Persist and Resist – July 6, 2020
Note from Maria Lynam, Editor – This is a long newsletter, but I hope that you find the links of interest. There is so much we need to be aware of.
Congratulations! Judy Stahl, Democratic candidate for LD1 AZ State House and John Lutes, Democratic candidate for District 1 Yavapai County Board of Supervisors, were unanimously endorsed at Prescott Indivisible’s July 2 meeting. The vote was taken in breakout rooms after both candidates spoke of their platforms and their campaign progress. We are so fortunate to have TWO candidates for county and state offices come from PI. The video for the meeting is HERE.-
What can you do to help them?
1. Open your pocketbook – contribute on ActBlue or send a check!
2. VOTE! Judy requests that you only vote for her in the primary and presidential elections.
3. On July 13 at 6p, Judy Stahl will be part of the Clean Elections Committee Meet the LD Candidates from across the state.
July 13: RSVP HERE for Legislative Districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
4. John Lutes will be on the panel of the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors Candidate Forum on Tues. July 7 at 5pm. Sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Central Yavapai Co., register here.
5. Volunteer! Click on the logo below to volunteer help out. John needs postcard writers!
Prescott Valley Residents – A recent attack ad mailer went out to PV residents vilifying town council candidate David Dohm, because he is a registered Democrat. This was uncalled for and a drastic measure not seen before in a local NON-PARTISAN race.
Ask yourself why several other candidates running are brokers, realtors, or supported by big developers for unmanaged growth and no concern with water availability issues. It’s all about money and big development and it leaves the citizen’s voice unheard. Because of this, we ask that in the primary election, you vote for just ONE candidate, DAVID DOHM. Voting for just one, instead of four, will give DAVID DOHM a chance to win a seat on town council.
Dohm will be a featured speaker at the Yavapai Dems meeting on Thurs. July 9 and at the DWPA meeting on Wed. July 29.
You can watch the PV Town Council candidate interviews on Signals.
Primary Election Information – Tuesday, Aug. 4. Ballots mailed on Wed. July 8. Early voting begins on Wed. July 8.
1, If you are a registered Independent, Other, Party Not Designated, or Green Party and are on the Permanent Early Voting List, you must tell the Yav. Co. Recorder’s Office which party ballot you want mailed. Call 928-771-3248 or visit yavapai.us/GoVote to request a one-time early ballot. You do not have to re-register!
2. You can register to vote anytime. However, Mon. July 6 (today) is the last day to register to vote in the primary.
3. Election materials cannot be forwarded. If you have changes to your residential or mailing address, call 928-771-3248 or visit www.servicearizona.com to update your information.
4. Wed. July 29 – Last day to mail a ballot
5. Fri. July 31 – Last day to vote early – in person
6. Tues., Aug. 4 Election Day – Vote Centers (aka Polling Places) are open 6am-7pm
7. Click here for all Voter information, including locations of drop boxes, voting centers, hours, etc. Our Board of Elections is a phenomenal resource; please contact them with questions.
8. How safe is it to vote in person? Very – read this!
Want to be a Poll Watcher? – aka Election Observer, 2 hour shifts – contact Vivian Perry, vivianperry45@msn.com
Want to be a Poll Worker? – fill out this on-line form. Classes are the week of 7/20. (Election Day is a long day, starting at 5:30 a.m. and ending after all work is complete, typically 9:00 p.m. Poll workers cannot leave their Vote Center until the election is closed that night.)
Additional Information from the 7/2 Prescott Indivisible Meeting:
Please consider making a monthly donation to Prescott Indivisible. The GOTV effort and other programs to support the community depend on it.
PI Member List Update – We are continuing to update our member list so that we can be the most effective organization possible. When you get an email from one of our volunteers, please reply back to them with your information. We need to know that all of you are behind us.
An Update on the Earnings Suspense File: When a wage statement does not match a name/SSN combo after a search for a match, it gets placed in this “file”.
Linda Kaul submits: “This may not be the answer for every American town and city, but it sure is a good guideline to move toward a more effective, less expensive and most importantly, a more humane approach to dealing with issues within our communities”. How a town in Oregon with a population of 170,000 replaced some of the police with mental health workers and medics.It has worked for 30 years!
Racial Equity Education – As was announced in the PI GM, we are emphasizing the importance of becoming educated in the area of racial equity so that we can support the Black Lives Matter movement. To that end, we are going to start having weekly suggestions for movies, books and podcasts. If you have one that has affected your life, please let us know. Here are the suggestions this week and who made them:
Jeff Daverman: “True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight For Equality”
Jim Stein:Trae Crowder video
Doug Nall: James Baldwin “I am not Your Negro” available on PBS and Netflix or Amazon Prime. The Nat’t Museum of African American History & Culture, is a great resource for Black history. I recommend “The Great Migration Home Movie Project” The films of black Oklahomans in the ’20’s are fascinating.
Molly Beverly and and Patti Marrs: “Can you Dig This” (trailer) about gangster gardening in inner city Los Angeles, on Netflix Prime
Maria Lynam: The typical Black American family is virtually no closer to equal footing with its White peers in terms of income and wealth than it was 50 years ago, when Civil Rights-era reforms were enacted to expand opportunity and limit outright racial discrimination. Like the protests in the 1960s, the recent waves of rallies following Black Americans’ deaths at the hands of police have renewed attention to the long-standing racial divide in the US.(CNN) See editorial and charts.
Please send suggestions to info@prescottindivisible.org for inclusion in future newsletters.
Volunteer Opportunities
Voter Values Project (VVP) – Prescott Indivisible and other community organizations, such as the Democratic Women of the Prescott Area, are participating in the Voter Values Project. The postcard project encouraging Independents to sign up for the Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL) and to complete a survey on the website continues to go forward!
To date, the VVP Volunteers have mailed out 2,000 postcards to Independents in Yavapai County and have followed up with phone calls. Volunteers will begin preparing the next group of 1,500 postcards next week, which will be mailed by July 14. Additional Volunteers are needed immediately to send text messages to those postcard recipients alerting them that the postcard will be coming their way. We need and appreciate your help!If you are not familiar with texting on your Android or iPhone, Mavis Brauer and Louise Clara are here to help! They will be conducting “Office Hours” on Zoom so you can check in to ask questions or stay for the entire session. Please contact Louise Clara at lclara5250@msn.com to volunteer and/or participate in the Zoom sessions.
Yavapai County Ferris Wheel Project – Tuesday, July 7th, at 4 pm, join phone banking for Judy Stahl for AZ House- LD1! We’ll do training on zoom and then use the virtual open phone bank to make calls. Can you help out for 2 hours? Democrats have been demoralized in this district for years. But this election is different, and with your help, we WILL flip the state Blue!
Reply to this email madison.lisle@student.prescott.edu,, text, or call me (575-956-3035) if you can join us on Tuesday or if you have any questions. Then I will send the zoom link and directions on how to do the phone bank.
Mark Kelly Campaign – To phone bank for the campaign, contact Linda Meigs: 256-509-9414 or linda@meigsmade.com
Why We Must to Everything in Our Power to
Turn AZ & YC BLUE!
Guess you all heard that the Prescott Courthouse Plaza was a hotbed of Trump-archy on July 4 – there were truck cabs, pickups, cars bedecked with Trump 2020 and US Flags (how did they hijack our flag as representing the White nationalist movement?) and men marching down Gurley St. Traffic was blocked at major intersections. Watch “Ted” being interviewed and cut off on msnbc. Gosar was in town, “Meeting with his Natural Constituents“. Just wait for a spike in Covid-19 cases in 10-14 days–here’s why: Courthouse Square, no masks, no social distancing! National reads – Trump’s Push to Amplify Racism (WaPO) and info about the “Boogaloo Boys“.
Lost in the news? This week the Russia bounty scandal included the information that bounties on American and allied soldiers ranged up to $100,000. National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien blamed Trump’s CIA briefer for not bringing the information to the president’s attention, although sources confirm it was, in fact, written in the President’s Daily Brief in February. How Arizona Became a Swing State (first of a series) – fivethiryeight newsletters, subsidiary of abc news, subscribe.
View a good ad – here’s another good video from LD6!
New News!
Invest in Ed and Second Chances gained enough signatures to qualify for the Nov. ballot. This was accomplished by the tireless volunteers who gathered signatures through drive-through efforts across the state. (Note: Invest in Ed will put an initiative on the ballot to increase taxes on income over $250,000 per person, 2.5%)
SAVE OUR SCHOOLS! Expansion of Voucher Programs to Private and Religious Schools – On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in the landmark Espinoza v Montana case, opening the door for more public funding of private, religious voucher programs across the country and dismantling the separation of church and state. Betsy DeVos, US Secretary of Education and voucher proponent, tweeted: “All states need to seize this extraordinary opportunity to expand all education options at all schools to every single student.”
This decision will have far-reaching effects across the states and their ability to fund public schools. We’ve already seen it in Arizona: A small dollar-for-dollar tax credit program that began in the late 1990s has ballooned to more than $250 million annually, with a vast majority of the tax credits going to religious schools. As funding for privatization has increased exponentially in Arizona, funding for public schools has been slashed more than any other state in the nation.
Save Our Schools Arizona will fight harder than ever to ensure that our state leaders prioritize public education and stop the unfettered growth of private school vouchers year after year in our state. They need your help – once again, you can 1) get on their mailing list and they will keep you up to date on the latest and 2) donate so they can continue their fight.
Tuesday, July 14 at 6pm – Join Save Our Schools AZ for a virtual presentation hosted by Beth Lewis, Director of SOSAZ Network with special guest panelists from the Prescott High School Clark and Sonja Tenney. Special thanks to co-sponsor the League of Women Voters Central Yavapai County. Register here.
Pandemic info
STAY HOME, WEAR YOUR MASK WHEN YOU GO OUT, SOCIAL DISTANCE!!!
Just in! Race for a Vaccine from the WaPo 7/5/20. Today’s AZ stats – Identified cases total 94,553 and known deaths are at 1,805. It’s unknown how many of these cases are currently sick or asymptomatic. The state does not report the number of recovered cases, though it does report hospital discharges. Yavapai Co. – as of 7/2! 853 cases, 11 deaths, 361 recoveries. Mask Donations! Prescott Indivisible and the Democratic Women of the Prescott Area and other community members have now donated over 5,000 masks to the Navajo Nations. Masks are still needed, so if you are a sewer, please contribute. Contact Maria Lynam, maria488@icloud.com.
Important Community Need!
PLEASE CONTRIBUTE TO THE YAVAPAI CO. START-RIGHT BACKPACK PROGRAM -The annual backpack program now includes a Back-to-School Fair and hopes to provide backpacks with school supplies to 4,000 children from low-income, military, and families affected by COVID-19. This is a joint effort between the Firefighter Angel Foundation, AZTV7 “Stuff the Bus”.
Yavapai County schools need more help this year because of increased need; due to budget cuts, schools are limited in what they can provide.
These past few months have been hard on everyone. If you are in a position to help a child this year, please do so. Donations can be mailed to the Yavapai County Food Bank, P. O. Box 4151, Prescott 86301, or donated on their website. Designate funds as “Yavapai Start-Right Program” or note “Backpacks” in the comments section. Funds not designated go towards the primary purpose of providing food and will not be captured as part of the backpack program.
For Fun!!!
!!!!
Ringo Starr’s virtual birthday extravaganza
Ringo is ringing in 80 years in style — with a totally online benefit concert, proceeds going to, among other organizations, the Black Lives Matter Global Network. The fun begins Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET, streaming on YouTube.
“Hamilton” on Disney+ – it will cost you $6.99 per month to stream Disney Plus. When Broadway was shut down, Hamilton tickets could cost $600 per seat, should you be lucky enough to get them! Almost 3 hours long, it is fantastic.
AZResist has the latest information on progressive meetings and actions around the state.
PRESCOTT INDIVISIBLE
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