Former President Trump's second impeachment trial is underway.  It is imperative that we contact both Senators and ask them to be professional and impartial.
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US CAPITOL PHONE NUMBER 202-224-3121

(1)  We are counting on both Senators to be fair minded and to use the facts and information presented in the Senate trial to make their decisions. We do NOT want either Senator to have made his mind up already.

(2)  Former President Trump and all those who aided and enabled him must be held accountable, no matter who they are.  This includes  holding other Senators and previous administration officials accountable for crimes committed while in office.  This includes holding Senators Cruz and Hawley accountable for inciting the Capitol assault.

Link to numbers and call scripts:  http://bit.ly/2miOJP8    

We're ba-aaaack!
It has been a very long 4 years.  Thank you for never giving up.
Stay tuned for actions and call scripts for both state and national actions.

Primary election ballots HAVE BEEN MAILED.  If you don't have yours, reach out to your county elections office.  If you aren't registered, reach out to your county elections office.  List here: https://sosmt.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020-Late-Registration-Locations.pdf

Check your registration status and track your ballot via the Montana My Voter Page
https://app.mt.gov/voterinfo/

MORE RESOURCES
List of Montana Legislative Candidates
Non-Legislative Candidates (Federal, Governor, etc)
x
x
x


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​We are down to CRUNCH TIME.   T-minus twenty days... And counting...

​WE NEED YOUR HELP!
​
Please volunteer to get out the vote in Missoula!
The fastest way to get connected to the coordinated campaign is by email: missoula@mtdems.org

You can also just stop by the office at 345 W. Front St. or call 406-493-0131.
​
For victory in November, let's leave it all on the field!

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Love Trumps Hate: We Connect. We Rally. We March

Together we stand as a community unified against the messages of hate Trump spreads. We empower ourselves to take control of our democracy and hit the polls. We stand together as Americans and Montanans. Missoula Rises, along with a coalition of organizations, will host a “Love Trumps Hate” rally and March to the Polls on Thursday, October 18, 2018 from 2:30 to 6pm at Playfair Park in Missoula.

The general schedule of events is as follows:

Wednesday, October 17, 2018 6-8 pm at Imagination Brewing, Missoula, MT

• Sign making party/work party/press can interview the hardworking, on the ground members of Missoula Rises.

Thursday, October 18, 2018 at Playfair Park Missoula,  MT

2:30 - 4:00 pm We Create Community Connection

• The Native community will open the event. Peaceful Heart Yoga will be leading yoga for children and adults, specifically focusing on how to use our passion, rage and anger for positive and constructive work. 
• Community Mural. We want to know what your vision of Missoula Community looks like. Come show us what your heart says about our community. Show us what your dream for a Missoula Community looks like. Show us through art! 
• Community Comfort Food Potluck. Yes, we will have food trucks, but we also all bring our comfort food that speaks to our homes and cultures to share with each other.
• Face Painting for adults and kids. Show your love, your pride, your patriotism on your face! :)
• VOTING!!! We will have escorts to walk people over to the polls to VOTE! And yes.... we are working on getting golf carts draped in American flags to shuttle people over there. Education, education, education.
• There will be tables with information and people to talk to about the various ballot initiatives. You can also find out there how to canvass, door knock and help register voters.

4:00-4:30 Press Conference at Staging Area

4:30 - 5:30 pm We Rally

• Speakers to include veterans, indigenous leaders, youth activists, interfaith leaders.  Rally led by Erin Erickson, Missoula Rises Director and Ben Dawson, Missoula Area Central Labor Council.

5:30 - 6:00 pm We March

• We march from Playfair Park down South Avenue and wrap around the fairgrounds to Russell Street. We surround the sidewalks around the Missoula County Fairgrounds. We surround the polls. We protest, AND we get out the vote. We do both.

A full event description is available online at : https://www.facebook.com/events/248193679377589/ 

For General Media and logistics questions prior to the 18th contact: Lisa Davey, Press Coordinator for Missoula Rises 406-240-4105 or ladavey25@gmail.com

For other inquiries or specific interviews, contact: 
Erin Erickson, Director Missoula Rises 406-531-2510 or erickson@bebtlaw.com

Nothing is going to change in Washington unless we flip the House and the Senate.  

Our part of that, here in Montana, is to re-elect Jon Tester and elect Kathleen Williams.  So here it is:  A Simple Guide to Making A Difference, and how to have fun doing it.

Because we can do it.  Here’s how:

We’re going to act together.  It won’t be hard. In fact, you’ll have fun doing it. And you will sleep better knowing you are doing your part.

1. Sign up as a volunteer for the campaigns.  That gets you on the email lists, so you’ll know about any upcoming events.  You’ll run into old friends and make new friends, go to candidate and volunteer events, get free pizza, and have fun.  Click the links below to get to the volunteer signup pages.
   
   
   1. TESTER
   2. WILLIAMS
      
      
2. If you have Facebook you can Like the candidate pages.  This is another way to make sure you see all the messages from the campaigns and don’t miss any fun events.  Click the links below to get to the Facebook pages.
   
   
   • Jon Tester
   • Senator Jon Tester
   • Women for Tester
   • Williams for Montana
     
     
3. Sign up for events.  Clicks, Likes, and witty Tweets don’t win elections. Real people doing real things win elections.  You’ll start getting notified of events and training after you sign up online and with Facebook. Pick one and get started.  It’s easy and fun.
   
   If you are able, sign up for a shift knocking doors. It’s fun, it’s not hard at all, you meet great people, and you get to have real conversations with your neighbors.  If a farmer like Jon Tester can do it, you can too.
   
   If door knocking isn’t for you, you can phone bank.  It’s easy and fun too. You will be in a room with other volunteers, get some training and resources, use campaign phones, and work from a list of voters.  You’ll get some sample wording. You will have great conversations with people all across Montana. You’ll probably even score some snacks.
   
   
   
4. Spread the word.  Talk to your friends and family.  Let them know you support Tester and Williams, and why.  Help them understand why voting for Tester and Williams is so important.  Find some people who didn’t vote in the 2016 election and help them register.   Ask people if they are registered to vote at their current address. Ask your kids, grandkids, neighbors, people in your classes, ask everyone.  If each of us gets just two new people to vote in 2018, we can turn this thing around.  Reach out to friends and family, especially anyone under 30.  That’s the group that has the lowest voter turnout, and also has the most to lose.
   
   
5. Donate to the campaigns if you can.  Every donation matters.
   
   
   • ActBlue: Tester
   • ActBlue: Williams

Together, Montanans will  lead the way to real change by flipping the House and Senate.
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#WhereAreTheChildren #EndFamilySeparation

WHAT’S HAPPENING???

Thing 1:  The Trump administration is forcibly taking migrant children from their parents and placing them in separate detention centers to “deter” illegal immigration.
​

• The Trump administration has begun forcibly taking children from their parents.  Rather than only taking truly unaccompanied children, or children whose parents are charged with violent crimes, HHS has classified all unauthorized border crossers as criminals and separates the children from their families.  
• More than 700 children have been taken from adults claiming to be their parents (October 2017 – April 2018), including more than 100 children under the age of 4.
• These children wait in shelters or are sent to federally contracted foster homes, often without parents being told exactly where they are.
• In the meantime, space in shelters and foster homes is limited.  The administration plans to open internment camp facilities at military bases to house some of the separated children.

Thing 2:  The US government has lost some of the children.  
​

• Federal officials lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children last year after a government agency placed the minors in the homes of adult sponsors.
• These children may end up in the hands of human traffickers or be used as laborers by people posing as relatives.  We know this has happened. Two years ago, a Senate homeland security subcommittee released a report detailing how HHS officials placed eight children with human traffickers who forced the minors to work on an egg farm in Marion, Ohio. The report found that department officials had failed to establish procedures to protect the unaccompanied minors, such as conducting sufficient background checks on potential sponsors and following up with sponsors.  We have evidence that children have been sold into sex trafficking.
• Homeland Security and HHS signed a memorandum of understanding in 2016 and agreed to establish joint procedures within one year for dealing with unaccompanied migrant children.  More than a year after the new guidelines were due, the two agencies have not completed them. Article here.

WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS?
​

• The Trump administration claims it will deter people from trying to enter the US.  Chief of staff John Kelly told NPR in an interview three weeks ago that the plan to forcibly separate mothers from their children was explicitly designed as a “tough deterrent” to scare immigrants from trying to enter the U.S.
• Trump is using these children as bargaining chips.  He said so himself when he tweeted “Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.”  Trump wants to force the Democrats to vote for a new immigration bill that gives him what he wants: tougher law enforcement on the border, a higher rate of deportation, and funding for his wall.
• Racism.  Sometimes the simplest answer is the correct answer.  Trump and his administration have told us, in word and deed, that they are racists and see people of color as criminals, as gang members, as animals.  We should believe them when they say that.

BUT OBAMA!
​

• By now you have probably heard someone say “Obama started it” or “Obama did it too.”
• NO.  Not true.  This is a change from Obama policy.  Previously, most parents had been allowed to remain with their children in family shelters while awaiting asylum cases or deportation proceedings.  The Office of Refugee Resettlement generally placed only children who crossed the border without a parent in government-run detention centers. If a parent and a child came together, they would be processed together unless border officers could not be certain that they were actually the parents of the children accompanying them or if the adults were prosecuted for a crime.
• This is a complete change of rules and drastic escalation by the Trump administration.  People of conscience around the world are noting that this is what the Nazis did.  It is a betrayal of everything the United States stands for.

CALL TO ACTION!

Being outraged and upset is not enough.  Posting on Facebook is not enough.  If we can't stop this in the United States, we can't stop it anywhere.
​

• Connect with local groups.  
  • DAILY ACTIONS HERE.
  • Get the app!  Our team code is 289-029-004.
• Put pressure on our members of Congress.  All three of them.   Call. Email. Fax. Show up at their offices and their events.  Congress is a co-equal branch of government and is supposed to act as a check and balance on the Executive.  It’s time for them to act like it and do their jobs.  Stay updated with Daily Actions and events telling our Members of Congress to:
  • Force HHS to end the 100% prosecution policy, stop separating families, and do not put children in military concentration camps.  All you have to say is “I am outraged by how our government is treating children at the border. What is my Senator/Rep doing about this?”
  • Pass a clean DREAM Act to protect the 800,000 Dreamers.
  • Restore Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for another 300,000 refugees.
• Put pressure on other parts of the government.
  • You can contact ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) directly. Write to them here or call them at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE.
  • Call/fax E. Scott Lloyd, the Director of The Office of Refugee Resettlement in DHHS. He is responsible for the missing children.  Phone: 202-401-9246
    Fax: 202-401-0981.
• Action on the ground.  
  • There is an effort to organize #WhereAreTheChildren marches for June 14. Check here for more information.
  • We need more volunteers helping immigrant serving/organizing organizations with things like showing up at city council meetings to voice support for immigrants, ask your city government to invest in legal services money for people going through deportation, preparing your neighbors to defeat any anti-sanctuary efforts, and accompanying undocumented people to ICE check ins.
  • If you are a person of faith or a member of a faith community, ask what your congregation is doing to stop family separation. 
• Midterm Elections. Demand every candidate support legislation to fix this harm.  Republicans control both the House and Senate. Republicans refuse to take any action to hold Trump accountable for anything, including this horrific policy.   Democrats are afraid to make immigration a campaign priority. Enough is enough. Democrats have to stand up and demand that the United States do the right thing.
  ​

References/Additional Reading

• www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/taking-children-from-their-parents-is-a-form-of-state-terror
• https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/trump-blames-his-own-child-separation-policy-on-democrats
• http://www.businessinsider.com/john-kelly-family-separation-policy-illegal-border-crossing-2018-5
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/05/27/the-trump-administrations-refugee-and-border-policies-cruelly-ignore-the-lessons-of-the-past/?utm_term=.4c5dfc099c81
• https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/anguish-southwest-border-more-immigrant-children-are-separated-parents-n874821
• https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/sessions-parents-children-entering-us-illegally-will-be-separated-n872081
• https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/05/08/2018-09902/privacy-act-of-1974-system-of-records
• https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Operation_Streamline_Policy_Brief.pdf
• https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2017/0609/ICE-shutters-helpful-family-management-program-amid-budget-cuts
• https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/sessions-parents-children-entering-us-illegally-will-be-separated-n872081
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/federal-agency-says-it-lost-track-of-1475-migrant-children/2018/04/27/48960718-49d3-11e8-8082-105a446d19b8_story.html?utm_term=.541f81dc3401
• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/20/us/immigrant-children-separation-ice.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/us/politics/migrant-children-missing.html
• https://rewire.news/article/2018/05/08/jeff-sessions-separated-immigrant-families-obama/
  
  

What do you call it when one party controls the House, the Senate, and the White House?  You SHOULD be able to call it legislative carte blanche - the ability to do whatever that party wants to do.  Instead, we’re calling it the #GOPShutdown.

First, here’s a simple way to explain the shutdown:
​

• ​Pretend the Senate is a restaurant and  Mitch McConnell (Senate Majority Leader) is the waiter.
• Chuck Schumer (Senate Minority Leader) and friends sit down and order scrambled eggs.
• McConnell says "No. Everyone gets poached eggs and those brown people over there have to eat poison, or no one gets breakfast."
• Schumer says "We want scrambled eggs, and NO ONE is eating poison."
• McConnell then starts yelling "THE DEMOCRATS WON'T LET ANYONE HAVE BREAKFAST!!!"
• And no one gets to eat.

There is no reason for the government to be shut down.  We should have a budget bill that takes us through the fiscal year.  We don’t.  We’ve had a series of Continuing Resolutions (CRs) for the last 9 years.  The one that failed Friday night was only a 4 week extension.  Now they are trying to put together something for as little as 3-4 days.  This is like trying to handle your household finances via payday loans.

Backstory:  How did we get here?

• CHIP funding expired in September.  Four months ago.  There was a bipartisan bill to continue CHIP funding but the Republicans held it back while they took another shot at repealing Obamacare (that failed), then rammed the #GOPTaxScam through before the end of the year.  The Republican talking point that the Democrats are not funding CHIP is not true.
• Trump ended DACA in September.  An average of 122 Dreamers lose their DACA protections every day.  The Republican talking point that DACA is not in imminent danger is false.
• Democrats agreed to more time for negotiation in September, again on December 9, and again on December 22.  There was a  bipartisan agreement to avert this shutdown, and Trump said he would sign whatever Congress gave him.  Then Trump and some of his allies in Congress blew that up on Jan 11 (remember the racist s-hole comment?).   
• Last Friday the House passed a very narrow spending bill that included six years of funding for CHIP but did not include DACA legislation.  The Senate took up the same bill and could not even get all of the Republicans to vote for it.  Several Democrats did, and several Republicans did not.  Time ran out and now large parts of the federal government are shut down.
  
  

There is a bipartisan bill that would get up to 70 votes in the Senate.  Mitch McConnell will not bring this bill up for a vote.  There have been motions to allow the military to be paid during the shutdown, and McConnell will not allow a vote.

Republicans control all three branches of government.  The shutdown belongs to the Republican party.  Republicans must make a choice: Honor the bipartisan agreement between Republicans and Democrats to end the shutdown or stand with Trump and the most racist voices in our country and keep the government shut down.

How to Respond to GOP Talking Points  (via Indivisible Guide)

1.     Democrats are shutting the government down to give amnesty to illegal immigrants.

• FALSE.
• Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the House but they have not put forward legislation to fund the government that can pass both chambers of Congress. It is their obligation to keep the government running.
• DACA is not unchecked illegal immigration.  DACA recipients are lawfully present -- they are children who have lived in America for years, in many cases their entire lives.  They were here lawfully under a government program that grants them lawfully present status until Donald Trump unilaterally ended it.

2.     Democrats are hurting our military.

• FALSE.
• Republicans want to throw even more money at the Pentagon -- so much more money, that they’d need a new agreement in Congress to do it (because of  the sequester caps that Republicans themselves imposed some years ago).  Our existing military is not underfunded. It is not underprepared. Republicans want the CR to allow even more bloated spending to flow to the Pentagon and they’re not getting their way -- but that is a very different story from “Democrats are hurting the military.”   
• Military personnel have always received back pay for any lost salary during a government shutdown.
• Multiple Senate Democrats have attempted to advance language specifying that service members will get paid during any shutdown, but Mitch McConnell has objected and kept these measures from getting a vote.

3.     Democrats are holding up CHIP.
​

• FALSE.
• CHIP funding expired at the end of September. Republicans have used CHIP as a political bargaining tool since then. Even though there is bipartisan support for extending CHIP for ten years, Republicans put a shorter six year reauthorization -- paired with repeal of certain Affordable Care Act provisions -- into the proposed CR to try to pit CHIP and Dream against each other, dividing Democrats. If anyone is holding up CHIP funding, it’s the Republicans that control Congress and the White House that could have extended funding months ago.

4.     DACA is not an imminent issue. We have until March.

• FALSE.  
• An average of 122 Dreamers lose their protection from deportation everyday.  Over 16,000 Dreamers have lost protection  since Trump unilaterally ended DACA in September.   We need to protect Dreamers now. Plus, this Republican Congress has a habit of missing deadlines and not honoring promises to deal with issues later (ask Senators Flake and Collins!) so Congress must do this now.

5.     Democrats are closing the national parks and hurting federal employees.”

• FALSE.
• The Republicans shut down the government and refuse to allow a vote on a bipartisan blll that can pass. Yes, some national parks will close for as long as Republicans fail to re-open the government, but some are still open and unstaffed (which is arguably worse!).  
• Federal employees have always received back pay for any lost salary during a government shutdown. If they do not receive back pay this time, it is because the Republicans won’t vote for it.
• Finally, Republicans have demonized federal employees for years -- consistently proposing pay freezes, pay cuts, and the drastic cuts to the workforce.  Any newfound concern they have for our federal workforce is a disingenuous fabrication.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

JOIN a state or local action group and be notified of all in-person activities.

IndivisibleMT  
www.IndivisibleMT.com  
Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Indivisible-Montana-125153521365231/
Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/IndivisibleMT/
Twitter @Indivisible_MT

Missoula Rises
https://missoularises.com/ 
Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/563298447213940/  
Twitter @MissoulaRises

Big Sky Rising  
http://bigskyrising.net/  
Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BigSkyRising/
Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/BigSkyRising/

JOIN thousands of your friends and neighbors and start calling / emailing / faxing  our members of Congress!  

Phone numbers and call scripts here:   http://bit.ly/2miOJP8
Make it easy - Get the app!  getamplify.org, team code 289-029-004

Just want the numbers so you can call?

Generic Capitol Phone Numbers
202-224-3121 or 1-855-980-2350

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