Happy Saturday to all you fantastic postcard writers!
Let us reiterate how thrilled we are to have you on our team! We know the only way to get Trump out of the White House, flip our state legislature, and start to get the policies we need is to get Dems in Philly to VOTE!! And this is one way that gets done.
Remember, this is how we win. We know it’s tough in the country right now, but don’t let that throw us off our game. That’s their goal. Instead, let writing postcards be the antidote to your stress. (And of course calling our Members of Congress, but that's for another day.)
1. How we select the addresses – an update
As we mentioned earlier, the data out of Florida show that infrequent or irregular voters have the highest increase in their rate of voting when they vote by mail. So we started with voters who voted in 2008 and not in 2016. Of course these numbers changed every week as more and more people signed up for VBM. So subtracting the VBM voters, we’ve sent you addresses for nearly all of those originally targeted voters! That is amazing. Now, we are adding voters who voted in 2012 and not in 2016 (except for those we already included in the earlier sets). These are also infrequent voters like the original set, but this will pull in younger voters, who were not eligible to vote in 2008.
2. Our progress - the map!
We showed the map below to you four weeks ago. It shows the wards we had written postcards to at that point, highlighted in light blue.
And this map is where we stand now! We have sent you addresses for 62 wards in the city! The darker the blue color in a ward, the more addresses we’ve written in that ward.
Our progress - by the numbers:
You all are STILL writing postcards in wild numbers!! Remember, our original goal was 50,000 postcards.
Here is where we are now:
62 – The number of Philly wards we’ve sent you addresses for.
450+ – The number of our volunteers writing postcards.
61,275 – The number of postcard addresses we’ve sent to our volunteers so far.
50,000 – The number of addresses we’ve sent as part of our project to a group in Ithaca, NY. This is a group of artists who design postcards urging voters to get to the polls.
That’s a total of over 110,000 postcards – and counting . .
One more thing. We know the total number of volunteers is higher than listed here because so many of you are sharing our addresses and cards and writing them with your friends. Thank you!
Your questions, and answers –
Q: Can I still use the USPS postcards I have?
A: YES! You can use up the postcards you’ve already bought. We would like you to switch to our beautiful new cards but if you prefer not to, that's okay too! We'll send you addresses for those.
Q. I live outside Pennsylvania. Can I mail the postcards from here?
A. Yes. You can mail your completed postcards from wherever you are. People who receive them do not notice the postmark and often the postmark does not identify the origination point.
Q. Where can I get my other questions answered?
A. Bring your questions to tomorrow’s Office Hours! We can have a better conversation than through email and we'll be able to put a face to an name.
Speaking of friends . . .
DON’T FORGET THE POWER OF THREE!
Also known as – you know at least three people who are as distressed as you are.
We need to save our democracy. So what else can you do besides all your hard work on these postcards? Get three of your friends to join us – even if they live in another state. Many of you have already done this and thank you!!
If you refer three friends for this project, and each of your three friends write just 100 postcards, that will increase the number of voters we can reach by an additional 120,000 voters! Woo-hoo!
So how would it feel on November 4 to know you made a difference – no matter how the election turns out? Even if we win, we need a landslide to prevent any shenanigans by Trump after the election.
And imagine if each friend writes 200 cards… So are you in?
How to refer your friends --
1. Send us their name and email address, or
2. Ask them to email us at this link and we’ll get them started, plus
3. One more easy thing you can do. Copy and paste the text below (including the web address) into a Facebook post. The link to our page to sign up automatically be embedded and your social media contacts can sign up easily.
Here is the text to copy and paste:
Skip the lines. Fight voter suppression. Mail-in voting is how we will stop Trump. Join me and over 350 people writing postcards to voters to encourage Vote By Mail. https://www.indivisiblephiladelphia.com/vote-by-mail
OFFICE HOURS!
Every Sunday, we’ve set up Office Hours. You can come to say hi, ask questions, write postcards together, meet some special guests, or just chat. It can be whatever you want it to be, so stop by and say hi!
When: Noon to 2:00 pm.
Where: Join The Zoom Meeting:
Meeting ID: 848 2869 3816
Password: 115073
One tap mobile
+13017158592,,84828693816#,,,,0#,,115073#
THIS WEEK’S POSTCARD PHOTOS!
Check out these photos! Thank you to everyone who sent them to us! Keep ‘em coming with our new postcards too.
Thank you to Marion, Regina, Wendy, and Rosalind. Great job!
Have a good weekend. Stay safe. Wear a mask. Be kind.
~ In solidarity, the IndivisiblePhiladelphia VBM Team -- Ann, Sandy, Pookie, Roopa, Vicki, Pat