PNN’s mission is to engage, educate and empower our neighbors to make our City a better place to live. Here’s what’s coming up in each of these areas:
Engage: The Big Canvass & Rally for Safe Communities
Educate: Work Your Polling Place on Election Day
Empower: Vote, Vote, Vote!
Our Endorsements & Recommendations
Some of our fellow members have asked us to put together a complete list of endorsements and recommendations for this election, including the judges and the ballot question. You can find that information here.
We are four days from an Election Day that will decide the direction our City Council will take for the next four years! We have an opportunity to keep CM Kendra Brooks on City Council and to have her friend and ally Nicolas O'Rourke join her.
But the GOP is spending Billionaire Jeffrey Yass' money to stop them, and the Democratic Establishment is threatening to remove any Committee Person who openly supports them. Now is the time for each of us to do our duty as concerned and thinking citizens and not only get out to vote, but to help Get Out The Vote - by knocking on doors to talk with your neighbors about what's at stake on November 7th.
Here's what you can do:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Big Canvass at Vernon Park
Saturday, 11AM, 5700 Germantown Ave.
That means we need to step up our game this weekend by joining The Big Canvass at Vernon Park in Germantown. We will target the entire Ward 59, a critical turnout area for Kendra and Nic to win. If we can increase voting in this ward by just a few percentage points, it may be enough to push Kendra and Nic over the top.
Also, just as crucially, those votes could help elect our slate of appellate Court judicial candidates - most importantly Dan McCaffery for Supreme Court - who we desperately need on the bench to protect abortion, voter rights, gun control legislation, and funding for public education.
The weather is going to be perfect - 65 degrees and sunny!
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rally for Safe Communities
Saturday, 2PM, 5700 Germantown Ave.
Right after the Big Canvass, we'll be getting together with Kendra Brooks, Nic O'Rourke, Seth Anderson Oberman, Rep. Chris Rabb and other community leaders for a Rally for Safe Communities. They will talk about violence prevention, expanded access to healthcare, environmental sustainability, fully-resourced schools, good sustaining union jobs and deeply-affordable housing, among other topics.
You will also have an opportunity to join one of our Working Groups that will take on some of our biggest issues around Housing, Schools and Public Institutions, Climate Justice and Community-Centered Development. This is a follow-up to the work we started at the People's Summit at the end of September. If you did not attend the Summit, here's your chance to plug in and get your activism on!
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Canvass in West Mt. Airy
Sunday, 11AM, Lovett Library, 6945 Germantown Ave.
We have been asked to help canvass in neighborhoods where Democratic Committee Persons have been threatened with expulsion by Party Chair Bob Brady if they openly support Kendra Brooks and Nic O'Rourke. So, we are going to help them out by canvassing in their place. Join us to knock doors under beautiful skies and help get out the vote!
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Election Day Poll Watching
Tuesday, November 7th, Morning & Afternoon Shifts, Your Polling Place
The reason that the political establishment was so successful in the primary election was because they had people at every polling place in the city, handing out sample ballots for their chosen candidates. We did not. And you could tell by looking at the positive results for our endorsed candidates - division by division - where we had coverage and where we did not.
Let's not make the same mistake again and doom ourselves to four more years of politics as usual in City Hall. Click the link below and sign up to work at a polling place - yours or another - and help to get Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O'Rourke elected to City Council.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
This Week in History
Nov 4, 1964 – D.C. Residents Vote. The residents of the District of Columbia cast ballots in their first presidential election after the 23rd Amendment gave them the right to vote for president. D.C. has three Electoral Votes, just like Wyoming, although it only has one (non-voting) representative in Congress.
Nov. 5, 1855 – Eugene Debs Born. Happy birthday to Eugene Victor "Gene" Debs, an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States.
Nov 7, 1916 – First Congresswoman. The Montana suffragist Jeannette Rankin is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the first woman in the history of the nation to win a seat in the federal Congress.
Nov 9, 1935 – CIO Founded. The Congress for Industrial Organization was founded by eight international unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor. In its statement of purpose, the CIO said it had formed to encourage the AFL to organize workers in mass production industries along industrial union lines.
Thanks for your activism!
Tim Brown, Organizing Director