress. H.R. 1 cracks down by making sure that ethics rules apply to all government officials – including the President. This means demanding disclosure of and divestment from financial interests that pose conflicts of interest, and then for the rest of the executive branch locking the “revolving door” of lobbyists and government officials, prohibiting bribery, and demanding full disclosure of information revealing potential and actual conflicts of interest. 

    ACTION: Call your Representative and ask them to commit to voting YES on H.R. 1 when it comes to the House floor. You can follow progress of the bill here, and sign up for alerts as it moves through committees and onto the floor. 

  • Just the Facts – The Inequality in Financial Security that Biden is walking into

     Contributed by Olga Vanucci.

    • The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at an all-time high, at over 30,000, but only 55% of Americans own stocks, and only 19% of households earning less than $35,000 a year own stocks.
    • The typical household earning less than $35,000 a year and holding stocks holds just $8,400.
    • One-third of homeowners have less than $500 set aside for an emergency, and that includes 50% of homeowners with an annual household income of less than $50,000.
    • Some 95% of workers in low-income households — making less than $36,000 per year — were either laid off in the first few months of the coronavirus (37%) or experienced a loss in income (58%).
    • In just the first three months of the pandemic, more than 100 million people skipped their monthly payments for mortgages, student loans, credit cards and other forms of debt. 
    • In November 2020, 10.7 million Americans were unemployed, meaning they’re not working and want to work. 
    • US households owe $1.55 trillion in stu­dent loan debt, $861 billion in credit card debt and $81 billion in unpaid medical bills. All told, Americans hold a staggering $4.13 trillion in non-hous­ing debt.

    Sources:

  • Raising the Keystone – Upholding Democracy in Pennsylvania

    Contributed by Lisa Bergson.

    Writing on the night of January 6th, we see the extreme danger of embracing tyrants and coddling vigilantes and militias. Today, we saw the consequences in the invasion of our capital, the disruption of our formal electoral process, and the ransacking of the Capitol Complex, forcing our elected representatives to shelter, as though from an invader.  

    Dear ILNHers, these thugs are our neighbors. Right up my block, read lawn signs: “America for Trump” “Trotsky, Stalin, and Socialists for Biden” and “Christians for Trump.”  My husband and I joked about posting a sign: “Hitler, Mussolini, and Putin for Trump”. But, we pulled up our election signs by November 10th for a reason. Win or lose, this is our community.  And our grassroots organizing must continue; our commitment to heal the searing wounds that divide us, is more urgent than ever. 

    Here’s what to do now:

    Protect Our Democracy:  This call just received from Jason Henry, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, is so grave that I’m posting it verbatim:

    “For months, Harrisburg Republicans have echoed dangerous lies about mail-in voting—a process they, themselves, voted for just last year. They’ve held sham hearings, joined outrageous lawsuits to disenfranchise millions, and supported Trump’s calls to throw out their own constituents’ votes.

    “On Tuesday, they escalated again. Mere hours before a mob wrecked our nation’s capitol, Republicans shamed our commonwealth’s capitol by refusing to seat a duly elected Democrat, citing the same unproven voter fraud Trump used to spur violence. That a handful of PA Republicans “disavowed” the political violence they spent months stoking is not enough. Immediate, corrective action is needed to restore faith in our electoral system.

    “The fact is: There’s a dangerous anti-democratic streak among Pennsylvania Republican leaders. Today, we call on them to make amends and begin rebuilding the public’s faith in our elections.

    First, the PA Senate should immediately swear in Senator Jim Brewster, the certified winner in Senate District 45.

    Additionally, we ask that GOP leadership once again condemn violence, and we call on Senator Jake Corman to investigate his caucuses’ role in the attack, especially the presence of Doug Mastriano.

    Finally, we call on Pennsylvania’s Republican leadership to state jointly and unequivocally that President-Elect Joe Biden won our state.

    “None of these actions will fully correct the damage, paranoia, and division their actions have caused, but they’ll mark good first steps in the long road towards restoring faith in democracy.”

    ACTION: Please call your Republican officials and ask that they take these steps towards restoring our democracy.

    Block State Republican Attempt to Hijack the Courts. First, PA Republicans joined forces to try to disenfranchise all of us who chose to safely and legitimately vote by mail. Now, the GOP-controlled legislature is attempting to gerrymander our court system, which has served to protect our democracy by standing up to their baseless contention of voter fraud. With no provision for public comment and over the objection of legal experts and many former judges – Republican and Democrat — their goal is to splice the election of 31 Appellate Judges who rule statewide, into seven local districts. This power grab serves to reduce our judiciary’s political independence and diversity reflective of our state. It robs us of a say in the election of 90% of our statewide judges.  Our Republican-dominated State Legislature is fast-tracking this HB38 to amend our Constitution and degrade our widely respected judiciary.

    ACTION: Join me and send a letter to your local representative.

    TO LEARN MORE: 

    • Watch this short video: 
    • Attend an online event presented by the Bucks County League of Women Voters on Saturday January 9th. Register here. 

    Feed Your Head.  As activists, the better informed and united we are, the more effective we can be.  That’s why Turn PA Blue is sagely using this time to offer an intriguing series of Wednesday seminars. Topics include “local races, our courts, redistricting, policy updates, data/mapping, and more”. In doing so, the organization aims to offer “opportunities to come together to listen, learn, plan, and continue our work for a better future”.

    Dates, Times, and Events (events and speakers will be updated):

    1. Wednesday, January 13th, from 7-8 PM: No Off-Years: The Importance of Local Races. Guest speakers include Lara Putnam, Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh, State Representative Jennifer O’Mara, and Scranton Mayor, Paige Cognetti.
    2. Wednesday, January 27th, from 7-8 PM: Judicial Gerrymandering: What is it? Why Does it Matter? How Can You Stop It? Guest speakers include State Representative Mike Zabel, Deborah Gross, President and CEO of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, and PA Superior Court Judge Carolyn Nichols.
    3. Wednesday, February 3, Lunchtime (12-1 PM): Mapping the Political Geography of PA. Guest speakers included Lara Putnam, Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh, and Ben Forstate, Political Analyst.
    4. Wednesday, February 10, from 7-8 PM: PA Policy Update. Guest speakers include State Senator Katie Muth and State Representative Joanna McClinton.

    CALL TO ACTION: I hope to see you at any or all of these Turn PA Blue events.

    Promote Awareness and Uproot Racism in Our Community.  In the aftermath of the brutal murder of George Floyd last summer, an interracial team was forged under the aegis of the Bucks County NAACP to focus on Criminal Justice and Education.  Specifically, they aim to work on legislation; to “reimagine public safety”, and to raise awareness among the general public and within our schools. “You can’t address racism unless you understand that it’s in your community,” says Helen Tai, who is helping to spearhead this vital initiative. To that end, the team has put together seminars on “Understanding White Privilege” and “Being a White Ally”, with February dates scheduled for, “Talking to Your Children About Racism” and “Implicit Bias and Micro-aggressions.” 

    CALL TO ACTION:  

    • To get involved with this exciting and impactful mission, sign up for the Bucks County NAACP January newsletter, which details recent accomplishments and upcoming activities.
    • To volunteer for the NAACP Bucks County Criminal Justice and Education Committee, please contact Miriam Tucker (miriam@cjecbucks.org)

    BUILD OUR BENCH: For our February edition, there will be an overview of the critical local elections coming up in 2021.  In the meantime, a wonderful opportunity to meet the Democratic candidates for Bucks County District Attorney and Judge of the Court of Common Pleas will be sponsored by Bucks Voices Zoom Webinar on January 25th at 7:00 p.m. Register for our Webinar!

    I welcome news of your wins, events, and announcements.  Please email me at: LisaBergson0@gmail.com.