Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Hi! Everyone! Welcome to our event. I'm. Going to read the land Acknowledgment. This land acknowledgment calls us to commit to continuing to learn how to be better stewards of the language. In habit
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): we recognize that every member of the center is a junior college community, has benefited and continues to benefit
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): from the youth and occupation of this land. Since the institutions founding in 1,918, consistent with our values of community and diversity, we have a responsibility to acknowledge and make visible the colleges relationship to native peoples By offering this land acknowledgment. We have firm, indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Santa Rosa Junior College more accountable for the needs of American Indian and indigenous peoples. We acknowledged that we gather at Santa Rosa Junior College on the territorial traditional land of the Pomo People in center rose up, and the coast to me walk people in Petaloma, past and present, and honor with gratitude. The land itself, and the people who have stewarded it throughout the generations.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Thank you.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and i'll pass it on to Debbie, and
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and i'd like to give a pitch for the wonderful exhibit that's going on right now at the Museum. It's an exhibit of the Pomo Basket weavers artwork, and it's really wonderful. It'll be there, I think, through December, and if you get a chance I highly highly recommend you, take a look.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So. Yes, i'm done a rope from the current president of the League of Women, voters of Cinema County and Debbie Mckay. My colleague, is here. I'm going to start out with a really brief history of the League of Women voters, and then Debbie is going to follow up with more practical information about what the League is currently doing. So the League of women voters was founded officially in Chicago in 1,920, just 6 months before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and women won the right to vote formed by the suffragists of the National American Women's Suffrage Association. The League began as a mighty political experiment designed to help 20 million women carry out their new responsibility as voters, as some of these women recognize that just because you could vote didn't mean you had the knowledge or the opportunity to vote.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified after it passed in the House and Senate. The final hurdle for the nineteenth amendment was ratification by the States as anti-suffrage groups still fought to oppose ratification. Suffrage leaders mobilized to continue their pressure campaign in all the States.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Finally, the amendment was ratified in Tennessee by one vote and officially made law on August 20 sixth.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): As the League became more active in issue advocacy, the need a rose for a separate organizational arm for activities like voter, registration and information.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): The League of Women Voters Education Fund was established to encourage the active and informed participation of citizens in government and to increase understanding of major political and public policy issues, and this happened especially because of
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): being a 501, C, 3, a nonprofit organization. You can only do so much politically, so they had to kind of make 2 organizations from from the one.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and then in 1972 shortly after Congressional passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, the League of Women voters voted officially to support equal rights for all, regardless of sex.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): The League followed this vote with a nationwide pressure campaign that continued through the 1,970. Some of us were around to see that, and that national campaign ended in 1,982. But the legal women voted continues to push for era ratification today, and I think Debbie is going to talk a little bit more about that
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): the leaks, sponsored, televised general election Presidential debates in 1980 and 84 as well as presidential primary forms in 80 84 and 88 the debates focused on nonpartisan issues
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): with a main goal of informing voters. As candidates demanded increasingly partisan conditions. However, the League withdrew its sponsorship of general election debates in 1,988
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): leagues around the country, continue to hold debates and forms for local and State offices today.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): The leaks Grassroots campaign for national legislation to reform voter. Registration resulted in passage of the National Voter Registration Act or Nvra, also known as the Motor Voter Bill. The goal was to increase accessibility to the electoral process.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): The Motor Voter Bill enables citizens to register motor vehicle agencies automatically as well as by mail and at agencies that serve the public
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): when they oops going to faster.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): when the 2,000 election exposed many problems facing the election system that was for versus bush with the hanging shads. And all this something you weren't around. Then the League began to work on election reform.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): working closely with the Civil Rights Coalition. The League helped draft and help pass the Help America Vote Act or Hobb, which established provisional balloting requirements for updating voting systems and the Election Assistance Commission.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): The National League provided a dedicated website for voter information as early as the 19 nineties in 2,006 lead launch the next generation of online voter education with vote 4, 1, one.org, which is a one stop shop for election. United information
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): today. Vote 4. 1. One provides both general and state-specific nonpartisan resources to the voting public, including a nationwide polling place. Locator: a ballot, look up tool candidate positions on issues and more. And in California we also have loaders edge.org, and there'll be some
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): little book bookmarks that you can take about. What is that?
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): February fourteenth 2023 marks 103 years that the League of women voters, has empowered voters and defended democracy over the last century. We fought for election, protection, democratic reforms, and equal access to the ballot, all while maintaining our commitment to non partisanship and fostering and informed electorate.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): As we look into our next 100 years, we AIM to build power for the next generation of women leaders. There you are and voting rights activists. Here we are.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): The League is celebrating the 100 Year Milestone by launching a new programmatic focus called women powered democracy. And so we're.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): And I tell you a little bit more about what our local league is focusing on.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): I'll get it. Okay.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Maybe not. Yeah. just put it in.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Yeah.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Okay. So we're in. We're gonna talk a little bit more about the history of voting in the United States. And you know why women wanted to vote. Why your vote matters. So I'm going to start with a little story about Amy and George.
Now Amy was born in 1,880, which probably seems like ancient history. But you'll get a sense of why women back then wanted to vote so much.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So at 17 Amy's living at home. She's working part time because she's still going to school in the local bank in town, and she's earning a little PIN money. When women earned money it was called PIN money, because they supposedly didn't need money. Their husbands or their father took care of them.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Women typically did not work if they were married, or if they had their family supporting them. But Amy's father was good friends with the bank manager, so the bank manager thought this would be a good way for Amy to learn a little bit about managing your money, so she could manage your household accounts when she was married, and besides, everybody in town knew Amy loved her so it'd probably be good for big business.
At 18 she got another job as a teller in a local bank in a nearby town. She was trying to move out and become more independent now. She couldn't live on her own, of course, so she went and stayed with her Aunt Sarah in that town.
Amy planned to work until she got married to George. Now she had met George when he came into the bank to make the bank deposits for the store where he worked.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): She had been recording him for about 2 months now, and she said, oh, this is the one I know. This is what I'm going to spend the rest of my life with.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So at 19 she and George got married, and they settled into a nice little rental house, and she, of course, stopped working, because now George would support her. And first came George, Jr. And a couple of later years later, came Annie. They're a very happy family
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): until tragedy struck. Amy's father died suddenly of a heart attack when his will was read. Amy was his only child, and he had left her $5,000 in cash. Now he had worked all his life, put his all his money into savings for retirement, so he never bought his own home. But guess what? He died of a heart attack. People back then died much earlier.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): so Amy's widowed mother came to live with her children now as a widow. She could have managed her own money, and she could have lived on her own, but she really didn't want to do that. She wanted to be with her family. So when she came to move in with Amy she brought the $5,000 cash with her.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So Amy was really shocked, and thought, what can I do with this $5,000? What could I do to make my dad proud of me so she really thought hard about that.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): She didn't want to squander the money or use it foolishly, and she remembered how much her dad has stressed being a homeowner. So she said, I know i'll buy a house for our family.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and so she didn't want to leave that $5,000 laying around the house right so she saw, you know. It might take a while to find a just the right house. I know i'll put the money in the bank where I used to work. So she went and met with the bank manager. He was really happy to see her, and he says.
Sure, that's a good plan. Put your money here to you and George find a house. We'll keep your money safe. No problem.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): That night when George came home, Amy shared her plan with him. You know I put the money in the bank. We need to look for a house, and he said, Well, things are pretty busy at work. I don't know if i'm gonna have time to you looking for a house, and I know you might be pretty particular. Why, don't you go ahead and look for a house. Let me know when you found the right one. I'll take a look, and we'll buy it
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So she thought that was a good plan. So she went around, looked at houses, found the right one, came home and told George and said, okay, you know, now we can get our money, and we can buy this house. So the next day she went to the bank to withdraw the $5,000.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Well, the bank manager said, oh, Amy, I can't give you the money, she said. What she said. Well, now that you're married, you know George Manages is all your affairs. The bank account is in his name as head of the family. So you better talk to George.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Amy was not pleased. $5,000 was an inheritance from my Father doesn't that make any difference? Well, the bank manager had encountered these kinds of situations before he patiently informed her that because she was married, everything now was jointly owned, and her husband was in charge. Her name was not even on the bank account.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and he said, Well, i'll talk to George after work, and we'll be back.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So after dinner, when the children were in bed, Amy approached George and said she had found a great place to buy. But, George, they Won't let me get the money.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): I want us to go with the bank tomorrow and get our $5,000. George kind of hung his head and kind of looked a little sheepish, and said, Well.
Amy, i'm sorry, but there's only a $1,000 left in the account.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and Amy said, how is that possible. George said. Well, I wanted to surprise you. I invested 4,000 in that new railroad line a few weeks ago. They said they could double my money that way. We'd have enough for a house. We'd have enough for George Junior's education. Nice wedding for Annie when she was old enough.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): But you know this week I found out those real world guys have left town, and nobody knows where they are. Oh, Amy, please forgive me! Amy thought hard for a moment she was so mad. She thought about divorcing George.
but she loved her children, and she knew if she divorced George, she wouldn't get custody of the children. She had no job. She had no way to support them.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): She didn't want that to happen. She calm down a little bit, and she thought, you know. George really is a good husband. He's kind to be in the kids. He works hard. He's not like John down the street, who drinks up his paycheck every Friday night.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Maybe I can go back to work. I can go back to work. We'll save up. We'll scrimp, and we'll. We'll get that money, and mom's here. She can watch the kids. So the next morning Amy talk to her. Mom said, Can you watch the kids? Will I run a few herons.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and she went to stop at the bank to ask for a job back. She said. You know I was a really good teller, and she kind of told the bank manager what happened. He wasn't surprised. You knew there was only $1,000 left in the account.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): he said. Well, Amy, you were one of our best tellers, but we don't employ married women. It would reflect badly on their husbands. It would look like, you know they can't support you, and it might even make some of the husbands take their banking elsewhere. So I can't do that.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So she was in a huff. And she thought, okay, I'm gonna see you the local attorney, Jim Brown. I know him from him coming in the bank. I'm sure he'll help me.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So she's came into Mr. Brown's office and said, I need your help. So men stole $4,000 from me, and I want you to sue them for me.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Well, Amy said, maybe please sit down and and tell me what happened. So she told him her whole story.
and then he said, Well, Amy, you bring George on in here, and i'll file as soon for you. But it's if we can find them.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): And he said, No, no, no, you don't understand. George is kind of embarrassed. He doesn't want to sue anybody. He doesn't want to come in here. Well, Amy, i'm sorry, but as a married woman you have no standing to do anybody.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): so George would have to file a suit. So Amy is really that up at this point
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): i'm gonna go see the sheriff. The sheriff will do something about this. So she related her whole sad tale to the sheriff, and she said, Yep, Amy. I've heard from several people about those swindlers, but I doubt we'll be able to catch them. They kind of have a way of pulling this all over the State, and then you can't find a trace of them. But you know, if George wants to, you have him come in and file a complaint.
Amy had never realized how few rights she had as a married woman, she said to herself. You know I'm a grown woman. I've had $4,000 stolen from me, and there's not a darn thing I can do about it.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Something has to change. So the next day Amy thought about her. Aunt Sarah. she said, you know, and Sarah is always working on women's rights. I bet she'll have some ideas on this. So she arranged to have a friend take her to her aunt's house, told her aunt the whole tale of woe, and said, You know we needed to change these darn laws. How do you do that?
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): And Sarah kind of waked at her, and she goes. If we women had the vote we'd be changing these laws. And the next day Amy joined the suffrage movement.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So you can see why you know a lot of women wanted the right to vote back in the 18 hundreds and into the early 19 hundreds. But that isn't all solved. When I got married. My name was not on the bank account, and I could not get a credit card in my own name.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): And if you're familiar with the dodge decision which took away women's reproductive rights, you know. We're still fighting a lot of these battles, you know it's not. It's not over. It is not agent history. We have battles going on right now, and I'm going to be talking to you about some of those battles.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So we heard Amy's story. and women did get the right to vote in 1920, but it was really only white women who got the right to vote.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Native Americans were not even recognized as citizens, until 1,924. Many Asian residents were not able to vote until the forties and a lot of black men and women were prevented for voting until the voting Rights Act of 1,965
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and we're going to give you these links at the end. So don't worry about them now. But there is a page at the end. You might want to use your phone to take picture. They'll have all these links. So you know, voting rights, we talk about the women really really getting the right to vote 1920, but it's been a struggle since then. Not all women got the right to vote then.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So in 1,924, the Snyder Act did grant native Americans full citizenship if they were born in the Us. But they left it up to the States to implement the act.
and it took years and years and years of fighting in individual States, and they did a lot of same things to the native American that they did to other people of color where they gave them literacy tasks. They gave them other citizenship test. They put every barrier they could think of. They refused to put any voting sites on reservations. They did all kinds of things to keep people from voting
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): same kind of thing for Asian people there in 1982, the Us. Had a Chinese exclusion act that borrowed Chinese from becoming citizens. Now I was finally repealed in 1,943,
and a leather law was passed in 1,946. That admitted Filipino and Asian Indian immigrants, but it kept a quota on how many could come in the Us. All that didn't change until the same year as the Civil Rights Voting Act being passed, which was 1965.
So you can see there's been an ongoing effort to prevent people from voting.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So the most significant Federal legislation. I'm. Voting is the Voting Rights Act of 1,965 anybody know who signed that
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): it was Lyndon Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, signed back. and this was all about racial discrimination. It secured the right for racial minorities, especially in the south. That's where most of the
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): people were trying to keep the color people from voting. It's been reauthorized 6 times with bipartisan approval, including 2,006. So you'd think you know, okay, Problem solved. We're all done right.
and it had a huge impact. It had had a massive increase in voter, turnout, and voter registration. Nearly 1 million black voters were registered within 4 years of its passage.
and it also increased the number of elected black officials in the South. So not only did it change voting rights to change. Who could run for office because you do have to register, to vote for, run to office.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): But all that kind of came to a halt
in 2,013. The Supreme Court
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): made an important ruling called Shelby versus Holder. It was a very close vote. It was 5 to 4, and it invalidated 2 key sections of that Voting Rights Act.
So what they did when they originally got the Voting Rights Act is, they gathered a lot of data that showed the discrimination that was going on, especially in Southern States. And they in this law, they said before these States who have a history of discriminating, can change their voting laws. They have to be a clearance from the Department of Justice. Doj is commonly called
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Well, that was 40 year old data By the time the Court heard this case, so they said, oh, that's all data. Discrimination doesn't go on anymore. We solve that problem Years ago.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So they used that the fact that the data was old to as a reason to overturn some of the provisions of the act. But you know, why? Was the data not showing discrimination, because this law was an effect. Wouldn't take a rocket science to figure that out.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): so they used to have to get permission from the Department of Justice before they implemented new voting laws or practices. That was the other part of the law that they struck down in the Supreme Court.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So it was severely weakened, and there was an effort in 2,022 to there was passed in the house that the Senate refused to pass legislation that would have restored all the voting right act provisions. So now we just have to depend on State courts. We can't depend on the Supreme Court to effect to protect our voting rights, which I think is kind of sad.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So what happened after Shelby versus Holder? Well, I think Texas kind of had made a bet on how they thought this case was going to go, because immediately the State of Texas implemented much stricter voter. Id laws now there was what they would accept to let people register, and both
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Alabama close polling places and counties that have predominantly black voters. So they shrunk down the number of polling places, because that means people have to have more transportation to get there. They purged hundreds of thousands of people from the voter roles without notifying them.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So how would you feel if you went to vote? And you get there? And they say, oh, we don't have you on the roles. and you don't even know that you've been purged. What can you do at that point? Because back then a lot of people had to go to the same day voting they had to vote on that one particular day. You find out you're not registered. And then they say, oh, and the registration deadline was 2 weeks ago. You can't register now.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So that's what happened to hundreds of thousands of people in Alabama. Mississippi, and Alabama also started to enforce stricter voter. Id laws that had specifically been barred by the Department of Justice. So they waiting for this law to be weakened.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and suppression continues today in 2,02118 States enacted 30 laws restricting, voting. So this is continuing. It's not like it just happened in 2,013, and it stopped
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): so States can now enact any new voting laws they want without any Department of Justice Review, and they have enacted new laws with negative effects, not just on people of color, but it's affected agent Americans disabled Americans, low income voters, working people and youth, like all of you.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So i'll give you some examples of that, and and how they're doing that. I'll go right to you. I'll let you give you a minute to look at this. But thank you. Probably most interested in you.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): The greater impact on youth is that they now will not allow people in some States to use their college photo. Id
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): for their Id to register, to vote or to vote, and they also are taking
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): the campus is off of the list of where people can both. So I think this campus has a dropbox. I know Sonoma State University has a dropbox there. We in some states they're removing those. So you have nowhere on campus to go and vote, which is very inconvenient for people
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): in California. You can choose to vote either at the campus where you're going to school, or where you, your parents reside. If you, if you still live with them when you're not attending school. Lot of states are doing away with that. They're saying, No, you've got to go back to where your parents live when it comes time to go. Well, that's not what it's convenient for people.
and then it's also had a a greater impact on black voters in particular in 2 ways. Anybody heard of souls to the polls. Anybody know what that is?
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So also the calls is a long standing tradition in the South, where people go to church in the morning, and then afterwards there are buses and vans and things like that to take them to the polling place. So when there's voting on Sundays they 10 church, they go these buses, and then they go in both.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): It's very convenient. It's almost like a celebration. It's almost like they have a voting party, and they go and vote well. In many states in the South They're getting rid of that. and they're also making it tougher to get mail ballots, because
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): male ballots are used more by black voters than any other voters. Now that may have changed during Covid. I haven't seen more post covid numbers. But that may be more a more prevalent practice way. People of all backgrounds, if you want a full story about the Shelby versus Holder and all the impacts.
Or if you want a list of all the voter suppression activities you're going on. These are 2 websites where you can go and get the full story.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and it's it's pretty shocking what's going on?
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So if voting didn't matter so much, why would they try so hard to stop us from voting. I mean even the people who don't want us to vote get the voting is important, and that's why they that's why they're trying to pick and choose who can vote and who can.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So I want to talk a little bit about all the different kinds of elections that go on because we tend to think of voting as the only
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): who's the President. What like we go to into high schools, and we register teenagers in High school, and we'll ask them, you know. Do you know who the President is? They usually know who the President is? If you ask him who's the Mayor who's the City Council member? Not a clue.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Who's sheriff? Maybe, you know I was like that when I was in high school. I didn't know who any of those people were.
and I think people are getting more sophisticated about that. But there's a lot of people have a lot of other things going on in their life. And so they. And and also, I think our society and our media kinda hype. The Presidential election is the only election that matters.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): But you're gonna see in a minute here that the midterm elections are actually just as important, maybe even more important than the Presidential election, because the midterms that are all. Halfway between the Presidential elections are where we elect people who make a lot of laws that affect us.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So one third of the Senators are elected Senator Service 66 year term. All of the members of the House of Representatives are elected because they only serve a 2 year term.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Many members of our State legislatures are elected. Many of our State governors are elected mayors and city, town and town council, members, school boards, and special districts. So there's all these levels of government where people get elected, and those people are making decisions about your lives.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): I love this quote from Daniel Anderson at Gallopedia.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and he says, Local government is the government closest to home, and decisions made at the local level often impact what your quality of life is the most each day, and that's really true. And i'm going to give you some examples of that.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So i'm going to give you an example on transportation, because transportation a lot of people are very concerned about climate change. I'm: one of them. And one of the things we're worried about is greenhouse gas emissions. And how is that going to raise our average temperature on the earth?
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Well, transportation, at least in Sonoma County produces about 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions. So more efficient travel, more public transportation, you know. Car pulling all those kind of things can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So i'm going to give you a real concrete example of why voting matters a special
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): local voting.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So this was several years ago. There was an initiative just for people who lived in the bay area to raise the bridge tolls except for Golden Gate, but all the other bridges and raise the bridge to, and that money could be used for improving transportation. So part of that money is going to go towards having Smart go up to Windsor and Heelsburg. Part of that money is going to help finish the Sonoma Marin Narrows project because you don't want
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): vehicles idling and traffic. That's one of the worst sources of greenhouse gas. and it's going to also improve highway 37, which is in jeopardy of being flooded because of global warming.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): And there's gonna be tens of millions of dollars to expand public transit. And They're also gonna use some of this money to coordinate all these different means of transit. They're They're gonna try to have all the bus systems link up with each other and share schedules. And all of this money was the result of local voters casting their balance.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and the people who decided where that money was going to go all local elected public officials that decide once to get this money. How are we going to spend it?
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So this is a huge amount of money that's affecting our community.
Here's another example: having again to do with climate change. We all know that it's really good to have renewable power, such as solar to power all our electrical needs. I don't know how many of you know, but in 2,002 the Santa Rosa City Council said, let's use our waste water for a good purpose. So they built a pipeline up to the guys or field up of Guys ago.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): where they generate steam to produce electricity, and this is 24 h a day. Solar is usually only when the sun is out. The geothermal power is 24 h a day, so it's very reliable, and we have it available when our needs are the highest, which is usually in the evening.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So they count 11 million gallons of this treated sewage water up to the geysers. It generates enough energy to to to provide the electricity for a 100,000 households in our area. I mean that's an amazing number to me Again, who did this
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): local elected officials. and once that system was in place. one of the things the League does is a little bit of advocacy for different things, and we heard that some of the local cities and towns were looking at, using renewable energy to power, their towns and services. So we sent them letters. We went and testified at their meetings. We've got other people who testified
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): all of the local cities and towns and Sonoma County have now gone to this 100% reduced Bill green energy for all their buildings and services, so that again was elected officials making our lives better.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and some other things on solar power, is the city of city Council in Sebastable. It requires all new homes to have solar panels. So the county has launched a streamlined application for people wanting to put solar on their houses, and it's kind of automatically approved as long as they meet the criteria.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Also, our regional airport is now almost a 100% powered by solar panels that are put out in that area. So they're using power from the sun to run the airport
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): again. All these were done by local elected officials minimum wage. I figure that's a subject near and dear to all our hearts. I was shocked when I looked this up. I was really shocked to see that the Federal minimum wage is $7 and 25 cents an hour I mean to me that's just
unacceptable. Well, the last time it was raised was in 2,008, so we kind of can't depend on the Federal Government on this issue. The California minimum wage is a little bit better now. It's almost it's twice as much. It's $15 and 50 cents an hour. It's still hard to make it on that amount of money. But
our local elected officials can make decisions not only about their own employees, but they can set minimum wages, which this is another issue that the League really lobbied pretty heavily with the city councils to do.
And so you'll see here all the rates for the various cities, and even the county Board of Supervisors, are much higher. You know, several dollars higher than even what we have in the State of California. So again, they are making decisions that affect your daily lives. Because even if you're not in a minimum wage job, you know, this sets the bottom. And so other jobs are going to all be higher than this. They're not going to be lower than this.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): so like who's in those offices really makes a difference.
So we give you. We gave you a couple of examples that we talked about the wages we talked about public transportation. We talked about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but they also determined the funding for police and fire services
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): mit ctl and and something new that a lot of cities are doing, is they, instead of having the police respond to a mental health crisis or a homeless crisis, they're putting together teams of social workers, emts, and other professionals, 150
that can go out and assess the problem and hopefully help the people which frees up our police and fire services to deal with crimes and fires. So again, it's elected officials deciding to use our local money to put these other programs into effect.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): They also have a lot of influence on our water supplies. The Board of Supervisors is also who runs the Water Agency.
They also do voting on zoning laws and affordable housing, which we know is an issue in Sonoma County, and much, much more. They are constantly making decisions.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): And here's a few examples of the kind of decisions they've made recently. I'll just hit a couple of them.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): The sheriff's office did an active shooter preparedness and response training at the Office of Education for the Teacher learning center, which is particularly relevant right now. We didn't have a shooter, but we did have knives on campus. We continue to have knives on campus.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Another one is the City council passing a just cause eviction ordinance, which means that a landlord can't evict somebody unless they have a just cause 2.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): And so you can see here, there's a like a day to day decisions that they're making this all happen in one week. Some more things that happen that same week is, Catati decided to repave 6 miles of their city streets. Now they're not a big city. So that was probably most of their city streets.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): City of Hillsburg created 58 new units of affordable housing.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): so they are constantly making decisions about how to spend your tax dollars. So you want to know how these people are. You want to know what they stand for? So one of the ways you can find that out
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): is through the League of Women voters, because one of the things we do is we do candidate forums, and we're nonpartisan. So we don't support or oppose any particular
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): candidate for office, and we don't tell you how to vote on them. We let you decide for yourself, but we do. Candidate forms. We record them. Now we're doing one zoom, and if you can't watch them tonight that we do them, we put them on our on our Youtube Channel, so you can go and look and see who the candidates are and decide who to vote for. And we're we're doing simultaneous translation into Spanish for that. Now, too.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): so change occurs when people vote. Now, a good thing that's happening is more. Women are running, and more people of color are running for offices in Nova County, but none of that matters unless we vote.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So where's your best source of information? I'm. Voting. Besides, the League is the registrar of voters, and they make sure elections are secure, and they make sure the machines are up and running. They train the poll workers.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and you can be a poll worker if you you want to do something about voting Ho, being a poll worker for a day or a few days is a very interesting way to do that. You don't make a lot of money, but you learn a lot
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and make sure ballots are secure at all times. Something you may not know is each ballot has its own serial number, so each ballot is unique, and a little later we'll tell you how you can track that balance so you can see where it is from the time it's mail to you till you get it. Fill it out and send it back, and it's counted.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Spell Track your ballot, it's a service by the Secretary of State, and they use that little serial number to do that.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): And I hate this really long website for the register of voters. But that's where you go to get information, and that again will be on the last. The last slide.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So voting in Sonoma County has changed recently. You may be familiar with this. If you voted in the last election we're now it's called the Voters Choice County, and you choose how and when to vote. You see, you had to go to a particular polling place to cast your ballot.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): I did that for years, or you had to get a mail ballot, and you had to request a mail ballot, but all that's changed. Now. You are automatically mail a mail ballot.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and then they have several ways for you to vote. They have drop boxes. I think there is about 20 of those in Soma County.
You can do early voting, so it's not just limited to election day. Some pulling places are open 10 days before the election. Some are 4 days so, but especially the 4 days that gives you the weekend, you know. If you have the weekend off. It gives you the weekend and Monday to vote before election day.
So there's those centers all over the county at the register of Voters website. You can find out where the host centers are, and we have been designated as a bilingual county or Spanish speaking, and that's one of the reasons we shifted to translating our candidate nights into Spanish. We wanted to serve that part of our community.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So you can check the status of your voter registration, because if you move if you change your name, there's certain things that trigger a need to go and re-register. So I go in and check this periodically, just to make sure. You know that i'm still in there the right address, and I haven't been purged from the polls, or anything like that, so you can go. I have this
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): place to check it. And then I mentioned, Track your ballot. This is where you sign up to track your ballot, which is really fun. Do it at least once. It's just fascinating to see how they can keep track of your ballot and where it is they'll send you an email or text your choice.
So here's a good all register of voters again. And then here's our website. Send also our Youtube Channel. Now you can get to our Youtube Channel from our website. There is a little button you click on the opening page. They'll take you to our Youtube Channel. That's where we have all our candidate forums.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): We have the pros and cons forums about the ballot measures and a whole lot of other really good information, and we we have a lot of information about voting on our website and links to a lot of the places where you can get information. So we're we're really good resource when it comes to voting.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So I think you probably got a sense of this from what Donna was saying. We have actually 4 levels with the legal women voters. We have the National League, which was what was established in 1,920. We have individual State League, so there's one for California. In the bay area we have sort of an intermediate level, and all the leagues in the 9 Bay area counties have a group that get together periodically, usually by zoom. And then we have our locally here in Sonoma County, and we're actually pretty old ourselves. We were established. I think it was in 1,950.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So we've been around for a long time in this county and in in the local level. It's all membership. We're all volunteers. We don't have any paid staff.
and so we just commit ourselves to doing this work. We believe in it passionately.
Our core mission. Of course you can probably guess by now is civics, education, and voter information. So just it's not enough to vote. You need to have information and make educated decisions. As I mentioned before. We're nonpartisan.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and we've been doing advocacy for quite a long time at the national level. They have positions on gun violence, reproductive rights, climate change and lots of other things. You can go to the national site and look them up and see. And we have also in our website some of the core issues that we have worked on in the past and are currently working on the climate change is when we're really passionate about right now.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So we host, as I mentioned, nonpartisan candidate forums. We do presentations on the pros and Cons and the ballot measures.
As I mentioned earlier, we visit high schools to do voter, registration and something we're hoping to do soon. Here at the Jc. And at Sonoma State University is what we call peer to peer voter registration. So we're going to train people to register their peers as a way again, to make it easier for people
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): to sign up, to register and to vote.
We distribute voter registration forums to about 90 locations in Snowy County. We want to make it as easy as possible with the well. Those are mainly at libraries and at post offices. But there's just a lot of locations we go to. And again, that's all volunteers.
and we advocate on issues. As I mentioned for us a lot, but it has to do with climate change. So we're looking at water resources, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing public transportation. But we also work on things like the minimum wage, social justice.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): criminal justice, reform. You can again go to our website and see what what things were focused on each year, and we we sort of evaluate that each year we don't just have that as a permanent thing. We can change that at any time
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): now, and a few other things we do that you may not know about is, we do interviews of local state legislators. and we talked to them about our priorities, and we talked to them about the legislation we'd like to see, and we do this in coordination with several other county leads, because it's more powerful. If you go and meet with them as a group, and we usually all have a similar concern. So we just finished that in February, and then we make a report to the State League about that
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): We have a Facebook page which i'm by you to check out, and as I mentioned the Youtube Channel, and I think we mentioned earlier. We have a
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): nice little bookmark called Voters Edge, that takes you to the Voters Edge Website, and that's where we have information from across the State about candidates and ballot measures. So that's a really good place to go at
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): election time. We do a lot of
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): having our booth out in the community, and people always tell me when I give them this
that side. I always go there every election, I mean, I hear that, and it makes me just smile. But we have a really good reputation of being really accurate and fair, and not trying to push our agenda. And so people love this website. And again we have volunteers who talk to the candidates and get them to put their information and on there. So sometimes there won't be any information. That's when a candidate's not cooperating.
and that tells me a lot about whether I want to vote for them or not. Not the whole story, but it gives me a feeling. I want to look into this person a little more.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and we have a Sonoma state intern who helps us on most of the activities I have mentioned, and they they don't do everything we assign them to do some part of that. But we use a variety of interns. And so we all get a chance to kind of experience these different parts of the Union.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So what's your part in all of this? Well, your part is to use the resources that are out there, such as ballot. Pd. Is sample battle. Look up, tool where you can find out when the election is happening, and who's running and more information about them?
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Go see your ballot and nonpartisan information at the Voters Edge website.
But you know what I do to kind of make this fun, because it can be kind of boring is I'll do it with friends. We have, like a little party where we talk about the candidates. We talk about the balance initiatives, and how do we feel about them? So it's kind of like having a little study group, and I enjoy that.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Other people like to just do it on their own, and then we want to make information available. But you know we don't know at all. So when we don't know the answer to a question, we'll refer people back to the register of Voters office because they're really the people who do know it all, and they'll give you a tour if you want. If you're very interested.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): please don't do it at election time you're too busy. But if you want to go and do a tour. It's a really fascinating place to find out how they do everything, and it was fascinating to me to find out. They check every single signature.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So your signature is important. They literally check every single signature before they they we'll count a ballot, so that's why it takes a long to get those election results. Sometimes.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): if you want to become more active in trying to change the laws, you don't like some of the laws you can contacted your elected officials. If they don't hear from you, they assume everything's fine, so I think it's important to let elected officials know what's on your mind, and if you don't know who they are.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): you can go to this website and look up and find out who they are. So I love that, and I was mentioning earlier. There's another great place to find out information about where people stand on issues. Elected officials. It's called
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): You get this right. It's called Vote smart, just the facts.org, and it's a wonderful website to look up candidates, and where they stand, who's funding them? So all done by volunteer. To this all nonpartisan, and it's amazing how much information they pulled together.
And of course, the other thing you can do is become a League member we love having new members, and you decide what level of participation you want to do. And the good news is that if you are a full time. Student. We don't charge you dues we don't try to do is until you graduate and leave college.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So that's a great opportunity to kind of check us out. Find out what we're all about, and see if we're a good match or a good fit.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): The other thing you can do is spread the word about some of the things you've heard today. Why, voting is important about the global officials and all the kinds of decisions They may talk to your family. Talk to your friends, talk to anybody that will listen basically. And if you participate in social media, you know, put some facts out there on social media teach other people how to read social media. We have a great game. We're going to be putting on our website in which it was up there. Now it's called, verify it.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and it was developed by Alameda League, and it shows you how to kind of spot fake news. So we're going to be putting actually a youth page on our website soon, and we're going to have that game verify on the website. So people could kind of learn how to spot. Fake news. I did it, and it fueled me a number of times. So it's really worth looking at and learning.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Okay, here's the link of the blast page with all the links I was promising you. I'll leave that up for a little while, and i'm happy, and i'm sure Don is happy to answer any questions if you have any questions, but anything you covered. Yes.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): you know I used to go to the candidate forums. That is how I would get a lot of my information about who to vote for. And I said, Wow! These people are not trying to
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): convinced me to do anything they're just giving me like straightforward information, and I get to see firsthand from these people themselves, the candid themselves what they think rather than somebody else, telling me what they think so. I thought, this is a good source of information, so that made me curious. You know, how do they do this? Who are these people? And I did happen to know one person in the League, and she used to volunteer to do those. So I started asking her questions, and I really liked her, and as I met other people in the League I really liked them. And I said, Wow, you know
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): I want to. I want to know more about these people, and then one of the League members asked me to cover a meeting for her, because part of what we do sometimes is, we monitor meetings, and this was a meeting about homelessness
and affordable housing, which is something near and dear to my heart. I hate the fact that we don't have enough housing for everybody, including the students at this campus.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): so she said, Well cover this meeting. I can't cover it, and so I went, and I was hooked. I found out how much I didn't know, and I wanted to learn more. So that's why the things that excites me about the League is, you can participate at whatever level you want, and you can learn as much as you want, and i'm a lifelong learner. I i'm i'm a very curious person, and i'm, and I want to know how my community works.
because if I know how it works, then maybe I can influence a little bit. If I don't know how it works. Then i'm just kind of helpless, and everybody else is going to make decisions for me, so I wanted to know how do things work, and how can I influence what's happening? And that's part of what the League gave me was information about how things work and how I can make a difference.
So those were kind of the things that it tracked me in addition to them, just being nice people, nice, friendly people.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): And then one more question: how long have you been a part of the lead, and how has it changed over? We had a lot of very different collections.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Yes, we have. Yes, we have. Well, I was got involved. I think it's probably been about 6 years now. I've been involved. I mean, I used to attend. You know the events they would put on, but it wasn't a member. So about 6 years ago, after I retired, I said, okay, I have more time now. I'm not working full time. So I joined then, and yes, we saw our membership bump up when we've had certain elections and go back down. And you know, Covid really changed what we do because we're so much out in the community, and we had to go. Who can't do that anymore? How are we gonna do this.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So we kind of stopped our community events where we went out, and we'd have a booth. But we switched the things that were most important to us. Like our meetings and our candidate forums and our posing conforms. We moved all that to zoom. None of us knew how to do. Zoom. We wished we'd had some of you around, but we learned, you know we were very motivated, so we learned how to use zoom, and it was very amazing to us how that made a difference in people participating in the candidate for so we used to have, you know.
100 people. Maybe if it was a sheriff's race. We'd have 200 people come to a candidate tonight. Well, you know the last year, not this year, but the previous year, when we did the just the midterm candidate forums. We did them all on zoom, and then we put them on our Youtube Channel so people can watch them on zoom live streaming on Youtube or Facebook, or afterwards on Youtube.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): 5 over 5,000 people watched our candidate, Youtube videos. So it was like, okay, we're gonna keep doing this, and I think 450 of those people were watching it in Spanish.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): and we just got the numbers, so i'm not sure i'll remember this exactly. But we had a similar. you know, huge boost to the number of people watching our pros and cons forms. We do those separately. But I we still. This year we did some of those live, but it was recorded on zoom. And so we've really been able to reach a lot more people which surprised us. I mean we weren't expecting that it was a good surprise. There are some little silver lightings in this whole Covid thing.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): but we're we're still kind of adjusting, because we used to do we? We do socials where we just get together and just kind of get to know each other and celebrate what we've done, and that had to stop during Covid. But we've held a couple of those this year people mask or don't mask it's their choice. So yeah, we kind of had to reevaluate how we do things. I think our mission is stayed the same. But the how has changed
other questions that anybody has.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): We're where you need to do a lot of work on that. The diversity is not particularly good. We do have man. We do have a few people of color, but we want to improve that. We want to increase that.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So we're trying to. We just adopted a partnership statement. The board just adopted that we're hoping to work more with the naacp. We have work with Lucy, and for several years, and do we do things together with them. Sometimes, like we work together educating people about redistricting. And that came up. So we're hoping to do more with other groups, so that we can have my more diversity. I mean the League tends to look like me right. An older, retired woman who has time on her hands. But we want to change that we want younger
people. We want people to come. We want to reflect. A community is really what we want.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Yeah.
we're really not doing anything for migrant workers right now. They're not. They're not citizens. They can't vote
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): So there's not a lot that we can offer them or me.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): Well, we do go out. We do go out in the community, and we're trying to go out where we might encounter. You know people from all walks of life because we want to let them know. I mean.
Purnur Ozbirinci (she/her): in a way we talk about them as future voters, because they may want to become citizens, and they may not know how to get help with that. So those are all potential voters in my my thought. So we'll go to like the festival that Independenceia will go to a low c. An event. We'll go to different places where people already are. We go to the.