Olympia Indivisible 2020 in Review

1/15/2021

Hello Olympia Indivisibler, It’s 2021 (at last!). On behalf of OI’s teams and Steering Committee, I want to wish you health, safety, connection, resilience, and engagement. The New Year sure as heck is off to a bumpy start, with cause for both great jubilation and consternation on the national political scene, as the pandemic presents its own roller-coaster, with new cases surging as vaccinations arrive, offering hope of better days ahead.

Given how much and how quickly events are moving right now, with multiple breaking news cycles crashing into each other on an hourly basis, it seems to me to be a particularly good moment to both look back and forward in time to have a larger framework to think about the present, remember the past, and think about the future.

I want to invite you to take a moment to look back on Olympia Indivisible’s highlights of 2020. Gotta say, it’s pretty dang uplifting. Guaranteed to put some sunshine into your day (and boy howdy can we use that right now!).

And before you dive into our Year in Review, please know that Olympia Indivisible is NOT going away in 2021. If ever we doubted, we now know that a democracy cannot protect itself and its sustainability relies on ordinary folks like you and me staying engaged, in whatever way that works for your particular, beautiful life. Stay tuned for more about our newly revised mission and how you can help here at home to be part of this new beginning.

With deep appreciation and thankfulness to you,

Lisa Ornstein

Let’s Dive In!

Washington Team

Membership attended ten consecutive weeks of informational Zoom town halls, each featuring an OI-endorsed candidate.

Members liaised with the campaigns of each of the endorsed candidates to provide volunteers and support services such as: phone and text banking, literature drops, yard sign posting, and sign waving.

GOTV Writing Team and AZ-MI Home Team

OI writers and friends wrote over 9000+ postcards on behalf of OI-endorsed candidates.

Our members were among 98 writers who wrote 9,806 postcards. They encouraged people to sign up for mail-in ballots and to vote in Arizona.

Our members recruited 78 writers who wrote 4,000 postcards for winning Arizona Senate candidate Mark Kelly.

Arizona And Michigan Field Teams (pre-pandemic)

Members took a 7-day field trip to Phoenix, AZ to register young voters on college campuses and campaign for progressives.

Get Out The Vote (GOTV) Field Team

OI members and their friends reached out to 27 key states and made 7,553 contacts during this campaign to advocate for early/in-person voting.

Membership partnered with Rust Belt Rising to register voters in Michigan and with Flip the West to make calls to get out the vote and to support Mark Kelly in Arizona

Endorsement Team

Endorsement team produced a rich on-line data bank of information about candidates in key races.

Weekly Town Halls allowed members to get to know the candidates running for local offices.

Communications-Tech Team

Revamped the OI website content and increased aesthetic appeal; created one-stop shopping campaign support pages for endorsed candidates as well as all OI programs.

Introduced and expanded use of communications tools such as Google Drive, Slack, Zoom, MailChimp, ActionSprout and Facebook. They also developed the Photo Library chronicling OI events.

Education Team

An Education Toolkit was developed for membership.

Created “Yes You Can!” phone bank training program on Zoom and delivered training to more than 50 OI members.

Community Service

$4,601 was donated to the Thurston County Foodbank by OI members between March and December.

OI members donated and delivered three carloads of blankets, coats, survival camping gear, and hygiene and medical supplies to Partners in Prevention Education.

Significant All-Member Events

It’s up to us:: Indivisible 3.0 Roll-out in January. Launched seven new teams to work on elections, and started a new phase of OI.

May Day: Engagement Team organized an all-member May Day Zoom meeting with guest speaker Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal to honor workers, update members on Congressional issues, and engage members in electoral work.

Ruth Sent Us Rally: Members showed up to honor the legacy of Supreme Court Justice and civil rights hero Ruth Bader Ginsberg and to make the elections count.

Stand with Portland: OI members stood vigil in support of Black Lives Matters protests and to protest violent suppression and presence of Federal military forces in Portland and Seattle.

Save USPS: Action Team coordinated a weeklong protest to support postal workers and protest efforts to remove essential equipment for processing absentee ballots.