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"We are a grassroots organization of concerned residents of Brunswick, Topsham and Harpswell”
Newsletter for August 9, 2026
Brunswick Area Indivisible Action Calendar:
Recurring Events (Brunswick)
Tuesdays, 5:30 pm Brunswick Maine Street Route 1 Overpass Rally - Bring your signs and flags.
Wednesdays, 12:30 pm Brunswick Town Mall Cosplay protest. Meet at the Gazebo- costumes optional
Saturdays, 11:00 am to 12:00 Brunswick, Maine St. on Rt 1 Overpass. Bring banners, signs.
Mark your calendar:
Monthly Community Meetings resume September 3. Program details tba.
Postcarding resumes at the monthly Community Meetings. In September and October, it will be get out the vote cards. Drop in beginning at 4pm before the meeting.
BAI Book Group Discussion Wednesday, October 21, 2026 from 4 to 5:15pm. Topsham Public Library.
'You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train' by Howard Zinn
For More actions and events, visit Activate Maine and Mobilize
Civics 101
Civics is the study of the rights, duties, and responsibilities of citizens within a society. As citizens it behooves us know about how we, the people are being governed and to help decide how we are governed.
The United States of America is a Democratic Republic where there is direct and indirect personal participation requiring concern, vigilance, and action in order to work the way it is meant to work. Participation democracy is where eligible individuals elect representatives, vote directly on items of interest, and influence the political system on an individual basis. We also operate in a Pluralistic Democracy, where individuals band together to influence the political system as a group, pooling resources, join PACs, political parties, corporations, or other special interest groups. The USA also operates in an Elite Democracy. The electoral college, which was originally intended to have an elite educated group protect the system from the tyranny of the masses, where electors decide on the president.
The first step is for individuals to participate! Get involved:
vote, register others to vote, join a campaign, make donations, join protests and rally’s! Any US citizen who will be 18 or older by November 3rd this year can call their Town Clerk, and obtain whatever is required to register to vote in the crucial upcoming November midterms.
Maine's New ICE Controlling Laws
Thanks to the action by the Maine State Legislature this year, three new laws became effective in Maine on July 29:
- ICE Out of Policing - Prohibits Maine law enforcement agencies, including police and jails, from assisting federal immigration authorities in civil immigration enforcement. Bans holding people in local jails solely for civil immigration violations.Prohibits notifying ICE about nonpublic inmate release dates, except in serious cases.
- ICE Out of Our Homes - Bars landlords from disclosing tenants’ immigration status or other sensitive personal information to ICE without a valid judicial warrant or other legal authority .
- ICE Out of Schools and State Healthcare - Prevents immigration officers from entering nonpublic areas of public schools, childcare facilities, state colleges, public libraries, and the two state hospitals without a judicial warrant.
Limits access to protected records in these institutions without legal authority.
Aims to keep schools and healthcare facilities safe spaces free from federal immigration enforcement.
The best summaries can be found at Maine ACLU and Maine Morning Star.
BAI can help by being sure its towns and local law enforcement agencies are aware of and following these new prohibitions!
The Town Of Biddeford’s Response to ICE Murder of Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero
We are all too familiar with the activities of ICE in the United States and the ongoing harassment, kidnapping and murder in our streets. Many news outlets report on ICE’s activities and condemn their tactics of abuse, intimidation and outright lawlessness. On July13th ICE shot and killed Duran Guerrero in Biddeford. Another innocent victim of an out of control federal agency. While it was reported on nationally how did we locally respond to this horrible event?
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Biddeford residents gathered at the murder sight and established makeshift memorials and held peaceful community vigils. Neighbors, friends and local business workers spoke out publicly, expressing profound grief over the loss of Duran Guerrero while coordinating immediate financial aid for his widow and young daughter.
Municipal leaders in Biddeford acted quickly to address community trauma following the shooting in their neighborhood. The city opened municipal meetings for emotional public testimony while partnering with regional healthcare organizations like Sweetser and Maine Behavior Health to deploy language assessable behavioral health professionals, crisis counseling, and trauma support directly to affected residents and grieving family members.
Local grassroots organizations mobilized public demonstration across the city. Advocates demanded a full transparent investigation into ICE tactics, the public release of body-camera footage, and the immediate end to uncoordinated immigrant enforcement operations. Community members actively pressured local leaders to draft municipal ordinances preventing city resources and local police officers from assisting federal immigration operations. Biddeford residents also urged regional cooperation with surrounding towns to shield vulnerable immigrant neighbors, demand strict federal transparency and push state lawmakers for comprehensive oversight prohibiting arbitrary traffic stops and unannounced federal operations with in municipal boundaries.
The Maine Immigrants Rights Coalition has published a call to action with demands for state, local and federal policy changes. The immigration system is fundamentally broken and extensive policy change is needed at all levels.
Childhood Hunger On The Rise
Imagine running out of milk, fruit and fresh veggies for your kids and knowing there will be none in the fridge for the rest of the month. Imagine sending your child to school hungry. Can you imagine the constant anxiety knowing that as hard as you work, you can’t feed your kids and pay rent, gas and utilities?
With the passage of the reconciliation bill by Republicans in Congress last June, the Federal Government dumped many SNAP costs onto the states. As The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports “While cutting SNAP eligibility for children was not a stated target of H.R. 1’s proponents, the cost shift and access barriers are resulting in serious losses of food assistance for low-income children.”
The report estimates that more than 4000 Maine children have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) since last year. Children on SNAP also had streamlined access to WIC and free and reduced school meal programs. Those programs have become harder to access under the new law. SNAP is a program that works. It lifts children out of poverty and helps provide family stability. Along with that come lifelong benefits of health, better educational and employment outcomes. One broad economic study concluded for every $1 invested in children, SNAP provides $62 in value.
Nationwide, more than 1.5 million children may have lost SNAP benefits as states struggle to meet hastily and poorly developed 'error reduction' targets. In Maine, as in most states, 'errors' have not been the result of waste, fraud or abuse. Most have been easily detected and corrected overpayments to legitimately enrolled households.
We can expect food insecurity to jump dramatically in our state. Until this disasterous law is changed, we must provide ongoing support for state and local solutions. Please support Maine’s efforts to backfill federal funding cuts and support the local food pantries and organizations helping to end food insecurity, like Full Plates, Full Potential.
National Indivisible Election Protection Plan: Hands Off Our Vote
Donald Trump has made no secret about his intention to interfere with the upcoming midterms. He has continually brought up the importance of passing the ‘Save Act’; legislation meant to make voting more difficult, especially for women and minorities by requiring expensive and time consuming documents be procured to ‘prove’ citizenship in order to vote. The Supreme Court has gutted voting rights for black people, and there is a constant drumbeat of propaganda about how the ‘democrats plan to cheat.’ Mail-in ballots, a perfectly safe method of voting used by many states is under attack because it makes casting a ballot too easy for millions of voters. Trump has also threatened to send his armed goons to polling places presumably to intimidate people. He and his cohorts have been on the attack for months but National Indivisible is organizing massively to be prepared to thwart them.
National Indivisible has produced training videos which are highly recommended for you to access and watch. In the first training Corey Dukes, of ‘Protect Democracy’ outlines the threats to our elections and the tactics employed, deceive, disrupt and deny. He also talks about the strategy to fight back. The four major points of the plan are:
• Vote Early. The more people who vote prior to election day the harder the results will be to deny. Check your registration often. Collect forms of ID. Take friends and family with you when you go to vote
• Build movement of trusted local messengers, fight disinformation, volunteer at the polls.
• Rapid response to election threats
• Get information, be ready for mass mobilization
It is up to us to make sure we do our parts to aid in this endeavor. One of the biggest takeaways from these informative videos is the acknowledgement of our power and how we can use it to defeat attempts at election fraud perpetrated by our president. To sign up for the next trainings, Wed, Aug 19, 8:00-9:00pm and Wed., Aug 26, 8:00-9:00pm: go to Indivisible National’s site www.indivisibletraining.org, and they will send you a link to join as well as a link to send to friends and family to join.
Working Group News
- Education
Indivisible National is running a Hands Off Our Vote campaign to keep our country's elections free and fair and a true representation of our will! If you have family or friends in one of these at risk states, acronym MOTING: MI, OH, TX, IW, NC, & GA_ Please send them this message:
National Indivisible is organizing a "Hands Off Our Vote" strategy to defend the midterm elections and to get in place for the 2028 Presidential. One "shenanigan" that the Republicans might try is dumping likely Democratic voters off the voter rolls. [insert state of your friend] is one of the R's targeted states along with NC,TX, AK, MI, OH, IW, and GA.
Please pass the information along.
-Brunswick Area Indivisible
As always, if you have an upcoming action, article, legislative issue or story that you want to go out on the Brunswick Area Indivisible email list, send it to communications.bai.me@gmail.com
Have you missed a newsletter, want to look back, or want to share a past issue? The most recent 6+ newsletters can be found on the BAI Posts page.
Want to support BAI? We welcome your time and talents. Contact communications.bai.me@gmail.com for volunteer opportunities. Donations are welcome at our meetings and online through ACT BLUE.
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