WARD POWER

Learn & Share Ideas, Improve Coordination With Other Wards, Get Ideas For Voter Outreach

Verbatim Responses: To help others be successful. To hear what others are doing. Learn what wards are doing. What works and what doesn’t. Ideas for voter turnout. Voter outreach. Find a thread. Meet people. Share ideas. Learn. Better coordination with other ward leaders. Working better together. Hearing new and additional ideas are better than mine alone. To get on the ball with building momentum. Share ideas about resisting. Meet like-minded people. Collaboration. Renew motivation. Alexa told me to! 😉

Recent Ward Events. Our wards have been busy! Here’s what’s been happening:

Drinking Liberally – Wards 1A, 5A, 4A, 5B, 3A Goal: Building Community

Ice Cream Sunday with Reps –  3D, 4A, 5A Goal: Informing & Community Building

May Day Picnic With Labor – DPSFC & 4C Goal: Build Partnership & Community

Power Into Action Workshop – 4C Goal: Inform & Engage

Community Meeting With AG Torrez -5A/4A Goal: Inform & Build Connections With Key Elected Officials

Ward Events Coming Up. There are lots of Ward activities coming up this summer:

July 5 Picnic in Alto Park – 2A Goal: Building Community

June 28, 4pm 1420 – Voices From The Street – 4B Goal: To Listen & Inform

July 24, 5:30 pm 1420 – NM State Democratic Party Leader’s Priorities & Q&A – 4C Goal: Inform & Engage Ward Leaders

TBA – Picnic Potluck – 3A

TBA – Chile & Conversation, Ward Breakfasts, Food for Thought – All Wards

Random thoughts. Many connections were made or enhanced at this brunch. For some, their motivation was renewed. We talked about many possibilities for ward events and local action. As ward leaders what do we need to do this work? We discussed being value driven vs. policy driven. We need to identify our values. Our values translate well into the basic needs of our members, think kitchen table items first. We want to build a better country. We start local, Dems do good things for their communities. With protests increasing, we need more county-wide non-violence and de-escalation training. The question was asked can wards get DPSFC money for events? Yes!

The Organizing Power Of Protest. We had a good discussion about how the growing local protests can be an effective organizing tool to engage some of our ward members. The protests send a message to this toxic regime but they also serve to lift up and motivate the folks who protest. By coming together with like-minded people, protests help break through the isolation many feel right now. The message? You are not alone. However, how we frame the reason for participation is important. Not everyone in our wards responds to broad themes like “save our democracy” or “stop authoritarianism.” Instead, let’s use plain language (thanks Jonnalyn!) to inform our wards why getting involved in local events matters to them.

Why we are resisting: Medicaid: because it pays our doctor bills – we can’t afford to lose it; hands off our social security, we need our checks; stop rounding up our friends and neighbors; our kids need their school lunches… Ideas we had to engage folks include: sign-making parties (great for folks who can’t or won’t protest but want to do something), car-pooling to events, and getting folks to drive by protests to honk and wave their approval. All of these protest-related activities meet our goals of informing, engaging and building community. If we can communicate the stakes and the urgency to our ward members, they will be more inclined to become more active with the party and each other. We want to offer a variety of activities to meet different comfort levels of activism, e.g. some folks will send a postcard but will not attend a street protest.

Here are just a few of the ongoing resistance events happening around town.

JUNE 10 – 5-6 PM ‘GET SMART’ Sign Waving at the corner of Cerrillos and St. Michael’s (in front of Dion’s/Weck’s – please don’t block Dion’s parking lot as dinner starts for them) This action will focus on helping Santa Fe ‘Get Smart’ about Social Security. There have been changes to policies that directly impact real people. We have 18 signs, but feel free to bring your own if you want to tell people how these changes have impacted you directly. GET SMART will have a different issue and location every other week. We’ll always make sure parking is easy and the space where we line up is safe.