Meeting notes September 24

Full replay: https://www.facebook.com/cbidems/live

Rich Bennett started the meeting by saying how it’s been another difficult week and it’s so hard to know how to address it all. He knows the people are here because they’re people who care and they want to take action, they’re not going to sit back and just watch, they’re the ones who are going to pick up the phones and do the work that’s necessary.

He then said that Erica Cohen and Allison Mingus had written a tribute to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that was printed in The Citizen this month. He asked Allison to read the statement, reprinted here, as well:

“Our hearts are heavy today as we mourn the loss of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Jewish tradition says that a person who dies on the eve of Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) is a person of righteousness. We will remember Justice Ginsburg as so much more than just righteous. She was a role model to generations of women. She showed us what is possible, how never to take “no” for an answer, and to fight for what we believe in.

As we mourn her loss, we also celebrate the life she lived and the gifts she left us. As a feminist, she fought for decades to end sexist discrimination and combat the pervasive misogyny in our everyday lives. She worked hard to protect our rights as women, to ensure we could make our own choices about how we want to live our lives. CBID is proud to be made up of so many women who stood with Justice Ginsburg as she fought for the rights of women, BIPOC individuals, the LGBTQIA+ community, and so many more marginalized communities. The women of CBID feel connected to Ginsburg because we believe our community can do better and must do better.

Even with this tragedy, we will not lose hope. We will work as hard as she did to make America a more equal and just society; the society that she knew we could be. When we are fighting like hell for our democracy in the coming weeks, we will channel her strength and her spirit. She was born and raised right here in Brooklyn, and we must harness that energy to take down this administration and honor Justice Ginsburg by electing a President, a Senate, a House, and a state legislature that she would be proud of.”

Next, Erica Cohen spoke as a representative of the Brooklyn Voters Alliance. She said there are three ways to vote: Absentee ballot, Early Voting, or on Election Day. She mentioned that Early Voting starts Oct. 24th and goes through Nov. 1st. There is no voting on November 2nd. She reported that absentee ballots can be placed into dropboxes located at all early voting sites, as well as on Election Day, but that in-person voting is still encouraged. If you drop off an absentee ballot, but decide you want to vote in person after all, you can still do that—the absentee ballot will be discarded. This is why New York absentee ballots are not counted until several days after Election Day. They must be checked against the ballots cast in person at the polling sites.

Erica also said that we should be receiving a card in the mail, the kind that you can put on your keychain. It will contain a barcode that will speed up the process of signing in at a polling site. Someone mentioned that even the barcode from previous elections would still work, as well.

Erica finished by saying that one should not leave a poll site without having cast a ballot. If told that you are not on the voting rolls, you have to ask for an affidavit ballot.

Next, Sarah Shah, the Out-of-State Director for North Carolina Dems spoke. She described the North Carolina races as equivalent to the triple-word score in Scrabble. The presidential race is closely tied in the polls, Governor Roy Cooper, who won by 10,000 votes in the last election, is also fighting for re-election, and Cal Cunningham is also hotly contested. North Carolina is the first state to start voting—it began early voting on September 1st. Approximately 200,000 ballots have already been cast. North Carolina Dems has one of the largest staffs in the country, but is very grateful for any support they can get.

Kate Travis, Maine Dems Out-of-State Field Organizer, spoke next. She said, as a young person, she felt disappointed and betrayed by the world that is being left to her and, even more so, by Susan Collins. She is working hard for Sara Gideon, whom she believes will put Mainers first and the country first, above partisan politics. She said that, while Maine has had very low COVID deaths, its economy has been hit hard by the lack of tourism. They are trying creative ways to do outreach to students at colleges that have reopened and are hoping that the large senior population in the state will take advantage of vote-by-mail.

Then, Annie Tan talked about the actions and priorities of MORE, which is a UFT caucus. She reported that schools are not ready to reopen and that the responses of the city administration is lacking in responses to calls for more testing, more PPE, better ventilation, more nurses—essentially, she sees no real plan in place to open them effectively and safely. She said there was a lot of frustration with the DOE and the Mayor for not providing real leadership. When asked if she thought we needed to wait for a vaccine to reopen, she said no, but we need to be much better at doing so safely.

Rich then put out another call for participation in CBID’s 60 Days of Action. He encouraged everyone to take part and to fill up our Bingo cards. He mentioned that Fridays are phone banking for the Biden/Harris campaign and they’ve been very well-attended. In addition, Yvette Clarke has promised to attend the call on October 2nd.

Signups can be done here: https://www.cbidems.org/60daysofaction

Next, Tony Melone of New Kings Democrats talked about the Brooklyn County Committee. According to its rules, a general meeting needs to be held no later than October 6th. As of the time of this meeting, no date had yet been set. New Kings Democrats devised a plan for the Committee to be able to hold such a meeting via Zoom so as to keep everyone safe, but there has been no response nor any indication that it will happen this way.

He also talked about NKD’s proposed changes to County Committee’s rules. NKD is asking for feedback about these proposed changes, as well as the support from other groups, including CBID. One of the more salient details is restricting every member to no more than a certain number of proxies. The number being considered right now is 20, but that could change. This would prevent the situation where 300 members show up for the meeting, but the County Committee chair has 400 proxies, and so that one person gets to decide on every issue.

For details, you can see the document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EpTijjEqy0fIEC63_WopKAl40MfAho_rg_TmNhHmooI/edit

Finally, Joanne Boger explained that Climate Committee chose not to report at this time, but she expects that get out of the vote efforts stemming from the Sierra Club will become more active after the election.

The meeting was adjourned.