my synagogue is doing some really great accessibility and inclusivity work right now and works with a lot of local charities–you can donate to them here
Hey folks, my synagogue is the ONLY synagogue in my town, the same town that houses Liberty University, that evangelical Christian college that trump visited and who sent a busload of students to support kavanaugh, and who illegally smuggled jewish artifacts into their school biblical museum via hobby lobby
We are small, mostly older people, but liberal, welcoming, and LGBT friendly, do interfaith outreach, are currently sponsoring refugees, do food drives throughout the year, are part of a state wide jewish choir, and are the only synagogue in the whole town, that is pretty much owned by LU.
If you are able to donate to help us continue to survive and help the community, here is where you can do so, baruch hashem.
“If you’re disturbed by that’s happened today, VOTE!” Yes, please tell me your plan on how voting will stop everyday neo-Nazis from killing innocent Jewish people.
Lifehack: if you set a nazi on fire they will be 100% too dead to be able to do evil nazi things like killing unarmed and innocent people and stuff
unless you’re planning on starting and completing a socialist revolution by november 6th there is absolutely no reason to abstain from voting. it is not a blood pact. you are not beholden to democrats when you vote for them over abstaining. there IS a lesser of two evils and it’s not inaction. every republican voted in kavanaugh and only one democrat did. statistically we are literally safer with democrats in office.
and no, i’m not planning on relinquishing communist ideals in deference to dems. i just don’t think as black and white as “anything short of a communist revolution is useless.” roe v wade is in jeopardy and women WILL die if it gets overturned. leftists sitting on their asses are about as useful as the thoughts and prayers of school shootings
“1912 I wanted to support Theodore Roosevelt, but his Bull Moose convention dodged the Negro problem and I tried to help elect Wilson as a liberal Southerner. Under Wilson came the worst attempt at Jim Crow legislation and discrimination in civil service that we had experienced since the Civil War. In 1916 I took Hughes as the lesser of two evils. He promised Negroes nothing and kept his word. In 1920, I supported Harding because of his promise to liberate Haiti. In 1924, I voted for La Follette, although I knew he could not be elected. In 1928, Negroes faced absolute dilemma. Neither Hoover nor Smith wanted the Negro vote and both publicly insulted us. I voted for Norman Thomas and the Socialists, although the Socialists had attempted to Jim Crow Negro members in the South. In 1932 I voted for Franklin Roosevelt, since Hoover was unthinkable and Roosevelt’s attitude toward workers most realistic. I was again in the South from 1934 until 1944. Technically I could vote, but the election in which I could vote was a farce. The real election was the White Primary. […] In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.” -
W.E.B DuBois, Why I Won’t Vote
Also, the attitude that people who have issues with electoral politics are sitting around waiting for a revolution shows how little Liberals know about leftist community building or activism. The people who are the loudest about how little the party that’s in control matters, from what I’ve seen, are the people who are the most involved in community building, be it community defense (Pink Pistols, Trigger Warning, Huey B Newton Gun Club, Black Panther Party), community nourishment (Food, Nob Bombs, Black Panther Party again, Really Really Free Market) or workers rights (IWW). Instead of lording it over these people who work hard outside of election season because you bothered to get out of your bed once, actually build your community around you because both Donkey Team and Elephant Team has failed to meet our needs repeatedly but Food, Not Bombs, actually puts food on poor people’s metaphorical tables and community defense organizations intimidate bigots into making me feel safe and teach marginalized people how to use tools of oppression when I know damn well that calling the police won’t do anything.
Who should I, a LGBT+ woman, vote for in the coming 2020 election, Kamala “Trans Women don’t deserve health care” Harris? Elizabeth “Health care for Trans Women are a waste of resource” Warren? Hillary “I only supported Gay marriage because it was politically expedient” Clinton? Joe “I stood by as Obama jailed a Trans Woman in a male military jail and denied her healthcare” Biden? They’d kill us just as fast as republicans will, if they could. They’ll dangle our rights in front of us and threaten us with deprivation of our rights, and that’s somehow okay? You can catch me teaching local LGBT+ folks how to (legally) arm themselves and handing out food to our disproportionately homeless LGBT+ folks instead.
okay, help me out a little here: what part of roe vs wade do you not understand?
Name one (1) senator that is up for election that vows to try and impeach Kavanaugh, and show me how democrats up for election have promised to strongarm Trump into nominating someone who will fight to keep RvW if Kavanaugh even gets impeached, since RvW is up for debate in the supreme court and Trump’s already got his justices in. How, legally or materially, will fight for RvW, a case that’s already headed to a court that’s outside of voting folks’ control now, be affected one way or another?
While you answer that, address the historical precedence of abolitionists/liberation activists stating that American democracy has died as soon as white men allowed marginalized people to vote (even earlier arguably) and address how your rhetoric about leftists waiting for a revolution or whatever is flatly untrue, in the eyes of how there are so many leftist community organizations that looks out for the community because our elected officials won’t (I named a lot! Join them and actually start helping out!).
Also, for a trans man, nice job throwing trans women under the bus when literally all democratic darlings have either materially oppressed trans woman or expressed trans women as taking up too much resources all in the name of electoral politics. I guess you can get a head start on oppressing women as a man.
wow…. you really thought you was saying something with that last paragraph there. word, word.
still amazed people honest to god think this is an own
the mistake here was mentioning black people and how neither party has never really cared about us cuz whites like op don’t care about any of that
Y'all remember that post I made last Wednesday about dumbass white people speaking down to black people and people of colour when it comes to voting? And never knowing or attempting to understand what we go through when it comes to voting? Op is a shining example of exactly what I meant.
ugh.I hate this so much… leaving aside the fact that “the centre” is a statistical fiction and not an actual position, say you just want to argue that compulsory voting makes political parties reflect the majority views of Australians (a common assumption) - there’s really no evidence for it.
For example - Australia is one of the most pro-choice countries on earth, has been for ages, massive support for legal abortions from voters of all parties. In New South Wales abortion is illegal unless a doctor says there’s a threat to the mother’s life - and that’s Australia’s most populous state, 7 and a half million people. Abortion has literally just been decriminalised in Queensland, comes into effect in December.
The majority of Australians supported marriage equality in every poll since 2007, compulsory voting didn’t stop politicians ignoring “the centre” for ten full years on that one.
The majority of Australians are opposed to privatisation, has compulsory voting stopped every single government, regardless which party is in power, pushing it through? Nope. Australians are actually in favour of re-nationalising a lot of things, and it’s not even a lefty thing, the majority of Liberal-National voters (the mainstream right wing party, current government) actually want to re-nationalise Telstra, the largest telecommunications company in Australia. Has compulsory voting made this prime patch of centre-ground real estate attractive to any party? Has it fuck
The average Australian is pro-euthanasia, they’d like the public transport system to be good (they’re all shite) they’re not up for massively subsidising the mining industry or bailing out banks. They believe in climate change - up until 2015 we had a prime minister who thought climate change is “probably doing good” for the planet - did compulsory voting save us from that wanker? nope
All compulsory voting does is allow them to manufacture a larger mandate for whatever shit they were going to do anyway.
No amount of voting will ever make public opinion matter more than the various vested interests of the powerful, because politicians only need your support on election day - every other day they need the support of a bunch of rich and powerful scumbags and the institutional forces they command…which suits politicians fine, because they understand rich and powerful scumbags, that’s their mates, their colleagues, their school friends… they don’t need to do an opinion poll to know what plays well in that, their true and only constituency. They are fundamentally, permanently, constitutionally unable to actually give a fuck what you think - and compulsory voting makes that easier for them, not harder.
When I was canvassing for Stacey Abrams, I’d say about 80% of the people whose doors I knocked on were eligible to vote and said they don’t vote. 100% of them were Black and low income since we targeted communities that had democratic voting habits. They knew about Stacey and still didn’t feel moved. I don’t think liberals lambasting non-voters for the millionth time would help this demographic lul.
Energy could be better spent into (1) eliminating voter suppression and (2) maybe realizing some of these people aren’t uneducated, that they make an educated decision not to participate, and maybe addressing the reasons why they aren’t participating. Maybe politicians aren’t entitled to votes just because they don’t have “Republican” on their ticket. Maybe they have to actually figure out how to mobilize their base. 👀
Someone: Hey maybe the Democratic Party doesn’t have the best interests of most people at heart
A million brainworm liberals, shambling towards the heretic with their arms outstretched: Still Vote. Participate In System. Lesser Evil.
@peteseeger if your vote wouldn’t make a difference for the better, than there wouldn’t be so many people trying to take your voting rights away. Right wingers are actively blocking the voting access of black, latino, and native american communities.
And a fuckton of straight/white/male supremacists are happy about this… because they KNOW that these groups voting actually makes a difference.
This isn’t rocket science. So many people from these communities are desperate to get their voting rights back, and if you’re gonna shit on the reasons they value their own votes then LOL that says more about you as a person than anyone else.
Like clockwork
man i made a long ass post saying “i think you should vote but dont expect voting to save us” where i said over and over that voting is worth doing bc damage control and sure enough. ppl in the notes going “but you have to vote! no candidate is perfect VOTE”
it’s like if i said “taking pain pills is okay for now but you still need to go to see a doctor about your broken foot” and everyone goes “why??? are you telling people it’s wrong to take pain pills??????”
Yall I don’t like either political party, but at least the Democrats won’t attempt to reverse Roe v Wade & the ruling that stated same-sex marriage is a constitutional right under the 14th amendment. At least Democratic politcians aren’t actively going out of their way to prevent people from voting and intentionally altering the way districts are broken up in order to benefit the Republican vote. Yeah ofc a lot of Democratic politicians suck, but they pose less of a threat than a Republican majority. Most Republican politicians don’t give a fuck about Americans who aren’t in the 1%, and the sad thing is that they’ve convinced people otherwise.
The democrats don’t care about anyone outside of the ruling class either, and the sad thing is that they’ve convinced you otherwise
Lol did you catch the part where I said a lot of Democratic politicians suck
It’s not “a lot of Democratic politicians.” It is the Democratic Party, fundamentally and inherently, as an institution.
The. Leaser. Of. Two. Evils. Is. LESS. EVIL.
And yet, still evil. Funny how that works.
yes it sucks that we have to do that! but we might as well use what tiny power we have to slow our descent in to hell. you can go right back to planning to overthrow the government after. you can even plan to overthrow the same lesser evil person you voted for. voting doesn’t bar you from taking other action, yknow.
Yeah, that’s what people always say and yet after the election it’s mysteriously once again not the time to try to build a better world, because the next election is in a few years and we can’t let the republicans win that
Vote as damage control, but do not let it be more than a tiny morsel of your full political engagement. Organize, protest, build community programs, obstruct fascists in the streets. Do not let your political engagement begin and end on voting day. Stay engaged year round, every day of every week, and don’t be afraid to put in actual physical and mental labor.
Harm reduction is…harm reduction.
My partner, in the 2016 election, defined the choices as “the slow train to fascism” (HRC) and “the fast train to fascism” (Trump). And picked the slow train. Because fewer people die. I’d like fewer needlessly dead people.
Again, these aren’t “don’t vote” posts, they are “the Democrats you vote for will betray you, so be sure to put most of your political energy to avenues outside of voting” posts, with an implication of “put your energy into building independent working class political power.”
After paying from my doctor appointments, new lenses for my glasses and everything else i see myself again in need of help.
It is a very small sum ($135) but there is no way ill be able to get that money because i don’t really have things to sell anymore or irl friends who could help me so i come to tumblr to see is anyone could donate anything (even a dollar helps) so I can keep a roof over my head.
thank you very much and if you can’t donate, please reblog.
This is all i have right now, please, after discovering that both my parents and my brother wont help me i need this money so i dont end on the street, please, just please… help me if you can.
Listen, I live in Brazil, a place where every 19 minutes a member of the LGBT community is murdered, if I end up on the streets? I’m pretty sure I will be one of them.
democrats leech their votes from the most marginalized classes of society by dangling their basic needs in front of them and using fear based tactics to instill the idea that for poor people, racialized people, people persecuted for their gender or sexuality Dems are the only choice. and when Democrats have usurped the value of those votes, they stand back and allow the persecution of those same people for the sake of maintaining the status quo. if you don’t think that’s sinister in every definition of that term it’s because you’ve never had to face that danger and probably don’t have a place in this conversation
these two comments are repeated hundreds of times on this post and are basically the archetype for the default response to any post, tweet, statement etc that criticizes Democrats for taking advantage of the “lesser evil” narrative without actually giving a shit about the survival of the marginalized people they manipulate votes from.
People make the fundamental mistake of thinking critiques of the democrats come from a place of wanting “party perfection” and that that’s wrong or selfish or naive. The reality is that there is no investment in democrats which could result in the sustained protection of persecuted people bc dems are imperialist, capitalist and racist in their very nature and any investment in trying to “fix” the party means having to accept its core ideologies which shapes the Democrats’ very structure.
the thing that hurts the most from these comments is the “blah blah revolution but that’s never gonna happen so what can we do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”
anyone who says this is completely erasing decades of anti-capitalist organizing against the hijacking of “the left” from status-quo affirming democrats who are as committed to imperialist, capitalist hegemony as their Republican foes.
The Black Panther Party alone serves as the ultimate example of how it can be made possible to invest in community organizing over electoral politics. we have been conditioned to believe that electoralism is the only way forward when history shows us there *were* anti-racist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist viable alternatives to partaking in the two-party system.
Brown Berets, Panthers, American Indian Movement all worked to protect their communities from exploitation of the Democrats and fulfilled the promises Democrats dangled in front of persecuted people, but never honoured or prioritized.
and like, i just want to point out these points are really basic and made by me as an outsider and as someone with very little knowledge or understanding of the history of these movements, but as someone who’s been lucky enough to have loved ones explain these things to me and introduce to me to the realization that there have been viable alternatives in the past, but the threat they posed to the two-party system has led to their targeted destruction.
these comments like “well there’s no other options” & “what else can we do?? we must choose the lesser evil” are devastating bc no doubt this thinking was contributory to the near extinction of movements that practiced anti-racism, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism at their very core and worked to provide for their community and protect those that were most persecuted, and those that continue to be abused by democrats today. these comments are a hindrance to the transformation of future movements and by default make it so that investing in the dems, over and over again, is the only option, when historically this has not been true, and historically has never led to the protection of marginalized people.
assuming this fatalist thinking that declares there are no options is totally ahistorical. there were very viable and successful options in the past, there could be successful options in the future too but not if we continue to invest in the party that sells out our rights once getting our vote.
The gang makes a break in their stilted and constipated conversation with the employees of Tangled Web records. Mikey makes an unexpected move.
This episode contains content that could be triggering for those sensitive to subjects regarding the death of animals, along with the usual violent content.
ANNOUNCING: The What Does C.O.R.P.S. Stand For? Completely Dry T-Shirt contest:
Just hop into the Ghostpuncher Discord, click here and pop over to the #what-does-corps-stand-for channel and let us know about your idea of what C.O.R.P.S. stands for. Vote on other peoples’ submissions by reacting to them and on October 30th, the voting will be closed and the submission with the most reacts and Eve’s personal favorite will get a free T-Shirt shipped to them to just about wherever.
