Tomorrow, June 9, starting at 5 PM Pacific, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack will air its first public hearing on primetime TV. These hearings will show us far more than what we learned in the second impeachment of Donald John Trump. They will reveal how the events of January 6, 2021 fit into a much broader attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Check out our Viewers’ Guide to the hearings.
Emergency Executive Orders vs. Mass Shooting Epidemic
We are trapped in a national health emergency: an epidemic of mass shootings. Our right to life has been subordinated to the gun industry’s desire to profit by selling deadly weapons with little restraint, while mass shootings accelerate and gun-related killings and suicides intensify. Congress must stop accepting a status quo where the will of a majority of Senators, collectively representing some 194 million Americans, can be overruled by a minority that represents 76 million fewer people and is willing, and even eager, to let chaotic fanatics armed with weapons of war threaten our lives.
Join us and gun safety groups nationwide to urge President Biden to declare a national health emergency due to gun violence, name a Director of Gun Violence Prevention, and issue executive orders to curb gun violence until we have voted in more responsible Senators and Congresspeople in the 2022 Blue Wave to codify those measures.
Tell President Biden: Use emergency executive orders to curb mass shootings!
Good Bills for a Better Congress: The Equality Act
One of the things that makes us progressives and distinguishes us from the Right is our rejection of patriarchy—the ideology that says that there are only two genders, men and women, and that they have specific, rigidly defined, and mutually exclusive roles in society, with men entitled to hold power and women largely excluded from it. We work to build a society that provides equal opportunity for all people of all genders.
The journey in this direction has been long and hard, and it is unfinished. Today, Republican legislatures in many states are passing legislation that compels people to remain pregnant whether they want to (or even safely can) or not. They’re also attempting to outlaw transgender people’s ability to exist in public by banning them from youth sports, forcing them to use the wrong restroom, and denying them life-saving medical care. This is on top of existing discrimination in the workforce, education, housing, and more.
The Equality Act would be another step in the right direction: toward equality. It would amend federal law to codify protections against discrimination on the basis of gender or birth-assigned sex. It would also prohibit the “bathroom bills” that deny trans people full participation in public life. These protections would help level the playing field for all women, both those who are cisgender (i.e. people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) and those who are transgender, and all trans people, including trans men and nonbinary people.
We are so close to passing this legislation, but this Senate doesn’t quite have the votes. A bigger, better Democratic majority could make history by getting us there.
There are so many outstanding bills that will never make it past Republican obstruction in the 50/50 Senate. So instead of asking you to take action on bills like this right now, we’re keeping a list of bills our next Congress can and should enact, if we can hold our House majority and increase our Senate majority. Find the Equality Act, and more that might inspire your friends and family to vote in the midterm elections, on our list of Good Bills for a Better Congress.
Thank you for voting!
We’re writing this on Tuesday evening, so we don’t even know the early returns yet.
We appreciate every voter who participates in our democracy. We’ll know the final results of all the races in a few weeks. In the meantime, we hope you’ll continue to take part in get-out-the-vote activities for states whose primaries haven’t concluded yet, and for the general midterm election coming up in a few short months.
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If you’re interested in participating in activities like drafting letters to our Members of Congress and developing our strategy for influencing them, the Indivisible SF Federal Working Group is where it happens. Our next meeting is on Thursday, May 26. Details on how to register below.
ISF Federal Working Group meeting: Thursday, June 9, 7:30–9 PM. Register here to join our regular Zoom meeting, where we work together to develop strategies for influencing our Members of Congress and the Biden administration to support a progressive agenda. All are welcome to participate and contribute, even if you’ve never attended an ISF meeting before.
Bay Area Coalition Phone Banks: Wednesdays and Saturdays. Our friends at Swing Left need your help talking to voters about the upcoming primaries and midterms. Join Swing Left and the Bay Area Coalition on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings to make calls to voters in California and around the nation. Sign up for a shift:
- TODAY, Wednesday, June 8, 5–7 PM
- Saturday, June 11, 10 AM–12 PM
- Wednesday, June 15, 5–7 PM
Voter registration drive in the California Central Valley with Swing Left: Saturdays. Swing Left needs your help registering voters in Central Valley CD-13 and CD-22, from Modesto to Bakersfield. They will conduct door-to-door and COVID-safe canvassing to register voters every weekend until November 8. Sign up here:
- Saturday, June 25, 9 AM–3:30 PM
- Saturday, July 2, 9 AM–3:30 PM
- Saturday, July 9, 9 AM–3:30 PM
Moral March on Washington and To The Polls watch party with Indivisible East Bay: Saturday, June 18. Join our friends at Indivisible East Bay for a virtual watch party of the Moral March on Washington by the Poor People’s Campaign. RSVP here.
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.
Today’s photo is of the House select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection by J. Scott Applewhite for the Associated Press. It was featured on an NPR article about the committee’s proceedings.
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Keep Fighting,
The Indivisible SF Team
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