Dear Resistance Members,

 Are you currently:

• Writing a letter to your editor and need data to back up your argument?
• Looking for information to share with your representative?
• Wondering how to verify if a news story is based in reality or alternative-facts?  
• Trying to figure out what Net Neutrality is and why it matters?
• Dealing with information overload and needing some reassurance?
  
  

To answer your questions, big or small, we present the Missoula Resistance Library,  a group of information professionals banding together to provide research and resources to the Missoula Resistance community.  Knowledge is power and we are committed to empowering citizens by sharing information and supporting your information needs.  

Contact us online at https://missoularesistancelibrary.wordpress.com/ or drop in and visit with us Thursday, June 15th, from 5 to 7pm at the Union Club Bar, 208 E Main.    

Resisting and persisting,
​
Your Librarians
(Image credit: Sorvala)

 

​Yesterday Ben Wickler, the Washington director of MoveOn.org published a long thread on Twitter that I think is so important I’m going to post a paraphrase of it.

He makes a lot of suggestions. If all you can do is 1-3, do it. If you can add 4 and 5, good! (I’m going to.) And every one after that is good, too. I’m in a state with two Democratic Senators who have been loud in their denunciation of TrumpCare already, so I will concentrate on 4-6. I invite you to join me.

OK, here’s what Mr. Wickler suggests. Your access to health care, and that of your neighbors, may depend on taking his advice in the next two weeks:

​The progress of TrumpCare in the Senate is reaching a critical point.
The GOP leadership in the Senate plans to pass a bill very quickly, bypassing all the usual hearings and safeguards.

We have time to protest, but VERY LITTLE TIME. They plan to pass this monster by the end of the month.

They plan to send the bill to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO,) sight unseen by the public, by this coming Tuesday, June 13. Negotiations on the bill are nearly over. What has leaked out about it is horrific.

When they get the bill back from the CBO, the plan is to fast-track it to the Senate floor. That means no filibuster.  No discussion. 

The week of June 26, the score will come out, the bill will be made public, the public will scream, and they’ll grit their teeth & pass it. No town halls, no public discussion, no hearings with experts or people affected, NOTHING. Just the vote.

What Wickler hears from the Hill is that they have already come close to the votes to do this.
Unlike the House vote, where most people only saw what was happening in the final 48 hours, we have 3 weeks to stop this bill.
​
1.      PHONE CALLS – Senate offices are back to normal in the number of phone calls they receive from constituents. We must light up the phones with our feelings about TrumpCare.

2.     Put this number on speed dial, if you haven’t already: 202-224-2131.

3.     Tell your calendar or Siri or whatever you do for reminders to make a call to Congress DAILY at that number.

4.     Don’t just call your Senator. Recruit callers. Type “Friends in Tennessee” to Facebook. Remind them to call Senator Lamar Alexander.

5.     Do the same for these Senators:

6.     Call friends in TN WV LA ME TN AR AZ CO SC NV AK & OH! Get in touch & ask ’em to call Congress re Trumpcare. They can be Democrats, Republicans or Independents – we’re all going to be hurt by the bill in the Senate now. Ask them to remind their Senators about the issues they care about: pre-existing conditions, seniors, medicare, whatever.​

7.     Go a step further: when you call a Senator’s office, ask to speak to the Health Staffer. Here are their names: 

​8.     These staffers are human beings. They work on health care because they care about health. Even if their bosses don’t. Tell your story. What we want is for health staffers to be telling their bosses that they’ve spent all day with the phone from freaked-out constituents.

9.     Another step further: Ask the health staffer for a meeting before the vote with state staffers (or in DC, if you can come). Promise to bring a group. Bring a ton of people. Contact @MoveOn for help in putting a group together.

10.   EMAIL the health staffers with your personal story. You can figure out their email addresses thusly: Staffer1stName.stafferLastname@SenatorLastName.senate.gov.

11.   If you don’t get the meeting, no problem. You can still recruit a group & show up at Senators’ offices. Time to break out the signs.

12.   Find the letters to the editor submission email address for local papers in your state & send them your story, mentioning your Senator.

Wickler concludes with this (quoting him, not paraphrasing here):​​

We are commanded:  “Do not profit by the blood of your fellow [human being.]” In other words, save tax dollars on something else, not health care. ​

I have had the privilege of hearing the Rev. Dr. William Barber, Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Goldsboro, North Carolina.  The Rev. Dr. Barber is the architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement that gained national acclaim with its Moral Monday protests at the North Carolina General Assembly in 2013. His website is Repairers of the Breach.
 
Rev. Dr. Barber does not mince words.  He called for us to come together, as progressives, as people of faith, as people with moral character, as people who must act together.  We may have differences, but we cannot afford to be divided.  We have a moral imperative, a moral call to action, and act we must.  We must:
 

1. Critique issues like health care repeal with moral language. Not left vs right, or GOP vs Democrat. We must criticize these actions as wrong, as not moral.  This violent public policy is in violation of the Constitution, of economic justice, and of our religious values.   As it is written in Isaiah 10 (a book shared by all the peoples of the book):
   
   1  Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees,
   2  to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.
   
   We need to hold tight to that.  This is violent public policy. It is immoral, unjust, evil.
   
   
2. Call out those who claim to be people of faith yet who support this budget and this legislation. Call them out, challenge them on moral terms. Call out the silence of white evangelicals, who are so loud on the attack, but so silent on the fundamental, pre-eminent issue of how we take care of the least of us.
   
   
3. Fill the galleries and halls with people who will be hurt by these measures. Use all the tools we have to put a face on the hurt and the injustice.  Show up. Speak up.
   
   
4. Unpack the lies. Clearly show the intersections.  The states and politicians who have refused to restore the Voting Rights Act are why we have a Congress like this, and why Trump was elected.  There were over 800 fewer polling places in black precincts in the south for this election.  Do not fight in silos or just on our issues. UNPACK THE LIES.  Speak in clear, short strong statements of truth.
   
   
5. Challenge the media.  Call them on their complicity, or their silence.  Tell the media “You cannot have people on the air, listed as political analysts, who lie, and are not challenged.”  Demand that the personalities challenge the guests, and call them on their lies.  Do not allow guests to say “Obamacare kills.” No, lack of Obamacare kills.  People who did not get care died.
   
   
6. Put a face on those impacted.  Put their faces, their stories, and their pain on display. The sick. The poor. The working poor.  Put a face on it.  The main people speaking at our rallies and events must be those impacted.  We must show the country what violent public policy looks like.
   
   We must also welcome those now who realize they voted for the wrong thing. Join them in the fight.  They too must be with us, beside us, at our press conferences.  
   
   
7. Expose the kind of health care that Congress has.  Call out that they have this kind of health care, paid for by taxpayers, while they are taking care from others. Expose the race and class connection.  Take your state’s number of people losing care, and break it out by race and age and class.  Talk about the 14th Amendment, and equal protection. Is this legislation in violation of equal protection?
   
   
8. Civil disobedience is part of our strategy. This is not a one time event.  We cannot tolerate violent public policy.  If this disgraceful legislation passes the House on Thursday, we need be in the streets on Friday.  We must look at civil disobedience. In DC, in the states, everywhere.  At some point you must be willing to put your body on the line.
   
   
9. Voter Registration. Every event we have, every rally, every protest, every teach-in, must also be a voter registration event.  If 30% of the unregistered voters had been registered and voted, we would have had a vastly different outcome.  If we can make that happen, we can take our states back, we can take the US House back, we can take the Senate back, and we can take the Presidency back.
   
   
10. This is not a rally, or an event. This is a movement.  We cannot, we will not, tolerate unjust, immoral, violent public policy.
    
    

Remember: Everything we progressives have now, everything we hold dear, was called impossible at one time.  Moral dissenters either win in the moment, or in the days to come.  This is a matter of life and death.   We may have  differences, but we cannot afford to be divided.  

We have a moral imperative, a moral call to action, and act we must.

A recording of the speech is here https://act.moveon.org/survey/readytoresist/  Rev. Dr. Barber begins speaking at about the 9 minute mark.
 
IndivisibleMT Resources Here
​

Start where you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can.

Yep, the United States is a yuuuuge mess.  We have Russian agents all over the Administration.  Economic inequality continues to get worse.  Health care as we know it may be done.  The planet is warming faster than any of the models.   North Korea keeps threatening nuclear war.  It’s too much for any one of us to fix.  But you know what?  No single one of us has to.  We just have to do what we can do.  And what we can do is save Montana first.

Start where you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can.

• Start where you are.  Right here in Montana.
• Use what you have.  We have a special election on May 25.  You have a ballot (and if you don’t have one, you can get one).  Use your ballot.
• Do what you can.  VOTE.   Vote for Rob Quist. If you have an absentee ballot, fill it out and get it in the mail, or drop it off.  If you don’t have an absentee ballot, you can early vote.  Just go to your county early voting location, fill out a form, get a ballot, fill it out, and hand it back.  Here’s the list of early voting locations for every county in Montana: EARLY VOTING LOCATIONS

Major Cities

• Billings (Yellowstone County):      217 N 27th St    M-F 8-5
• Bozeman (Gallatin County):          311 W Main, Rm 203
• Great Falls (Cascade County):       Fairgrounds    M-F 7-5
• Helena (Lewis & Clark County):    316 N Park Ave Rm 168 M-F 8-5
• Missoula (Missoula County):        Fairgrounds (South Ave entrance) M-F 8-5

Start where you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can.

We are going to need every single seat we can get in the US House of Representatives.  That’s not just a midterm issue, it’s a right now thing.  RIGHT NOW.  We have to flip this seat.  I don’t care if Quist is your favorite Democratic candidate or not (Disclosure: He’s not my favorite.).  That really does not matter.  He is not Greg Gianforte.  So you have to vote for him.  You can’t sit this one out, and you can’t cast a protest vote.  Suck it up, buttercup.

Your country needs you.  Your planet needs you.
VOTE.

Don't get mad.  Flip the seat.  Go vote to put a Montana cowboy in the House, not some billionaire who doesn't even like Montana.

Early Voting is open until the day of the special election (Thursday, May 25).  Head on over to your county early voting location, fill out an application for a one-time absentee ballot, fill out the ballot, seal it, hand it back.  Boom.  Took me 8 minutes this afternoon.  Would have taken 5 but I had some questions about the technology in use, and the election judge was chatty.

Our friends over at Big Sky Rising are compiling a list of the early voting location for every county in Montana HERE.  

REGISTER! Today (Tuesday, April 25th is the close of regular voter registration for the Special Election. You must complete, sign, and mail your Montana Voter Registration form and have it postmarked by this date.  After Tuesday you will have to go to your county elections site to register.

Request an absentee ballot. if that''s easier for you.

Thursday, 4/20/16  6pm - 8pm
Union Club, 208 E Main St, Missoula, MT 59802

We can't get Senator Daines to schedule a Town Hall with us, so we scheduled one for him.  We are providing him an opportunity to answer and address constituent questions and concerns. His office has been provided the information and we are of course optimistic that he will spend time with his voting constituents during his recess to Montana.

​Please come prepared with all of your questions and concerns to discuss with Senator Daines.

HEADS UP!  Tuesday April 25 is the close of regular voter registration for the Special Election. You must complete, sign, and mail your Montana Voter Registration form and have it postmarked by this date. The form has a check box for absentee ballot.  After Tuesday you will have to go to your county elections site to register.

IMPORTANT: For the Special Election, completed absentee ballots must be RECEIVED at the Elections Office before 8 pm on May 25.
If you are already registered to vote at your polling place, you can apply for an absentee ballot by completing and signing the Application for Absentee Ballot form. To allow for mail time, do this right away.
*Link for Montana election forms: http://sos.mt.gov/elections/forms
* To verify your current voting status, click "My Voter Page" below.

My Voter Page   The Montana Secretary of State's voter information service.

• Missoula 4/2

Special Election Forum:  Join Missoula community members, the Missoula Resistance Collective, Missoula Rises, IndivisibleMT, Montana Women Vote, Forward Montana, and more for a Special Election Action Forum in which you will learn how to have effective conversations and take action on the issues that matter most to you and your family.

Topics include Healthcare and the ACA, Public Education, LGBTQ rights, Public Lands and Conservation, and Immigration. 

Don't lose more sleep on account of politics. Join us!  Food and on-site childcare provided!
 
Sunday, April 2
Sunday at 4 PM - 6 PM
UCC of Missoula,  405 University Ave, Missoula, Montana 59801
https://www.facebook.com/events/1662506440724327/
 

• Bozeman 4/4

GPAN Grassroots Training #5:  Gallatin Progressive Action Network (GPAN) is hosting a Grassroots Organizing Training Series led by fellow GPANer and activist Elizabeth Marum. We will be hosting a training workshop every two weeks for the next few months. The remaining training dates are 4/4, and 4/18. Please join us to gain the tools to be an effective activist, advocate, or defender of human rights. You do not need to have attended a previous training as each of these workshops have a theme independent of the others. We will be meeting in the fellowship room, downstairs in the First Baptist Church on Grand Ave.
 
Tuesday, April 4 at 6 PM
First Baptist Church Bozeman, 120 S Grand Ave, Bozeman, Montana 59715
 https://www.facebook.com/events/1893482154227587/
 

• Helena 4/6

 ​
Story of Self Training/Medicaid Cut Updates:  Please join us to learn how to tell your Story of Self. This skill will enable you to give effective testimony to your elected officials as well as teach you a lifelong communication and advocacy skill that can be used in many ways. 

We will also have policy updates on proposed cuts to nutritional programs like Meals on Wheels and SNAP. We will have the latest in regard to Medicaid Cuts. Learn the advocacy training and you will have another tool in your toolkit to fight back.  Please join us to become part of the national campaign to fight back on cuts to the Safety Net that lifts so many of us out of poverty and helps us life our lives with dignity.

Please click here to register for the training. I will need a headcount for materials as well as lunch that is being provided

 Thursday, April 6 at 8 AM - 3:30 PM
Montana Council on Developmental Disabilities, 2714 Billings Ave, Helena, Montana 59601
https://www.facebook.com/events/1438833532824976/