The grassroots advocacy group Indivisible will host an emergency phone meeting Monday night to educate the public how to challenge President Donald Trump’s order banning refugees and Muslims from entering the United States.
Indivisible is a nationwide volunteer network organizing resistance to the Trump administration’s agenda. Their website, www.indivisbleguide.com, provides a downloadable guide for organizing activities to protest the administration’s actions.
The phone conference will take place at 10 p.m. AST Monday. Those interested in taking part can sign up at actionnetwork.org and leave their phone numbers.
The conference call will include representatives of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, American Civil Liberties Union, International Refugee Assistance Project and the National Immigration Law Center. It will focus on the weekend’s anti-immigration effort by the administration.
Trump signed executive orders Friday barring migrants, visitors and even legal residents from entering the United States from predominately Muslim countries – Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen – and refugees from around the world.
The order did not restrict travelers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt or the United Arab Emirates, the home countries of the 911 hijackers, and also locations where Trump has business interests, according to National Public Radio.
Protests erupted almost immediately at airports. Immigration attorneys showed up at several locations to assist people who were detained. Over the weekend, four federal judges ordered the ban to be put on hold, but Trump continued to defend the 90-day order banning immigrants and visa holders, refugees for 129 days and Syrian refugees indefinitely.
Monday night’s phone call will discuss what the executive orders mean and why they are considered “unconstitutional and illegal.”
During the conference call, instructions also will be given how to encourage the public to push members of Congress to withhold consent – a procedure that holds up Senate business for days – and to filibuster illegal executive orders and other objectionable actions.
“This vicious, hateful executive order undermines everything that America stands for. But remember, Trump’s agenda doesn’t depend on Trump – it depends on your members of Congress rubber-stamping it,” the Indivisible email stated.
According to The New Yorker magazine, Indivisible was started around Thanksgiving last year by a group of former Congressional workers. Ezra Levin and Jeremy Haile, former staff members of Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, and around 30 other former staffers patterned a guide based on successful practices they observed by the Tea Party for obstructing President Barak Obama. They call the Guide a “work in progress” and encourage public input.
More than 4,500 groups have formed and the guide has been downloaded more than 1 million times, according to the Indivisible website.
To date, Indivisible groups have met with and recorded lawmakers in Denver, Detroit, Michigan, Virginia and other locations. The organization has been featured in the L.A. Times, the Washington Examiner, The Economist, Bustle and on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show.
Editor’s note: The Source has suspended its policy of restricting coverage to territorial issues and periodically will run items pertaining to the ongoing national crisis over the Trump administration.
