Bull City Indivisible Begins

First meeting notes and what's next

“Our greatest threat in this moment is despair. We must bring people together” - Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible

Hi all,

Thank you to everyone who was able to make the first meeting today! (If you’re reading this and got it twice, sorry! Still learning Substack).

It was so amazing to be in a community of people fired up and ready to take action despite the hard path ahead.

We’ll decide about where to meet in the future depending on how many people regularly join. In winter illness season, we’ll balance making sure people feel safe and not being too cold, as well as making sure we are in kid-friendly spaces!

Indivisible began in 2016 "as a means to stop the Trump agenda. We succeeded and we will do it again. Democracy is in grave peril but not lost. This election is catastrophic, but democracy does not get decided in one election. Had we won, democracy would not have been saved. After losing, democracy isn’t gone. We will come together. We will fight back. We will forge a path forward.”

Most importantly: you do not have to come to every meeting. You might just read the emails. Or talk to a friend that went. You can come for some of it, and leave early. You can come late! You can come and just observe, or you can participate. My goal is to make sure we have a community that is welcoming and action-oriented.

Here are a few ways to get started this week. For meeting notes and summary, see below. Next meeting will be at Lakewood Social from 3-4:30 on December 1st. Mobilize link coming. You can subscribe to this newsletter and comment below, or find us on Instagram @bullcityindivisible.

Action Opportunities:

1. Call your state legislatures about HB10.

   1. Tuesday the NC legislature is expected to vote on HB 10  veto override.  This bill provides billions of dollars in private school vouchers to wealthy parents/private schools in the next 10 years. This would be devastating to our public schools that are already underfunded — private schools do not have to provide accommodations for children with disabilities, so one thing this does is takes money away from disabled children and gives it to wealthy parents in schools that can deny entrance to children. It would also require local sheriffs to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when they arrest someone and determine they are living in the United States unlawfully. If the bill becomes law, ICE would receive custody of arrestees after 48 hours of local custody. Governor Cooper vetoed the bill last fall and the general assembly is coming back for it's lame duck session on Tuesday.

   2. Here’s the language you can use when you call, adapted from Rep Marcia Morey’s statement: “My name is ______. I am a constituent in _____. Please vote against HB10. I oppose using taxpayer dollars for private schools. North Carolina used to be a leader in public education. Now, we have fallen woefully behind in teacher pay and too much money has been transferred to charter schools and opportunity scholarships. We should continue to advocate for the mandates of the Leandro decision and ensuring children in our public schools receive a sound, basic education. Additionally, I oppose the ICE component of HB 10 with the support of Durham's local law enforcement. Simply put, this bill puts individuals' constitutional rights in jeopardy.”

   3. Here’s how to find your representatives.

2. Call Thom Tillis and Ted Budd about the cabinet nominees and ask them to vote against confirming them. The 5calls app has everything you need to do this.

3. Call your house representative (see above to find out who it is) and ask them to vote against HB 9495. More about what the bill does here. If you live in Deborah Ross’s district, call and ask her to release the ethics report about Matt Gaetz.

4. Write: Postcards about down ballot races are some of the most effective. There’s a critical Supreme Court runoff election in Mississippi on Tuesday, November 26 - get addresses here. Runoff elections have low turnout so everything counts!

5. Donate: Allison Riggs is leading by 24 votes. 9 counties finish counts this week. Recount request deadline is Tuesday 12 pm. It will be a nail-biter. It is likely it’s going to recount which is actually going to be a legal battle over which votes '“count”. Donating to her campaign or here will help make sure every vote is counted.

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Our meeting covered a few things:

1. What Indivisible is and why I (Anna) started the group

   1. What is Indivisible? "Brought together by a practical guide to resist the Trump agenda in 2016, Indivisible is a movement of thousands of group leaders and more than a million members taking regular, iterative, and increasingly complex actions to resist the GOP’s agenda, elect local champions, and fight for progressive policies. We make calls. We show up. We speak with our neighbors. We organize. And through that work, we’ve built hundreds of mini-movements in support of local values. After practice, training, and repetition, we’ve built lasting power on our home turf, and a massive, collective political muscle ready to be exercised each and every day in every corner of the country."

   2. Why did I start the group? After working for months on the Harris campaign (unofficially) as well as getting the word out about down ballot races, I was devastated by the election results as were so many others. But as the old saying goes, “don’t mourn, organize”. My mom and many of her friends (as well as many others!) have been doing this work in Durham for a long time, but when I would go to events I would often be the only person my age. And yet, so many of my friends have been involved the past few months the and have responded to my texts or posts saying they're interested too, invested in wanting a better future for our families. I was incredibly inspired by the Women Wednesdays for Harris calls in the 3 months before the election, which had amazing discussions with actionable items each week. So, while mourning (here are Rebecca Solnit’s inspiring words), I decided to start an Indivisible group here in Durham.

      We have a critical opportunity here in NC to work towards flipping the legislature and courts back and ending extreme Republican gerrymandering. My goal is not to reinvent the wheel - there are SO many groups and organizations right here in our state that have been doing the work and continue to do the work. We will connect with those groups, learn about those groups, and get action items from those groups. But we will also be in community with each other and spread the word about actionable items to our own networks. 

2. After introductions, we briefly went over the Indivisible 2.0 guide which talks about steps we can and need to take over the next 2 years. I highly recommend everyone check it out, and you can do so here.

3. We talked about how NC was a bright spot in the 2024 election despite nationwide losses and why 2026 and 2030 are important dates in our state.

   1. While we saw a 6 point shift to the right across the country, NC only shifted 1.17% to the right. We are the only place in the country to have flipped three statewide offices R —>D and won in some almost impossible races. (For example, Terence Everitt won in the district that they tried to draw him out of to make a win impossible!). As of this writing, Allison Riggs is only up by 24 votes, and several counties will be meeting tomorrow.

   2. 2026 is a critical year: we have to ensure that we stop a Trump agenda by flipping the house and senate on a national level. Whoever wins in 2026 will be in charge of the 2028 elections, and if we have election deniers in charge and people who will not hold free and fair elections, it will be a Big Deal. In NC, we have the opportunity to vote out Thom Tillis and elect a Democrat. We also must re-elect Anita Earls, protect and flip more seats in the NCGA, and re-elect Don Davis.

   3. 2030 is the year that we need to look towards in NC politics. In 2030, we have an opportunity to draw new maps, ones that are not gerrymandered in such an extreme way. Democrats might have kept the house this year and prevented a Trump trifecta if not for gerrymandering in NC (we went from a 7-7 split to a 10-3 split in 2020). But to draw new maps we have to do two things — these are not impossible but it will take a lot of work and that needs to start now.

      1. Get a majority in the NCGA (currently just shy of Republican supermajority in the house).

      2. Get a majority on the NC supreme court (currently 5-2, will remain 5-2 if Riggs wins, 6-1 if she loses). Anita Earls’ seat is up in 2026 and then 3 more seats are up in 2028.

4. Small Group Exercise #1. How we get our information and how it makes us feel - we broke into small groups and talked about how we consume information. Everyone came up with mainstream media, podcasts, Substacks, Instagram accounts, or podcasts. See the bottom of the email for the list and my comments about it.

   1. Couldn’t make it to the meeting? Leave a comment with your favorite listens or reads!

5. Small Group Exercise #2. Our next small group breakout was to talk about NC groups that are already doing the work and come up with a list, see below.

   1. One of the comments I got again and again during canvassing and organizing the past few months was “you know so much!”. And while it wasn’t the only way I got information, one BIG way I did was following local politicians and GOTV organizers on social media. I got to know folks like Woodson Bradley and Mo Green and then spread the word to everyone I knew.

   2. Couldn’t make it to the meeting? Leave a comment with your favorite local organizations already taking action!

6. We came back together at the end to talk about action items and how to contact our representatives. We had an absolutely amazing serenade from a high schooler who came — she filled me with hope for our future.

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Homework:

1. Diversify your information and news — follow new sources outside the mainstream media. We’re not talking about following right-wing media — but try out a podcast (I listened to Jon Stewart and Heather Cox Richardson this week and it was great, especially HCR’s answers so I’ll be listening to Stacey Abram’s conversation with her!), a different newspaper (like Cardinal and Pine), Substack (like Emily Amick and Jessica Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water) are two of the ones I’m reading among others). Follow local (and national) political accounts on Instagram (@momsfornc, @yourneighborsforchange, @carolina.forward).

2. Read Emily Amick and Sami Sage’s Democracy In Retrograde — our next meeting will be from 3 - 4:30 on December 1st at Lakewood Social. Read the book before the meeting if you have time, but if you don’t get to read it or read all of it you can still come. Meeting a little earlier since it got cold and dark today!

With hope and determination,

Anna 

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Here’s what people came up with during our group exercises — I’ll send out another more edited list at some point. This is just what people came up with tonight (plus one or two additions from me). One thing I noticed was that white men and legacy media dominated — these failed us during the election season. The new Indivisible guide says one of the ways we fight fascism is to “develop independent media and communications. Establish media channels NOT connected to the state to influence the public narrative, counter misinformation, and communicate values and goals to the public. Don’t rely solely on channels controlled by those who benefit from the current regime (looking at you, Elon Musk). E.g. the underground press during World War II and later in Eastern European resistance movements.” In particular, there was a significant lack of Black and brown voices on the list below — it is important that we listen to voices other than white ones. Here’s Austin Channing Brown’s Substack and Britney Packnett Cunningham’s podcast - to name two of MANY. If you subscribe, please pay them if you are able. We shouldn’t rely on the free labor of Black women.

Ways we get our information:

Podcasts

• Pod Save America

• #Sistersinlaw

• Undistracted with Britney Packnett Cunningham

• Sharon Says So

• Hometown Holler

• Bulwark

• Up First (NPR)

• Jon Stewart

• The Daily - NYT

• Love It or Leave It

• Rachel Maddow

• Chris Hayes

• Ezra Klein

Substacks

• Heather Cox Richardson

• Emily In Your Phone

• Robert Reich

• Your Local Epidemiologist

• Jessica Vallenti

• Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

• Robert Hubbell

• Jay Kuo  The Status Kuo and The Big Picture

• Lucian Truscott IV

• Sherrilyn Ifill

• Jess Piper The View From Rural Missouri

Online or Print Publications

• NYT

• WaPo

• Reuters

• Free Press

• Indy

• Newsweek

• USA Today

• WSJ

• Democracy Docket

• Daily Kos

• Atlantic

• ProPublica

• NYT

• HuffPo

• MSNBC

• AP

Newsletters

• Politician emails like AOC’s

• Dan Pfeiffer

• James Carville

• Sister District

Television

• Daily Show

• Late Show

• Rachel Maddow

• MSNBC

• ABC news

• CNN

YouTube channels

• Bryan Tyler Cohen

• “Sons of Liberty”

• Xander Hall

• Thom Hartmann

• Farron Balanced

Social Media

• Facebook

• Bluesky

• Threads

• Instagram

  • We will have another newsletter with good Insta follows, but if you want to get started check out @thecaseforchange who came up with a really good list and is working on updating it (see her post from Nov 8 titled “Who to Follow In the Aftermath”) and follow those as well as local NC groups and politician accounts like @carolina.forward, @momsfornc, @yourneighborsforchange, @jeffjacksonnc, @siembranc, etc. You can also check out who our account is following! Find us on Instagram @bullcityindivisible.

Local NC organizations to follow (we’ll be talking more about what many of these organizations do in future meetings, but start following them on social media or look them up to get started!):

• Flip NC

• Down Home NC (rural organizing)

• Bull city votes

• County to County NC

• Democracy NC

• Red Wine and Blue NC

• Common Cause

• Durham Democrats (or your local Democratic party! some of the rural parties really took off this year!)

• Moms Demand Action - NC chapter

• League of Women Voters - NC chapter

• Swing Left NC

• Southern Poverty Law Center

• Democracy Out Loud

• Never and Now NC

• Durham People’s Alliance

• NC Democrats

• NCAAT

• YouCanVote

• Vot-ER

• Durham Democratic Women

• Neighbors on Call

• Durham for All

• Carolina Federation

• Moms Rising

• Kids Vote NC

• HRC

• Equality NC

• The Poor People’s Campaign

• Democracy Out Loud

• Public School Strong

• Southerners on New Ground

• Carolina Jews for Justice

• Jewish Voices for Peace

• Durham Association of Educators

• Moms for Mo

• Chatham Pride Alliance

• CWS Immigrant Solidarity Fund

• Carolina Forward