The Indivisible Chico Insider - November 26th, 2025
- indivisiblechicote
- Nov 26
- 6 min read
This week in Action: An Update from Indivisible Chico!
It's been a relentless year for anyone concerned about the state of democracy. The exhausting reality of civic action is that you're constantly asked to drink from a firehose of national problems while still running your 24/7 life—balancing work, school, family care, and the simple need for rest.
As the busy holiday season approaches, we want to start with a crucial reminder:
Your activism is a marathon, not a sprint, and your community needs you to be rested and safe.
Our Holiday Mission: Prioritize Joy and Community.
If you’re receiving this email, you are a member of Indivisible Chico, and your participation in our shared democracy is essential. As you head into winter gatherings, travel, and family commitments, please treat your rest as a core part of your civic duty.
Focus on these two things in the coming weeks:
Celebrate the Small Wins: Authoritarian efforts thrive on making you feel overwhelmed. Push back by recognizing every small victory in your daily life and in our work together. If you wrote one letter, if you made it to one meeting, if you had one civil conversation with a relative—that’s a win! Keep track of those moments to help shine a light through the seasonal darkness of the Winter Solstice in December.
Double Down on Community: The holidays are a celebration of unity, which is inherently democratic. Remember participation in community and sharing joy are fundamental human needs. Lean into those family interactions and work parties and bring clear-eyed good will and fun. Our human connections are the grassroots foundation of our movement.
Take the time you need to recharge, connect, and celebrate. The opportunities for both engagement and rest will continue as the new year begins, so stay ready for the next phase of our work.
It’s easy to have feelings of anger, frustration, or to be overwhelmed. But hold off the impulse to act on them. As 2026 approaches, we are far from done. Our strategic response is not simply to protest, but to fight back with joy and whimsy, focusing on how we can continue to resist with radical care.
When the pressures of the day try to grind you down, choose to lean into hope. Find the way you want to bring light into the world, and do more of that. Our collective joy is the most powerful antidote to the exhaustion the manipulators behind the curtain want you to feel.
Do not give them the satisfaction of your silence or your surrender.
We will continue this work together into 2026.
A Note of Thanks for No Kings 2.0
Our team has been out of commission for the last month, so we want to catch up on some important business in line with the week’s festivities.
In October we issued the challenge and Chico showed up! With over 1,000 people who made it out to Wildwood Park and over 5,000 who marched downtown, Chico added more than 6,000 to the global tally of folks who made it clear: No Kings in America.
For those keeping score, that's the second event so far where Chico has turned out more than 3 5% of the local population. Let's keep it up!
Shoutout to the locals who signed on to help out:
Gender and Sexuality Equity Coalition (GSEC)
Ya Ya's Jackets
Peruvian Products
Julianna Rose Photos
Face Painting by Marina Johnson-Welsh
Brit Blows
Baked Love
Chico Palestine Advocacy
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
So… What's next?
That's a great question! We have a few ideas, but we want to hear from you! There are a lot of things we can do together to bring awareness to the issues our local representatives are willfully ignoring that impact our lives here in District 1. What do you want to see happen? If you have ideas for future events, we set up a form here here so you can share them and we’ll try to help bring our community’s ideas to life!
Comedy, Cocoa, and Community Care!
Mark your calendars for our final general meeting of the year! Our next meeting is scheduled for Sunday, December 7th, at 5:00 PM. We're leaning into the fun of the season and putting our collective joy into action.
What to Expect:
Laughter & Joy: We are thrilled to welcome Chico's very own improv troop, Okay, Whoa!, who have volunteered a free show to boost our spirits and practice fighting back with fun.
Picnic Potluck: Dinner is on us—well, us and you! We'll be doing picnic-style dining. Please bring a dish to share with the community, (home cooked or not), or pack something delicious just for yourself.
Festive Fashion: Dig out your best, your worst, or your most cheerful holiday sweaters! Ugly or otherwise, let’s bring the festive spirit.
Admission: Bring Your Care!
As always, the meeting is free and open to all. The only cost of admission is your presence!
However, we encourage anyone who can to support our local neighbors in need. We will be collecting donations for local food banks and shelters:
Non-perishable food items
Clean, warm winter coats
New, unwrapped toys
Come celebrate a challenging year, share some laughs, and recharge with your community. See you there!
Mark Your Calendar!
Volunteer Call to Action
Though we are not a large group yet, we are mightily committed to doing all we can to keep our democracy! We want to grow and would love to recruit a volunteer wrangler. Somebody who can answer emails more quickly than our team's current scramble and help get people working on the projects important to them.
Know anyone who is social and likes to keep track of multiple people and tasks at once? Point them our way!
What We're Reading, Watching, and Otherwise
You might have heard of the We Ain't Buying It movement over the past year. Indivisible has gotten involved nationally to help spread the push for creating more conscious consumers. All of us can put our money where our values are.
It's a simple way to participate in making a statement without even leaving home! For the rest of the month, don't buy anything from the corporations disrespecting American dignity by killing DEI initiatives, underpaying employees, or supporting ICE.
The three companies to avoid this season:
Target
Amazon
the Home Depot
Sign the We Ain't Buying It pledge to help send the message to the corporations that we will only support those businesses that invest in our communities and strengthen our national democracy.
There's an alternative to supporting harmful corporations: Buy Local! Encourage your family and friends to shop local, too. You can learn more about boycotts, and their alternative, the buycott, with our blog post on how to vote with your wallet.
We're compiling a list of local businesses and will have it up on our website soon. If you know of some local shops that could use some love this shopping season, drop us an email to tell us about it and we'll make sure they're included on our local buycott list!
If you're invested in bookgiving, we highly suggest Joyce White Vance's book Giving Up is Unforgivable for those friends and family who might be struggling under the strain of the marathon we've found ourselves in. It is a timely, useful read.
And it's always worth remembering, in our current era of inflated holiday present costs, that former President Reagan didn't like tariffs, either.
Tis' The Season of Thanks
Whether you wish folks a Happy Thanksgiving, a Happy Harvest, or a Happy Wolfenoot, it's the season of being thankful for the harvest to get us through the winter. The good folks of CA District 1 have gotten Indivisible Chico through the year so far, so we want to offer our sincerest thanks for all you have helped us and the other area organizations accomplish in our few months as a group! From a small group of 75 people to crowds of hundreds of civically active constituents making their voices heard, you showed up for Chico and our democracy in colorful ways! Keep it up!
