Call Your Senators TODAY: NO WAR WITH IRAN

It's been a while but the news is dire again and I'm reaching out to urge you to please call your Senators today to urge them to vote against allowing Trump to start a war with Iran.

His seemingly unprovoked order to assassinate Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran's top security commander was done without even informing Congress and has already spawned a whole host of awful effects, including retaliatory strikes on U.S. forces in Iraq and the deaths of the 176 innocent people on board Ukraine Airlines flight out of Tehran.

Trump is clearly attempting to distract everyone from his forthcoming impeachment trial in the Senate by doing exactly what he previously accused President Obama of doing for electoral gain.

We have to do everything in our power to stop him from playing with thousands (or more) human lives to get his way.

The Democrat-controlled House has just voted to curtail his powers of war but the vote fell almost entirely on party lines and the Republican-controlled Senate is unlikely to vote the right way next week.

Call your Senators today:

1. Find your Senator's number here.

2. Use the script below or just use your own words:

"Hi, my name is YOUR NAME and I'm a constituent calling from YOUR TOWN/CITY. 

I'm extremely concerned that President Trump is starting an unprovoked war with Iran and I'm calling to urge the Senator to vote to block his power to proceed without approval from Congress. His decision to order the murder of Iran's top security commander occurred without Congress's knowledge and has already resulted in retaliatory strikes on U.S. troops in Iraq and the deaths of 176 innocent passengers on the Ukraine Airlines flight that was shot down in Tehran. More innocent lives will be lost if the Senator does not vote to stop Trump's rush to war.

Thank you for taking my call."

3. Hang up and call your other Senator.

4. Please share! If you live in a State with one or more Republican Senators, share this post with everyone you know and ask them to join you. And I encourage you to tweet and post at all your members of Congress about this, too.

WE FLIPPED THE HOUSE!!! and other victories

After an agonizing Election Day and night, the results are (mostly) in and I am feeling incredibly hopeful and buoyed up by our many victories. Apologies in advance for the many exclamation points in this post.

Here in my swing district, NY's 19th, Democrat Antonio Delgado is my new Congressperson and I could not be happier! We successfully kicked Republican John Faso to the curb after just one crappy term. Faso consistently voted against our best interests and was caught on video promising one of his constituents who suffers from a brain tumor and spinal condition that he would protect her healthcare complete with repeated hugs (spoiler alert: he lied...)

There's also a new Sheriff in town here in Ulster County -- an experienced State Trooper and former U.S. Marine and DEMOCRAT named Juan Figueroa! I am thrilled to see the back of our previous Sheriff, Paul Van Blarcum who liked to use the Sheriff Office's official Facebook page to disparage the players taking a knee and encourage people to boycott the NFL, and to urge people to carry firearms in response to school shootings. No more!

My Democratic candidate for NY State Senate lost her race but Democrats won control of the NY State Senate in earnest - no more awful IDC! Come January, we'll have our first ever woman Majority leader in the NY State Senate. Hopefully, this will allow the Dems to tackle a series of long-overdue reforms that have been languishing for years.

On the national level, DEMOCRATS NOW HAVE CONTROL OF THE HOUSE!!! This means that creepy Devin Nunes is no longer going to be overseeing the Mueller investigation among other crucial checks on Trump's power. Some highlights of yesterday's results:

We elected a record-breaking 100+ women to Congress yesterday, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is now the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at 29 years of age!

Voters elected our first two Native American women to Congress - Deb Haaland in New Mexico and Sharice Davids in Kansas. Davids is also Kansas's first openly LGBT Congressperson!

Midwest voters elected our first two Muslim women to Congress - Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and Ilhan Omar in Minnesota!

 And Colorado's new governor, Democrat Jared Polis is the first openly gay man elected to a governorship.

That jerk Scott Walker is no longer the Governor of Wisconsin, he was beaten by Democrat Tony Evers! Nevada has a new Democratic Governor and Senator! And in Georgia's race for governor, Democrat Stacey Abrams is NOT conceding to Brian Kemp, her Republican opponent who refused to step away from his post overseeing state elections while he campaigned... I like that fighting spirit and who knows, Georgia has an interesting law requiring one candidate to win at least 50% of the vote - Kemp currently has 50.4% but we'll see what's in those absentee ballots - maybe there will be a runoff election.

I won't pretend that the Senate seats we lost last night are not disturbing but I feel filled with hope today.

We progressives are just getting started and we've got the next two years to improve and build on our strategies, our voter registrations, our ground game and our candidates. There's a lot of work to do but we can do it.

A big thank you to all of you who knocked on doors, sent postcards, registered voters, made calls, sent texts, talked to your neighbors, drove people to the polls, donated money and VOTED!

Let's take a little rest to celebrate and gather ourselves for the coming push to get rid of Trump and take back the Senate. Then, back at it!

Join the Blue Wave this weekend and next week!

Lots of promising signs of the building Blue Wave out there, people. Early voting among young people in both Texas and Georgia is up 500%! And early voting by African-Americans and Hispanics – both traditionally Democratic constituencies – has more than doubled.

The Democratic challenger in my swing district has a narrow lead over the Republican incumbent in the latest polls.

And I know I am not alone in the volume of texts and calls I've been getting urging me to vote for Dems, right?

But none of us can afford to sit this one out. And I don't mean just getting your butt to the polls on Election Day - we all need to help with the Get Out the Vote effort. There are lots of ways to get involved, I hope you'll pick at least one of them.

Go door to door. This is the most effective way to boost turnout. I know it's a bit daunting the first time but do it with a friend and it can be fun! If you're not sure who to volunteer with, here are some options:

• Go to the web site of whoever is running for office in your district and sign up to volunteer. For those of you in my area, here's the link to Antonio Delgado's volunteer events/sign up page or just email phoebe at delgadoforcongress dot com.
• Sign up with the Working Families Party's election efforts.
• If you're in my neck of the Woodstock (NY-19) you can join Citizen Action of NY's canvassing efforts in Kingston. 
• Sign up with Swing Left or Flippable.

Make calls or send texts.

• Indivisible is running a big phone and text bank from now through the election. Sign up here and join for however much time you can.
• Moms Rising has a very accessible option - you sign up for a 20 minute shift of either calls or texts, your choice - that's it! Sign up here.
• If you're in upstate NY's Capitol region, you can join Citizen Action's Blue Wave phonebank in Albany. 
• Sign up with Swing Left or Flippable.
• Join the MoveOn.org text team - starting on 11/4/18.

Drive people to the polls.

Connect with the campaign of whoever is running near you or with a local nonprofit who is arranging rides for people. 

In NY-19, try Citizen Action - email Andy, their field director - afalk at citizen actionny dot org. Or try one of these national services below.

• Carpool Vote
• The Last Weekend
• Drive Vote is organizing rides to the polls in three districts - CA-25, TX-14, WI-1 - you can sign up here.

Reach out to your friends and family!

Don't neglect those nearest and dearest to you. Make sure everyone you know (who agrees with your politics, that is) has a plan to vote and is informed about any local ballot initiatives. 

Heads up, those of you in Ulster County, you should vote YES on Proposition 1 to establish an unbiased redistricting committee. And I am voting No on Proposition 2 to dissolve and terminate our library district.

And consider voting for the Democratic candidates on the Working Families Party line, too.

Don't Thank Me,Do YOUR Part To Change Things

I'm haunted by the fact that I did not knock doors or make phone calls for Hillary Clinton in 2016. All I did was donate a few times and engage in endless online debates with Bernie Bros - not very effective...

I saw plenty of posts from friends who were out canvassing door to door and I made sure to thank them - something that I've since learned is totally infuriating. Why? Because someone else's civic engagement simply cannot be a substitute for your own civic engagement. That's not how it works.

Of course, everyone was certain that Clinton would win back in November 2016 - even the pollsters. Ooops.

It's now 2018, the country is going to Hell and our best chance of fixing it is by helping Democrats win their races on November 6th at the federal, state and local levels.

So please stop wringing your hands, stop trading angry tweets with Republicans, stop commenting on news stories about Trump's latest outrage, stop cursing fate, stop weeping for the future of humanit and sign up to help get out the vote. 

If you can't go door to door, you can make calls from home, you can send texts, you can write postcards. There is definitely something you can do to help.

If you're not sure who to join, check out Sister District (this is great if there are no competitive races in your state) or Flippable or Swing Left or your local Indivisible group or MoveOn - they'll tell you where to go. If you don't get off your ass to help, you don't get to complain if nothing changes.

As for myself, I organized a postcard writing party with friends. We hand-wrote notes on more than 240 postcards to infrequent Democratic and left-leaning voters in our swing district. And it was fun!

Despite a long-standing dislike of going door to door (I'm shy!), I plan to spend the weekend before the election canvassing for Antonio Delgado in my swing district. I should be going every weekend, but it's what I can manage.

If you're already doing all this and more, I hope you are kindly telling the people who thank you that you don't need to be thanked but you do need them to get involved.