Hi Indivisibles,

I’m Robin, one of the leaders of Arvadans for Progressive Action (APA), an Indivisible group out of Arvada, Colorado. I hope you are well and healthy. I’m taking over the main Indivisible email program today to tell you a little about what it’s like to be active in an Indivisible Group and to invite you to join your local group. 

A little bit about me: I started out my life as a Republican, but I switched to a Democrat more than a decade ago. In 2016, my husband was a Trump voter, and after the election, he bought me flowers and said “I don’t want to talk about it.” After a few weeks of sitting around feeling depressed, I just thought, okay, I have to do something, and that’s how I found APA and Indivisible. 

Fast forward to today: I’m an active member of APA. I’ve learned to call my senators, join town halls and canvass for candidates, and I’ve written about a jillion postcards to voters. For me, my group has been a lifeline, and a way to focus all my worries and hopes for change. Here’s a little about how our group is organized and what we’re up to that I hope might inspire you to join, or found, or get more involved in your own group (click here to find a group near you!). 

At APA, we organize our work into “action teams” where members focus on issues they’re passionate about. They’ve kept going strong during the COVID stay at home (and now “safer at home”) orders here in Colorado. Here’s a few examples:  

• The Human Rights Team sets out to advocate for LGBTQ+ communities and immigrant and undocumented communities, just to name a few.
  
  
• The Economy/Affordable Housing Team advocates for economic justice and opportunity for all our citizens, and focuses on increasing the stock of affordable housing in Arvada (for all residents including seniors, workforce/working families, and those with disabilities). Our team has quarterly meetings with City of Arvada staff.
  
  
• The Environment Action Team educates and engages our community at the local, State and Federal levels on a variety of environmental actions, including testifying at public hearings, writing letters to the editor, attending protests, and engaging with our elected officials.
  
  
• Got healthcare? Our profit-driven, employer based “system” doesn’t work especially during this public health crisis. So our healthcare team meets monthly to work on related issues, including learning how a universal, single payer healthcare system would improve the lives of ALL of us!
  
  
• The Anti-War Action Team works to increase awareness of the enormous impact of war. They gave us a great presentation a few weeks ago about the waste that massive military spending truly represents. Now is a time of opportunity and there are a lot of efforts to push back on militarism and war, and this team does just that. 

Like most Indivisible Groups, we’ve done a lot of adjusting over the past eight weeks as the COVID-19 crisis has unfolded. We’re still meeting each month, but now it’s happening over Zoom (i.e. a virtual meeting.) In June, for example, we will have the Executive Director of Great Education Colorado speak on a state ballot initiative to help better pay our teachers. Our Action Teams have also moved their meetings to Zoom, and everyone’s enjoying playing with the “custom backgrounds” feature. 

We’re also moving forward with our core work: in March, we co-hosted a webinar on recycling in our area, and in April, we made a local endorsement of Andrew Romanoff for US Senate.

The Indivisible National team has been running lots of virtual trainings on how to move our organizing online, and we’ve also worked closely with Jody, the Indivisible Colorado Senior Statewide Organizer, to keep everything moving through this uncertain time. It’s been an adjustment, to be sure, but overall, like most Indivisible Groups, we’re getting used to it! 

I’ll close out this email with one more pitch: if you’re not already active with your local group, I really encourage you to click on the group map here and get involved. Or if there’s not a group in your area (there are, most places), reach out to the Indivisible National team, and they can help you get one started. It’s been a great lifeline for me, and a way to make friends and make change. 

In solidarity,

Robin, Arvadans for Progressive Action