All Action Items

We’ve compiled a list of action items you can take to move the needle forward. To help you save time, we’ve divided them into categories and ranked them by the effort required for each item. Green being easiest, light orange needing a bit more time investment, and solid orange being a full commitment.

News & Media – How to Learn What’s Going On

CalMatters – CalMatters is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe, explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding California’s leaders accountable. Their mission is to improve California’s democracy by making its government more transparent and accountable, and providing Californians with the information they need to understand and engage with their government.

Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson – Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of American history. Her Substack has 2.5M subscribers and chronicles today’s political landscape. Cox Richardson explains today’s politics through the lens of history, including the Constitution, laws, the economy, and social customs, while exploring what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American. Another wonderful option for busy working people. The newsletter takes no more than 15 minutes to read and arrives every morning with a thorough recap of yesterday’s news.

Politics – Building A Better Democracy

Organizing – How to Plug In and Develop an Activism Habit

Take Action San Diego (A local chapter of Swing Left) – Take Action San Diego’s mission is to drive positive change by supporting progressive candidates and policies; targeting key electoral opportunities; and providing citizens with effective tools to stay politically engaged at the national, state and local levels. Take Action San Diego meets monthly over Zoom and provides opportunities to get involved and learn about national and local issues. This is a great group to join if you are brand new to political activity.

Indivisible – You may have heard of Indivisible, the progressive grassroots movement of millions of activists across every state who fights to defeat the rightwing takeover of the American government and build an inclusive democracy. Well, they have chapters all over San Diego who meet regularly, engage in actions, get educated on the issues, and contribute to the rebuilding of American democracy. Find your chapter today and get plugged in!

To Read – Books for the Curious and Committed Californian

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson – Examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear into Pride, Power, and Real Change by Cristina Jiménez – A coming-of-age story for both a young woman finding her true self and a social movement of immigrant youth trailblazers who inspired the world and changed the lives of millions.

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein – Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger asks: What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder – Is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.

How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley – Identifies ten pillars of fascist politics—an appeal to the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, favoring “the heartland,” and a dismantling of public goods and unions—that amount to an urgent diagnosis of the tactics right-wing politicians use to break down democracies and a critical lens on the current moment.

Golden State: The Making of California by Michael Hiltzik – A definitive new history of California—from the Spanish conquistadors to the Gold Rush to the state’s meteoric rise as a tech powerhouse and bulwark of progressivism—and of its indelible mark on the United States and the world.

Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America by Eli Mystal – Reimagines what our legal system, and society at large, could look like if we could move past legislation plagued by racism, misogyny, and corruption. Through accessible yet detailed prose and trenchant wit, Mystal argues that these egregiously awful laws—his “Bill of Wrongs”—continue to cause systematic and individual harm and should be repealed completely.

We Are the Land: A History of Native California by Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer – The first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it.

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones – The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

Actions & Strategies – What Can I Do

Find Contact Information for Your Elected Representatives – Simply enter your address to locate contact information for your Federal, State, and Local elected officials. Pro tip – For State Electeds the key offices to focus on include the Governor, State Senator, and State Representative (Assemblymember) while for Local Electeds the key offices to look for are Mayor, County Supervisor, and City Legislator (City Councilmember). Also, make your life easier and save their contact information in your phone and use 5 calls which has scripts for you to use to talk to your reps.

Raise the Minimum Wage for Hospitality and Tourism Workers – Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera has drafted an ordinance to raise the minimum wage for hospitality and tourism workers (hotel, janitorial, and event workers) to $25 an hour. Already, corporations, professional sports teams, and millionaires are crying poor if they are forced to pay workers what they rightfully earn. But if we want to rebuild our democracy, then democracy has to work for working people and provide them with a living wage. The vote on the ordinance takes place on September 16th so sign the petition and call your councilmember and tell them to back the wage increase for hospitality and tourism workers because tourists, corporate hotels, millionaires, and even the Padres need to pay their fair share. And if you can, show up at City Hall and show your support in person on the 16th.

Redistricting – Californians have an opportunity to ensure that the midterm elections are not stolen from the American people before the first vote is even cast. This attempt at electoral theft is already underway due to Texas’s sudden and severe gerrymandered congressional maps that President Trump demanded which will give MAGA five more congressional seats in the House of Representatives and most likely result in two more years of MAGA chaos without a single check or balance. Californians can uniquely push back on this un-American attack on voters with Proposition 50 that “authorizes temporary changes to Congressional district maps in response to Texas’ partisan redistricting.”  Essentially, Proposition 50 will allow California to gerrymander our congressional maps by temporarily suspending the congressional maps that were drawn after the 2020 census by California’s non-partisan independent redistricting commission. These redrawn gerrymandered congressional maps will result in 5 new Democratic leaning districts in California and dramatically increase the likelihood of 5 new Democrats being elected to the House of Representatives in 2026 thereby erasing the advantages of Texas’ gerrymander and possibly saving us from two more years of single-party MAGA rule. Importantly, the authority to draw congressional maps returns to California’s nonpartisan independent redistricting commission in 2030 and the commission will draw new congressional maps that are not gerrymandered moving forward. These gerrymandered maps are temporary and in response to President Trump and Texas MAGAs trying to steal the 2026 midterm elections. So in addition to voting YES on Proposition 50 on November 4, 2025 and helping protect democracy and provide a check on MAGA, you can get involved in helping turn out your fellow Californians to vote YES on Proposition 50 by:

• • Writing postcards
  • Calling voters
  • Writing letters to the editor
  • Talking with your friends and neighbors about Proposition 50 and why it’s important

Ranked Choice Voting – The Justice Workshop is working to pass an amendment to the San Diego city charter that will implement the ranked choice voting system for all San Diego elections. This voting method is already in use in places like Alaska, New York City, Maine, and San Francisco. With a ranked choice voting system, voters will rank candidates in order of preference, starting with their favorite as #1, their second favorite as #2, and so on. If their first choice doesn’t have enough votes to win, their vote is automatically transferred to their second choice. If their second choice doesn’t have enough votes to win, their vote is automatically transferred to their next choice, and so on. This process continues until a candidate wins. Ranked choice voting will modernize San Diego’s election process, creating a system that is fairer, simpler, and more representative. They hope to have it on the ballot in 2028 if they can get enough signatures. So sign the petition and help build a better democracy in San Diego.

Display Dissent – Get loud about the type of American you are and the version of America you want to live in. If you think “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are good American values then get a t-shirt that says so. Post a pro-democracy sign on your business. Get a Melt ICE bumper sticker or write a letter to the editor. But refuse to be silent. We need the majority of Americans who do not support this MAGA agenda to let that be known as loud and clear and as often as possible. Dictators hate dissent so dissent we must!

Divest $2B of California’s Public Pension Funds from Tesla – Did you know that the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) have a total of roughly $2B invested in Tesla stock?! It’s time for them to dump this risky financial asset that also enriches a billionaire who just gave another $15M to MAGA Republicans in June of this year. Through the Divest from Tesla website you can sign the petition, email the boards, submit statements, and more. Pressure is building on both the CalPERS and CalSTRS boards to drop Tesla and you can be part of the final push. If you want to make a major impact, this is low hanging fruit that can really hurt MAGA and Elon.

Support asylum seekers at the Federal Courthouse – There are a variety of roles you can play in support of migrants attending their scheduled appointments at the Courthouse