Dear RUN,

In the last three weeks, hundreds of you joined us for virtual convenings to brainstorm for 2021. We started off in San Diego with some show-and-tell from our houses, then zipped over to LA where veterans and newbies combined forces. We did a joint convening with the San Joaquin Valley and Sacramento regions, then popped over to Orange County the next morning, where Spanish-speaking local leaders welcomed other Spanish-speaking RUN members from across the state. Then we finished with an enthusiastic Bay Area crowd on Friday!

I know you’re chomping at the bit to see what everyone’s ideas were. Here’s a tiny preview: a lot of you care about making sure tenants are protected during COVID, protected space for unhoused people, and real requirements to build affordable housing. But to really see what we came up with, join us on Wednesday’s Community Care call. We’ll take the next two weeks to streamline our lists, then send out a survey with narrowed ideas at the end of the month. Watch this space for that survey when it’s out!

After you all take the survey, we’ll meet up to use that information and choose RUN’s final priorities for 2021 at the Summit. You can apply now to attend that Summit, which will take place on December 3 and 4, a Thursday and Friday. We’ll meet up for an hour and a half in the morning and afternoon on Thursday and two hours on Friday morning, if you’re wondering - final times coming soon.

If you added your voice to the There Ought To Be A Law process, stay involved all the way through and join us for the next steps!

Take good care,

Tori

Connect with RUN

• Community Care calls are BACK. Want to help sort through the 224 ideas that RUN members across the state came up with during There Ought To Be A Law convenings in the last two weeks? Join us this Wednesday 10/21 at 1pm to see them and start to narrow them down. Here’s the Zoom link, or you can call in at 669 900 6833, Meeting ID 963 6157 2844.
• You’ve got 9 more days to register for the virtual RUN Summit, happening Dec. 3 and 4, 2020, where we’ll choose RUN’s final priorities for 2021 based on the brainstorms from There Ought To Be A Law. You’ll also get powerful training to set us up for research actions with legislators in January. Apply here through October 28.
• Are you interested in how California could use future federal stimulus money for housing? Join a webinar with Lourdes Castro Ramirez and Jason Elliott and ask questions in the chat! It’s tomorrow 10/20 from 10-11am and you can register here.

News you can use

• “Everything is impossible until it’s not. I want to be in a world where we’re thinking about what we need, not just what we think we can get.” Here’s a long, vivid story about the national tenants’ rights movement - and how the writer, who also wrote Evicted, learned to think bigger about how to fix the housing crisis.
• Here’s a look at the life and art of Ronnie Goodman, a Black unhoused artist who died in August in San Francisco. He should still be here with us, but we can honor him by spreading his message.