We have lots of news to report since our last newsletter in April, along with some ways for you to take action now - join us at our next two events, take our short survey, request your ballot for US elections, and contact your senators about the Big Bad Bill and the SAVE Act.
May 12 Rally in Oslo
As requested by DAN members participating in our March Town Hall, on May 12 we held a rally for the Constitution at Stortinget to coincide with President Obama’s first visit to Oslo since receiving the Nobel peace prize and Norway’s Constitution Day a few days later. Speakers all focused on Trump and his minions in the administration and in Congress’ disdain for the rule of law and what we can do about it. More than 100 people turned out with signs, songs, and determination from as far away as Stavanger and Trondheim. The rally was covered by Dagsavisen. A condensed video of the rally can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAfpMEWrDXc
New DAN Executive Committee (ExCom)
The Annual General Meeting and the election for DAN Executive Committee members was held on June 4th. DAN’s Nominations and Elections Committee announced our newly elected leaders, who represent a blend of new faces in new roles and familiar faces in different roles:
Chair – Erica Gibson
Vice Chair – David Morse
Secretary – Joy Buikema Fjaertoft
Treasurer – Pat Gunn
Counsel – Sam Shannon
Voting Representatives – Christina Skovsgaard and Andy Stites
Members at Large – Pam Price and Leif Marcussen
No Dictators Day
On June 14, DAN held a protest and picnic in Oslo’s Frogner Park in coordination with hundreds of events across the US and around the world to push back against the self-serving and ridiculously expensive birthday party/Soviet-style military parade conjured up by the President and his cronies. Close to 150 DAN members, family and friends came out and bravely spoke out against the Administration’s craven, kleptocratic decimation of American democracy. You can find videos of DAN’s No Dictators Day’s speeches and calls for action on our social media including Instagram, Facebook, and our new Bluesky account. Aftenposten reported on the protest (paywall). The Oslo protest was also featured by Indivisible.
Upcoming Events
Senator Tammy Baldwin speaks to DA, Wednesday June 25th 18:00 CET
We are thrilled to invite you to a special Pride Month event featuring U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. As the first openly LGBTQ+ woman elected to both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Senator Baldwin has been a progressive voice and steadfast advocate for equality and human rights. She was the principal sponsor of the Respect for Marriage Act and is one of the key sponsors of the Equality Act.
All DA events are open to all members regardless of where you live.
38th Annual American Independence Day Celebration
The American Coordinating Council of Norway will once again host an American Independence Day celebration in Frognerparken on Sunday, 29 June from 12:00-17:00. DAN will have a table at this always fun event. There will be delicious American food, live entertainment, sports, a children's festival packed with games and activities, and of course the much-anticipated watermelon-eating contest! We hope to see you and your favorite Norwegian-Americans there.
Register HERE for your FREE entry!
Pub Night is on hiatus until after summer break. We will resume our monthly meeting at Brygg in Oslo on the second Tuesday in August and will continue our bi-monthly café roundtable in August.
Short survey
In order to keep up the momentum from our rally and No Dictators Day, we would like to know which of the many issues /disasters coming at us daily from the Trump firehose most concern you and what you would like to see from DAN moving forward. This will also help us prepare for our next Town Hall in the fall. Please complete this short survey to let us know what you think and what DAN can best do for you.
Request your absentee ballot for 2025 NOW.
If you haven’t done so already, please apply for an absentee ballot, especially if you are from a state that allows down ballot voting. There are thousands of races for offices this year for governor, state legislators, judges, local officials and others. And many state have voting issues on the ballot. Only IN, KY, and NV have no elections in 2025.
Many thanks to everyone for voting in 2024; 83% of our membership used Votefromabroad.org to register and request their ballots. Thanks to the National Voter Registration Act and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), it’s easy to register to vote. But different and confusing state rules for voting, even in federal elections, makes it hard for overseas voters to exercise their right to vote. Less than 10% of eligible overseas voters actually voted in the 2020 presidential election; less than 4% in the 2022 congressional elections. And the SAVE Act (see below) would drive these dismal numbers down further. We must do better. Click the button below to find out more:
Pending Legislation
The Big Bad Billionaires Bill (a.k.a. budget reconciliation) passed the House by one vote last month and is now being fast-tracked by Trump and his henchmen in the Senate. It’s too chock full of awful stuff to list everything in it that makes us want to be sick but it’s basically the legislative codification of Project 2025. Details here, including how to tell your Senators to vote HELL NO, at:
Save us from the SAVE Act
The so-called SAVE Act passed in the House (HR 22) and has been referred to the Senate Rules Committee in the Senate. If enacted, it will create barriers to voting for millions of American citizens living in the US and abroad, by requiring all eligible voters to register in person at their local election office with a passport or certified birth certificate. It's a wolf of voter suppression in the sheep's clothing of "protecting" your vote, intended to make voting a privilege for the few rather than a right of all citizens under the Constitution. Trump and his Republican minions in Congress are trying cynically to solve a problem – voting by noncitizens – that doesn’t exist. The SAVE Act will cost US taxpayers billions of dollars to establish a new state and local-level bureaucracies just to keep you from voting. Call or email your Senator, whether Democrat, Republican or Independent.
A Final Word
We all can feel beaten down by the horrible news coming at us every day from a craven Administration and its congressional crew, and we know you’re inundated by pleas to help stop the madness. Indeed, many of you are making those pleas. Now is the time to get up and fight back. It’s not just up to us as DAN leadership to do that. We will try to reach out to you only when it’s essential for you to know and/or act, but you will be receiving more emails from us than usual as we try to save our democracy.
To quote Dr. King, we’re appealing to “the fierce urgency of now.” We will be nudges, because if we don’t win, legislatively, electorally, in the judiciary and the court of public opinion, we can kiss our constitutional right to express our opinion goodbye, wherever we are. The stakes are that high.
Thanks for listening and taking action.