Moving ahead, planning next steps

Welcome back! We took our own advice (Coping with stress) and stepped away for a few weeks. We’re back, ready to work to defend democracy and to help our friends do the same.

In this newsletter:

1. Your invitation to working sessions (ZOOM and live) to help us improve and move ahead – RSVP please!
2. New content for you on the Friends Here and Now web site
3. New forms of action emerging around the nation

And breaking news: it looks like the next big nationwide action will be another "No Kings" day on Saturday, October 18. Click here to sign up for update emails on this from Indivisible. We'll share more information about this when it's available.

Invitation to the working sessions

We want to bring together our subscribers and other supporters to meet up, provide much-needed insight into how to improve our web site and newsletter, and explore next steps together. The agenda for these sessions will be:

• Meet each other.
• Review the web site. We’re looking for suggestions for improvements and ways to make it more useful.
• Expand our community. We have a target of doubling subscriptions in next 60 days, from the current 50+ to 100. We’ll explore ways you can help, including reaching out to your friends and network both here and outside New Mexico (and even outside the US).
• Explore any other actions we should be taking.

There will be three sessions, depending on your interest:

• Tuesday Sept 16, 9:30-10:30 AM Mountain Time, on ZOOM
• Wednesday September 17, 7:30-8:30 PM, on ZOOM
• Thursday September 18, 9:30-10:30 AM Mountain Time, in person in Santa Fe at a convenient location TBD

(After each session, we’ll stay available/on-line for an additional 30 minutes, in case folks want to hang on and talk more casually.) 

PLEASE RSVP (email us at foshereandnow@gmail.com) by WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 10 and tell us:

• If you want to participate
• Which sessions you can attend
• If you have a preference, which session you prefer

New content on our web site

We’re now highlighting new content to make it easier to browse and spot what’s new on existing pages. When we have entirely new pages, we’ll highlight them on the Site Map (a link is in small type at the bottom of every page on the web site).

There is new material on almost every page of the web site, including:

• On the How are things going? page (which can be reached easily from the Stay Informed page), we have highlights you might have missed – and this month they’re all about folks fighting back against authoritarianism!
• The Use Your Voice page has lots of new information, including:
  • How to help yourself, friends or family register and vote from overseas
  • How to warn your neighbors if ICE is operating in the area
  • How to get more information about how individual companies use their money for political purposes
• We’ve even added ways to connect with political action outside the US on our Demonstrate page.
• There’s a truly interesting new article on “what opposition movements need – and what fear-based regimes fear most,” on our Why Taking Action Matters page (which can be reached easily from the Perspective page).

New Forms of Action Emerging

People are finding both new needs to resist authoritarianism and new ways to respond in defense of democracy. They offer ideas many of us can use, if we so choose:

• Elected officials are taking strong stands against intrusive Federal presence and actions in their jurisdictions, especially Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.
  • If you have a Democratic Governor or Mayor (or both), contact them now and urge them to follow the examples of those other Democrats.
  • If you have a Republican Governor, contact them now and tell them you need your National Guard available for disaster relief and other work  in your state (for which they signed up and are trained), not sent out-of-state for someone else’s political agenda.
• Federal employees are increasingly taking a stand, refusing to either comply with illegal policies or leave their jobs silently. That takes courage, but that’s what’s needed now.
  • If you are a Federal employee under that kind of pressure, reach out to the many legal and other support groups available.
  • If you know Federal employees facing this pressure or taking these stands, support them in any way you can.
• Regular citizens are taking action ranging from refusing to rubber-stamp Federal indictments of protestors if serving on grand juries, to putting Mexican flag decals on their bumper to show support for immigrants – and confuse ICE and waste their time.

If you’ve read this far, thanks and hope it was useful. And please don’t forget to RSVP via email for the September sessions!