Whitehall Indivisible: Mark Your Calendars

Whitehall Indivisible (WI)’s calendar is filling, and we encourage people of all political stripes to come and hear what our guest speakers have to say—it really can’t hurt to listen to someone talk, even if you disagree. Because we value the opportunity to make our own decisions about candidates and issues, we will continue to invite local politicians who will appear on our future ballots, regardless of party.

Defiance.org is a new organization spearheaded by Miles Taylor, a former DHS official. This organization has a national scope and will offer options for individuals seeking specific actions to push back against authoritarianism. Several of us will experiment with this platform and report back.

We learned about a local 15-year-old using an interactive web platform to work a phone bank to help people get registered to vote, and we will collect phone bank opportunities and share them at meetings.

The company Zignal has been hired by ICE to collect real-time data from people’s phones through “social listening” in both online and offline formats. “Offline social listening” means your phone is funneling data about what you say, see, and hear when you are not specifically engaged in an online activity.

Data collection on US citizens is legal thanks to the post-9/11 PATRIOT Act, which was pitched as a trade-off between privacy and safety. A cynic might ask how selling citizens’ data to commercial businesses keeps us safe, because yes, commercial entities can also pay for Zignal’s services, not just ICE.

We heard back from Trevor Walter, conservative candidate for Montana’s HD 69, and he will be scheduling with us in January. Matt Rains from Simms (Eastern District), but running in the Western District against Zinke, has not responded to our efforts to contact him.

Mark Reinschmidt will present at our regular meeting on November 20.

This Thursday, from 6 PM to 7:30 PM, Whitehall Indivisible will welcome Sam Lux, candidate for the US House of Representatives in 2026 against Troy Downing. We will meet in a classroom across the hall from the Whitehall School library, since the library is hosting a book fair.

Whitehall Indivisible is a nonpartisan, anti-authoritarian group of locals who meet and discuss current events on a local to an international scale. We welcome new faces and new perspectives, and we have snacks. We hope to see you.