Elections · Use Your Power, Recruit Friends · Vote with your Dollars

GOOD UPDATE! Democrat Andrew Zwicker WON RE-ELECTION to the New Jersey State Legislature (Reminder October 2019–He’s Running for Re-election)

Update March 2019: We at OTYCD are nudging this back in the queue because Zwicker is up for re-election in 2019. Please keep him in mind when planning your donations and volunteer work for 2019 campaigns.

 

This OTYCD entry originally posted in September 2017.

 

YES YES YES! Democrat Andrew Zwicker won re-election to the New Jersey state legislature! Read more here:

http://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/elections/2017/11/08/bateman-zwicker-freiman-win-surprising-election/841885001/

 

 

Original text of the post follows.

 

Help re-elect Democrat Andrew Zwicker to the New Jersey state legislature. The election takes place on November 7, 2017.

 

In addition to spotlighting five Virginia state-level candidates chosen by Flippable for the upcoming race in November, we at OTYCD are also devoting posts to six candidates chosen by 314 Action whose races fall in 2017. 314 Action is an organization that boosts hopefuls who have STEM backgrounds.

 

Zwicker was first elected to the New Jersey legislature in January 2016, where he serves on the Judiciary Committee as well as the committees for regulated professions and also for telecommunications and utilities. 314 Action helped him then, and is helping him now. He is the only scientist currently serving in the New Jersey legislature. In addition, he is the first Democrat ever to represent his district. He beat his Republican rival by just 78 votes.

 

Zwicker holds a Ph.d in physics from Johns Hopkins University and is the Head of Science Education at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He is also a fellow of the American Physical Society and edits the organization’s newsletter.

 

In the legislature, he works to make college more affordable and to expand access to pre-K. He accepts climate change and wants the state to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas initiative, in which nine states joined forces to reduce climate-harming emissions. He wants to make sure that laws protecting the environment are enforced. And in all things, he will bring the rigor of a scientist, making decisions based on facts and evidence.

 

 

See his campaign website:

http://www.zwickerforassembly.com

 

 

See his About Andrew page:

http://www.zwickerforassembly.com

 

 

See his Issues page:

http://www.zwickerforassembly.com/issues

 

 

Donate to Zwicker’s campaign:

https://act.myngp.com/Forms/2831768608462735360

 

 

Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!

 

 

Like Zwicker on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/ZwickerforAssembly/

 

 

Follow him on Twitter:

@AndrewZwicker

 

 

See his profile page on the New Jersey Legislature website:

http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/bio.asp?Leg=386

 

 

See Zwicker’s page at 314 Action:

http://www.314action.org/andrew-zwicker

 

 

See 314 Action’s Endorsed Candidates page:

http://www.314action.org/endorsed-candidates/

 

 

Donate to 314 Action:

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/314act?refcode=website&amounts=15,25,50,100,250,500,1000&amount=25&recurring=true

Call Your State Legislators · Community Activism · Elections · Voting Rights, Fighting Voter Suppression

Learn If Your State Is Passing Laws That Restrict Voting, and Fight Back

This OTYCD entry originally posted in June 2017.

Is your state trying to pass laws that make it harder to vote? Consult the Brennan Center’s info and maps, and if the answer is yes, fight back.

 

Voting restrictions are a scourge on democracy, but as long as they benefit Republicans, Republicans will try to pass them. We feel that if you are eligible to vote, and you want to vote, you should be able to vote, and you should be given many options for doing so to let you choose what works best for your schedule.

 

The Brennan Center for Justice, located at the New York University School of Law, tracks state bills that intend or have the effect of making it harder to vote.

 

First, read the Brennan Center’s Voting Laws Roundup for 2017, and see if your state is mentioned:

https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/voting-laws-roundup-2017?utm_content=bufferba0df&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

Also see the Brennan Center’s interactive map of New Voting Restrictions in America:

https://www.brennancenter.org/new-voting-restrictions-america

 

Once you know what’s going on in your state, call your state-level reps to speak out against laws that restrict voting.

 

Don’t know who your state house rep and state senator are? Plug your address and zip code into this search tool (note–the address is key. If you only give your zip code, you won’t get the two names you most need):

https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org

 

Then click on the names of your state house rep and state senator. Their contact info will come up.

 

Here’s a sample script that you can modify accordingly:

“Dear (State Senator/House Rep Lastname), I ask you to oppose (House/Senate bill ####), which will have the effect of making it harder to cast a vote. Everyone who is eligible to vote, and wants to, should have the opportunity to do so. Bills and laws that make it harder to vote are inherently anti-democratic. Please do not sponsor, co-sponsor, or support bills that stop people from voting. Thank you.”

 

Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the button on the upper right of the page. And tell your friends about the blog!

Candidates · Community Activism · Elections

Find Out Which of Your State Legislators Are Up for Re-Election In 2018

Find out which of your state legislators might be up for re-election, and see whether you can support them in 2018.

2018 is a busy year, with elections happening on the federal, state, and local levels. You should check and see which of your state legislators might be up for re-election.

First, you need to find the names of your state senator and state house rep if you don’t know them already. Go to:

http://www.whoaremyrepresentatives.org

…plug in your address and zip code, and voila! The search engine will give you the names of your state senator and state house rep, plus their Wikipedia entries, email addresses, web sites, social media contacts, and the like.

Once you have their names (unlike Congress, you probably have just one state senator, not two), go to Ballotpedia:

http://www.ballotpedia.org

…and search on “<Your State> State Senate” and then “<Your State> State House of Representatives”.

Locate the column on the right, look for the line about term limits, and see how long your state’s legislative terms last. State legislatures don’t necessarily mirror the patterns of Congress. For example, terms of office in the New York state legislature are two years for both state senators and state house reps.

If your state legislature holds elections every two years, chances are your state legislators are up for re-election in 2018.

Now go to the websites of your state senator and state house rep. Read about them. Google them. Look each person up on Ballotpedia. See what’s been written about them and about their votes in the state legislature. Are they doing what you want? Do they reflect your values?

As you do this work, remember that while liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats are extinct on the federal level, they still exist at the state level. A ‘D’ next to a name is not an indicator of quality, and an ‘R’ should not automatically turn you off. You have to spend some time digging into your state legislators’ platforms and voting records to figure out if they’re people you can back.

If they are people you can back, sit down and figure out how to slot them into your volunteering schedule and your political donation budget. If you’ve really got the political bug, you might want to prioritize helping a state legislator–they’re more accessible than Congressional incumbents and candidates.

If your state legislators aren’t people you can support, go back to the whoaremyrepresentatives.org results or look your legislators’ names up on Ballotpedia. Both sources will give you the names of the districts each represents.

Then Google “Candidates <Whatever District You Live In>” or “Candidates running against <incumbent you don’t like> for <name of your home district>”. That might yield names of others who are running against your state legislators in 2018.

Don’t be surprised if nothing comes up, however. It’s fairly common for state legislators to run unopposed.

If you don’t like the incumbent and you don’t like the challengers (or there aren’t any challengers), why not consider running? No, really? Why not?

But if that’s a bridge too far, you could contact Flippable and see if it’s on the case, or you could talk about what you learned at your next Indivisible meeting and try to recruit someone else to run.

 

The whoaremyrepresentatives.org search engine was created by Politiwatch, a nonprofit 501 (3) (C) organization. They accept donations, but only in Bitcoin; scroll down for the donation button:

https://politiwatch.org

 

See the Ballotpedia home page:

https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page

 

Donate to Ballotpedia ($18 corresponds to the cost of a single article):

https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia:Donate

 

Like Ballotpedia on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Ballotpedia?ref=br_tf

 

Follow Ballotpedia on Twitter:

@ballotpedia

Elections · GOOD UPDATE! · Use Your Power, Recruit Friends · Vote with your Dollars

GOOD UPDATE! Democrat Jennifer Carroll Foy WON A Seat in the Virginia State Legislature

This OTYCD entry originally posted in September 2017.

YES YES YES! Per Flippable, Democrat Jennifer Carroll Foy won her race for a seat in the Virginia state senate. Hooray!

Original text of this post follows.

Support Democrat Jennifer Carroll Foy, who’s running for a Virginia state legislature seat this fall.

Flippable, the organization created after the 2016 elections to focus on state and local elections, has identified the state of Virginia as, well, flippable. All 100 seats in its House of Delegates are up for grabs on November 7, 2017.

We at OTYCD hope to prep and post items on the five Virginia candidates in the districts that Flippable has deemed most worthy of your time and money.

Foy is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and a public defender. She’s been a foster mom for eight years as well.

She would expand Medicaid in Virginia. She hopes to increase public school teachers’ salaries and reduce class sizes. She would protect Planned Parenthood’s funding. She supports extending the Metro Blue Line into Prince William County. She wants to raise the grand larceny threshold from $200 to $1,000, which should result in fewer people under the age of 18 being convicted of a felony. She would fight climate change.

 

See her campaign site:

https://www.jennifercarrollfoy.org

 

See her Meet Jennifer page:

https://www.jennifercarrollfoy.org/meet-jennifer/

 

See her Issues page:

https://www.jennifercarrollfoy.org/issues/

 

Donate to Foy’s campaign:

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/jennifercarrollfoy?refcode=jcf-topnav

 

Volunteer for Foy’s campaign:

https://www.jennifercarrollfoy.org/volunteer/

 

Like her on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/JenniferCarrollFoy/

 

Follow her on Twitter:

@JCarrollFoy

 

See her Flippable page:

http://elections.flippable.org/elections?id=SVAH002

 

See her Crowdpac page:

https://www.crowdpac.com/campaigns/205608/jennifer-carroll-foy-for-delegate

 

See her Ballotpedia page:

https://ballotpedia.org/Jennifer_Foy

 

See the ‘Why Virginia?’ page on Flippable, as well as the other four candidates:

https://www.flippable.org/virginia-house#wsimg

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elections · Use Your Power, Recruit Friends · Vote with your Dollars

GOOD UPDATE: Democrat Cheryl Turpin Wins a Seat In The Virginia State Legislature

This OTYCD entry originally posted in September 2017.

 

YES YES YES! This was a bit of a nail-biter, but Cheryl Turpin defeated Rocky Holcomb by 51 to 49 to take a seat in the Virginia state legislature. She had lost to him in a January special election.

 

Read more here (scroll down for results in Turpin’s race, district 85:

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/virginia-general-elections

https://pilotonline.com/news/government/politics/virginia/cox-high-school-teacher-leads-a-sheriff-s-deputy-in/article_817a22ac-5908-5f3b-bb82-c77d7c30b16f.html

 

 

Read the original blog text here:

 

Support Democrat Cheryl Turpin’s run for the Virginia state legislature. The election happens on November 7, 2017.

 

In addition to spotlighting five Virginia state-level candidates chosen by Flippable for the upcoming race in November, we at OTYCD are also devoting posts to six candidates chosen by 314 Action whose races fall in 2017. 314 Action is an organization that boosts hopefuls who have STEM backgrounds.

 

If Turpin seems vaguely familiar, she should. She ran for the Virginia state legislature in a special election in early January and lost, earning 47 percent of the vote to Republican Rocky Holcomb’s 53 percent. She faces him again in November.

 

Turpin has served as a high school science teacher for 24 years. She supports full-day public kindergarten, a living wage, and defending the environment. She wants to encourage young entrepreneurs by offering them loans to start small businesses. She wants to expand broadband access. She supports overhauls of the state’s criminal justice and mental health systems. She would promote recycling. She would increase spending on infrastructure to improve roads and alleviate traffic jams.

 

 

See Turpin’s campaign website:

https://cherylturpinforvb.com

 

 

See her About page:

https://cherylturpinforvb.com/about/

 

 

Donate to Turpin’s campaign:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/314action_turpin?refcode=314website

 

 

Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!

 

 

Like her on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/CT4VAB

 

 

Follow her on Twitter:

@ct_4_vab

 

 

See 314 Action’s Endorsed Candidates page:

http://www.314action.org/endorsed-candidates/

 

 

Donate to 314 Action:

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/314act?refcode=website&amounts=15,25,50,100,250,500,1000&amount=25&recurring=true

 

 

See her page on Ballotpedia:

https://ballotpedia.org/Cheryl_Turpin

 

 

See an old OTYCD post on Turpin and two other Virginia candidates in the January 2017 special election:

https://onethingyoucando.com/2017/09/24/spread-the-word-and-vote-for-these-three-democrats-in-virginia-on-jan-10/

 

 

Read about the outcome of the January special election:

https://pilotonline.com/news/government/politics/virginia/republican-holcomb-wins-special-election-to-fill-scott-taylor-s/article_662a0f4a-6779-5478-a869-869cffe4e0cb.html

Elections · GOOD UPDATE! · Use Your Power, Recruit Friends · Vote with your Dollars

GOOD UPDATE! Democrat David Reid WON A Seat In The Virginia State Legislature

This OTYCD entry originally posted in September 2017.

 

YES YES YES! Per Flippable, Democrat David Reid won his race for a seat in the Virginia state senate. Hooray!

 

Original text of this post follows.

 

Support Democrat David Reid, who is running for a seat in the Virginia state House of Delegates.

 

Flippable, the organization created after the 2016 elections to focus on state and local elections, has identified the state of Virginia as, well, flippable. All 100 seats in its House of Delegates are up for grabs on November 7, 2017.

 

We at OTYCD hope to prep and post items on the five Virginia candidates in the districts that Flippable has deemed most worthy of your time and money.

 

Reid spent some of his formative years in a children’s home and became the first in his family to graduate from college. He served in the U.S. Navy Reserve from 1988 to 2011, retiring as a commander.

 

He wants to expand Medicaid and implement full-day kindergarten for all children living in Loudon County. Having financed his college education with Pell grants, scholarships, and work-study earnings, he wants to fight tuition rises and find ways to make college more affordable. He fully supports reproductive rights, very much including the right to choose. He wants to end partisan gerrymandering. He supports gun safety measures, including mental health checks, universal background checks, and restricting access for people convicted of domestic violence. He would fight animal abuse and cruelty.

 

 

See Reid’s campaign homepage:

https://www.reidfordelegate.com

 

 

See his Meet David page:

https://www.reidfordelegate.com/meet-david

 

 

See his Priorities page:

https://www.reidfordelegate.com/my-priorities

 

 

Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!

 

 

Like him on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/reidfordelegate/

 

 

Follow him on Twitter:

@DavidReidVA

 

 

Donate to Reid’s campaign:

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/reidwebsite

 

 

Volunteer for Reid’s campaign:

https://act.myngp.com/Forms/6091492254737238528

 

 

See the Flippable page on Reid:

https://www.flippable.org/virginia-house#wsimg

 

 

See Flippable’s page on ‘Why Virginia?’, which shows you the other four candidates:

https://www.flippable.org/virginia-house#wsimg

 

 

See his Ballotpedia page:

https://ballotpedia.org/David_Reid_(Virginia)

 

 

See his Sister District entry:

https://www.sisterdistrict.com/vahod12-1/

 

Elections · GOOD UPDATE! · Use Your Power, Recruit Friends · Vote with your Dollars

GOOD UPDATE! Democrat Hala Ayala WON A Seat in Virginia’s State Legislature

This OTYCD entry originally posted in September 2017.

YES YES YES! Hala Ayala won her race for a seat in Virginia’s House of Delegates! She defeated Rich Anderson, a four-term Republican incumbent.

Read more here:

http://www.insidenova.com/news/politics/prince_william/ayala-wins-st-district-seat-defeating–term-incumbent/article_22e3019e-c434-11e7-bb85-b3efe305948f.html

Original text of this post follows.

Support Democrat Hala Ayala, who is running for a seat in Virginia’s House of Delegates on November 7, 2017.

In addition to spotlighting five Virginia state-level candidates chosen by Flippable for the upcoming race in November, we at OTYCD are also devoting posts to six candidates chosen by 314 Action whose races fall in 2017. 314 Action is an organization that boosts hopefuls who have STEM backgrounds.

Ayala worked her way up from a service job with no benefits to serving the Department of Homeland Security as a cybersecurity specialist. She is the founder and former president of the Prince William County chapter of the National Organization for Women. She helped organize Virginian efforts to appear at the Women’s March on Washington on January 21, 2017.

Ayala would expand Medicaid and defend Planned Parenthood. A former president of a local Parent-Teacher Organization, she supports universal pre-K, affordable college and university tuition, and efforts against bullying and discrimination. She would invest in public transportation and other infrastructure projects that could reduce traffic woes. She supports initiatives for paid family leave, paid sick leave, increasing the minimum wage, and ensuring equal pay for equal work.

 

See Ayala’s campaign website:

https://ayalafordelegate.com

 

See her Meet Hala page:

https://ayalafordelegate.com/about/

 

See her Issues page:

https://ayalafordelegate.com/on-the-issues/

 

Donate to Ayala’s campaign:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/314action_ayala?refcode=314website

 

Like her on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/AyalaforDelegate/

 

Follow her on Twitter:

@HalaAyala

 

See her 314 Action page:

http://www.314action.org/hala-ayala

 

See her Crowdpac page:

https://www.crowdpac.com/campaigns/212305/hala-ayala

 

See her Ballotpedia page:

https://ballotpedia.org/Hala_Ayala

 

See 314 Action’s Endorsed Candidates page:

http://www.314action.org/endorsed-candidates/

 

Donate to 314 Action:

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/314act?refcode=website&amounts=15,25,50,100,250,500,1000&amount=25&recurring=true

Action Alerts · Community Activism · Public Education · Vote with your Dollars

UPDATED: Pay the Meal Debts of Students at Your Local K-12 School and Ask Your State Legislature to Pass an Anti-Lunch-Shaming Bill

Call a local K-12 school in your area and ask if you can pay off the school lunch debt of a student or two. Also, find out if your state has an anti-lunch-shaming bill and if it doesn’t, ask your legislature to pass one.

 

Low-income families sometimes struggle to pay the school lunch bills of their children. Hungry kids have trouble learning, but some poor kids suffer worse than a missed meal. Some have suffered the indignity of having their breakfast or lunch taken from them and thrown in the trash. Sometimes this happens in sight of their classmates.

 

In extreme cases (scroll down for a New York Times article that relays these incidents), students who owe are forced to clean cafeteria tables. The arm of a child in Alabama was stamped with the phrase “I Need Lunch Money.”

 

Being poor isn’t good or bad; it just is. No child should be made to feel shame over not having as much money as their fellow students, or made to suffer socially because their parents fell behind in their school meal payments or simply forgot.

 

One way you can fight back is to call a K-12 school near you and ask if you can pay the bills of students whose families are in arrears. Odds are there’s at least one school in your city or town that has unpaid school meal bills. A 2016 report by the School Nutrition  Association states that roughly 75 percent of responding districts had at least some student meal debt by the end of the school year.

 

This is an admittedly imperfect solution, as it lets the government off the hook for funding a service that minor children should be able to expect, but it does help where help is needed.

 

You can also ask your state legislators if your state has an anti-lunch-shaming bill on the books, and if they don’t, you can ask them to pass one.

 

First, find your state legislators by plugging your zip code into this web tool:

https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/

 

Then look up their biographies on your state legislature’s web site and see if either your state senator or state house rep or both sit on any education-related committees. If they do, it is extra-important for you to pursue this matter.

 

Ask your state reps to pass a bill like the Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights Act, which New Mexico’s governor signed into law in April. It appears to be the first bill of its kind passed by an American state. It outlaws any techniques that have the effect of shaming students, and it asks schools to work with parents to satisfy meal debt or get them on a federal school meal assistance program.

 

Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the button on the upper right of the page. And tell your friends about the blog!

 

GOOD UPDATE: A Seattleite by the name of Jeff Lew has made it his mission to combat lunch debt and school practices that shame children whose parents have trouble paying for meals.

 

His GoFundMe is a clearinghouse for schools in need, and it lets you start a campaign on behalf of a school near you:

https://www.gofundme.com/raise-funds/erase-lunch-debt

 

You can also show support by following him on Twitter:

@biglew8

…and following his dedicated Twitter account for the cause, which is admittedly a work  in progress as of May 28:

@LunchDebt

 

 

Read this 2016 Atlantic piece on unpaid school meal bills:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/unpaid-school-lunch-bills/460509/

 

 

See the particulars of the New Mexico anti-shaming law:

https://www.nmlegis.gov/Legislation/Legislation?Chamber=S&LegType=B&LegNo=374&year=17

 

 

Read this New York Times piece on the New Mexico anti-shaming law:

 

See the School Nutrition Association report that states that three-quarters of districts who filled out the survey had outstanding student debts (scan for the paragraph with the phrase “unpaid student meal debt” in bold):

https://schoolnutrition.org/NewsPublications/PressReleases/SNANationalSurveyRevealsIncreasedEffortsToPromoteStudentConsumptionOfHealthyChoices/

 

 

Read about that incident in Alabama where a kid’s arm was stamped with the phrase ‘I Need Lunch Money’:

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/06/gardendale_elementary_student.html

 

 

See more proof that school lunch-shaming is, sadly, a thing:

Some Schools Shame Students When Their Parents Can’t Pay For Lunch

http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/children-shamed-so-parents-will-pay-the-school-lunch-bill/

 

 

Read about recent efforts by individual citizens to settle unpaid student meal debt:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donors-unite-nationwide-to-pay-off-kids-school-lunch-debt/

 

 

Call Your State Legislators · Online Privacy, Net Neutrality

Urge Your State Legislators to Protect Your Privacy on the Internet

This OTYCD entry originally posted in May 2017.

 

Call and email your state legislators and ask them to create laws that will protect your privacy on the Internet.

 

Earlier, we urged you to call your house reps and ask them to vote against H.R. Res 86, which, if passed, would gut consumer privacy protections online. (We’re sure you won’t be surprised to know the bill was entirely sponsored by Republicans.) Well, it passed, and Trump signed it.

 

Now we must turn to our state legislators to protect us from those who would harvest our data and sell it.

 

Some state legislatures are already on the case. Illinois is working on a European-style “right to know” law that would tell customers what information search engines and social media platforms are gathering on them, and who they’re selling it to. Minnesota is mulling a law that would stop Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from selling consumer information without written permission. Massachusetts state senators just introduced a bill similar to Minnesota’s.

 

The first step in asking your state legislators to pass laws protecting your online privacy is knowing who they are.

 

Find your state senator and house rep here, as well as your state attorney general:

https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/

 

 

Then call or email them and ask them to pass laws that protect consumer privacy online, assuming they aren’t already doing that. If they are, tell them that you support their efforts, and ask what you can do to help make them law.

 

 

Sample script: “Hello, I am <Firstname Lastname from town, zip code>. I am contacting you to ask you to write, support, and pass laws that will protect <state name> consumers’ online privacy. As you know, Trump recently signed a law that allows Internet Service Providers to harvest information about their users’ online movements and sell it to third parties. I would like you and your colleagues to consider bills like those being discussed in Minnesota and Massachusetts, which would not let ISPs sell someone’s data without their written permission. Illinois is also considering a bill that would force search engines and social media platforms to tell consumers what data they’re gathering, and who they’re selling it to. Laws like these would do much to protect our privacy online. Thank you.”

 

 

Subscribe to One Thing You Can Do by clicking the blue button on the upper right or checking the About & Subscribe page. And tell your friends about the blog!

 

 

Read about the states’ reaction to the passage of HR Res 86:

 

 

Read about the efforts in the Illinois and Minnesota state legislatures to protect their residents’ online privacy:

Now that the US federal government doesn’t care about internet privacy, states are stepping in

 

 

Elections · GOOD UPDATE! · Support Immigrants and Refugees · Use Your Power, Recruit Friends · Vote with your Dollars

GOOD UPDATE! Democrat Kathy Tran WON A Seat In The Virginia State Legislature

This OTYCD entry originally posted in September 2017.

YES YES YES! Per Flippable, Democrat Kathy Tran won her race for a seat in the Virginia state senate. Hooray!

Original text of this post follows.

Support Kathy Tran, a Democrat running for the Virginia state legislature’s House of Delegates.

Flippable, the organization created after the 2016 elections to focus on state and local elections, has identified the state of Virginia as, well, flippable. All 100 seats in its House of Delegates are up for grabs on November 7, 2017.

We at OTYCD hope to prep and post items on the five Virginia candidates in the districts that Flippable has deemed most worthy of your time and money.

Tran and her family fled Vietnam when she was seven months old. She served the U.S. Department of Labor for 12 years before moving on to the National Immigration Forum, a leading immigration advocacy organization.

She wants to strengthen public schools, protect our environment, and prevent gun violence. She supports comprehensive immigration reform and expanding Medicaid. She defends reproductive rights, and has earned the endorsement of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia.

And as this quote from her Civil Rights and Democracy entry in her Issues section shows, she will defend both in a loud voice and at the slightest provocation:

“Kathy will use her voice to stand against those who seek to undermine a welcoming and inclusive Virginia.

At a time when the most fundamental elements of a well-functioning democracy are being challenged across the country, Kathy will fight against laws and practices that keep Virginians from exercising their right to vote or seek to weaken our vote through gerrymandering or the influence of big money in politics.”

 

See Tran’s campaign website:

https://www.kathyfordelegate.com

 

See her ‘Meet Kathy’ page:

https://www.kathyfordelegate.com/#about-kathy-section

 

 

Like her on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/KathyForDelegate/about/?ref=page_internal

 

Follow her on Twitter:

@KathyLKTran

 

Donate to Tran’s campaign:

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/kathytran?refcode=website

 

See her Crowdpac page:

https://www.crowdpac.com/candidates/58d1f079d9e70460452ebec3/kathy-tran

 

See Flippable’s page on Tran:

http://elections.flippable.org/elections?id=SVAH042

 

See Ballotpedia’s page on Tran:

https://ballotpedia.org/Kathy_Tran

 

See Flippable’s ‘Why Virginia’ page (you can find info on the other four races here):

https://www.flippable.org/virginia-house#wsimg

 

Volunteer to help Tran and the other four Virginia state legislature candidates:
https://www.mobilizeamerica.io/flippable