Dear Indivisibles,

What a week for activism. Thank you to everyone who showed up to make your voice heard at one of the many rallies and office visits scheduled around the metro with the goal to #KeepFamiliesTogether. Especially if you organized one yourself! Special thanks to Wendy B, a local mom who organized a Blunt office visit on her own and has now jumped in with both feet as an IKC organizer. She'll be leading weekly office visits Wednesdays at 11 at Senator Blunt's downtown office to speak up for children and families.

In the News  

Keep up with the most impactful stories and be ready to take action on developing stories.

National News

• Families in the border are still in trouble. Families seeking legal asylum are being imprisoned, and children are found in traumatic conditions. If these are the camps they're showing us, what's happening in the places where they don't allow visitors?
• The executive order that ended family separation instead puts entire families, including young children, behind bars. This and other recent administration policies propose moving families to military bases and attempting to explicitly bar congressional oversight. Excluding Congress is one of the most chilling chapters of this deeply disturbing story.
• The U.S. pulled out of the United Nations Human Rights Commission after it criticized Trump's treatment of immigrants and legal asylum seekers. The world will now move forward without the U.S. having a seat at the table.  
• Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is in jail awaiting his trial since violating bail terms with attempted witness tampering. He's asked for the court to ignore lawfully gathered evidence against him and been denied. Catch up on the Trump/Russia scandal at "2016 active measures". There have been five guilty pleas so far.
• As anticipated, after throwing the budget off kilter with last year's unpopular tax cut for the rich, the GOP introduced a bill to slash spending on healthcare, social security, and other programs that millions of Americans depend on for basic survival. The deal would privatize much of Medicare and convert Medicaid to block grants, a funding structure notorious for misallocated spending.

Missouri News

• Missouri’s Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft testified in Washington this week stating fraud is “an exponentially greater threat than hacking of election equipment.” That assertion is as dangerous as it is absurd. The Secretary of State's office can be reached at (573) 751-4936, FYI.
• Our new Governor Mike Parson flew to Washington to meet with Trump to discuss removing "job killing regulations." We prefer to call the regulations "life saving," since they protect our health, safety, and environment.

Calls to Action  

Take action on your own schedule! Use your phone and computer to make your voice heard.

Herd on the Hill has updated their letter template to respond to Trump's executive order and all its inadequacies. You can use this service, run by DC-area residents, to send letters directly to your Senators. Go write your letter, and follow up with a phone call!

And if you can, take a moment and review more ways you can help families on the border. If you have the means, send money to help. Local organizations can do the most good, they just need the resources to do so. If you can't, keep awareness up among your circle and keep up the pressure on your MoCs.

Finally, get ready. Healthcare is under attack again, this time along with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We'll keep you updated with calls to action.

Upcoming Events

Take action with others! Build energy and connection among like-purposed people. Check our social media frequently for more up-to-date event information.

Take Action to to Win for Missouri Workers: Find out what you can do to fight back against attacks on the rights and well being of Missouri workers and their families with these two talks by Bob Minor and Zac Sweets, sponsored by the Heartland Alliance for Progress. The meeting takes place today from 5:15pm - 7:00pm at Californos, 4124 Pennsylvania Ave. The talks will provide important information and background on workers and the middle class to help you make informed decisions at the polls on August 7.  Drinks and food will be available for purchase.

Speak out for migrant families: We will be back at Senator Blunt's office on Wednesday at 11am. Bring yourself — and your kids if you’ve got ‘em — to visit Senator Blunt’s office to ask him to reunite immigrant children with their parents and to speak up against indefinite detentions for families. Bring letters and have your kids draw pictures to leave behind with his staff.

Help the DREAMers:  Join Advocates for Immigration Rights and Reconciliation and KS/MO DREAM Alliance July 1, 4pm - 8pm at the Wyandotte County Lake Park, to raise money for scholarships to assist DACA recipients. The event will include food, live music by the KC Latin Jazz All Stars, games and prizes. Let us know you're coming so we'll have plenty of food. If you can't attend, please consider donating.

March and Celebrate!  Wear your red, white and blue and bring your family as volunteers for the Moms Demand Action march in the annual Parkville July Fourth Parade. Parade line-up begins at 9:00am at the corner of 63rd Street and Highway 9, and the parade kicks off at 10:00am. Please RSVP so that we know you'll be joining us.

Raise Your Hand: Got a question for candidates running for the District 8 Missouri Senate seat (Lee's Summit area)? Here's your chance to ask incumbent Mike Cierpiot (R) and challlengers Hillary Shields (D) and Leonard Jonas Hughes IV (R) their views in a forum open to the public on July 12, from 6:30pm - 8:00pm at John Knox Village in Lee's Summit. The event is sponsored by the League of Women Voters KC. Lee's Summit is a short drive from urban KC and the SD 8 election will be a close one, and very important in determining the balance of the MO senate in the 2019 session. It all adds up to SD 8 being a great place to put in your campaign volunteer hours this election season.

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Our hearts hurt at the constant atrocities we are facing - and committing - as a nation. It is simply not acceptable that the most vulnerable are viewed, at best, as disposable bargaining chips by Trump and his allies. Small children and even babies are suffering irreparable trauma and abuse in this racist stunt of political theatre.  But we take some hope in how many of you are not giving up, how many are ready to shout and march for justice and basic human dignity. Remember the words of President Obama, said during his final address to the Armed Forces as President, on December 6, 2017:

"Let my final words to you as your Commander-in-Chief be a reminder of what it is that you're fighting for, what it is that we are fighting for. The United States of America is not a country that imposes religious tests as a price for freedom. We're a country that was founded so that people could practice their faiths as they choose. The United States of America is not a place where some citizens have to withstand greater scrutiny, or carry a special ID card, or prove that they’re not an enemy from within. We’re a country that has bled and struggled and sacrificed against that kind of discrimination and arbitrary rule, here in our own country and around the world. We’re a nation that believes freedom can never be taken for granted and that each of us has a responsibility to sustain it. The universal right to speak your mind and to protest against authority, to live in a society that’s open and free, that can criticize a President without retribution—a country where you're judged by the content of your character rather than what you look like, or how you worship, or what your last name is, or where your family came from—that's what separates us from tyrants and terrorists."

The struggle for the soul of our nation, the bending of our arc toward justice and freedom, has been long and turbulent. Today we are facing our chapter in that epic, and we must not falter. We are so thankful to be facing the challenge shoulder to shoulder with you. Indivisible.

Shoulder to shoulder,

Indivisible KC