And Still We Vote
In the black community, voting has always been complicated.
We voted and yet you lynched us.
We voted and yet you incarcerated us.
We voted and you poisoned our water.
We voted and you tested your nerve gas on our soldiers.
We voted and you dissected, poked, and prodded our women's bodies as though they were little more than lab rats.
We voted and you redlined us into segregated cities that you knew were in flood zones, too close to the power plant, polluted with brown fields and toxic waste.
We voted but you taxed and gentrified us out of the cities to which we fled to seek asylum from the scourge of racial terrorism.
We voted in our own officials, bankers, barbers, beauticians, teachers, preachers, educators, and scientists, but you bombed and burned our Black Wall Streets to the ground. Then you voted to build a highway through it.
We voted and you called us "super predators" after we told you we needed better employment, better education, better healthcare for our sick and elderly, and land to plant and harvest healthy foods and vegetables.
By Delonte Gholston (lead pastor at Peace Fellowship Church, a multicultural, multi-socioeconomic community in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C.)
How do you defeat voter suppression tactics when it’s fueled by billionaires’ cash and partisan power? The same way the Voting Rights Act was first won 50 years ago.
[video:https://youtu.be/xxl36fQS7sc]
“The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is a searing indictment of a rigged electoral system where hundreds of thousands of people of color are routinely denied the right to vote. Palast [is] one of our great investigative reporters… If you are not outraged by what Palast has uncovered you have no heart.” – Chris Hedges
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Historian Carol Anderson — author of "One Person, No Vote" — walks us through the timeline of truly free and fair elections in the United States, a period she says lasted from the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 until a fateful Supreme Court decision in 2013. That triggered a wave of voter ID laws, voter roll purges, and other tactics that Anderson says come out of the Jim Crow playbook for voter suppression.
Just 48 Years Of Free and Fair Elections
On Nov. 8, 2016, Crystal Mason, an African-American mother of three, went to the polls and voted. Hers was a provisional ballot, however, as she hadn’t been to her polling place near Fort Worth, Texas, for several years. She had been in prison for tax-related offenses, and was under federal supervised release. “I went to the local church, where I went before I went to prison, to vote,” she said on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. “When they looked on the roster, they realized my name wasn’t there … when I got ready to walk away, they stopped me and they told me, ‘Hey, you can fill out a provisional ballot. … If you’re at the right location, it will count. And if you’re not, it won’t.’ I didn’t see any harm with that. So the lady sat me down and helped me out with it.”
What Crystal didn’t know was that in Texas, you can’t vote while on parole or supervised release. What happened next is hard to believe. She was charged with voter fraud, convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. On top of that shock, a federal judge ruled that because she violated the terms of her supervised release — for voting in Texas — she must spend an additional 10 months in federal prison, on top of the five-year state sentence that she is appealing.
Meet Crystal Mason, the Black Texas Mother Facing 5+ Years in Prison for Voting in the 2016 Election
Political historian Judith Brett argues that "Australia was born not on the battlefield but at the ballot box." To prove it, she delves into the fascinating backstory of the Aussie electoral system, exploring the key innovations that make Australia's way of voting so unique. This is mandatory listening for those who wish to learn how Australia pioneered everything from secret ballots and polling booths to the concept of compulsory voting.
The invention of Australian voting
Australian Greens want to lower the national voting age to 16, but make it optional rather than compulsory. The Parliament's youngest senator is leading the charge, which would allow people to put their name on the electoral roll at just 14. Senator Jordan Steele-John will introduce a bill to this effect in the budget week sitting period.
Should the voting age be lowered to 16?
More than six million United States citizens are currently denied the right to vote due to state laws that disenfranchise citizens who have been convicted of a felony. More than 75 percent of these disenfranchised citizens are not in prison, and more than half have completed all terms of parole and probation. The US is unique in the civil consequences it applies to its criminal population, almost certainly the only country in the world that disenfranchises a significant number of people who are either no longer incarcerated or were never in prison at all. Activists and advocates, though, are fighting back by reforming state laws. Ron Pierce, a Democracy and Justice Fellow at the New Jersey Institute of Social Justice, who was formerly incarcerated, and Scott Novakowski, associate counsel at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, joined Chris Hedges to talk about the fight they are leading to repeal voting disenfranchisement in the state of New Jersey.
Repealing Voter Disenfranchisement in New Jersey
The Queensbridge House public housing project in Long Island City Queens is the largest such complex in the country. With more than 7,000 residents, it’s a community with little faith in civic engagement. Like other public housing communities, and low-income neighborhoods in general, poor people vote at considerably lower rates than wealthier ones. Many feel apathetic, that the system is rigged, and that their votes don’t matter.
One nonprofit in NYC is using innovative partnerships with community-based social service organizations to conduct nonpartisan voter mobilization so more underrepresented citizens participate in our democracy.
Community Votes is trying to change the culture and mindset of large nonprofit social service agencies so they integrate into their day-to-day operations civic engagement activities. These activities include promoting awareness of elections and issues and encouraging voting and other participation in federal, state, and city policy making. A few years ago Community Votes partnered with the Jacob Riis Neighborhood Settlement, a longtime provider of social services in the Queensbridge Houses, to engage in personalized messaging to mobilize voters. The results were a considerably higher rate of voter turnout in the 2014 midterm elections.
Guest – Louisa Hackett is the director of Community Votes. Louisa founded Community Votes in 2013. Through her work at Community Resource Exchange providing consulting services to New York City nonprofit organizations, she recognized the assets direct service organizations have to turn more citizens into voters.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly still considering a symbolic “show vote” in Congress on an anti-Semitism and “hate” resolution—which would offer all the authenticity and honesty of a Soviet show trial. If she proceeds, it will prove Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s point about the inordinate influence wielded over Congress by the “Israel-right or-wrong”/AIPAC lobby and its power to stifle criticism of Israel.
Nancy Pelosi May Well Prove Ilhan Omar Correct
Republicans and Democrats Say Their Criticism of Ilhan Omar Is About Anti-Semitism.
The resolution was originated by two New York Democrats who are among Congress’s most longstanding pro-Israel diehards: Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey. Both endorsed George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion. Both opposed Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. Both supported Donald Trump’s move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
Most Americans support Medicare for All, higher taxes on the rich, a Green New Deal, and other major items on the progressive agenda—so why has Congress failed to enact them?
The reason, Columbia University Law School professor Tim Wu argued in an op-ed for the New York Times on Tuesday, is that the influence of corporations and the donor class on the American political system has drowned out the policy desires of the public.
The American election system is complicated, to say the least -- but voting is one of the most tangible ways that each of us can shape our communities. How can we make the system more modern, inclusive and secure? Civic engagement champion Tiana Epps-Johnson shares what's needed to bring voting in the US into the 21st century -- and to get every person to the polls.
What's Needed to Bring the U.S. Voting System into the 21st Century
The cult of personality in America is a powerful drug. It takes the energy of ordinary citizens which, combined, can be a powerful force, and depletes it in the spectator sport of voting. Our most cherished moment of democratic citizenship comes when we leave the house once in four years to choose between two mediocre white Anglo-Saxon males who have been trundled out by political caucuses, million dollar primaries and managed conventions for the rigged multiple choice test we call an election. Presidents come and go. But the FBI is always there, on the job, sometimes catching criminals, sometimes committing crimes itself, always checking on radicals as secret police do all over the world. Its latest confession: ninety-two burglaries, 1960-66.
Presidents come and go, but the military budget keeps rising. It was $74 billion in 1973, is over $100 billion now (the equivalent of $2000 in taxes for every family), and will reach $130 billion in 1980.
Presidents come and go, but the 200 top corporations keep increasing their control: 45 percent of all manufacturing in 1960, 60 per cent by 1970.
No President in this century has stopped the trend. Not even FDR.
Sure, there are better candidates and worse. But we will go a long way from spectator democracy to real democracy when we understand that the future of this country doesn’t depend, mainly, on who is our next President. It depends on whether the American citizen, fed up with high taxes, high prices, unemployment, waste, war and corruption, will organize all over the country a clamor for change even greater than the labor uprisings of the ’30s or the black rebellion of the ’60s and shake this country out of old paths into new ones.
I’m not against elections. I think we should have one someday, with no private money, with no corporate media, with no gerrymandering, with fair ballot and debate and media access and public financing, with substantive platforms, with hand-counted paper ballots, with election day holiday and free food and drink, with instant runoff, with automatic registration — elections meeting world standards. In fact, if I had my druthers, we’d abolish the Senate, enlarge the House, govern largely by public initiative, turn the president into an executive, lower the voting age, abolish the electoral college, and so forth. But even with the broken system we’ve got, I’m not against voting. I’m against imagining that voting is all you have to do, and that because somebody sticks an “I voted!” flag sticker on you, your country loves you and everything is going to be OK.
-- Beyond Voting by Howard Zinn + What Else You Can Do: 198 Methods of Nonviolent
Action by David Swanson
A History of Voting in the United States
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
Comments
A poster who is probably now around 82
(not from Kos or this board) told me that we have not had an honest vote since the 1960s, when voting machines were first* used.
With the internet, we have the ability to introduce democracy for the very first time since Ancient Athens. We also have the ability to podcast the entire chain of custody of ballots. (Remember the state Dem party head who drove off with 2016 caucus ballots in a car with the license plate "Hillary 2016"?)
If your officials actually gave a damn about one person, one vote, we would have returned to handwritten ballots, counted by hand, with an unassailable chain of custody. Long ago.
Democrats, who would have us believe that the only clean elections are those won by Democratic politicians, seemed to relish claiming that both the 2000 and the 2004 Presidential elections were stolen from Democratic candidates. So much so, that, once Democrats got a majority in the House in 2006, Waxman held a hearing on rigging the vote. Turned out, surprise, surprise, not only is rigging voting machine software possible, it's incredibly easy for those who know programming.
One would have thought that passing a corrective bill would have been the point of the hearings and would have followed the hearing "as night follows day" and at least been put to a vote. That way, if it failed to pass, at least America would have been able to see who voted against clean elections. But, no bill! Gee, in that case, I cannot help but wonder: What was the actual point of the hearing? Spending tax dollars? Looking cute for Comcast cameras?
And then there was the aftermath of SCOTUS cases, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, 557 U.S. 193(2009) and Shelby County v. Holder (2013) (both as in Eric Holder, Attorney General). "What aftermath?" you might well arsk. Inaction. Utter inaction.
In the first case, the SCOTUS warned that it was not going to require states, voting districts, etc. to run changes to their election laws by the AG based upon the data that Congress had examined before passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Reason? That data is now sixty-five years old. Everyone blames the Supreme Court for invalidating the Voting Rights Act, as do I. However, since nothing is to be done after the SCOTUS renders a constitutional decision, I also blame Congress for not updating the data and amending the Voting Rights Act accordingly, as the SCOTUS opinions in those cases all but directed Congress to do.
Inasmuch as most people don't read Supreme Court opinions, most people don't know there is something about invalidation of certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act for which Congress should be blamed. Which, obviously, suits Congress just fine.
The date of the first case is 2009, when both the POTUS and the AG were members of the class that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was intended to protect; and the party of the POTUS and the AG, which seems to believe it is owed the black vote (in no small measure because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965) had strong majorities in both Houses. Not that I am letting Republicans off the hook: Everyone should oppose discrimination in every walk of life, perhaps most of all, Congress as to racial discrimination by states with respect to voting.
Anyway, it's been almost a decade since 2009 and almost a half dozen years since 2013. Anyone noticed Congressional hearings being held on which states are currently discriminating?
And that is how much politicians care about your vote or mine. When they are not pretending to really, really care about it, that is.
*FYI I just learned that Thomas Edison--or whomever Edison may or may not have stolen from--invented a voting machine! I feel much as I did when I first learned submarines were used in the Civil War! The more you know....
You will be excited to hear that Georgia wants to get rid
of its old, flawed voting machines and replace them with new, expensive, flawed voting machines at taxpayer expense. Meanwhile taxpayers are screaming that we want hand marked paper ballots, but the media can’t hear us. And so the juggernaut lumbers forward with the corrupt process being glossed over. The corruption was indeed reported on, but it apparently no longer matters. Because expensive shiny machines that can be hacked are better than paper ballots that might not be recorded accurately. The fix is in.
Also during this session an anti-abortion “heartbeat” bill that would prohibit abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected looks like it’s headed for passage. The governor strongly supports this bill and has said that he will sign it if it reaches his desk. We are so screwed!
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Roe v. Wade prohibits the heartbeat bill, bu
1. No one pays attention to the Constitution anymore anyway.
2. I dasn't wish someone would take that heartbeat law to the Supremes. They are probably itching to overrule Roe> v. Wade. From their standpoint, Bush and Bush were clever to stack the court with Catholics--and younger ones, at that. The Catholic religion prohibits abortion. So, little Georgie could claim, "I have no litmus test."
Howard Zinn (above) succinctly and accurately summed it up:
"But even with the broken system we’ve got, I’m not against voting. I’m against imagining that voting is all you have to do. . . "
I am against that, too. I am also against assuming that my vote
is counted correctly or that it matters as much politicians pretend it does. Same for "contact your representatives."
@HenryAWallace I'm against voter
I'm against voter suppression, too. That doesn't mean I'm not going to vote, thereby accomplishing their objective, ie.: suppressing by vote. I don't believe in biting off my nose to spite my face.
I always vote, but not because I have faith in the vote.
That's fine!
But we need to be careful about discouraging people from voting. The oligarchs of both major parties do enough of that already.
Exactly how are "we" discouraging people
From voting?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
As long are you aren't putting a damper on voting,
. . . I have no bone to pick with you.
It's just that given the atrocity of the current system, too many people aren't voting. In 2016, 58% of registered voters decided not to vote for president.
It's a whole lot easier to wittingly or unwittingly convince reluctant voters to say the hell with it than it is to get them to vote for this or that or other candidates.
It's a good point
as futile as it seems, our vote is what they want..they need.. from us. There has to be a way to leverage that. I don't see the old ways as useful (The PTB are surprised only once) and I don't know what the answer is, but they have been using our strengths against us time and time again. The time is ripe to return the favor.
We don't like bone picking
If people want to vote it's okay. If they don't that's okay too. If they vote for a certain candidate that's okay. If they support Trump that's okay too. If they have objections to a candidate that's okay. This site only has one rule. DBaD.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
I don't see how I have denied anybody . . .
. . . their opinion. I don;t think I have disagreed with anybody in a disagreeable manner. When I hear the old KOS refrain, Dbad, I recall very well how that was used to run Berners off that forum. So y'all have fun.
This...
is what folks have a problem with:
Folks aren't used to being dictated to like that around here. And as far as running off Berners, this site has many Bernie supporters, so please don't conflate us with DKos.
Stick around, you seem like you'd be a good participant here, after you learn the ropes.
Definition of "bone to pick"
It seems folks around here are not familiar with or misinterpreting the old saying. Having a “bone to pick with someone” means having a grievance that needs to be talked out.
It does not mean silencing somebody. It does not mean that the bone picker is trying to act as arbeiter or dictator of what can be said or done. It does not entail vote shaming or non-vote shaming.
It entails discussion and when I encounter the old "DbaD" Kos refrain waved around at me, I'm sorry, but that sure feels like deja vu and to be quite frank, it opens old wounds and I consider it very insulting.
Damper on voting?
I am a huge fan of dissent. Some people advocate not voting as a form of dissent and I have no problem with that at all.
It may not be my form of protest, but I applaud people acting upon their convictions. I have no right to tell them to keep their intentions quiet. Especially on this site.
As for myself, I only cast a vote for someone who inspires me.
So far, I am planning on devoting Election Day to organizing my sock drawer.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
@on the cusp
I don't have to feel inspired to vote. Given the threat of nuclear tensions and climate change I see voting as the most effective means of self preservation and preserving the planet for future generations. Of course, we need to do other things in addition to voting, including making all sorts of life-style changes, but if you think there's another way to prevent our extinction leading to the obliteration of Mother Earth, I'm willing to consider your take.
Voting has not
(thus far) prevented the crises you describe. I have no magic solution to offer.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Not yet but hope springs eternal. . .
Or at least for the next year and some months.
Thing is, I really don't think we have much time left given the crescendoing greed and belligerency of the Trump administration especially in the realm of foreign policy, the rise of right wing parties all over the globe, and of course the threat of climate change.
I'm a pretty old fart and I don't recall being so scared since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Wally...
I see you are new here. Let me give you a little piece of advice. We don't shame folks around here for their voting preferences, or not voting for that matter. We practice live and let live.
We are a non partisan site which means the site itself backs no political party or candidates. Therefor folks are allowed to speak their minds here, across the political spectrum, left right and in between. And don't be surprised if you see a pro Trump article here as well, that's how we roll. As the site description says "Free-range politics".
So if I may suggest, you will do yourself a favor by not deciding yourself the arbiter of what is or isn't politically expedient here at this site.
Express yourself but be tolerant of others, that is what we are about.
In what way would I be putting a damper on voting?
By pointing out facts about our fraudulent elections? That sounds more like an issue you will be compelled to navigate if your intention here is to "get" people to cast votes within an electoral system that mendaciously chooses which votes to count.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
@Anja Geitz It seems
It seems you are arguing that our elections are fraudulent and that it is useless to participate in them. If that's the case, yea, then it seems you are putting a damper on voting.
Well I guess the burden falls on you then, doesn't it?
Saving the country using a corrupt electoral infrastructure will be an arduously fruitless task, if the last 50 years of our political efficacy is any indication.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
It rests upon all of us.
BTW if you study US History, you'll find that political corruption has been going on since the founding of the nation. It's never going to completely eliminated. But if you have some suggestions how it can be accomplished outside the realm of electoral politics, please clue me in. A Spartacist revolution before the 12 years scientists have given us to opt for continued life on the planet?
Perception is strange that way
I use my time and my activism where it can do actual good and yield actual results. I used to participate in the big tent of politics but have decided to create value within my own community. And guess what? I sleep just fine.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
P.S. I was a history major
And can assure you that what we've seen in politics since Bush's reign is unrecognzable to what preceded it in terms of control, corruption, collusion, and the Borg like media inculcation.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Good works are commendable
But I'm still going to have to hold that without electoral participation, there will be no electoral reform. Eliminating the prospect of governmental change at the national level, kaboshes the possibility of taking on climate change and nuclear proliferation on the scale such dire and all too immediately threatening emergencies need to be taken on.
Yes, things have gotten worse. The corruption is bigger and badder than ever.
I've gotten to the point in the face of the 12 year climate change window and escalating nuclear military madness, though, where I figure it's now or never. If a decent, viable candidate is not forthcoming despite my meager efforts, I suppose I'll just have to content myself to saying I tried but failed. I guess I can live with that too. Probably not very contentedly and I'll probably sleep a lot uneasier. Such is life. Sometimes it sucks.
PS I also checked out the biographical link you provided . . .
Thanks for working with so much heart and spirited endeavor in 2016.
Do you really still believe that the Russians took control of the electoral grid?
Me, I think that was just so much more Clinton-Global Security Corporate State bullshit designed to discourage decent, idealistic folks from being politically active.
She never believed that
Read again, maybe?
She said this at the end:
She is among the vast majority here, that does not believe in any way that the Russians "hacked" anything. She quoted an article that used the fake Russian hack as an excuse to let DHS take over the election system. Her point is valid, and even more reason to have no faith in our electoral system. And, using a fixed, fraudulent system to fix said system won't work. I don't know how to fix our fucked up system. We let them screw us, without knowing it, of course, and I don't see a way to fix it.
@Wally
Seems you missed this part or chose not to include it:
"But then this happened.
The Department of Homeland Security on Friday declared the electoral system as "critical infrastructure," the latest in a series of eleventh-hour responses to alleged Russian election-season hacks.
The designation — which will put election equipment in the same category as the power grid or financial sector — came the same day that intelligence agencies released an unclassified report that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a hacking campaign against Democratic organizations and officials that eventually aimed to help elect Donald Trump. The report said Russian spies had accessed elements of state and local election boards as part of their digital meddling."
The reference to "they" in the second part wasn't clear enough for me.
So it seems all we can do for now is vote (or not) and hope that the Global Security Corporate State folks won't take control of and defraud election results.
Is it better to go on and on about how people's vote won't count? I think that strategy and action discourages people from voting.
Maybe you don't understand how blockquotes work?
She blockquoted an excerpt from the linked article. You copy/pasted the excerpt. Her link was in the sentence that said 'then this happened'. You can click on it, and go find her quoted excerpt.
Those are not her words. Her words and thoughts are not in the quote box, they're outside of it.
And no, I didn't miss it. Dude. . .
@Wally
In any event, do think it makes no sense for people to vote, then?
How then do you want to bring about the national level change that is needed to bring about electoral reform, combat climate change, prevent nuclear catastrophe, etc etc etc.
Nihilism? A Spartacist Rebellion?
What's your Rx? I see criticism after criticism but no solutions and no roadmap towards any from you. And let's not forget the 12 year warning from scientists about climate change.
I've already answered your badgering question
Go find it. You're trying like hell to piss people off and play dumb by repeatedly saying the same thing over and over, as if they're talking points, and putting words in people's mouths. I've seen this behavior before, on other sites. There's a name for it, and here I am feeding one. My bad!
I'm marking this spot...
for future reference, this is where the escalation started.
I wish
That you'd review the entire thread and note the trolling behavior by the common denominator, here. Sincerely. Not being shitty, in any way. That type of behavior happens, several of us respond, and I get called out. That common denominator, based on recent participation, appears to be very good at stoking discourse, not just this essay. It's almost like a game.
I saw no...
incivility in any comments Wally made, but I saw it in yours. I think your problem is in what he has to say, not in how he says it.
It's the ditohead comments
Over, and over. Exact same thing. Asking the same questions repeatedly, even after he's already been answered, repeatedly.
And no, I don't like his, as he said about me, "pie in the sky" answer to save the planet by registering as a dem and voting for Bernie, but that doesn't make him a troll. Lots of people agree with him, and they don't act like this. You know that. Come on, JtC. His badgering, gnat like behavior does. Zoe gave him a link and he twisted it to say she believes something she never has, then edited his original comment about it. I pointed out how to understand blockquotes, and agreed with her point, and the fucking gnat kept up the bullshit, with a coy tone, so his insults aren't as straight forward, as something I would say.
The thing is, how many times are we supposed to allow him to ask us the same damn questions many have already answered, and get blamed/shamed for the state of the entire planet, since we have a differing opinion, before we get pissed off? Before we question his motives? It's a game to him. I believe we're being played. Maybe he's a gift from kos. The behavior is pretty textbook, imo, almost, but not quite, robotic.
Oh, I see...
so you weren't poking the new guy with a stick then? And then you double down on the insults. I'm starting to see now why new members hardly ever participate.
Your assumption seems to be that votes get counted cleanly.
Everyone does not share that assumption.
Voter suppression is a problem on many levels
But I'm not going to give in to despair or try to discourage people from voting.
What's your alternative? Or is asking that question a matter of "badgering"?
Vote suppression and faking a vote count are different.
However, I now see this subtopic went gang aft agley. That being the case, I won't continue the discussion here. Maybe another time, another day.
Zoebear didn’t write that, it’s a quote from a news article
Deja is correct; in that comment Zoe quoted the article in order to make her point, which was that this “Russian hacking” story was what the powers that be used to justify the DHS takeover of the voting machines and election process. When she said “this happened” she was referring to the story, and the subsequent DHS takeover.
I’ve read her comments here for a long time, I’m quite sure she doesn’t think that Russia hacked the election.
See "In any event" and other replies above
And your Rx?
Are you a nihilist? A Spartacist? What?
I don’t have time or the inclination to
expound on my personal beliefs or how I got to them right now. I’m not in the mood for an interrogation thanks anyway. I was simply letting you know you’d misread Zoebear’s comment that she linked to.
As you might be aware, people in this country are actually allowed to not vote, and are allowed to say why they don’t. People are even allowed to advocate boycotting the elections entirely, and/or boycotting the dem-republican party entirely.
There’s no obligation to have magical answers which have eluded humankind for centuries on how best to organize and govern, or how to make that happen. It’s ok to just not go along with a broken system.
Vote or not, for who and why or why not, these decisions are up to each person to decide for themselves.
So...
zoebear needs a tag team to answer for her now?
No, she doesn’t
Sorry I attempted to provide clarity to a new poster who misread her comment.
Is there a new rule that we cannot reply to comments now unless directed at us personally?
Wow, ok I get it. I’ll just go back to full time lurk mode. Sorry for participating.
Reply to you edit/add
Election results are already fraudulent. I've already given you links. Canova sued in Florida over it too.
I guess we could do like you, and go on and on about registering as a dim, and voting for Bernie as if he's our Obi Wan Kenobi, ignoring the facts about the machines, and the unknown when it comes to DHS having control of the whole process. Your shaming us is not going to change our minds or accomplish what appears to be some type of mission of yours, with familiar tactics. You're going to get very tired, unless those of us who disagree with you all get sick of the constant badgering and just leave.
Btw, where did you participate online, prior to coming here?
Another dogpile...
what is this, rugby?
I see, I see
See my thanks to dkmich.
Always crickets when asked for an Rx or roadmap/timeline.
@Wally
If you answer my questions, posed prior to yours, I'll be glad to answer yours posed above about my prior online participation.
I have no idea how you came to this conclusion.
My writing is usually pretty clear, but for the record, no, I do not, nor have I ever thought the Russians took control over our electoral grid.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I misinterpreted you.
I hear you now. Thanks for your patience and understanding. I still don't quite agree with you but . . . Best wishes.
Why do we have to be careful about that?
You always vote. . .
. . .but have no faith in your vote. I understand why. I do read even if at times I have difficulty following somebody's argument or when a pronoun is used and I can't connect it to the correct noun.
Having been "vote shamed" by many close friends in 2016 for voting Green (in a Dem-locked state), I try not to do the same to folks who don't vote. There have been times when I haven't voted or have written in names of dead folks. Maybe some day, I'll write in Henry Wallace (I know the history) in some election.
So if you ever do decide not to vote for whatever reason, that's your right and don't feel ashamed by it. However, depending on the situation, I might disagree with your decision and I have a right to express my disagreement as long as I don't insult anyone as I've been insulted here (as noted by the moderator).
I've also tried to directly answer Zoebear's "we" questions which I think you're referring to. . . If you want to be excluded from my sense of "we," that's fine and your choice, too. If you want to go on about we or is is is?, I'm simply too tired to go on. I'm an old fart and I only have so much time and energy.
Very powerful essay.
It conjures up so much in so many different directions. Thanks, phillybluesfan - and it's good to see you again.
But primarily it stirs my indignation toward folks who disappointingly miss the point of the reparations discussion. One would have to (and could easily) produce an essay about 1000x longer than this excellent and fairly long one already, in which to properly lay out the full untold story of slavery and institutional racism with extensive examples of permitted atrocity toward Blacks, at every level of American government and society. I don't have nearly the time to do this justice but wish I did.
With respect to voting alone as just one example, there are so many ghastly examples of mob murder and violence, burning of homes, torturing, intimidation to keep black folks, who were the majority in many Southern voting districts, from participating in voting. The cruel irony of this, after the brutal and horrific Civil, is that there was a period in which Blacks for the first time participated in the hard-won covenant of such rights and were elected up and down to government seats of significance - only to be brutally repressed only a handful of years later when scorned white officials turned back hard and heavy against any of the initial advancements of the Reconstruction and underwrote a whole series of laws designed to completely decapitate their freedom.
"Slavery By Another Name" was what took the place of Reconstruction. This is not hyperbole. What it resulted in was generation after generation of Blacks, having been given their just rights as complete free human beings (but without much financial footing, if any), being forced back into the haunting shadow of becoming The Hunted once again.
If you can think of a more cruel story I'd like to hear it.
Some of the offenses then on the books included walking on train tracks, standing on street corners, being without proper id's (which of course were then made difficult to possess). You can read stories up from this period right on through the present day of a young black boy being accused of some phantom offense (looking at a white woman, not showing proper deference on a sidewalk to a white person, to present day innocuous activities such as simply driving (Sandra Bland) or shopping (John Crawford III) while black etc. It was an institutional effort to re-enslave mostly black men in order to both provide cheap or free labor to the burgeoning big industries and to subjugate an entire race (which happens to be a false construct) again. Nothing's changed since then (see Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow").
Memorial, museum, recount terror of lynching, slavery's legacies
The discussion of reparations needs first and foremost to be begun with an acknowledgment that it would be the right thing to do. Details, whatabout and bickering over how just detract.
Most importantly America needs at some point to face squarely in the face the full spectrum horror of slavery, over 400 years of institutionalized oppression and its lasting effect up, psychically and economically among other things, til this very minute on our Black brothers and sisters.
(edited to correct name and paste to wrong sentence).
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
cruel stories
Native Americans. (The parallels are downright frightening!)
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Similar. But not the same.
Genocide was visited upon both no doubt.
The Indians are the indigenous people of America. They are war casualties and victims of Manifest Destiny.
Blacks were from a distant continent, and literally ripped from their families to be sold into slavery. Their arrival in this land is thus: Shackled and crammed on top of one another in the bowels of slave ships to endure unimaginable deprivations and degradation, they came to the land of the Indian as property.
With no rights, no land, with no compromises made (those that were made to Indians were usually broken, whereas none were made to Blacks until the Ciivl War forced such) and in a completely foreign land with no friends, Blacks were literally branded and whipped as animals to be rode until they were broken or killed.
The atrocities to the Indians were no less horrific, and some were enslaved also.
But from the start there was at least a pretense to them, and sometimes even real concessions, that allowed for a society/tribe to remain somewhat intact. If a slaveholder wanted to “sell” a mother, father or their children - that was it, end of the family.
All of which is to say that that vicious familicide is one of many indelible, unremovable scars that every black American carries forever. Whereas practically every white person on here, as well as American Indians, could if they wanted to, trace their lineage back to family. Not possible for descendants of slaves.
I see both as victims of white supremacy.
I see the American Indian more as the victim of imperialism, with “racial “ ties that can be construed as Hispanic or other, which makes them much less subject to the kind of outright overt hostility experienced by Blacks.
I see the Black American as victim of outright institutional racism, almost solely based on the color of his and her skin.
Genocide vs. Slow Genocide.
As Paul Robeson declared in his manifesto, “We Charge Genocide.”
A very frank and candid conversation, much like the Truth and Reconciliation project of South Africa, desperately needs to happen. Reparations would be part of it.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Voting won't mean anything until...
...capitalist interests no longer control the means of production. There, I said it.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
“Toon from 1912—names may have changed, but the problem hasn’t”
https://jackpineradicals.com/boards/topic/toon-from-1912-the-names-may-h...
@The Aspie Corner How are you going to get
How are you going to get to the point where capitalists no longer control the means of production if workers can't even elect a socialist president?
Non electronic voting
Bolivian style. Paper ballots, counted in public (with a twist of modern live streaming by the state & anyone with a camera/connection) on site, where votes are cast.
Until something that radical happens, voting tallies will always go to the ones who paid the voting machine owners the most money. Ask Hillary about how she pulled off so many "wins" against Bernie, despite contradictory exit poll data. So contradictory, in fact, exit polls were stopped. So convenient.
https://www.hackingdemocracy.com
Or, we can just keep doing the same old thing, and expecting different results, as if we're totally sane. I will not participate until we stop doing this. It's futile and illogical.
@Deja So you are going to
So you are going to have to live with the consequence being Trump or a Clinton-clone or even Hillary taking the nomination on the second ballot at the convention. But you can always keep plugging for some kind of pie in the sky revolution.
How will you get paper ballots if you don't elect representative who will ensure their use?
You miss the entire point
And your pie in the sky comment is so deliciously ironic.
If you still believe that your electronic vote is counted the way it was cast, if that vote was cast for someone other than the predetermined winner, you completely miss the point.
You can't "vote" to "elect" anyone to do anything with executable code in the machines that have been proven to be nothing more than a scam, but especially not to unrig the rigged system from which the corporate puppets, themselves benefit. Bwahahahaa! You're joking, right? Maybe if we vote enough, they'll give themselves pay cuts too.
Pie in the sky, indeed. Whatever you do, do not watch Hacking Democracy and see for yourself; just keep "voting" for whomever the corporatists allow you to. Btw, the same machines that were uncovered, and proven to be easily (by design) manipulated in the documentary, were used in 2016.
[video:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iZLWPleeCHE]
@Deja You are battling
You are battling a straw man of your own making.
Again, answer me this: How are you going to bring about the use of paper ballots?
So...
according to that quote that you twisted, folks that prefer to vote are insane which by association would include members here, am I right? And you are "sane" since you prefer to not participate, am I right again?
So calling people in an entire state dumb shit kickers
Is A Okay, but paraphrasing a quote from Albert Einstein is scoldable?
I said "we" I only recently stopped voting, even knowing what I know about rigged tallies. Who's "twisting" again?
I answered a question in my reply. How do we get away from capitalism's grip on our elections (paraphrasing again -- slap away) by stating we go Bolivian style. I linked to a documentary that proves that electronic voting is futile. The film has been around a long time. A freelance writer/grandma accidentally stumbled upon the code, online, back before Google censored searches. She took it to her local university computer science department and they proved results could be created to be whatever they wanted.
You cautioned another user to think twice next time they posted the exact quote by Einstein in another essay. Is it Einstein? Is it the word insane? Was there a memo I missed that said echo chamber or get scolded, but being called a dumb shit kicker is perfectly fine? Wth is going on here?
I was pretty sure...
you'd come back with some magic reason that that wasn't what you intended.
Plain and simple, it is insulting, Einstein quote or not. And for your information there is no evidence that Einstein ever said that. But it is a convenient quote to hide behind, no?
Why is it Deja, that I am constantly reminding you of our DBAA policy? What is this, like the 10th time or so?
I'm thinking 3 times
I'm thinking more like three times in as many years, but nice dodge on the selective moderation, and proving my point about it.
I'd call you a dumb shit kicker, but I'm pretty sure you would consider it an insult if directed at you -- just not an insult when it was directed at me and blatantly ignored by you and all your mods. I see how this works.
Have a great weekend, JtC!
For your information...
I am a dumb shit kicker so that's no insult to me.
So you say 3 times, huh. How many times would you say a member here should be able to lob insults and get away with it? What are the limits that moderation should allow, in your humble opinion, of course? How many chances should they get, 3, 10, none?
thanatokephaloides the insane
I have no utter idea what's happening in Deja's head, of course. It has been said that I have enough trouble reading my own mind to be bothered trying to read anyone else's.
But I do still vote; albeit with decreasing faith in the impact of the same, as another c99er put it so very well. Admittedly, Colorado uses ink-marked paper ballots in its almost all-mail elections system. (It's a major reason I support that system.)
And I maintain that if we could just get to the point that we all had genuine, affectionate love for one another we could abolish most applications of human authority.
So maybe I am insane......
-- me
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Something new is required
https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
I like the old IWW one better.....
I'd add some media folks to the "We Fool You" layer if I was to put out a more modern version, though.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
They all work just fine
and yes the media is a required add on
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
I wouldn't support voting at 16.
Not old enough to drive without another licensed adult, not old enough to be tried as an adult, not old enough to join the military, not old enough to enter into a legal contract, not old enough to work late hours or 40 hours, climb a ladder, use a skill saw....16 is too young to have a clue. Not that 18 guarantees they'll be any more tuned in. Still....
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
old enough to join the military??
Those last two are the rats I smell here. Most significant felony cases involving 16-year-olds are already being tried as adults, in violation of the spirit of the very laws you mention. And I smell a really strong whiff of "join the military" (at 16) involved with all this.
The line must be drawn somewhere, where we as a society allow people to start making their own decisions and their own mistakes. It is the latter -- the mistakes -- that are the only reason a 25-year-old has it any more "together" than a 16-year-old does.
And at the age of 60, I'm still too young to join the military!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Now. Russiagate vs Black voter suppression. White Narcissism?
America had a beautiful prestine voting system until Putin/Russians came along. They stole votes, changes results, and suppressed entire voting blocks like African American with their hypnotic inducing tweets.
And then the reality. First where needed democrats cheated Bernie including wiping out voters in multi-racial Queens. Then come the general elections in 2016 and 2018 republicans particularily massively cheated African Americans out of their votes. Not a Russian in sight.
When you step back, if you listened to the democrats and media, the integrity and results of US elections were totally undermined by Russians. Pay attention to what is happening on the ground and lots of disenfranchisment of AA voters. Again, not a Russian in sight.
Can't help but see that the white power structure was totally focused on Russians while a large part of their base was being cheated. From what I little I could read (there wasn't much), the white power structure of the democrats did next to nothing to fight back. It was up to local Black, Hispanic, and Native American activists to take up the fight.
It seems to me that the white power structure of the democratic party was only concerned about their views and needs while letting its black base to fend for itself. The white leadership showed its own racial narcissism. For example, I never heard Hillary mention black voter suppression when she went on her (paid) pity tour. Think about all the quotes by white democrats about election results, integrity, etc, that involved Russia or black voter suppression. Want to bet the count would be massively about Russia.
This
I suppose that Russia is to blame for the bank bailouts and the hideously flawed ACA and the increasing wealth inequality and the tax cuts that made it worse and all the other problems this country has? I'm hearing that Russia wants to destroy the country and have people fighting with each other. That people don't see how broken the country was before Her lost is unbelievable. Maybe if Kamillary wants to win badly enough she will contact the Russian Internet advertising agency to see how she can only spend $100,000 for a few Facebook ads.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Thanks Phillybluesfan,
And, this might be a slight tangent to your article, as it is more about black incarceration rates than direct voter disenfranchisement, the result is usually the same since former felons have a difficult time in most states in regaining their rights.
Anyway, take a look here at the maps of segregation in our country. Make sure to scroll down until you see the maps with the blue dots (whites) and the green dots (blacks). The situation is really pretty messed up.
Taken together with the facts that these prison populations, even though they can't vote, are used to construct legislative districts (census 2020 continues this, it's gerrymandering on steroids), I think we need another voting rights act. Now.
Great resource, thanks for sharing this map.
I'm sorry, but this is horrendous
and I really am sorry, because I agree with the spirit of everything you're saying.
But my God.
Historian Carol Anderson — author of "One Person, No Vote" — walks us through the timeline of truly free and fair elections in the United States, a period she says lasted from the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 until a fateful Supreme Court decision in 2013.
We really have completely rewritten history, haven't we? Or rather, we've accepted the version that our overlords wrote for us, and now we have total amnesia about something that happened less than twenty years ago. Voting rights advocates are now pushing this version of history too, just like I saw Jimmy Dore and Ron Placone doing a month ago or so.
Can we not even manage to remember that George W. Bush achieved the presidency by racist election fraud, by a software version of Jim Crow? Can we not remember the black people locked out of polling places in Ohio in 2004? It appears that those historical facts have been reabsorbed into the body politic like a cyst--no trace it ever happened.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Voting, at this point, has little to do with
shaping our communities or anything else, except on the local level perhaps. But even if voting were the holy grail of positive social change, it hardly matters, since the most massive racist election fraud since the Voting Rights Act now gets treated like it never happened, less than twenty years down the pike.
If that's the history we remember and believe in, if we operate under the assumptions created by that history, then basically we will only remember election fraud when the powerful wish us to--in other words, when someone playing the villain role, like Trump, commits the fraud. And who knows? Maybe twenty years down the pike, we will have forgotten Trump's sins like we've forgotten George W's.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver