Save the United States Postal Service
Save the United States Postal Service
The president is trying to steal the election, he said so himself.
This newsletter is produced w/ Zach Peterson (@zachprague).
Scroll down for Read Something; Watch Something; Tech Tips; and a weekly tech tip from Robert S. Anthony (@newyorkbob).
TUNE IN: Today’s Sunday NYT Readaalong is special. My guest is Veronica Chambers, Editor of Narrative Projects at The New York Times and co-author of “Finish the Fight!” a history of the American suffrage movement for middle-grade readers. It will be an amazing show! 8:30-10:15 am ET - watch live or later.
The best way to know when I’m on the air, and see all my archived Covid19 shows, is to subscribe to my YouTube channel. We’ve been going for 158 straight days and we have no plans of stopping!
My Digimentors team is working with companies and nonprofits around the world to create virtual events. We’ve worked on events for 50 people and 100,000 people. See our new brochure. Don’t cancel or postpone your conference - contact us! sree@sree.net
***
Right this second, the president is crippling the Postal Service (USPS) so that he will win the election on November 3rd. His goal is to make it hard-to-impossible to vote by mail across the country, severely depress turnout, and steal the election.
It’s not speculation. He said it on TV.
In Oregon, it’s already happening.
Nationwide, it’s ramping up as well. According to the Washington Post, 46 states and the District of Columbia have already received letters from the USPS saying it “cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted.”
With the Senate out of session for the month (without passing a new Covid19 relief bill, of course), recourse lies with the states — specifically state attorneys general. This feels like the 1000th time over the last 3+ years that we’ve had to rely on another branch of government to save us from the president’s corruption-laden whims and, once again, it’s on an issue absolutely fundamental to the functioning of the country.
Per the Washington Post report, 671 USPS mail sorting machines have been removed across the country since over the last two months - a reduction in national mail sorting capacity of 21.4 million pieces of mail per hour. Soon, that will include ballots for the presidential election. Right now, it means late medicine, late paychecks, late Social Security/Medicare funds, and a lot more.
Please write, call, email, text — whatever you can do — your senators and representatives and put pressure on them to get involved and stop this madness. After you do that, go to your state’s secretary of state’s office (or whatever state agency manages elections) and check out every option you have to vote.
Some tweets to note:
Here’s a great thread from my friend Vanita Gupta, President and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, with avenues for you to reach out:
Make some calls. I’m going to.
- Sree
I know many nonprofits are suffering during the pandemic, so my Digimentors colleague, VP of Education Linda Bernstein (@wordwhacker), has put together an all-star workshop on Wed, Aug 19: Nonprofits & Social Media: How to Cope When the World is on Fire. Experts Beatrice Frey (@beafrey), Head of Digital Communications at UN Peacekeeping; Dante Licona (@dante_licona), Senior Social Media Officer at International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; Tiq Milan (@themrmilan), former Social Media Strategist at GLAAD. Tix are $20-$30 (watch live or later; if you can’t afford even this price, email me).
Read Something
This spot is usually reserved for a particularly poignant piece of writing, but I’m invoking editorial privilege and sharing my recent piece for Newsday; it’s all about why Kamala Harris is an excellent choice for VP. Read it and let me know what you think!
Sponsor message from Hotstar
The newest Indian films with subtitles are skipping theaters and coming straight to your home exclusively on Hotstar! Stream the latest critically acclaimed films Lootcase (8/10 on IMDB), Dil Bechara (9.1/10 on IMDB), Khuda Hafiz (8.1/10) now with #HotstarPremiereNights. Special offer – use promo code SREE2020 for a one-year subscription to Hotstar for only $3.75/month!
Hotstar brings you the newest Indian movies with subtitles plus entertainment, cricket, live news channels and much more. Learn all about it here. #hotstarusapromotions
[If you’d like to place an ad here or on any of my shows, please email sree@sree.net]
Tech Tips from @newyorkbob: Here’s Peeking at You
Each week, veteran tech journalist Robert S. Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him on @newyorkbob.
Now that we’re all neck-deep in virtual meetings, webinars and other video calls, we’re all one hacker — or one forgotten Zoom sign-out — away from having our privacy invaded. While you can delve into your device settings and disable camera, a low-tech solution might be better: Cover it up.
Simply place a removable sticker on the camera lens when not in a video call or install a stick-on, ultra-thin sliding door like the C-Slide Webcam Cover, or use a clip-on camera blocker like the googly-eyed AAkron Privacy Cover. The results are the same: Your camera’s view is physically blocked, a rather simple and unhackable solution.
Privacy covers come in various styles and sizes and are inexpensive, but laptop users beware: If your unit closes tightly, a stick-on sliding door might not be the right solution. Apple has even warned MacBook users not to install camera covers, claiming they could damage the display or interfere with the unit’s ambient light sensor.
Whether you cover your camera lens or not, please remember the golden rule of Zooming: Always wear pants.
Sponsor message from Nunbelievable
Divinely delicious cookies on a mission. Every handcrafted cookie purchased from Nunbelievable provides a meal to those in need. 1 cookie = 1 meal.
Get 20% off w/ code SREE at Nunbelievable.com
[If you’d like to place an ad here or on any of my shows, please email sree@sree.net]
Listen to Something
“Break up big tech” means different things to different people, but there should be little doubt that Facebook and Amazon (especially) are only going to be under more pressure to spin off products into independent businesses. This Intelligence Squared debate between “Break ’em Up” author Zephyr Teachout and MIT’s Andrew McAfee is both a great introduction to the topic, and a fantastic resource for people who have been following the issue closely. Listen here and on all major podcast platforms.
Watch Something
“Black women are the vanguard of democracy.” LaTosha Brown is a Co-founder of Black Votes Matter and a tireless advocate for people of color in… every aspect of public society in some way. This segment from last week on Lovett or Leave It is just so good.
Odds & Ends
📢 Delighted to share the good news that my friend, and Executive Producer of the #NYTReadalong, Neil Parekh (@neilparekh; neil@digimentors.group) has joined my company, Digimentors, full-time! He joins us from United Way Worldwide, the world’s largest privately-funded nonprofit. Monday is his first day as VP of Events and Communications. Read our press release and hire us!
🗞 My Sunday #NYTReadalong, where we read the print NYT out loud every week, 8:30-10:30 am ET. Our guest will be Veronica Chambers (@vvchambers), Editor of Narrative Projects at The New York Times and co-author of “Finish the Fight!” a history of the American suffrage movement for middle-grade readers. She is also the Lead Editor of the 44-page NYT special report on #Suffrageat100.
You can watch right here on Sunday or on replay in my YouTube archives.
The Readalong is followed Sundays 11 am-noon ET by a new medical show I’m co-executive producing with surgeons Sujana Chandrasekhar, M.D. (@DrSujanaENT), and Marina Kurian, M.D. (@MarinaKurian), called She’s On Call (watch live or later).
The Sunday #NYTReadalong is sponsored by Muck Rack and Strategy Focused Group. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.
🎧 Every Saturday, I host a call-in show on WBAI 99.5FM (@wbai) - "Coping with Covid19" - focused on being helpful, hopeful, and focusing on the pandemic's effects on society’s most vulnerable. Listen live Saturdays from 12-2pm EST, or later. And, of course, call in or tweet questions for us using the #wbaisree hashtag! Listen to an early episode here!
📺 A reminder to watch my Daily Global Covid19 Show. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn something every time. We’ve had 150+ shows and 280+ guests - and 1m+ viewers. Check out the archive and please subscribe to my YouTube channel. And/or sign up for my WhatsApp alerts list (it’s not your typical WhatsApp group, just a text when I’m live!). We are in partnership with Scroll.in, one of India’s best news and culture websites.
Recent highlights:
Sapphire, whose novel became Oscar-winning “Precious” (she’s newly on Twitter!)
Dr. Keiji Fukuda of HKU, former pandemics expert at WHO & CDC
👀 Did we miss anything? Make a mistake? Do you have an idea for anything we’re up to? Let us know! Let’s collaborate!