With 8,000 postcards, 'Indivisibles' aim to sway midterms their way

The good old boys deciding legislation — that’s done with.” – Donna Cywinski, Fauquier Indivisible

By Karen Chaffraix, Times Staff Writer

The walls cast a pink glow at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the back room at McMahon’s Irish Pub in Warrenton. The tables were full. Heads were down, and pens danced across little white cards. Meet the folks who comprise Fauquier Indivisible, on this last postcard-writing night before the mid-term elections.

Tonight’s postcards urge voters in Virginia’s 8th District to choose Democrat Carter Turner, and in the 1st District, Democrat Vangie Williams. On Thursday, Oct. 28, between those collected from the Upperville Progressives, an arm of the Fauquier Indivisibles, and this Warrenton group, 8,000 postcards were carried to the post office.

“It took two bins and three shopping bags to get them there,” Upperville group member Pat Reilly said from her place in Marshall. “We get the addresses from an online site.” Reilly first heard of the merits of postcard-writing at “the Women’s Summit,” a progressive political-strategy and team-building event held in Herndon last July sponsored Network NOVA. “I was skeptical, but there’s a study that says postcards are as effective as canvassing. Women went into postcard-writing particularly strongly, because calling is harder.”

Timeline

The Warrenton group that morphed into Fauquier Indivisible was begun in January 2017 by Cecilia Carr, a Prince William County English teacher. Politically involved “in small ways,” prior to President Donald Trump’s election, things now felt urgent, she said. Personal reasons caused her to move decisively.

A Warrenton resident for 17 years, Carr, 52, is among tonight’s post-card writers. She’s wearing a blue sweater, and her smile lights up her face. Carr started the group to distract herself from an impending medical diagnosis. Calling it, “Straight Outta Warrenton — Fauquier Resistance,” Carr registered the group with Indivisibles.org (a national progressive “how-to” site, itself a reaction to Trump’s election), created a Gmail address, bought a domain name and started spreading the word.

The group’s first event was the Rally for Unity in Warrenton in February 2017. “We were protesting the President’s Muslim travel ban and demonstrating that there are plenty of people in Fauquier who think differently. After the rally, we held our first meeting at Deja Brew. It was standing-room-only and overflow out the door.” Ten days later Carr got a positive diagnosis.

“Many people stepped up to help, and eventually, I handed the whole group off to the amazing Donna Cywinski and headed to NYC to have surgery,” Carr said. This coming summer she faces another.

Cywinski took over in April 2017, eventually appointing four additional “administrators,” Miggy Strano, Kim Gibson, Mara Seaforest and Carolyn Darrow. Together they run Fauquier Indivisible, Cywinski piloting its Facebook page, “the group’s main hub,” now up to 668 members.

Cywinski, 63, an attorney by training, teaches history at Lord Fairfax Community College. The Catlett resident said she was “traumatized” after President Trump was elected. “I couldn’t understand how people could vote for such a man. I kept thinking, ‘How am I going to get through the next four years?’”

That lasted until the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. in January 2017, she said. “We realized how many felt the same way, and that people needed a way to get involved.”

The week after the Women’s March, Cywinski attended the Rally for Unity in Warrenton. “[State Del.] Elizabeth Guzman was one of the speakers, running in my district. I had been heavily involved in the Hillary Clinton campaign, but hadn’t done anything since. I wanted to get involved.”

Hearing about a local arm of the Indivisibles starting up, Cywinski went to the gathering at Deja Brew where she met Carr. “Every day there were more shenanigans coming from the White House. I signed up.”

The genesis of the “Indivisible” movement was a Google-doc full of typos uploaded to a group of progressives by a young husband and wife team, congressional staffers upset by the results of the 2016 election. Tea party tactics had routed Leah Greenberg’s boss, Democrat Tom Perriello, from Congress in 2010, so she and husband Ezra Levin understood the effectiveness of tea-party activism. Contact with legislators at the local level was imperative. They titled their 23-page how-to for progressive activism, “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.”

Within days of its internet upload, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, among others, were praising its tenets and the whole thing took off. Profiled by magazines from The Nation to the New Yorker, Invisibles is now a movement with “at least two groups in every congressional district in the country, and more than 900 groups in California alone,” according to one article.

Locally, Fauquier Indivisible’s activism has already born fruit. At Sheriff Bob Mosier’s Vint Hill town hall in April 2017, held after he announced he would pursue an agreement to detain undocumented immigrants in cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a crowd of 150 rallied for a voice vote of “yea” or “nay.” The resounding response was “nay.” Mosier later decided the agreement was unnecessary.

Today, Fauquier Indivisibles work with other local groups such as the Fauquier Democrats; Indivisible Nova West, in Manassas; Indivisible Alexandria; Indivisible Fairfax; Service Employees International Union; the Interfaith Council; and the Virginia Civic Engagement Table.

The Indivisibles’ platform is progressive but not partisan, Cywinski said. It stresses the idea that everybody in the country is entitled to liberty and justice, and that means everyone. “We support a lot of Democrats because today you can’t find a Republican who will put a check on Trump’s power,” Cywinski said.

Making waves

When Virginia’s General Assembly returns to Richmond in January, Indivisibles will be in the gallery just as they were last summer when Medicaid expansion passed and when Republicans put the kibosh on bringing the Equal Rights Amendment to the floor for a vote. “Take a vote. You need to take a vote,” the activists chanted, lapsing into singing “We Shall Overcome.” The old boys voted against it, but video of them doing so came to life on the internet.

Should Virginia pass the Equal Rights Amendment, it will be the 38th state to do so and the last vote needed for it to become the law of the land. State legislators promise to try again this year.

“We will be shining a light on what our lawmakers are doing,” Cywinski said. “From the first day, they will know we are there. The good old boys deciding on legislation — that’s done with.”

Reach Karen Chaffraix at kchaffraix@fauquier.com

Cecilia Carr (in blue sweater) started the Fauquier Indivisibles, then passed the baton to Donna Cywinski.

TIMES STAFF PHOTO/ KAREN CHAFFRAIX