JANUARY 2023
FOR OUR PROTECTION THESE EVENTS MAY NOT BE ON SOCIAL MEDIA!!! Copy and share ONLY with your members to avoid Zoom intruders. PLEASE NOTE: The newsletter will now be published once monthly on the third Saturday of the month. We will be coordinating with the website so please check there for additional information. If you want some
thing included in the newsletter, please submit it by email before the preceeding Monday.
MEETING SCHEDULES WITH SWIM AND PARTNERS
SWIM MEMBER MEETING JAN 24, 7 PM - 8 PM
In this off election year, SWIM will hold member meetings every other month. Register here for our January event. We will have an interesting agenda including meeting our new contact for Indivisible National and information on a new group in Traverse City, We are Indivisible. This group is a combination of Traverse Indivisible and Drinking Liberally. They have used some innovative ideas to engage with younger members. In addition, we'll also be introducing a great new tech tool from DemLabs to combat disinformation and digitally educate our voters! and meeting our new regional contact for Indivisible National. There will be time for Q&A as well as sharing. We are also updating our member group list. If there have been changes in your group leadership or any other information pertaining to your group, please submit them to info@statewideindivisiblemi.com. Once complete, this document will be made available to all groups. THE GUERILLA POLITIC JAN 26, 6 PM - 8 PM CHROMA DETROIT OR VIRTUAL OPTION SO YOU WANT TO RUN FOR OFFICE training will lay the foundations for what you need to learn if you want to run for office. SWIM founder, Michelle Pallas, is one of the presenters. She ran State Senator Mallory McMorrow's successful campaign for the Michigan Senate. She will be joined by Rick Silva, Former Campaign Manager and Chief of Staff to former Detroit City Councilmember Janee Ayers, Andrew Mutch, former Novi City Councilmember and more! You'll hear from people who've done it themselves and from those who've worked campaigns. as well as connecting with a cohort of support from others looking to do the same thing. Most importantly, you'll walk away ready to decide if 2023 is your year to make a concrete difference in your community. Tickets are $50 per person. This meeting is both in person and virtual. (Food is provided for in person attendees.) Register here. MEET WITH SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW'S TEAM FEB 2, 6 PM - 7 PM This ongoing meeting with Terry Campbell is always informative. It's our chance to ask our Senator's staff questions and get a view of what is going on in Washington. In light of Sen. Stabenow's recent announcement that she is retiring, this could be an especially interesting meeting. Click on this link to register for this event. Please send your questions, prior to the meeting so we can get them to Terry. You can email them to info@statewideindiviblemi.com. RESEARCH COLLABORATIVE CALL Anat Shenker-Osorio, Mike Podhorzer and the team from Research Collaborative provided invaluable opinion research and messaging advise throughout the 2022 campaign season. Watch this space for signups for their upcoming webinars. You can also check out their website for updates. CALLS TO ACTION FROM THE SWIM CLIMATE ACTION TEAM Expect a return of the Pacific El Nino weather system this year, bringing more storms and devastation with it. Climate modeling is now anticipating that we will pass the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold for global temperature increase as early as 2024. This threshold is considered a tipping point that climate experts say we should not pass, but now seems inevitable. What is your community doing to mitigate and prepare for a new world? Don't think your local community can influence change this big? Remember all politics is local - it starts at home! 47 communities across Michigan have joined this network. Michigan Green Communities is a program developed for local governments at the city, township, and county level. The program sets the stage for communities to normalize green thinking and set eco-friendly programs in place as the standard of good governance. If you are involved, or want to start being involved in your local politics, check this site out. They offer an individual newsletter so us ordinary citizens can track what's happening in the world of climate mitigation strategies. For those who want to dig deeper, they highlight 3 intriguing conferences later this year on varied topics! Scroll to the bottom of their homepage to sign up for the newsletter now. Then think about how you can begin or expand your local group's efforts to influence government, and consider attending a conference to learn more. Our future depends on our actions now! SUPPORT THE NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE Five of our 46 Presidents have come into office without winning the popular vote because every vote is not equal under the current Electoral College system. We can elect the President by popular vote in 2028, but Michigan legislators have to take action and pass a National Popular Vote bill. The National Popular Vote bill guarantees the presidency to the candidate who won the most popular votes in all 50 states and District of Columbia. Our state legislators have the power to repair our broken presidential election system but not without our action by writing them and calling them urging them to pass National Popular Vote. Use this link now to make your voice heard. It counts!!! INDIVISIBLE NATIONAL GROW GRANTS ARE BACK! Leaders: If you need cash for the day to day items that will help fund your activities in 2023 (think paid Zoom account, postcards, stamps, etc.), consider applying for an Indivisible GROW Grant. Many groups have used the GROW program in recent years to support a wide variety of unique projects. In 2023, they are excited to continue funding your amazing ideas: supporting your needs as you grow your group and strengthen your local movements. Check out eligibility rules and submit an application today! The application deadline for February 2023 is Tuesday, February 21st at 11:59 pm Pacific Time. Award notices will be given to applicants on March 7th. You can see their monthly application deadline schedule online. GROW has funded a wide range of projects: ranging from skills-trainings, recruitment drives, voter turnout campaigns, conferences, digital tools upgrades, supply purchases, and many more. Groups are invited to collaborate and come up with proposals to fund their needs around the work they are doing, and if you need any help with ideas for proposals, they can help with grant-eligible project ideas! Reminder: At least one group involved in your project must have an account with our Distributed Fundraising program in order to receive and spend GROW Grant funds. They encourage those who do not yet have a DF account to register for one before submitting a GROW application, as this will ensure a speedy transfer for any awards you receive. Grant funds can only be transferred to award recipients once their accounts are activated. If you need any assistance navigating the grants application process, get information on previously funded projects, or soundboard your current/potential grant proposals, you can reach out to them on the GROW Grants team at growgrants@indivisible.org or schedule a time to talk with a member of the team during their weekly office hours. They hope you will take advantage of this fantastic resource in 2023 and they look forward to seeing your proposals soon! You can click here to get more details. ROGAN'S LIST IS BACK PLUS OTHER GOOD RESOURCES We will no longer be posting the Tuesday Coffee Calls to Action. However, there are several great ways to stay current regarding actions that need your support. Check them out and let us know what you think. ROGAN'S LIST: Rogan's List is back after a hiatus. The list is jam packed with daily calls to action and overall great information. You'll find some of these Calls to Action peppered in our newsletters and on our Facebook page. Free subscriptions to Rogan's List are available on Substack by clicking here! CHOP WOOD, CARRY WOOD: Jessica Craven’s “Chop Wood, Carry Water”, provides daily actions for you to choose. You can sign up here. VOICES: Our own Michigan Indivisible, Laurie Evans writes “VOICES”, is a bi-weekly newsletter with insights into the political scene and actions to be taken. You can sign up by contacting Laurie at levans56@gmail.com. POST-ELECTION MESSAGING GROW OUR BASE SUGGESTIONS FROM FILMMAKER AND DIRECTOR, MICHAEL MOORE SPOILER ALERT! Your neighbors and coworkers are a lot more progressive than you think. They already agree with you on so many things. If you talk to them, not about Democrats vs. Republicans but rather about clean air vs. polluted air, or the Golden Rule vs. the Rule of the Bullies, or women being paid the same as men vs. not, you’ll find more agreement with each other than not. So your Blue army is much bigger than you thought. Michael Moore’s special 12-day mini podcast series — "Blue Dots in a Red Sea" — Michael spreads his strategy of how we can turn red into blue across the country. Michael helps you find the people who already agree with you but would never call themselves a Democrat. This is how we win. PROTECTING MICHIGAN SCHOOL BOARDS-RED WINE AND BLUE TRAINING AND TOOLKITS If you're from Ottawa County or read the Bridge magazine on what's going on in Ottawa County with radical MAGA extremists taking over local government you already know how important it is to fight right extremism at our local level. Red Wine and Blue has fantastic Troublemaker Training, Talking Points and Parent Playbook for us and parents on how we can take action against these extremists down to the school board level. Please watch this video and get a glove and get in the game! EATON COUNTY INDIVISIBLE ANNOUNCEMENT The administrators of this Eaton County Indivisible group announced their plan to close their Facebook page within 30 days. They have become inactive enough that they no longer effectively function anymore. Please see the Indivisible Michigan 7th District for an active group in the Lansing area. For anyone living in the southern county, look toward Battle Creek. Want to stay current on SWIM activities and share them with your networks? Here are some ways to do that! Vist the Website! www.statewideindivisiblemi.com. This new website is designed to be a central repository of the resources and network partners that we’ve amassed since 2016. We also wanted you, as members, to be able to add your own announcements about your successes and events. Follow us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/SWIMIndivisible The SWIM private page is now open to all interested members. Simply go to the page, answer a few simple questions and you are in. This is a great way to keep current on events and issues in between newsletters. Help us build our social media presence and impact by following SWIM on Twitter @SWIMIndivisible and Instagram StateWideIndivisibleMichigan If you are familiar with social media platforms like Mastadon, WhatsApp, TikTok, Tribel, Post, etc. please contact SWIM CORE member, Vickie Gutowski info@statewideindivisiblemi.com because she wants to become familiar with these tools. GET INVOLVED
FIRED UP??? WANT TO JOIN SWIM? Use this link to join SWIM: https://mailchi.mp/93c1d6b0908a/swim-individual-members GOT IDEAS, GOOD NEWS OR QUESTIONS??? Send us at email: info@statewideindivisiblemi.com