It’s easy to feel helpless in our current political climate. But there really is a lot you can do. 

Join Us

All are welcome. We meet on second and fourth Wednesday from 7-9 p.m. at the Congregational Church at 225 Tilton Ave. near downtown San Mateo.

If you can’t attend our meetings, you can always subscribe (through the “Follow”-button at the bottom of this page) to receive email updates from this site.

Make sure to check the events listings on this website for other functions you might attend.

Pay Attention

Pay attention to what’s going on in your community, and pay attention to what politicians are doing.

Read your local news with a critical eye. And for an alternative source of news, free from being beholden to advertisers and other powerful economic interests, check out our News You Can Use feature where we aggregate local and national news and opinion that might be of illuminating interest to you.

Learn

Housing, like many other issues of societal importance, is a complicated topic. The more you know about it, the better you will be able to participate in the struggles around it.

The Information & Resources section of this website attempts to be a compendium of rigorous information on housing. When you read up on some of the in-depth research on housing, you may find that the issue is very different from how it is presented by politicians and the media.

One San Mateo is also glad to hold Information Empowerment Sessions with any groups that would like to contact us.

Raise Your Voice

Share your story with The San Mateo Housing Stories Project.

Write your local newspaper.

Attend vigils and demonstrations.

Participate in important discussions that concern you.

You can check our events listings for these and many other ways you can raise your voice.

Lobby

Contact all of your representatives—from your city council members, to your county supervisors, to your state assembly people and senators, to your United States senators and congressional representatives.

Here is a resource for how to contact some of these people.

Vote

Vote in every election. Don’t just vote because the particular circumstances compel you to; vote because you want to compel those circumstances. The powerful depend on the disenfranchised not turning out in as large of numbers to vote as those who dutifully vote to maintain the status quo.

If you have done some of these things and are on your way to doing all you can, then you can take pride in the fact that you are part of the solution and not part of the problem. Moreover, you are playing a role in one of the most important civil rights fights of our day.