Friends,
What are you doing for the next 29 days?
I hope a lot: we have a crucial election to win. Voter registration in Indiana ends at noon today – Monday the 5th of October. Early voting begins tomorrow, on Tuesday the 6th.
Vote early if you possibly can, either in person or by mailing in your absentee ballot. Voting questions? Check here.
Volunteer to make phone calls, texts, or knock doors. Need suggestions? Try Mobilize US.
Donate to candidates so they can finish the race strong. One easy option is Act Blue.
It’s hard to keep up with events. Our heroic and historic Justice Ginburg died, leaving Senate Republicans a chance to show how incredibly hypocritical they are, rushing a nominee while voting is already underway in a Presidential election. (Can you say Merrick Garland? And how is it the Senate can’t pass a bill to help ordinary Americans hammered by the recession?)
President Trump comes down with COVID-19 and is hospitalized, after spending months minimizing the danger and failing to protect millions of Americans who caught it too, and of course the 200,000+ who died. We hope all who are ailing will recover and regain their health.
Even locally, tempers run high and frustrations bubble as we try to address the big challenges facing us on race, on economic equity, on the climate emergency.
Sometimes we just need to breathe and stay focused.
Toward the end of the gruesome bloodbath of the Civil War, President Lincoln, meeting with General Grant, quoted his Secretary of State Seward to say:
"[T]here was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency."
With 29 days until voting in our national election closes, let’s prove that virtue still will prevail, to save this republic, to meet the emergency. Activate. Agitate. Organize.
Democratically yours,
John
P.S. Check out Dawn’s recent part in a great national series called Unchained Democracy, with weekly episodes about major challenges we need to meet as a country. (You can see Dawn at about minute-54 in the second episode, found here.)