We had a fun and informative zoom with Four Directions shortly before Thanksgiving.
The zoom lasted just over an hour, and we have highlights for you!
5 short audio clips from the zoom:
- Balloon Juice impact in Nevada & Georgia in 2022 (1 min)
- Relational Organizing in Indian Country (1 min)
- Target States for 2024 (3 min)
- Funny Story (2 min)
- Plans for Montana in 2024 (3 min)
They talked about the Four Directions plan to expand back into Montana – with our help! The Native American vote can (and historically has) put Democratic Senator Jon Tester over the top.
Balloon Juice impact in Nevada and GA in 2022 (1 min)
Remember that winter storm in Nevada and our flash fundraising for coats & winter gear on election day? They sure do!
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Relational Organizing in Indian Country (1 min)
Four Directions pioneered relational organizing before it even had a name.
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Target States for 2024 (3 min)
Which states are critical to them, and why.
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Funny Story (2 min)
Hilarious anecdote about a recent Montana court case that involved Robert E. Lee and Sitting Bull.
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Plans for Montana in 2024 (3 min)
Maybe the Native vote can save the Senate!
OJ in the last clip: “I guess what I’m getting down to saying is that when Senator Tester wins because of the Native vote, it’s gonna be Balloon Juice and their people that made that happen, because nobody else is really stepping up [to say they want to help fund the Native vote in Montana].”
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BJ peeps working together are a force of nature. We are making a difference.
Open thread.
WaterGirl
If you have 10 minutes, and you’re interested, I hope you will listen to the clips!
Alison Rose
Honestly, that has me a little verklempt*. It’s really amazing what this community has been able to do, and I love that we’re giving such support to the Native vote because they deserve it (to put it mildly!).
(*it’s a good thing)
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose: I really liked OJ’s phrasing:
“Balloon Juice and their people” – like we are a tribe of our own.
Almost Retired
It really was a wonderful zoom, and I’m glad I was able to attend. It’s also great to get the highlights condensed into short excerpts (which suits my attention span quite nicely)!
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’d like to suggest Four Corners to friends who are looking for a good place to make a political donation, but I don’t want to condemn them to multiple fundraising letters. What’s the best thing to recommend to them?
Alison Rose
@WaterGirl: It does kinda feel like that, huh?
Jesse
Thank you WaterGirl for all your hard work on this. Fired up and ready to go for MT.
Another must-win is Ohio. Do we have any orgs in mind for OH, similar to Four Directions?
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If they give to Four Directions through OUR thermometer, I have it set to NOT share their information unless they explicitly check the box to say their info can be shared.
WaterGirl
@Jesse: We will continue to support some organizations we have supported in the past, and are reaching out to some new ones.
Still researching youth organizations and organizations in some other states. No one ID’d yet for Ohio, but if you happen to know a great organization, please drop me an email message.
Old School
RIP Ryan O’Neal.
Yutsano
@Alison Rose: We’re more of a pack, since jackals are social animals. But that’s really just another way of saying tribe.
Suzanne
@Old School: SuzMom texted me a few minutes ago that he died, and I was like, “Who’s that?”. So I looked up his Wiki page.
DAMN, that dude got a lot of top-quality ass.
Alison Rose
@Suzanne:
I’m so tempted to nominate this as a rotating tag.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WaterGirl: Thanks. That’s more or less what I thought. I’ll see what they say.
Barbara
@WaterGirl: I make a monthly donation to Four Directions. The director called me at one point and we had a nice discussion. He is so thankful for BJ and I am so thankful for his organization.
Martin
@Suzanne: Well, law of large numbers on that one. If you fuck everyone you meet, you’re unavoidably going to get some one and two sigma above the mean people in there.
Martin
I’m really kind of irritated how interesting Charlie Sykes interviews with evangelical anti-Trumpers are.
Madeleine
Are we important to Four Directions? Two of us were invited to attend a meet-and-greet with OJ, Barb, Brett a few weeks ago, And I was–unexpectedly–asked to talk about Balloon Juice. So YESS!
WaterGirl
@Martin: There are a number of ways to interpret that sentence.
edit: not sure you replied to my question earlier this week. Are you going to update the Barbie post and send it to me? I would really love to read it and post it on Medium Cool for discussion.
H.E.Wolf
@WaterGirl:
Thank you for posting the clips! That final sound file, with the shout-out to Balloon Juice folks, is pretty special. It’s sometimes easy to forget that collectively, we have power, and we’re using it to make positive change happen.
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
If I’d fucked a thousand women, still none of them would be Ursula Andress, Jacqueline Bisset, Anjelica Huston, Farrah Fawcett, or Melanie Griffith.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: But love means never having to say you’re sorry, so even if some of those women were friends, you wouldn’t have to say you’re sorry for having sex with all of then.
WaterGirl
@H.E.Wolf: I think you and Almost Retired might be the only ones who listened to them! :-)
I thought they were all good, but yeah, the first (about NV and GA last cycle) and the last (Montana this cycle) really point out the difference we can make, the difference we are making.
BlueGuitarist
This is awesome, WG. Thanks so much!
BlueGuitarist
Last year one of the successful super swing district down ballot candidates was a Native American woman, Shea Backus, who won back one of the swingiest districts in the state assembly and helped get out the vote up ballot for Susie Lee for US house and statewide Democratic candidates
H.E.Wolf
@WaterGirl:
I also liked the 4th clip, about Bret serving their opponent(s) with summons(es) to appear in court, and then driving like a bat out of hell to what he thought was safety on the rez.
The punchline, by OJ, is worth waiting for. :-)
Ksmiami
@WaterGirl: just donated- will try and remember to do it monthly. Team Blue has to prevail.
Joy in FL
I was at that Zoom meeting, so I haven’t listened to the clips (yet). I like that you put how long each clip is. I know each one is worth the couple minutes it would take to listen.
WaterGirl
@Joy in FL: I listened to the whole thing again in order to find the clips. The zoom was 75 minutes, but all the key points are in these 10 minutes of clips.
If I only had time to listen to 2 of them, I think I would choose the first and the last.
WaterGirl
@Ksmiami: Indeed it does.
WaterGirl
@H.E.Wolf: I loved that story!
H.E.Wolf
1. That’s awesome!
2. Yes we will.
H.E.Wolf
OJ has a very dry sense of humor. :)
WaterGirl
@H.E.Wolf: So did my dad. I am genetically predisposed to like a dry sense of humor.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist:
SRSLY.
Also, dude was good-looking in his younger years, but really gargoyled up. What a life.
columbusqueen
@Suzanne: Drugs will do that to you. O’Neal’s worst legacy is the addiction issues he left his children with-a lot of damage there.
Almost Retired
@Suzanne: Probably a dead thread but about 20 years ago my wife and I were at dinner at El Cholo in Los Angeles (not a fancy restaurant by any means). And I pointed to another booth and said “look at that sugar daddy dude with the Farrah wannabe.” And it turned out to actually be Ryan and Farrah (some tourists approached them). She looked great. He looked like my middle school gym coach.
Mousebumples
On topic – thanks for the clips, WaterGirl! I’ve got the thread open to hopefully listen to them later.
And off topic/re: O’Neal’s passing – I first saw him on Bones, which I enjoyed, as he was a very good actor. Later watched him and Tatum in Paper Moon – recommend it, for those that haven’t seen it. I think it’s on Max right now, for streaming.
sab
Small thing, but I trust people who can pronounce Nevada like the locals do. It really grates when others don’t: proves they are not even listening. MSM reporters (except from Univision and Telemundo) cannot. Californians cannot, although the state has been next door for 100 years. Four Corners people can and do.
Nevada ( first “a” is flat, like midwestern.) Never “Ne-vah-da.” That is Spanish, not English.
ceece
I would love to combine our postcarding efforts with Four Directions, is that going to be possible? I normally write for Reclaim our Vote (voters of color largely in the SE states) but I don’t think they are active in Montana.
TooTallTom
I understand from the earlier posts about Four Directions that they are not organizing a voting push in North Carolina, which surprises me, since there are 120k-ish Native Americans in NC. I was specifically thinking about Cherokee Reservation in western NC.
In 2020, I thought that NC would vote blue before we saw blue results in GA. As a reminder, 2020 was 50% Voldemort, and 49% Biden.
I wonder if this is due to the ratio of Native American people to total population of the state, as a criteria that they used to pick their states.
Almost Retired
@sab: that cracked me up. I was an election monitor in Nevada for the Lawyers Guild for the last three cycles and what I most remember about my training is not pronouncing Nevada like a Californian. Nuh Vad uh.
There go two miscreants
I just listened and they are good; much appreciated since I wasn’t in the Zoom. Didn’t have time yesterday when you posted them but kept that tab open.
WaterGirl
@There go two miscreants: Glad you had a chance to listen to the clips!
edit: I have so many open BJ tabs!
way2blue
Glad to chip in. And grateful, WaterGirl, that you’ve set up this link between Four Directions activists and BJ jackals. Contributing to their multi-state effort and Ukraine’s Safe Skies fund are my focus.
way2blue
@sab:
Hmm. I’m a Californian and have never heard your state pronounced ‘Ne vah da’. Always ‘Nuh vad uh’.
Tom Krajci
@WaterGirl: Question: is New Mexico communicating with and engaged with Four Directions?
(I just learned about Four Directions yesterday.)
Some of us in Otero county, NM are working to increase voter registration and voter turnout for 2024. One of those areas is the Mescalero Apache Tribe.
NM may be a fairly blue state in terms of presidential elections, but take a look at the status of NM-2 (Gabe Vasquez). NM-2 needs all the help it can get, and that district includes 1/2 of the Mescalero Apache Tribe.
Greetings from southern New Mexico!
Tom