It’s Never About The US President, It’s About The US Empire

This found its way to my inbox sometime in the last couple of days, about improvements to a good candidate information site. Posted verbatim:

We are a political bunch. The presidential election isn't interesting. But there are all sorts of local issues and offices on our ballots.

Is anyone here running for a position in this election? Is there a ballot measure or candidate for a local office that you are working for? Campaigning for anything is difficult this election because of Covid. People have had to be a little creative.

Here in my SoCal swamp, I have the pleasure and sweet sorrow of being able to vote for Tulsi twice this year. The first time will be in several hours when I trudge to the local polling precinct. There, being registered as No Party Preference NPP, which is the official designation in the Golden Fleecing State given to Independents registered to vote, my privilege will be to request AND receive a Dem primary ballot.

I saw this video posted by our friends over at The Progressive Wing and it's the 3rd or 4th such video I've watched during this campaign cycle. The previous ones featured Campaign Manager Faiz Shakir, along with young staffers from Iowa and New Hampshire.

Originally published on my blog: Hanna Writes.com

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.)

Slavery By Another Name

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.

It seems to me that everyone here is somewhere on the spectrum of voting or not-voting, and belief or not-belief in the process. I am interested in people's experience before and after.