SUMMER INTERNSHIP
The Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association (APAPA) is a national non-profit, non-partisan and grassroots organization founded in 2001. APAPA was established with the primary mission of empowering Asian and Pacific Islander (API) Americans in civic and public affairs through education, active participation, and leadership development. APAPA developed voter registration events, internships, scholarships, voter education forums, leadership, and networking programs designed specifically for the education, betterment, and advancement of the API community.
The APAPA-Southern California Region (APAPA-SCR) was established eight years ago to serve the SoCal community. The SCR currently has five chapters (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Gabriel, Youth, and Orange County). APAPA-SCR along with the Los Angeles Chapter, San Gabriel Chapter, and Orange County Chapter are awarding a number of leadership and summer internship positions for current Asian and Pacific Islander college and graduate school students.
The purpose of the internship is to help students better understand California state and local government and to develop future leaders in the API community. Each intern must spend a minimum of 50 hours in the assigned office between July 6 – August 14, 2015, working for a local/state legislator, congress member, or constitutional officer in Southern California. Upon completion of the internship, each intern will be awarded a $500 scholarship. There is also a week-long, all-expense-paid study-tour to Northern California to work and play together national and international student leaders from many other partner organizations.
We would like to invite your students to apply for this comprehensive leadership program. With our positive experience working with your students in the past, we are going to give favorable considerations for your student leaders. We appreciate your help dispersing the application information.
The internship application form can be found at APAPA website: http://apapa.org/scc/tp-apapa-scc.aspx
or download directly from:
http://apapa.org/scc/pdf/APAPA-SCR_internship_appl_2015.pdf

Today is a long one. You should do each of these separately and not in the same letter if you are writing.

–Call/fax your Senators and Congressional representative and tell them you OPPOSE HR 620, which would allow businesses more freedom to not comply with disability access and would put the burden of asking for access on the disabled. (URGENT– this is on the docket for TODAY)

–Call/fax your Senators and Congressional representative and let them know you OPPOSE the Graham/Cassidy/Heller ACA repeal.

Key points to bring up: (choose one or two that matter to you most if you don’t want to write or say too much) 

–This repeal is estimated to cause a spike in premiums of up to 20% in one year.
–This repeal is estimated to allow 32 million Americans to lose health insurance.
–This repeal gets rid of the Medicaid Expansion which covers about 11 million low-income Americans.
–This repeal will gut pre-existing condition protections.
–This repeal will gut women’s healthcare and family planning in the guise of “pro life” actions but the blow to women’s health affects care far beyond abortion.

–End by asking them to support Medicare for All or a similar single payer program.

– NEW YORK AND CALIFORNIA 12TH DISTRICT: Call/fax Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi and tell them that you will not accept a border wall as part of a compromise effort with Trump over the DREAM Act. Reiterate that you will only accept a clean DREAM Act that protects ALL immigrants who were brought here as children (not only those who are able to go to prestigious universities or get high-paying jobs in lucrative industries) and that does not tear families apart.

–Demand more transparency on their meetings with Trump and make it clear that while you understand the necessity of private discussions among lawmakers in typical situations, based on Trump’s reputation, you do not feel comfortable with private meetings in this case.

You can do this with other Democratic Senators and Representatives, too, but Schumer and Pelosi need to hear us express concern that they may be compromising on things that are unacceptable to their constituents.

–Call or fax your Senators and House Rep. (You can text “resist” to 50409 and it will walk you through the steps)

–If they have spoken out in favor of DACA or the DREAM Act, thank them for their support and tell them that you support them in this work.

–If they have not, or have spoken against it, tell them that you support DACA and that this is an issue that matters to you, and you would like to hear them voice support for it.

–Tell them that you believe that DACA must be extended until the bipartisan DREAM Act can be passed, that you want to see action on the DREAM Act and that you would like their support for Rep. Coffman’s BRIDGE Act, which will extend DACA for up to three years.

–Tell them that the final version of the DREAM Act *must* protect all people who came to the US as children and *must* keep families together, and that these points are non-negotiable (there is some talk that Republicans may try to pass a “lite” version of the DREAM Act so it is worth specifying these two points).

1) Be kind to yourself and others. Do what you can and do not beat yourself up if sickness, disability, or personal commitments mean you can’t register your dissent in the ways you would like. Remember to eat and drink and breathe. Taking care of yourself and your loved ones comes first because that is what we are fighting for.

2) Visit the SPLC’s website (https://www.splcenter.org/) and read one article and/or do one activity (they have templates for letter-writing campaigns, etc). If you can afford to, send a donation.

3) Check your legislators’ responses to Trump’s words yesterday. Decide whether you feel they were acceptable to you.

–Call, fax, or write your legislators and tell them how you feel about their response to Trump.

–Ask them to make (or continue to make) statements that equating neo-nazis, fascists, and white supremacists with people objecting to them is harmful and wrong.

–Ask them to call for Bannon’s, Miller’s, and Gorka’s removal.

If you’re talking to Federal legislators:

–Ask them to defend DACA and to extend temporary protected status for refugees.

–Ask them to take steps to rein in unilateral Presidential control of our nuclear arsenal.

–Ask them to continue to fight to protect the ACA, transgender troops, and voting rights.

If you’re talking to state/local legislators:

–Ask for more programs to challenge white supremacist hate groups in your community.

–If your community has any Confederate monuments on public grounds, ask for them to be removed.

If you are not sure where to start, here are some civic engagement tasks you can do some or all of today:

1) GIVE TO ADAPT 

–http:www.adapt.org/donate This will help them continue to organize disabled activists and disability advocates on the ground protesting in DC and to recruit more people to help them with this action– they have been responsible for organizing and supporting many of the folks you have seen photos of protesting, getting arrested, and dragged out of buildings in DC these past weeks and they need our support to keep working to protect disabled rights (and the rest of our rights, too).

2) CALL YOUR SENATORS
IF YOU ARE CALLING A DEMOCRATIC SENATOR: 

–Call your senator and thank them for fighting against all efforts to repeal the ACA without a bill that actually improves healthcare. –Let them know you support a single payer system (if you do). 

–Let them know that you will NOT support any bill that increases premiums or the number of uninsured people, or any bill that excludes care for any minority group (you may want to mention transgender health by name) or excludes support for reproductive health. 

–Express your distress over the DOJ’s decision to interpret Title VII as not protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and that you believe it should also protect people based on gender identity as well.

IF YOU ARE CALLING COLLINS (ME), MURKOWSKI (AK), OR MCCAIN (AZ) 

–Call them and thank them for fighting against all efforts to repeal the ACA without a bill that actually improves healthcare. 

–Let them know you support a single payer system (if you do).

–Let them know that you will NOT support any bill that increases premiums or the number of uninsured people, or any bill that excludes care for any minority group (you may want to mention transgender health by name) or excludes support for reproductive health. 

–Let them know that you appreciate that they crossed party lines to do the right thing and ask them to continue to demand bipartisan cooperation on any new healthcare bill.  

–Express your distress over the DOJ’s decision to interpret Title VII as not protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and that you believe it should also protect people based on gender identity as well.

IF YOU ARE CALLING COLLINS (ME) OR MURKOWSKI (AK)

–Let them know that you appreciate their steadfastness in the face of threats and insults from their own party and encourage them to keep working for better healthcare. Tell them that they have your support. 

IF YOU ARE CALLING MCCAIN (AZ

)–Let him know that you appreciate his efforts against the skinny repeal and to draw attention to procedural breakdown in the Senate but that his methods were not compassionate toward the people whose healthcare was dependent upon this vote and that he owes it to his constituents to be up front about his voting choices and that there are kinder ways to achieve the same ends.

IF YOU ARE CALLING A REPUBLICAN SENATOR WHO IS NOT ONE OF THE ABOVE:

–Tell them that unless they do a real 180 on healthcare, you will be voting against them.  

–Let them know you support a single payer system (if you do). 

–Let them know that you will NOT support any bill that increases premiums or the number of uninsured people, or any bill that excludes care for any minority group (you may want to mention transgender health by name) or excludes support for reproductive health. 

–Let them know that you expect them to do a better job of inviting bipartisan work on this bill.  

–Let them know that you expect them to do a better job of defending their own party members from insults within their party and that the way fellow Republicans have treated Murkowski and Collins is unacceptable. 

–Express your distress over the DOJ’s decision to interpret Title VII as not protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and that you believe it should also protect people based on gender identity as well.

3) CALL YOUR YOUR HOUSE REP:

–Express your feelings about their record on healthcare to this point. 

–Ask them to vote NO on any healthcare bill that increases premiums or the number of uninsured Americans. 

–Ask them to vote NO any bill that excludes care for any minority group (you may want to mention transgender health by name) or excludes support for reproductive health. 

–Let them know you support a single payer system (if you do). 

–Express your distress over the DOJ’s decision to interpret Title VII as not protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and that you believe it should also protect people based on gender identity as well.

4) CALL YOUR GOVERNOR AND STATE REP(S):

–Tell them that you would like to see state healthcare legislation in the event that the ACA is removed. 

 –Let them know you support a single payer system for your individual state (if you do). 

–Ask them to ensure that reproductive health, LGBT health, and healthcare for the disabled are protected. 

–Ask them to ensure that pre-existing condition exclusions are not welcome in your state.

–Ask them to ensure that caps on annual or lifetime coverage are not welcome in your state.

–Ask them to ensure that large employers MUST pay toward insurance for employees in your state. 

–Ask them to work on making sure that civil rights laws in your state protect people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Nonprofit Vote got LOUDR @ Tumblr

WHO THEY ARE:

Nonprofit Vote helps nonprofits engage the people they serve in voting and elections. They are the leading source of nonpartisan resources to help nonprofits integrate voter engagement into their ongoing activities and services.

WHAT WE DID:

National Voter Registration Day is a holiday devoted to ensuring every eligible American is registered to vote. Held on the 4th Tuesday of every September, the holiday is a single day of coordinated action between nonprofits, libraries, colleges and more doing on-the-ground voter registration work and major business promoting voter registration.

Tumblr x Nonprofit Vote took over users’ dash with this video, which had almost 10 million plays by the end of the day: