Indivisible San Pedro Won’t Back Down
Immediately after the 2016 election, more than 50 concerned citizens within 25 miles of San Pedro, used the Indivisible Guide, a guide to influencing Congress written by former progressive staffers. Indivisible San Pedro held its first public meeting on Feb. 16, 2017, at Angels Gate Cultural Center, Building H. Eight years later, Indivisible San Pedro is still here, fighting the good fight, one election at a time.
On Feb. 15, founding member of Indivisible San Pedro, Melanie Jones, greeted nearly 100 concerned yet jovial members and guests of the organization’s 8th-anniversary celebration and meeting, once again at Angels Gate Cultural Center.
“There is nothing normal about what is happening in our federal government now,” said Melanie Jones later by email. “Each Indivisible group responds to their own elected [representatives]. Fortunately, our local members of Congress are fighting hard for democracy and have been standing up to Trump/Musk. Good leaders need support. We do that, too.”
Jones said action is the antidote to despair. Indivisible San Pedro is trying to grow and is asking for the community’s help because “numbers mean visibility,” and right now, Indivisible’s actions are to focus on reclaiming the House in 2026. These efforts were a success for the group in 2018 when Indivisible’s actions made an impact, which led to a flip in Congress.
The genesis of Indivisible was when its founders Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg after the November 2016 election wrote and posted the above mentioned Google document called “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.”
Surprised that the document blew up, the founders set up a website with an interactive national map where local resistance projects could register to attract new participants and receive tips about how best to fight Trump initiatives in Congress.
Early viewers who witnessed the Indivisible map dots growing into the thousands galvanized into action. By late 2017, about half of those dots linked to newly launched local groups (many, though not all, of which eventually affiliated formally with D.C. Indivisible).
Jones said other Indivisible groups with other representatives have different assignments and she has no doubt they are holding members of Congress, whom they feel are not pushing back hard enough, to account.
“Certainly, that has been Indivisible’s national message,” Jones said. “We know this is a long battle. But for those of us who value America as we have known her, a land of laws, free speech, and growing equality… We will not back down.”
As a group of concerned citizens, ISP recognizes the Trump administration’s agenda will take America backward and must be stopped. While modeling the values of inclusion, respect, and fairness, the organization has and continues to work to flip local districts from red to blue in California while this time around, pressuring local district congressional members to resist the remaking of the federal government by Elon Musk and the rest of the Trump administration.
Jones recalled the days and weeks after the start of the convicted felon’s first term in office when Indivisible began. The organization’s members gathered at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes and formed the letters in the word, “RESIST,” using their bodies, lying on the grass of the then-45th president’s property.
Facing his second term, Jones responded to whether there had been any failures or what Indivisible would do differently now.
“Failure is not in our lexicon,” Jones wrote in an email. “We fight on. We are working to attract more people to the fight. Our strength is in numbers.”
Since its beginning, Indivisible San Pedro members have made phone calls and written postcards (numbering in the thousands) to residents, and the ISP ‘Light Brigade’ does a banner-hang over the Gaffey Street ‘San Pedro’ bridge overpass.
Its most recent banner in February read “It’s A Coup.” ISP also organizes and shows up at rallies to defend democracy and meets with elected representatives at both the state and federal levels to urge them to stand up to the current regime and its policies for their constituents.
Jones noted that Indivisible has pushed back on Democrats who seem inclined to act as if there can be anything like business as usual.
In addition to meeting in fellowship, at the meeting, Jones aimed to encourage attendees to join them in making phone calls to their representatives — especially if they are Republican — to push back on the president’s policies this second time around, like firing federal workers, increasing ICE raids — even within hospitals, places of worship and schools (designated protected areas), dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, and the repeal of wildlife protections, the Affordable Care Act and the National Right to Work.
Indivisible member Peter Warren told Random Lengths News that many people in this country are worried. The Indivisible meetings also serve as a way to connect with like-minded people who relate to this fear, worry and even some who recall how America today is reminiscent of 1930s Germany.
Nonprofit newsroom MinnPost in October 2024 highlighted glaring examples of this: Adolf Hitler in the 1920s and early 1930s sought to delegitimize core democratic institutions. Donald Trump as both Republican candidate and president has done the same when institutions do not serve his political goals: the courts, the electoral process, the certification of an election, democratic opposition, and even branches of the administration that do not fall in line.
Trump calls the mainstream news media “fake news.” In 1930s Germany, the Nazis similarly decried them as “Lügenpresse” (press of lies). He scapegoats minorities and stirs up hostile emotions against adversaries, calling them “internal enemies” of the American people, needing to be fought by the National Guard, even the military — another parallel.
Warren noted that MAGA Republicans who do not live in the Harbor Area don’t realize how integrated our neighborhoods are.
Subsequently, they do not (or don’t want to) see an accurate representation of diverse communities living and working relatively harmoniously.
Recently, Grassroots Democrats everywhere were shocked by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) apparent capitulation in the fight to fund the Trump administration’s government until Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. For the past week, many have called for him and other Democrats who followed him to be primaried out of office. The message: either fight or get out of the way of others who will.
The vote was 54-46, with two Democrats joining all but one Republican supporting the measure. The bill cleared a key procedural hurdle with the help of 10 Democrats in a 62-38 vote. Sixty votes were needed to defeat a Democratic filibuster.
The votes came after a 48-hour period in which Schumer broke with most House and Senate Democrats, announcing he would support moving forward on the bill a day after he declared they didn’t have the votes to fight it. Schumer ultimately voted no on the final passage of the legislation.
The budget, ultimately signed by the 34-time convicted felon in the Oval Office, reduced non-defense spending by approximately $13 billion, affecting Social Security, Medicare, Nutrition Assistance Programs, and Affordable Housing Initiatives. At the same time, an additional $6 billion has been allocated to defense. The bill enhances presidential authority over federal spending and it prevents Congress from voting to end emergency declarations that enable tariffs on countries like Canada and Mexico, effectively extending these trade measures.
This is after the Trump administration and the Department of Governmental Efficiency have taken a chainsaw to several agencies in the federal government resulting in the firing of 30,000 federal workers and counting.
Warren went on to say that much of the Indivisible meetings, besides actions, are about fellowship, companionship, and even therapy — the ability to talk to others who are also concerned.
“People need counseling,” he said of the meetings. “People want to do something, to not be alone, it’s joyful.
Indivisible San Pedro meets on Zoom on the second and fourth Thursday of each month. Jones noted the group always begins and ends each meeting with hope.
Further, this week, your senators and representatives are back home for recess — and Indivisible has many events planned to get their attention. It has put together a detailed toolkit to help you plan events and make the most of town halls.
Find out more at: https://www.facebook.com/indivisibleguide/
Details: https://www.facebook.com/groups/indivisiblesp and https://indivisible.org/