December MO2 News 4-Change
Hello Friends,
We at MO 2nd District for Change wish all of you and your families a happy holiday season. It will be a very different one for sure.
Public health professionals have said they expect December, January, and February to be difficult months for the country. We can make things better by wearing masks, staying home when we can, and adhering to all preventative measures. Our behavior can still have a positive impact on our community.
We’ve included some opportunities for you to continue to volunteer and effect political change, plus some info on COVID and an article about how we can spot misinformation and make sure what we think is true actually is true.
Let’s all pledge to have a safe holiday season.
Best,
Wendy Hollis Nishi, President
Let’s Help Georgia to Win the Senate!
Write Letters & Postcards
Due to a special election this year, there were two Senate races in Georgia this year. Because no candidate in either election got 50% of the vote, both will go to a runoff that takes place January 5, 2021. This runoff will determine which party controls the Senate. You can write to Georgians to help win these races!
👉 Sign up with VoteForward to write letters to Georgia
St. Louis Area Voter Protection Coalition is writing postcards to GA Voters on behalf of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and the Transformative Justice Coalition.
Help increase turnout in communities of color for the January 5th runoff & special election. There are about 300,000 postcards that need to be sent out, so please help by requesting postcards and sharing the project with your friends and family.
Initial Deadline: December 14th.
(If needed, you can continue writing & mailing until December 21st)
Postcards are bundled in packets of 50, but the script is brief and easy to write. We estimate that a writer will be able to finish the entire pack in 1–2 hours.
Local writers in the STL Metro can pick up postcard packets at three locations. Writers will receive packets of postcards, addresses, instructions, and a script. Postcards writers must supply their own stamps.
Postcard pickup locations:
👉 Under the deck of 920 Moreland Ave, Glendale MO 63122
👉 Front porch of, 810 E. Pacific Ave, Webster Groves MO 63119
👉 Front porch of, 4648 Villa Knoll Dr, St. Louis MO 63128
Email jennifer@stlvpc.org for more information.
👉 Click here for Georgia postcarding campaigns and links for postcarding supplies
Volunteer & Donate: GA Senate Campaigns
Calling All Virtual Volunteers to Help Flip Georgia
The fight for a Democratic Senate continues in Georgia, where there will be two runoff campaigns for the U.S. Senate that could alter the balance of power in Congress. The election will be held on January 5, 2021
Fair Fight is the grassroots Political Action Committee started by Stacey Abrams. It is currently focusing on GOTV (Get Out The Vote) in Georgia. Her organization’s work is credited in large part for flipping that state for Joe Biden. Fair Fight has initiated programs to support voter protection programs at state parties around the country 👉Join Fair Fight’s effort (volunteer or donate) to GOTV in Georgia’s run off election for the Senate.
Volunteer for or Donate to Georgia Senate Runoff Races
Sign up to:
👉Volunteer for Raphael Warnock here
👉Donate to Raphael Warnock here
Local & State Government News
Coverage of local political races is often drowned out by the dominance of national election coverage and social media. However, winning local races is key to long term positive change in our county, communities and neighborhoods. In the coming months, MO 2nd District for Change will focus on providing you ways to become involved and information about local races and issues.
We will start by introducing you to the St. Louis County Council.
St. Louis County Government
St. Louis County Council
Leadership
Chair: Lisa Clancy (Dem)
Vice Chair: Rochelle Walton Gray (Dem)
Current Council Members
District 1 Rita Heard Days (Dem)
District 2 Kelli Dunaway (Dem)
District 3 Tim Fitch (Rep)
District 4 Rochelle Walton Gray (Dem)
District 5 Lisa Clancy (Dem)
District 6 Ernie Trakas (Rep)
District 7 Mark Harder (Rep)
Each council member represents one of St. Louis County’s 7 council districts. The council members choose the council’s chair & vice-chair. Council members in even-numbered districts are elected in US Presidential Election years. Council members in odd-numbered districts are elected in even-numbered years without presidential elections. 2022 Council Member ElectionsIn 2022, the following Council Members will be up for election:
District 1: Rita Heard Days (D but lately votes with R)
District 3: Tim Fitch (R)
District 5: Lisa Clancy (D)
District 7: Mark Harder (R)
Here’s how to look up what district you live in:
Take Back Missouri
Elad Gross is forming a grass roots effort to develop and implement new ideas and a plan to take back Missouri. Please sign up to submit your ideas and receive updates for this endeavor at https://www.takebackmo.org/
Covid Information
St. Louis County Public Health Order
We are going into a winter of extreme risk for COVID transmission. In mid-November St. Louis County announced three new public health orders: a “Safer at Home” order, a stronger face covering order, and a revised quarantine and isolation order.
The Safer at Home Order asks you to stay at home unless you must leave for specific activities like going to work or school, seeking medical care, or buying food or other daily necessities.
Exceptions are made for going to church and for visiting members of your “support bubble.” A “support bubble” is a 10-person group of people you trust with your family’s life; the group agrees to only meet in-person with other members of the bubble. Even when you gather with other members of your trusted support bubble, you should still wear a mask, socially distance, wash your hands and do everything you can to reduce the risk of transmission. Part of your agreement needs to be that if any member of your group gets sick, that person will immediately tell everyone else. That notification is also required by the Safer at Home order.
Again, the virus numbers show that it is everywhere in our community. You are safest at home. If you can work remotely, please do.
The Safer at Home order limits gatherings to 10 people (down from 50). Restaurants can provide outdoor dining, take-out, and delivery; they cannot provide indoor dining. Bars may provide carryout and delivery; they cannot provide indoor service. Please support restaurants and bars by continuing to order takeout and delivery. Businesses capacity is 25% of the maximum allowed by fire code (down from 50%), with some exceptions such as hospitals, medical offices, and schools, which can be found in the order.
The revised Face Covering order requires face coverings for anyone older than 5 whenever outside the home. This includes when visiting someone else’s house. Exceptions can be made when eating, but only if a distance of at least six feet between diners is maintained. While 3 to 5-year-olds aren’t included in the order, they are strongly encouraged to wear face coverings whenever possible.
Everyone at a gym, including those working out, is included in this order. If you are working out outdoors and can retain 6ft from others, masks are optional. If you are outdoors and under 6ft from others, your mask needs to be on.
Participants in organized sports must wear a mask when not actively playing in a game. Also included are students in a school setting. Exceptions are made for students with medical issues and students who are eating, involved in PE or are in music class and socially distanced.
Other exceptions in the order include anyone who has a medical condition that prevents wearing a mask, and anyone who is in the water at a public pool.
The new Quarantine and Isolation Order directs residents who test positive to immediately self-isolate for at least 10 days after the test or after the first symptoms. Anyone who tests positive must immediately notify everyone they were in “close contact” with and tell them to quarantine — even if they were masked. “Close contact” is defined as being within six feet of someone who is positive for at least 15 minutes over the course of a day. If you were in close contact with someone who has COVID-19, you must quarantine for 14 days after the last contact with that person.
For instructions on how to isolate and quarantine yourself, please see stlcorona.com where you can also find the specifics of these new orders.
EPA Recommendation: Indoor Air Circulation for Holidays
Holiday gatherings, while smaller this year, may be inevitable for some people. Here are recommendations from the EPA to make your home safer for the get togethers you do plan.
Ensuring proper ventilation with outside air can help reduce indoor airborne contaminants, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and other viruses. However, by itself, increasing ventilation is not enough to protect people from exposure to the virus that causes COVID-19. When used along with other best practices (such as wearing masks, social distancing, frequent hand washing, and surface disinfection) recommended by the CDC, increasing ventilation can be part of a plan to protect yourself and your family.
READ MORE HERE: https://www.epa.gov/coronavirus/indoor-air-homes-and-coronavirus-covid-19
MO2 News 4-Change: December 2020
Articles of interest to MO2 voters.
Headlines are linked to full article online.
Neither Youth Nor Maturity Makes You Immune to Misinformation | Opinion
Call it revenge of the “Ok, boomer.”
From the Sun Sentinel:
After a TikTok video of a teen uttering the phrase went viral in late 2019, young people began using it to mock the attitudes and supposed cluelessness of us baby boomers. But according to recent research on COVID-19 misinformation, it’s the younger generation that is being played the fool.
The study, conducted by researchers at Harvard University, Rutgers University, Northeastern University and Northwestern University, found that Americans under age 25 are most likely to believe falsehoods related to the origins and seriousness of the disease.
The survey of 21,196 people in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., showed that people 18 to 24 years old had an 18% probability of falling for a falsehood about the virus. That compares to a 9% probability in people over age 65. The 18–24 age group also tended to believe misinformation at slightly higher rates than those aged 25–44, and at twice the rate of people 45 to 64 years old.
This apparent closing of the misinformation generation gap matters because it underscores the need for people of all ages to become more news-literate. Our K-12 education system must begin teaching news literacy across the nation’s schools. Adopted early in life, the skills and mindset of becoming more news-literate will last a lifetime. But the learning must extend beyond the classroom, too. Resources and tools should be widely and equitably available, regardless of age, so that all of us can keep improving on our ability to determine the credibility of news and other content.
What we can do is take our civic responsibility to be well-informed seriously by following a few simple and immediate steps to make sure we’re not being deceived:
- Pause to consider your emotional response to the information you encounter. A particularly strong reaction — fear, anger, laughter, revulsion, amazement — should prompt you to look closer.
- Check news sites and other trusted sources of information before believing or sharing content to ensure the source is credible and other news reporting validates the information.
- Read or follow a variety of credible news sources representing a variety of perspectives.
- When in doubt, consult fact-checking sites such as Politifact, FactCheck.org, AFP Fact Check or Snopes.
- Learn digital verification skills using readily accessible online tools to do reverse image searches, and confirm geographic location and website domain name ownership. I have used many of these free tools to quickly verify information.
If we embrace these skills and share them with friends and family, we become part of the information solution rather than the misinformation problem. OK, fellow boomers, millennials, Gen Z-ers and everyone else?
Call it revenge of the “Ok, boomer.”
From the Sun Sentinel:
After a TikTok video of a teen uttering the phrase went viral in late 2019, young people began using it to mock the attitudes and supposed cluelessness of us baby boomers. But according to recent research on COVID-19 misinformation, it’s the younger generation that is being played the fool.
The study, conducted by researchers at Harvard University, Rutgers University, Northeastern University and Northwestern University, found that Americans under age 25 are most likely to believe falsehoods related to the origins and seriousness of the disease.
The survey of 21,196 people in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., showed that people 18 to 24 years old had an 18% probability of falling for a falsehood about the virus. That compares to a 9% probability in people over age 65. The 18–24 age group also tended to believe misinformation at slightly higher rates than those aged 25–44, and at twice the rate of people 45 to 64 years old.
This apparent closing of the misinformation generation gap matters because it underscores the need for people of all ages to become more news-literate. Our K-12 education system must begin teaching news literacy across the nation’s schools. Adopted early in life, the skills and mindset of becoming more news-literate will last a lifetime. But the learning must extend beyond the classroom, too. Resources and tools should be widely and equitably available, regardless of age, so that all of us can keep improving on our ability to determine the credibility of news and other content.
What we can do is take our civic responsibility to be well-informed seriously by following a few simple and immediate steps to make sure we’re not being deceived:
- Pause to consider your emotional response to the information you encounter. A particularly strong reaction — fear, anger, laughter, revulsion, amazement — should prompt you to look closer.
- Check news sites and other trusted sources of information before believing or sharing content to ensure the source is credible and other news reporting validates the information.
- Read or follow a variety of credible news sources representing a variety of perspectives.
- When in doubt, consult fact-checking sites such as Politifact, FactCheck.org, AFP Fact Check or Snopes.
- Learn digital verification skills using readily accessible online tools to do reverse image searches, and confirm geographic location and website domain name ownership. I have used many of these free tools to quickly verify information.
If we embrace these skills and share them with friends and family, we become part of the information solution rather than the misinformation problem. OK, fellow boomers, millennials, Gen Z-ers and everyone else?
