New Podcast Episode

Plus, a New Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

A new episode of the podcast dropped yesterday. You can subscribe, download and listen here.

If you have already listened, you know what it’s about. Again. Gun violence. We had started recording the podcast on a regular Monday. We hit pause because Busy had to be on set. Then when we opened our phones, we saw the news about Nashville. So, when we came back, instead of continuing the conversation we’d planned, we had to talk about our nation’s absolute deranged addiction to guns and refusal to make any change whatsoever, no matter how many children and other innocent people are gunned down in their communities. Not gonna lie, I think when we recorded, we were both feeling pretty hopeless, as were a great many of you, I’m sure. I couldn’t stop thinking about how this wasn’t even the first recording of our podcast that was pre-empted by a school shooting. That’s how regularly scheduled they have become. But today is another day and we have a new mission, should any of you choose to accept it.

SO, remember all the good work you helped us do with Giving Circles and the States Project to help flip some seats blue in some crucial places where women’s bodily autonomy is under attack? We’re asking you if you want to do it again, this time with the goal of making real change and forcing common sense gun control. So if you are:

• Overwhelmed by the senseless loss of human lives? Ignore the voice in your head that says there is nothing you can do to take real action on the issues you care most about — because there is.

• The vast majority of the movement on gun safety in the past decade has come from state legislatures — not DC. State lawmakers are leading on this issue and we cannot afford to ignore them.

• You don’t have to be a millionaire who writes big checks to politicians to create change. It is often cheaper to change the balance of power in an entire state legislature than it is to win a single competitive Congressional seat.

• Everyday people — like us and our friends, like you and yours — can have a real impact in the places where these policies are actually being decided: in state capitals.

• Here’s the link to Busy's Giving Circle — join us. Give one-time, make it a recurring donation, think of it as a steady action that's the antidote to despair. 

• And it's not only guns. It's all the issue we care about. Arizona just passed a bathroom bill — a BATHROOM BILL. Governor Hobbs will veto it, but winning one seat in either chamber in Arizona stops this in its tracks.

• Rep. Laura Terech, who Busy's Giving Circle supported last year, took a powerful stand in Phoenix yesterday. But the bathroom bill passed because of one seat. Let's get that seat.
  
  

And if you want to start your own circle with your friends and neighbors, you can!

• Last year, nearly 70 of our listeners formed Giving Circles with the States Project — and collectively raised over $100,000 for states like Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania flipped! Arizona is just one seat away in each state chamber. We can do this. Here's how:

• Make a list: The friends you texted when you first heard the devastating news of another school shooting? The parent group chat you’re in? The moms and dads you wave to at drop off each morning? Write down those names. All of them.

• Write one email: 3 kids and 3 teachers killed in their school. How did you feel when you first read those words? What went through your mind? Put it on paper. Channel your grief, anger, helplessness — all of it — into words.

• Help shift power: Go statesproject.org/action, tap the Start Your Circle button, and fill out the form. Join a community of thousands of everyday people who start Giving Circles to impact the issues they care about most by shifting power in state legislatures.

• It's not sexy, it's not where the glamour is. But it's where the Kochs focus, the DeVoses, the architects of the rightwing — they work in state legislatures. And we can push back if we do it together.

• So is it worth what you spend on coffee every week? Is it worth what you spent on your last nice dinner out? Is it worth what you spent on your last vacation? Those types of dollars can make a HUGE impact here, where races are won by a few hundred votes and power shifts mean EVERYTHING.

Photo by Maria Lysenko on Unsplash