Action 177: We Won! Now What?
Background: The news this morning is full of reports of wins for (small d) democracy, and the Democratic Party. But NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO REST ON OUR LAURELS! The current speculation is about what the Republican reaction will be. Will they pull in their horns and “learn their lesson”, or double down in their reactionary campaign of terror, retribution, and cruelty to the least fortunate among us? Jeff Tiedrich, the profane and comical blogger that some of us read despite his salty language (1) sums it up thus: “will Republicans learn anything from the drubbing they took yesterday? of course fucking not. expect them to double down on the lunacy — and the oppression. it’s all they know how to do. we’ve got battles ahead of us that will need to be taken on, and won. but for today, let’s congratulate ourselves. tomorrow we return to the fight.”
As it happens, tomorrow, Nov. 5, is today. The progressive vs. centrist factions in the Democratic party (2) are writing the script in Maine, most obviously in the race for Susan Collins’ seat, but also in local races and the Governor’s race. Expect well-reasoned op-eds to blossom on the pages of your newspapers (see 3 for example). But the name of the game from now on is going to be neighbor-to-neighbor conversations. We have so much more in common with our Republican neighbors than they have with their fascist leadership. It’s kind of up to us to shine the light on the difference. Nobody else is going to save democracy for us – not the media which has sold out to oligarchs, and not most of the politicians of all parties who are too cowardly to lead, or too immersed in the grift and glory.
Action: You, yourself, can gear up NOW for the work ahead. FOR EXAMPLE:
· Put up a yard sign on your property between now and mid-December, and again before the primary. It can be a “resist” sign, a candidate sign, or something else of your devising. Please read Action 176 and follow the rules and suggestions.
· Organize for GOTV (4) canvassing next spring. The Secretary of State will be updating the voting records for all towns, based on any new and changed registrations that happened yesterday. Organize your town committee if it’s not already active, and get your hands on the new records (5), recruit your canvassers, cut your turfs, and make definite plans for the spring.
· Participate actively in all future pro-democracy, peaceful demonstrations and actions. Indivisible has a good webpage with in-depth information and specific actions. https://indivisible.org/resource
· Be active participants in the next Maine legislative session, which starts in January. We’ll try to keep you up to date.
Extra Credit:
(1) https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/democrats-fuck-yeah
(4) GOTV = Get Out The Vote
(5) How to do this: Have your town Democratic Committee assign you (or someone else with basic data and internet skills) as the official person authorized to get the records for your town Democratic Committee. Then, go here: https://www.maine.gov/sos/elections-voting/voter-data and scroll to the subheading titled Central Voter Registration System (CVR). Download and read carefully the first bullet under that subheading. When you are satisfied that you can comply with all the conditions, arrange with your town clerk to procure the data for you on a thumb drive. Hopefully your town clerk will be willing. For Brooksville, it cost me about $12 for the complete file including the thumb drive. You can import the data into an XL spreadsheet and sort it by various useful parameters. NOTE: I plan to wait to do this until after Thanksgiving, probably around December 1, when new voter data will have been incorporated into the SOS data base, and also to see if these instructions have changed, as they are over a year old. I don’t anticipate any major changes.