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Your truncated weekly Newsletter Indivisibles,
This week’s Newsletter will be a little briefer. Like many of you, Indivisibles at our national office will get time to celebrate what we’re thankful for this week, and so we’re dialing back the Newsletter a notch so that everyone can enjoy their break to the fullest.
One of the most important factors to staying in the fight long-term is knowing when to rest.
Your regularly scheduled Newsletter will return on Monday, December 11.
MoCs call for a Ceasefire
| **Content Warning: Talk about the current Israel/Palestinian conflict. Jump to the line break if you need to avoid this topic** |
Since their October 7 attack that took over 1400 Israeli, American, and foreign citizens’ lives, Hamas has continued to hold on to the vast majority of their more than 200 hostages. We continue to call for the immediate release of those hostages while condemning Hamas’ brutal crimes and their attacks on civilian populations.
In the aftermath, over 13,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including at least 5,500 children, and over 30,000 Palestinians have been injured due to Israel’s six-week-long bombardment -- including airstrikes hitting hospitals, UN shelters, schools, and refugee camps -- and its ongoing actions to cut off life-sustaining supplies are widely recognized by human rights groups to be collective punishment.
In every direction, both the violence and its broader impact have disproportionately fallen upon civilians and children. They must not be held responsible for the actions of Hamas.
The only humane choice right now is to call for a ceasefire.
It is up to us to do everything in our power to ensure that we are not supporting (tacitly or overtly) the murder of innocents and children. Our national role in this conflict is to find a pathway to peace that costs as few lives as possible.
As of today, 41 Members of Congress are on record calling for a ceasefire or cessation of hostilities, including 39 House members and two senators.
Included in this number are Rashida Tlaib -- the only Palestinian serving in Congress -- along with four Jewish representatives: Becca Balint (VT-AL), Dean Phillips (MN-03), Jamie Raskin (MD-08), and Sara Jacobs (CA-51). These brave MoCs are following the will of the American people despite their peers' non-committal lack of action, as 68% of Americans support a ceasefire.
We all have at least one senator or representative who still has not called for a ceasefire, and the most important thing that we -- as Indivisibles -- can do right now is pressure those MoCs to follow the overwhelming will of their constituents and the global community in calling for a humanitarian ceasefire to prevent further loss of civilian life and escalation of the human suffering on the ground.
Here’s what you can do:
- Call your representative, and urge them to call for a humanitarian ceasefire publicly and to use their position to push for an end to hostilities, to deliver urgently needed humanitarian assistance, and to ensure the hostages are released.
- Call both your senators now, and ask them to do the same.
Trans Day of Remembrance
| **Content Warning: This section discusses death and discrimination against the trans and non-binary community. If you need to skip this, jump ahead to the next section.** |
On this Transgender Day of Remembrance, we remember and we recommit.
Today, November 20, marks the annual Trans Day of Remembrance -- a day to honor with solemnity those trans and non-binary lives lost this year to violence and hate, as well as allow their memories to sustain our commitment to fighting for dignity and justice for all those facing transphobia and discrimination.
To mark this day, we invite you to read the National Center for Transgender Equality’s annual Remembrance Report. Take some time to learn about this day’s history, and read the stories of trans people whose remarkable lives were taken too soon -- and who deserve to be remembered fully, with their own names, identities, and stories.
As they write in their Eulogy for Trans Lives:
“Countless precious trans lives have been extinguished, and to grieve is an arduous journey. However, in our period of grief, we persist. We pay tribute to and exalt the existences of those who have departed, and our brilliance remains unaltered. We radiate with an intensity that will outlast our earthly tenure. We shine with a fire that will burn long after our time on Earth. Trans people have always been here, and we always will be.”
To our trans and non-binary Indivisibles: You belong. You deserve safety, affirmation, empathy, and love. You deserve to see yourselves in the books you read in school without shame, you deserve autonomy over your body, and you deserve to exist with joy and without apology.
To our entire network: We encourage you to reach out to your trans loved ones, coworkers, and neighbors, and make sure they feel seen and supported. We also encourage you to seek out ways to continue to educate yourself about trans inclusion on your own -- there are resources at all of our fingertips both virtually and in person, take advantage of them, and make sure your support leads to action. There’s never been a more critical time to commit ourselves not just to fighting for the rights of all LGBTQ+ people, but also to better understanding the intersections of this struggle with racial justice, gun violence prevention, health care inequity, and more.
Finally, let’s continue to call out dangerous rhetoric at every level meant to dehumanize trans people, and do everything we can to root out bigotry and help end the epidemic of violence so that all trans people may grow old.
Shutdown averted...for now
If you remember last Monday, we told you that the deadline to avert a shutdown was last Friday, November 17 and that House Republicans would likely kick the can down the road, once again, as a continuing resolution was the only viable path forward in the time we had left.
Well, guess what? That’s exactly what happened.
After making its way through the House and Senate at the 11th hour, President Biden signed a stopgap bill last Thursday that fully funds the government through January 19 and partially funds it until February 2.
If that setup seems a little confusing, we agree!
Essentially the funding was separated into two barrels: funding for agriculture, energy and water, military construction, Veterans’ Affairs, transportation, and housing ends in January while everything else continues until the February 2 deadline.
This sets up two distinct fights that Speaker Mike Johnson is telling his right flank he can win. But the underlying dynamics remain the same -- the extremists in the GOP are intent on shutting down the government over their dangerous demands, meaning Johnson doesn’t have the votes to govern. And with more House Democrats supporting it than Republicans, Johnson finds himself in the same position as his predecessor: staring down a MAGA wing with the power to unseat him.
MAGA dysfunction continues while Democrats hold strong.
While we are glad that a disastrous shutdown was averted, we can’t help but notice a recurring pattern of Republicans bringing us to the edge of calamity while never solving the actual problem. Stay tuned for another round of the potential shutdown crisis to begin in the new year.
Giving a Sh*t Tuesday
Last week, we launched our Giving a Sh*t Tuesday campaign to gauge just how energized and ready for 2024 this movement is. We set a goal of 1,000 donations and absolutely smashed it -- with over 1,600 contributions from all across the country by midnight.
We’re so grateful to everyone who contributed and signed up to volunteer. There’s a lot of work ahead of us to defeat Trump and restore our trifecta, but it’s clear this movement has every intention of getting it done.
If you didn’t get a chance to donate, we still have a ways to go to meet our budget for the year, so please consider giving today!
Follow us on Facebook, Mastodon, Threads, and Instagram to keep up on the latest information, and text “INDIVISIBLE” to 59798 to opt-in to our text messaging program, where we send rapid response actions a few times a month.
If there’s one thing we can be sure of, it is how thankful we are to be a part of this movement with you. Enjoy your holiday! You deserve it.
In solidarity,
Indivisible Team
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