Continue pressuring our members of Congress and the President
Indivisible SF Newsletter
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Both the Senate and the House will soon reconvene to pass (or not) crucial legislation that We the American People desperately need—voting rights, economic recovery and restructuring, infrastructure restoration, police reform, debt ceiling, and so much more. Republicans have vowed to use their filibuster to block everything we need except for maybe the corporate goodies contained in Manchin’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. So we need every Democrat in Congress to support the full Reconciliation Bill as originally proposed by Biden.
In addition to the two voting rights bills, we’re concentrating on the Reconciliation Bill (also known as the American Jobs and Family Plans, the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill, the human infrastructure bill, and the Build Back Better Act). This week we’re focusing on this bill’s “New Deal” economic-justice provisions. We need to tell our members of Congress, and President Biden himself, to hold the line and fight for the full original proposals, including the following:
* Protection of worker rights
* Well-paying jobs and economic justice
* A national $15/hour minimum wage
Democratic leaders plan to use the reconciliation process to circumvent the Republican filibuster. But there are restrictions on what can be included in legislation passed under reconciliation, and the Senate parliamentarian has already offered her opinion that the minimum wage and possibly other provisions don’t fit her interpretation of what is allowed. So that means Democrats will either have to end the unconstitutional filibuster rule or to ignore the parliamentarian’s opinion (which they can legally do). But to take either action,we need the votes of all fifty Democratic senators. So we also need to tell our members of Congress and our President that it’s time to stop chasing the mirage of bipartisanship, stop compromising, and start playing hardball with those Democrats who care more for their big-donor special interests than they do for their constituents.
In addition, because the Supreme Court moved so quickly to obliterate the CDC eviction moratorium, it’s important that we urge our members of Congress to include a CDC-authorization provision in the Reconciliation Bill.
Contact your members of Congress and the White House ([link removed]) and demand that the Reconciliation Bill incorporate economic justice!
** We already have minority rule in the Senate, and the filibuster just makes it worse
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In a democracy, citizens are supposed to have the same amount of voting power: one person, one vote. But that’s not the case in the Senate, where the 40 million people who live in the 22 smallest states get 44 senators to represent their views, while the 40 million people in California get two. The result of this kind of misrepresentation is a strong political bias and a form of minority rule.
The Democratic agenda—including For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act—is popular with the majority of the American people. The filibusters blocking it are politically illegitimate because they violate the central democratic principle of majority rule. But yesterday, the long awaited compromise Freedom to Vote Act was introduced, and Senator Manchin is seeking ten Republican votes for it. Failing that, we are hoping for a “carve-out” from the filibuster for voting rights. While ending the filibuster is our ultimate goal, we need at least to reform the filibuster to secure our voting rights.
Contact your senators and tell the ([link removed]) m: ([link removed]) end the filibuster or at least create a filibuster carve-out for voting rights to protect democracy.
** Remember: We don’t know the results of the recall election yet!
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What an exciting night, right? Not to mention the entire month-plus leading up to it.
But whatever the state of things as of this morning, there are still plenty of ballots to count. The real results won’t be known until the votes are counted.
So remember the lesson of the past few election cycles: The media’s projections on “election night” are not substitutes for the real results. We wait for the real results in about a week.
The leading Republican candidate has already been casting doubt on the legitimacy of a Newsom victory, making false claims of voter fraud ([link removed]) —continuing the legacy of Republican and Trumpian disinformation of the past couple of decades. If you see lies or other disinformation on social media about the election process or results, report it to Common Cause’s disinformation tipline ([link removed]) .
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All are welcome to join our events!
ISF Federal Working Group meeting: Thursday, September 23, 7:30–9 PM. Register here ([link removed]) for a Zoom meeting to help us develop strategies to influence our members of Congress and the Biden administration to enact a progressive agenda.
Women’s March for Our Rights—Reproductive Justice: Saturday, October 2, 11–12:30 PM at Civic Center. As part of a Women’s March Day of Action, our friends at Women’s March San Francisco are co-organizing a march in the city. Stay tuned for our plans for this action and find out more on their webpage ([link removed]) .
About this week’s photo
If you’ve seen our newsletter posts on Twitter and Facebook, you might have noticed that we include a photo or graphic with each issue. This week’s graphic is a photo by Sarah Silbiger for Reuters of the exterior of the US Capitol in its news story ([link removed]) about the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
Keep Fighting,
The Indivisible SF Team ([link removed])
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