Fighting Gerrymandering: It started with the microphone

GERRYMANDERING in Utah - Report on the Public meeting in Logan, Utah on

November 3rd for an initiative to repeal of Utah law (Proposition 4) requiring fair House district maps be drawn 

It started with the microphone. Well, it started with the chairs. On Monday, November 3, former Congressman Rob Bishop, a Republican from Brigham City, Utah, appeared in a meeting room in the Logan Library to conduct a hearing (which it really wasn’t) for a proposed initiative to go on the 2026 ballot. There were about 20 chairs. Several of us said they’d need more chairs. Mr. Bishop was doubtful. With about 50 people at the start of the meeting, and about 75 at its peak, we added a lot of chairs over the original 20 or so that they had put out.  And a few people stood. 

 Mr Bishop started the hearing with some opening remarks on his topic – the effort to repeal the results of Proposition 4 (Prop. 4) which is a voter approved Initiative in 2018 that created an independent redistricting commission to determine fair political district maps for elections of our four Congress persons in Utah. This became law. The Prop. 4 process was tried in 2021, and then the our state legislature ignored the recommended maps enacting their own, gerrymandered maps splitting Salt Lake City County into 4 districts. Lawsuits took years and in 2025 our State Supreme Court said they couldn’t ignore Prop. 4 because it is law.  After which Republican members of the state legislature wanted to change how state supreme court judges are selected, and started to find new ways to ignore laws created by voter approved initiatives.  

Rob Bishop has a quiet voice - unusual for a former state representative, congressman, and a teacher.  So I spoke up and asked him to use a microphone.  He seemed annoyed by the request, and he blamed the lack of a microphone on the library -  “the library was supposed to set that up for us, but they didn’t do it”.  After which a woman (who was not introduced) there to run the meeting with him, went to the anteroom, found a microphone, turned it on.  Problem solved in about 15 seconds. From Rob Bishop’s long experience, one would have thought that he’d have worked out how to be heard by people.

The hearing is a requirement for any group hoping to put an Initiative on the Utah ballot.  The group must have at least seven hearings, one in each of seven regions of the state, and meet other conditions, few of which seem to help shape the language or intent of the initiative - they seem to be impediments to ever getting an initiative on the ballot.  This is, of course, by design, as new rules were passed in the last 10 years to make initiatives more difficult in Utah.  Logan, the 17th largest town in Utah, was at the time, the largest city to have a hearing. The law that governs the initiative process doesn’t give any guidance as to how the hearings should run.  Rob Bishop outlined their rules for the hearing, which it wasn’t – no questions allowed or to be read into the record.  This wasn’t a debate; we were not there to discuss policy.  People would be given 2 minutes to make a statement.  We could make only statements - questions would not be recorded into whatever record was going to be made.  After 60 minutes of statement time, the hearing was over. The 60 minutes is required by law.

Run for School boards!

There are three seats are up in 2026 for the Cache County School Board; 2 in Logan.  These are nonpartisan races.

Members of the school boards help guide the policies and practices of the education in our public 

schools, and oversee the budgets for the system.   Help public education and the kids in our valley!

Run for Cache County Council !

Its only 31 days until the filing window opens for 2026 elections in Utah!  There are 3 county council seats up for election - Northeast, Logan 3, and Southeast.   Thanks to Milo Anderson for the great graphic!  Tell your friends.  County council races are partisan.  Logan 3 voted for the Harris/Walz ticket in 2024.  Note - the deadline to file MAY shift to later in the year, depending on the outcome of the legislative special session on Dec. 9.  

 

Tele TownHall - Rep. Blake Moore.

 Apologies for the late notice.  Rep. Blake Moore will have a tele townhall today, Thursday, Nov 20, at 12 pm MST, 

833 305 1678

Know your rights Workshop Nov 20 7 pm

 Please attend the ACLU Know Your Rights workshop focusing on issues related to immigration enforcement. We highly encourage any and all to attend. Please share the invitation widely - 7:00 pm on 11/20 in the Logan Library Community Rooms A&B.

Action Items for Week of Nov 17-22

 Hello all.  We hope you are well. Here are several items of interest.

1. WeThePeople meeting. Thursday, Nov. 20, 5:00-6:30 pm, Crepery, 29 West Center, Logan, basement room.  We have two agenda items.

A. Starting shortly after 5 pm, we will have a Q&A with Peter Crosby, who is planning to run for U. S. Congress in the newly defined 2nd congressional district. This will be an informal meeting to hear about Peter’s background, and for us to ask him questions. Please join us to talk with Peter. It appears that at least 3 of the 4 congressional districts in Utah will have strong candidates to challenge incumbents in 2026. 

B. The remaining time will be some brainstorming about our next actions - how can our group work with others to build communities, work on furthering progress in Cache Valley and beyond, etc.

This meeting is right before another important effort by Our Community Cache Valley (please see below) so please order some food before our meeting if you need to, and we will start and end our meeting promptly so we can get to the Library.) 

2. The filing period for most electoral races in 2026 starts Jan 2, and ends Jan 6, 2026.  We will soon post details of what local races are open, and short descriptions of the positions.  Please consider running or asking or suggesting others to run!  We will continue to work at enlarging our candidate AND voter bases in 2026!

3. Housekeeping and bookkeeping.  Thanks to the efforts of Laurie McNeill, we have updated mailing lists - this email uses what is hopefully the last of our ‘old’ lists and we aim to reduce the number of double emails that resulted from Jim not updating some of our lists.  And THANKS  to all of you who helped refill the Janecke-Evans coffers for our outlays this year.  Due to your generosity, we are basically ‘made whole’ AND our group will have donated over $1000 to the Cache Community Food Pantry.  

POLLING SHOWS: Legal immigrants are valued community members

Mass Deportation, mass cruelty, widespread lawlessness has backfired:  

PBS Newshour

Immigrants are more popular than ever

American know that ICE and Border Patrol engage in lawless thuggery

In some instances, they attempt murder.  Google "Chicago martinez shooting Exum brag"

They ACTUALLY MURDER People too:

Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, 38, was pulled over and eventually shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Franklin Park, Illinois on September 12, just after dropping off his two children at Passow Elementary School and Small World Learning Center, a daycare located blocks away from the incident.

Democrats and independents approve of a path

 to citizenship for undocumented workers.

Overall 65% of Americans agree on this

American Support for Legal Immigration Reaches New HeightsOctober 9, 2025-NEW STUDY

RESEARCHPUBLIC OPINION SURVEY BY SAM DONG AND CRAIG KAFURA

Key Findings

• Record or near-record numbers of Americans support increasing (28%) or maintaining current levels (49%) of legal immigration, while opposition to legal immigration is at an all-time low (21%).
• Just 36 percent of Americans see large numbers of immigrants and refugees arriving in the country as a critical threat, down from 50 percent last year.
• Two-thirds of Americans (65%) say immigrants currently working in the United States illegally should be able to apply for US citizenship, either immediately (43%) or after a penalty and waiting period (22%).
• Only a minority overall favor forcing undocumented workers to leave their jobs and the country altogether (23%), relatively unchanged from last year’s figure (20%).
• (Federal policy is out of step with public opinion.)

Support for Legal Immigration Hits All-Time High

Support for legal immigration has hit an all-time high since the Chicago Council Survey first asked this question in 2002. Today, half of Americans (49%) say that legal immigration into the United States should be kept at its present level, up from 44 percent in 2024. That percentage includes similar proportions across partisan groups, with half of Republicans (52%) and nearly as many Independents (48%) and Democrats (47%) in support of maintaining the present level of legal immigration.

Correspondingly, support for decreasing legal immigration has dropped from one-third of Americans (33%) last year to just one-fifth today (21%). This reverses a four-year upward trend from a previous record low of 27 percent in 2020. The timing suggests that Biden-era policies, perceived by many to be ineffectual on a surge of illegal migration on the southwest border, also affected perceptions of migration through legal routes. Under the second Trump administration, attitudes have reversed.

What Americans think about Trump’s deportations right now

Politics Updated on Jul 1, 2025 2:11 PM EDT — Published on Jul 1, 2025 5:00 AM EDT

As President Donald Trump seeks to keep his campaign promise of mass deportations, a majority of Americans say actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have “gone too far,” according to a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.

More than half of U.S. adults — 54% — described ICE’s actions in enforcing the country’s immigration laws as having “gone too far.” Another 18% percent said the agency has not gone far enough, while 26% said they’d describe ICE’s actions as “about right.”

pew

Five Immigrants To America Won 2024 And 2025 Nobel Prize In Economics

ByStuart Anderson,

Senior Contributor.

 Stuart Anderson writes about immigration, business and globalization.

Oct 13, 2025, 04:25pm EDT

PEW Research center

Source: Pew

ICE Serves Only to Terrorize and Occupy Americans

It's no longer just undocumented immigrants, Muslims, Black people, & pro-Palestinian activists who are targets. As ICE violently marches across American cities, the majority must stand up & resist.

THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali

 and 

Tara Setmayer

Oct 13, 2025

ICE is so cruel, extreme, and viciousin terrorizing fellow Americans that they have radicalized a former Republican who grew up in a law enforcement family and spent her career backing the Blue. Tara Setmayer, who left the GOP after Trump took over the party in 2016, spent most of her career as a conservative warrior promoting the Republican agenda. Now, she’s joining the majority and calling out Stephen Miller and Trump’s Gestapo that is abusing the badge to harass and assault innocent Americans.  more

ACTION in Utah: one of several: mid November

 THANK YOU FOR TAKING ACTION!

Please call your state lawmakers, post on social media, and speak with your neighbors in opposition to a GIANT ICE DETENTION CENTER IN UTAH

Author

UTAH has been spared the worst ICE actions in 2025 but that could change if a 10,000 bed detention center were built here.

• Governor Cox welcomes this dangerous plan
• Such a camp would increase the capacity by a factor of 3!!!!!
• Utah currently has ~ 5000 correctional beds.
• If Utah truly welcomes the world for the Olympics in 2034, having ICE racially profiling residents and visitors is "a bad look".
• Detention centers are incubators for diseases, particularly when many reports of unsanitary conditions, no clean water, lack of hygiene, overcrowding, and scores of violations occur. COVID outbreaks are a worry and they could overwhelm rural health systems
• Cruel and unusual punishment is reported in many facilities,
• Oversight has been stopped-illegally, amid a four-fold increase in deaths within such facilities
• Conditions are so bad that Republican House member Mike Kennedy has submitted a bill requiring that minimum standards be met at all federal detention. facilities.
• One ICE facility is known for its maggots and numerous runs of ambulances

THE ACTION ITEM:

Please Call your state lawmakers, post on social media, and speak with your neighbors in opposition to a detention Center in Utah

More Talking points:

• Inhumane treatment of our neighbors is in violation of the fundamental tenets of almost every world religion.
• Inhumane conditions are well-documented in several detention centers and the rates of death have climbed under this dictatorship. 
• https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/07/21/you-feel-like-your-life-is-over/abusive-practices-at-three-florida-immigration 
• 
  
  
• The conditions there—dirty cells crammed with dozens of detainees, limited drinking water, cold sandwiches for meals, open toilets—were so appalling that a federal judge on Tuesday called them “disgusting.”
• The first year of the second Trump administration has been even deadlier than 2020, when the unchecked COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the high death toll in detention facilities. SOURCE:  AMERICAN IMMIGRATION 
  COUNCIL. in late October 23 persons have died.
• People have also died, been shot at, assaulted, and harmed in other ways as agents attempt to round up people for detention centers:
• Marimar Martinez, in Chicago was warning her community of immigration enforcement actions. Annoyed by this, agents boxed in her car, hit and damaged her car, then Exum, a border Patrol Agent  called her a b@@@@ and fired 5 bullets into her at point blank range.  Amazingly she survied this attempted murder. Exum drove his damage government vehicle to Maine, requested that the damage on the vehicle be repaired, destroying evidence of his aggression, and he boasted of his marksmanship in a group chat.  Original false claims by the federal government asserted that citizen Martinez was one of 10 vehicles that boxed in agents, and that she brandished a gun. 
•  Jaime Alanís, 57, died a day after falling off a greenhouse roof during an immigration raid of a cannabis farm.
• Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, 38, was pulled over and eventually shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Franklin Park, Illinois on September 12, just after dropping off his two children at Passow Elementary School and Small World Learning Center, a daycare located blocks away from the incident. Federal agency falsely claimed he has dragged a federal agent but video evidence clearly refutes this claim.
• Utah ALREADY has a black mark for its Japanese-American detention center at Topaz Mountain.  Let's not repeat that history.
• Sheriffs and Police Chiefs in Utah do NOT welcome ICE or Border Patrol into our communities.  Logan, Utah led the way in hosting a packed community meeting to inform the public about policies and laws that impact our immigrant communities.
• UPR story about the meeting (except that the audience had >100-110 people in attendance, not ~60).
• Herald Journal's Article about the meeting.
• ICE and Border Patrol have a well-documented record of lying about their actions, their intentions, and several judges have rules them to be 'unreliable' and liars.
• Chief Bovino lied in court about actions in Chicago and was called out by a judge for the lies.  Bovino admitted to lying, according to some reports.

ACTIONS WE CAN TAKE:

    TRAIN to protect our neighbor

Several trainings exist:

one option

Another option