Otter's Rock

There is a Citizens Initiative in the EU being proposed to ban all types of conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ people! If you live in the EU, please sign!

Many shocking, new ideas shaped the American Experiment and related 18th century democratic ventures; as an historian of the period, I often notice that one of the most fundamental of them, and most shocking to a world which had so long assumed the opposite, often goes unmentioned — indeed sometimes denied — in today’s discussions of democracy: the belief that all people are educable. I think it’s urgent that we bring that principle back into the spotlight if we want to defend democracy from one of its common failure modes: pseudo-populist oligarchy.

...

Today’s America has seen decades of the intentional conservative-led starving and squeezing of public education, efforts to increase the disparity in education quality between public education and private or charter school education, conservative-led homeschool movements which aim to expose people to a narrow range of ideology, and also the devastation of newspapers, journalism, and a vast misinformation campaign. All this adds up to preventing many who are educable from becoming educated. Thomas Paine, and those I’m using him to represent, would recognize this as a sabotage of their system, one they would say might indeed enable Cade-style populism, which (as in Henry VI) is easy for ambitious elites to then harness to their own ends.  Thus, Paine would say: of course the democracy isn’t working well if such an essential precondition is being sabotaged.

When I see conservative thinking start to show up in acquaintances (or Silicon Valley leaders) who consider themselves progressive but also consider themselves smart, it often begins with them feeling that most people are stupid and the world would be better off if the smart were in charge.  One can often get such people to pause and reflect by bringing up the question of whether they think all people are fundamentally educable, and whether the solution isn’t to put the reins of power into genius hands but to put the Encyclopedia in everyone else’s.  Information is key.  Those peasants who shared commons maintained them sustainably for centuries because (as we now recognize) they were educated in the ways that mattered, they learned from families and communities to understand what they were doing, using local knowledge of commons, grazing etc. as they made choices.  If one’s democratic state is the commons, people will likewise maintain it well, but not if they’re intentionally deprived of access to basic knowledge of how it works and what can harm or heal it, and drowned instead in deliberate falsehoods.

--Ada Palmer, All People Are Created Educable, a Vital Oft-Forgotten Tenet of Modern Democracy

rydra_wong posted: Because the Tories looked across the Atlantic and went "ooh, voter suppression, that looks great"

Sign-y thing for UK people:

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/abandon-plans-to-demand-photo-id-at-general-elections

and

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/277121/ (thanks to kaberett)

See: Politics.co.uk: Photo ID: Govt voting reform will discourage ethnic minority voting

The Guardian: Conservatives accused of suppressing voters' rights over leaked photo ID plans

rydra_wong posted: Useful round-up of protests nationwide

Metro of all places: Nationwide protests planned as Queen approves Parliament suspension

(I didn't make it to the one today because I had to pack suddenly and get a bus and a train back to London and all that, but am pleased to see there's another London one scheduled for Sat.)

Petition's passed 700,000.

rydra_wong posted: UK people or people who know UK people: please signal boost

The EU elections (23rd May) are being used as a kind of proxy referendum, with everyone looking to see how Nigel Fucking Farage's "Brexit Party" performs versus the various pro-Remain parties, and both versus the flailing Labour and Tories.

We need to fuck his shit up, electorally speaking.

For those of you who are on the fence about voting, or haven't voted yet, or aren't sure if it matters, here's a bit about the issues and people on my ballot.

First and most obviously there is the US Senate and House of Representatives candidates.  If you think this doesn't matter, you're an idiot; if there had been 51 Democratic senators instead of 49, Kavanaugh would not now be a member of the Supreme Court.  And yes, this is true even if your Democratic senator is an absolute ASS and the next best thing to Satan.  Your Democratic senator (or senatorial candidate) may be an ass and the next best thing to Satan, but they are not actually Satan.  And it's a lot worse to have actual Satan in charge.  Think of how much nicer things would be if Trump hadn't had a congress that would mostly just follow his lead.

But leaving aside that, here are some issues on my ballot:

• A state-wide measure that requres law inforcement to receive de-escalation, mental health, and first-aid training, and adds an INDEPENDENT investigation to any use of deadly force by law enforcement.
• Tighter gun controls.
• Higher taxes on industrial pollution sources.

These are all really important things, yes?  And, sure, they only affect my state; but that's still very important for all the people living in my state.

Then there's the local Sherriff, the head cop in my county, and the guy in charge of law enforcement where I live since we don't have our own police department.  Do I want the guy in charge of the cops in my area to be a Republican, a member of a party that thinks it's just fine to rip children out of their parents' arms and stuff them in cages and treat them horribly?  Who thinks it's okay to strip people of citizenship because of the color of their skin?  HELL NO.  So I vote for the Democrat candidate.

Then there's the judges.  There are three state supreme court positions up for election (they aren't lifetime positions), and two of them are uncontested, but one of them is, and in THAT one, the two candidates are a) a guy who talks about using technology to make the court system more efficient, and then use the money saved to get more public defenders for low-income people accused of crimes, and b) a guy whose website is incoherent ranting about Kavanaugh and elite media doing a smear job.  Efficiency and working to make things better for low-income people is FAR preferable to a pro-Kavanaugh nutjob.

VOTE.  VOTE YOUR ENTIRE BALLOT, EVEN (ESPECIALLY!) THE LOCAL STUFF.  You can make SO MUCH difference to things locally regardless of what's going on nationally.  If you need information on candidates and measures, https://www.ballotready.org and www.vote411.org  and https://ballotpedia.org/ provide information.  If you are going to be voting in person, I suggest going to one of those sites, getting a sample ballot for your area, and writing down who and what you want to vote for and against so you have it when you actually are in the booth.

Folks, I haven't seen enough people talking about what an amazing thing happened on Tuesday. Sporadic stuff about specific people who won (mostly rejoicing that Danica Roem, a transgender woman, defeated and replaced the Virginia state legislator who authored the bathroom bill), but nothing about the whole shebang.

Folks.  Folks. The Republicans got hosed on Tuesday.  As usual, the Washington Post has a great analysis: Anti-Trump backlash fuels a Democratic sweep in Virginia and elections across the country.

( Election overview: all the places Democrats won )

Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, "wow, that's nice, but these are all local elections and small fry."  But there are three things to remember.

First, a HUGE proportion of the ways government impacts our lives come from local government.  Schools, roads, zoning (i.e. what kinds of homes and businesses and stuff goes where), water and utilities, police and law enforcement, these are all mostly under local control.  Local is where pretty much everything starts.  Obamacare started as a state-level plan that people liked and then adapted for the nation.  If you think your local police are racist and need to be reigned in, the President of the US and your congressperson can't do jack shit.  Your mayor, your governor, your county sheriff if you have one, your attorney general, your state legislature, those are the people who between them control your local law enforcement officials.  Gay marriage started at the state level.  Most things build up momentum at a local and state level, and then they go national.  It therefore should be obvious that local affairs are small-scale but HELLA IMPORTANT, and because they are so small-scale, your vote matters more.  You could be one vote in a few thousand, rather than one vote in a few million.

Second, all these awesome things?  They happened because people showed up and voted Democrat.  Democrats (especially young ones) have this nasty, NASTY habit of not showing up.  We get lazy.  We don't think a particular candidate is ideologically pure enough, so they're no different than the Republican they're running against.  We say, oh, there's no President on the ballot, so it doesn't matter.  We don't show up.  And then we wonder why everything's going to hell in a handbasket and our guys can't get anything done.  Trump and the Republican behemoth can ABSOLUTELY be defeated, we can in the long run ABSOLUTELY change the way things are going, but you know what it's going to take?  VOTING.  VOTING IN EVERY ELECTION.  YES, EVEN THE WEIRD ONES WITH ONLY LOCAL MINUTIAE ON THE BALLOT.  If people keep turning out like they did in Virginia, whole lot of places going to be colored blue on the map and Democratic goals are achievable.  BUT WE, ALL OF US, HAVE TO SHOW UP AND FUCKING VOTE.  EVERY SINGLE TIME.  You don't have to be constantly retweeting and reblogging stuff, you don't have to be The Greatest Activist Ever.  I mean, activism is great.  But it's all meaningless IF WE DON'T SHOW UP WHEN IT COUNTS.  On election day.  And if you don't have the time/money/attention/spoons/health/whatever to pay attention to each new scandal and whatever bill is in congress, that's okay!  It's perfectly fine!  As long as you vote.  Regularly and consistently and every fucking time like you were a little blue-haired redneck Fox-News-watching granny.  (I mean, vote as consistently as she would, not for the same candidates and policies as she would.)

Three, community.  Everybody wants to be The One Great Hero.  We build our societies on stories of The One Great Hero Who Saves The Day.  So it's really tempting to fall into that mindset, where if we can't be The One Great Hero, we're not having an impact.  But you know what?  Most of the time, the day isn't saved by The One Great Hero, the day is saved by a multitude of ordinary people who choose to do their part to make the world a better place.  Probably nobody reading this will ever have an opportunity to be The One Great Hero of anything.  But when a lot of people come together with a common purpose to achieve something, they can achieve far more lasting change than any One Great Hero ever possibly could.  Dr. King was great, but he wouldn't have achieved bupkiss without the SNCC and the NAACP and the SCLC and positive HORDES of voter registration workers and lawyers and lots of other people and groups.  None of us are islands, standing alone.  We all depend on each other.  We have to work together.  We have to support one another.  We have to come together in organized groups if we want to effect large-scale change.  There was no one great voter who single-handedly got any of these people elected.  But communities did, by working together and voting together.  This is both a blessing and a responsibility.  A blessing, because it means that the pressure is not on any one individual.  My senator isn't going to change his vote because of any one phone call I, personally, made; my single solitary vote isn't going to make or break any candidate.  A responsibility, because a number of phone calls by different people to my senator might very well change his vote, and a lot of us voting together might very well make or break a candidate in an election.  And the thing about groups and communities is that they are made up of individuals.  If we all of us, individually, decide not to work together and organize and put in the daily grind, nobody is going to do it.  So each one of us has a responsibility to do what we can.  Not because the whole shebang rests on our shoulders, but because a small piece of it does.  And if enough small pieces are missing, there's no larger picture.

Let's make sure as many small pieces as possible are in the picture.

For those of you who don't know, the Barna research group is a group that focuses on researching religious trends in America.  Although they are very DEFINITELY Christian and doing this for a Christian audience, they are also quite firm in their belief that in order to make good choices people need good, reliable information to base it on.  So they're pretty good about being as fair and accurate as they can in their research practices.

Their newest finding?  That in the last year, public opinion in America has swung quite dramatically in favor of immigration, diversity, and refugees, with most population segments adding at least 10% to their approval.  And practicing Christians who believe the US should welcome refugees more than doubled between 2016 and 2017, which is why there are currently more religious leaders across the board speaking to refugee and immigration issues.  (Evangelicals are the lone holdouts, surprise, surprise.)  For example, the Christian community is pretty much united in opposition to ending or limiting the DREAM program.  Even the Evangelicals agree there.

Unfortunately, the shift doesn't seem to be from racists, nationalists, and other right-wingers changing their minds.  Where the shift seems to be coming from is the people who were undecided a year ago moving towards open-mindedness, tolerance, and compassion.  So it's not that the whole country is moving towards tolerance, it's that the people in the middle are moving leftward on this issue.  Which is good, don't get me wrong!  It just means we've got our work cut out for us to reach out to the Evangelicals and the FOX newsers and all and help them see things in a different light.

(Obviously I'm not talking to people who aren't safe or wouldn't be safe if they tried to reach out, whether psychologically or physically.

From rydra_wong:

Brexit negotions start tomorrow even though we don't actually have a government, and those theoretically in charge are still pushing for leaving the customs union, ending freedom of movement, etc..

The Guardian: Big business leaders press Theresa May to rethink hard Brexit

David Davis, the Brexit secretary, says on Sunday that he would head into Monday’s Brexit talks aiming to “secure a deal that works for all parts of the United Kingdom”, but signalled that the plan was still to leave the customs union and reduce immigration.

So, still "contact your MP" time.

Grenfell:

https://secure.thebiggive.org.uk/grenfell is still doubling all donations until match funds run out (and have also started releasing funds in emergency cash via the groups that have established themselves on the frontline, i.e. not via RBKC who are apparently continuing to fail to provide co-ordination, organization, or much of anything)

The Home Office are helping Mohammad Alhajali's family get to the UK, so no more need to sign that petition.

https://grenfellsupport.wordpress.com looks very useful.

North Kensington Law Centre are providing legal education and support to residents affected by the fire: their donations page -- this would be a good thing to donate to as there may be issues with the general funds being used for legal support.

RBKC have £270 million in reserves. As far as I can see, that means they could afford to buy nice property in North Kensington at market prices to rehouse the survivors.

You know and I know that, although not every government regulation is good, a lot of them are vitally necessary to protect the average citizen, and that the Republicans would LOVE to gut every single one of them and make it impossible for government to do anything to protect people from corporate greed.

Enter the Regulatory Accountability Act, which has already passed the House and is up in the Senate.  It would make it virtually impossible for any new regulation to rein in Wall Street to be passed.  If you would like to contact your Senators to urge them to vote against it, Americans for Financial Reform has an email ready for you to customize and send.  It's got some background information and the email itself ready to go.  You can just enter your name and address (to get it to the right Senator), or you can customize the letter.  Me, I added some stuff about good regulations being necessary to prevent another financial meltdown such as we had in 2008 and how most regulations protect the average American citizen.