eregyrn-falls:to-transcribe:starlightomatic: bluepeets:twitter.com/coff33detective/status/
eregyrn-falls:to-transcribe:starlightomatic: bluepeets: https://twitter.com/coff33detective/status/1271463582312673281 “make yourselves impossible to ignore. 10,000 signatures on twitter is a lot but 10 unique personal emails is enough to derail an entire council session.” I was in a city council meeting last week about defunding the police and one of the council members mentioned multiple times that she’d been inundated with calls and emails all that day saying to defund the police. [ID: Two screenshots of a twitter thread by alex flanigan, anti-fascist @Coff33Detective from June 12, 2020 beginning at 11:25 AM that reads: hi! i work in local government and community management, and i’m here to tell you a secret: it is like, really, really easy to overwhelm the people who work in your local government. especially right now. especially on things they can actionably do or impact.you may not know this, but i bet your city or town or municipality has a website. i bet that website has some contact forms or email addresses on it. i bet you can use them to put together a message in about 5 minutes! i bet it’s almost as easy as signing a national petition.which is to say: i’m noticing, like most other people, that the national level discussion on really important and long overdue issues is flagging. but the internet and news cycle is not the only battleground, and you will be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to——fight those battles at home, on your own turf, with much more immediate impact, and they are so, so important.I am begging you: make my job, and the jobs of people like me, difficult right now. flood us with demands. make yourselves impossible to ignore. 10,000 signatures on twitter is a lot but 10 unique personal emails is enough to derail an entire council session. End ID] Something else people really need to think about right now: Right-wing activists KNOW this and they are ALREADY doing it.I live in an incredibly liberal area/state. But you know what was happening late this summer and in early fall? Anti-mask, anti-vaxx activists were swarming city council meetings and school-board meetings to disrupt the meetings and protest in person any attempt by the towns, cities, or school boards to put mask mandates or other safety measures for students returning to school in place. And these were not just “concerned citizens” from the town, or parents of the kids in that town. Oh no. There were websites aimed at organizing on a state level so that a large group of these people could show up to successive town meetings (so long, I suppose, as the rules of that town did not prohibit attendance at the meeting by people who did not live in the town). We had a guy at one of our town meetings just EXPLICITLY say that he had come to our town because HIS town had a mask-mandate and our town hadn’t yet put one in place, and he was annoyed because he’d started running errands in OUR town so he wouldn’t have to wear a mask.The point of these people is to disrupt the meetings and ALSO to create an environment of intimidation for the elected officials. And it’s working. At least, it’s working to create that environment of intimidation; it’s less clear that it’s working to prevent towns from passing safety measures.See also: right-wing activists who are overwhelming school boards with calls to ban books from the school libraries, and advocating book-burning.PLEASE do not just focus on politics at the national level, or even just at the state level.Right-wing activists are working on the LOCAL county and town level, and they’re also running for office at those levels, and winning. And they’re putting some truly reprehensible measures into place when they do win. They’re the ones giving your local police more money to buy drones and crap. Next they’ll be the ones thinking that lady in Virginia who’s suggesting burning LGBT+ books is a great idea. -- source link