a garbage boy

This depends STATE BY STATE (or town by town), so check out your own state's rules. As for everywhere, only poll workers are banned from this, and people holding up signs for candidates have to be a certain distance from the building.

[Image Description:

A Screenshot of a public Facebook-Textpost by “Sandy and Richard Riccardi”.

This word of caution is from someone who has worked the polls a lot in the past: More and more I’m seeing women announcing they will be voting with shirts, buttons, masks or hats that say “Ruth Send Me”, or something similar. [Transcriptor Annotation: the late Supremecourt Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. /End of Annotation.] Remember: political messages aren’t allowed in the polling place (that could include [Black Lives Matter] shirts, unfortunately.) Also unfortunately, messages can be interpreted by whoever is in charge. It could mean, in some cases, that a voter wearing a shirt they believe is political can be denied the right to vote after waiting in line for hours. Approach this election strategically and vote smarter and cleaner than ever have before. Understand that the other side will do what it takes to advance their agenda. We need to vote in record numbers. But we need to vote smart. We can wear that wonderful “Ruth send me” shirt or mask when we get home, and raise a glass in her memory. Please copy, or paraphrase, and share with the groups you are members of, as appropriate. Help spread the word so that every vote counts! We all know what’s at stake. Do not throw away your shot. [Transcriptor Annotation: four emojis follow the text, the Peace-Symbol, a red heart, a rooster, paw prints. /End Annotation. /End of Image Transcription.]

Thank you for the image description!

I remember a story of someone having trouble at the polls because they were wearing a Stark/Rogers (as in Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, the very fictional people) so BE CAREFUL. 

I just read the line “President Donald Trump also indicated that federal squads would likely target cities run by the party that opposes him” in a real-life news article and I’m just thinking about how people really thought Democrats were overreacting in 2016 and that we should “give him a chance”

“Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the same” really? ?? What a galaxy brain take. Because right now the standard is “will address the pandemic and not send unidentified federal agents to kidnap citizens in the street” so, yeah, they’re not the same

Dictators don’t let themselves be elected out of power.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/19/trump-joe-biden-coronavirus-polls

This is why you should vote, though.

Here’s the nightmare scenario: Biden could win by a very small margin - too close to call, like the 2000 election - and the conservative Supreme Court could get to decide that Trump is the winner, even if he loses the popular vote by a substantial margin (again).

Knowing that this is a possibility doesn’t mean we should give up. It’s actually an argument for getting out and voting, and encouraging every person you know to vote, especially if you live in or know anyone who lives in a swing state. If Biden wins by a landslide, it will be significantly harder for Trump to argue the results. Yes, he’ll stomp his feet and say it was rigged and spout conspiracies. But he will have lost, and it’s important that the rest of the world can clearly see that.

You know how the United States sometimes does that thing where we stand behind the democratically elected candidate in contested elections in other countries? Yeah. We’re that country now! So in the case that Biden wins decisively and Trump tries to contest the results, I fully expect other democratic leaders like Trudeau, Merkel, Macron, etc. to say loudly and clearly, “Congratulations, President Biden! We look forward to working with you!” This hits the global news, making it even harder for Trump to argue his case since it exposes him for what he is: A big giant baby throwing a temper tantrum. I also expect (lol) most (some) Republicans to do the responsible thing and back Biden in this scenario (shoutout Mitt Romney in advance). Is it going to be messy? Probably! But our best chance of getting him out of office is to vote him out now - waiting another four years will be disastrous, and who knows what elections will look like after another four years of voter suppression, gerrymandering, and Trump welcoming foreign interference? Let’s not find out.

Would I be surprised if Donald Trump went on Fox News and continued to insist that everyone there call him President Trump for the rest of his life? No. And the situation above isn’t the only nightmare scenario: It is highly likely that the 2020 election will drag on for days as mail-in ballots are being counted. But I don’t give a fuck what he does after he’s out of the White House - as long as he’s no longer in a position power. I will physically go there myself and stand outside screaming until he leaves if I have to, and I hope you will join me.

TL;DR Donald Trump will leave the White House one way or another. If the idea of 4 more years of Trump scares you, then let’s do everything we can to make sure he sees a decisive loss in 2020. We can’t afford to wait for 2024, when who knows how he will have abused his power and even fewer of us will have the chance to vote him out.

Vote to make his claim of victory less believable. Vote to make Trump lose by a truly embarrassing amount. Be one of the voices that said GET THE FUCK OUT, not one of the ones that stayed quiet. Vote so that you have the satisfaction of knowing you helped make him go apoplectic.

Vote, even if you expect to have to riot the following day because you think he’s going to ignore the results.

Don’t make it even one vote easier for him to claim his losing the election is Fake News.

View casting your vote for Biden as the easiest method of protesting against Trump and his blooming dictatorship that you can engage in, no matter what other styles of protesting you are involved with.

And if you’re already planning to vote? Please be aware that you may well have to engage in some of those other forms of protest as well, in order to save our democracy.

You don’t have to choose between voting and other forms of action. You can do both.

You SHOULD do both.

evergreen mood

How can I reblog this a million times?  The 1% are master manipulators.

The existence of another poor person is not why you’re poor.

Yes, voting is important, and we all should do it.

Can we please stop punching down at the people who are frustrated about the candidates we have? Can we please stop talking about how they want ~ideological purity~? Can we stop trying to emotionally blackmail the people who are just fucking tired after politician after politician has promised to make life better, and then thrown them under the bus in order to appeal to upper-middle-class white centrists?

We’re all supposed to fucking be in this together. If you’re out there yelling at someone poor, someone queer, someone of color, that Trump is their fault because they didn’t vote in 2016, and they better fucking straighten up or they’ll get it again this time - stop it. Support your siblings in resistance. Don’t waste your energy fighting the people who are already hurting. Put it against our actual goddamn oppressors.

Now that I’ve calmed down a bit, some clarification.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be pushing for people to vote, and vote Democrat, whereever they can. Blue-waving it is our best chance for survival at this point, and anyone who tries to argue that that’s not true better have a hell of a plan for what we should do instead, or else they’re talking out their ass.

What I’m saying is, we shouldn’t be filling our “hey! go vote!” posts with “if you don’t vote you are personally responsible for all oppression in America over the next two years”. Even if you don’t care about the anxiety and pain that fills people with on a personal level, that kind of guilt-based praxis burns people out really quickly, and a lot of us are already on the edge of burning out from compassion fatigue. We need people to be voting in 2020, and 2022, and 2024, and after. Hell, we need people to be voting on the local and state level in 2019. Emotional blackmail isn’t a sustainable way of getting people involved; if we want to change the world long-term, we need to make the people invested in social justice feel engaged, like they have a path to materially affect their own conditions, instead of just feeling like they have to keep pressing the “lesser of two evils” button and watching as half the time it doesn’t work anyway.

And that’s the thing. The Republican strategy, for so long, has been in making people feel like they can’t be effective, that there’s no reason to be engaged. It’s been a strategy of muting people’s rage so they burn out trying to be heard, then telling them their apathy is reasonable and rational and they should just leave politics to the adults in the room. If we burn each other out with guilt and fear, we’re playing right into their hands. That’s what I mean when I say “support your siblings in resistance”. Tell us why we’re helping, how we can help, and what we can do to make things better above and beyond the ballot box. Push us into pride and power, not apathy.

Protesters in Atlanta singing “ Move trump Get out the way ” an iconic moment in American history

Rarely do all 50 states agree on anything, but they all agree that we should support the Paris Climate Agreement, and yet Trump does the opposite because he’s an incompetent shithead and hates America.

Like, I can’t get over it. Maybe it’s petty but I can’t get over this really visceral indignance and hurt over the fact that Hillary deserved to win. 

Like, set aside whether or not you like her policies or not. That’s not the point. Hillary Rodham Clinton has 40 years of public service under her belt. She’s proven herself to be efficient, smart and good at the job. 

Not only that, but as the former First Lady, and as Secretary of State, she probably has as much knowledge of what being the President entails as one can possibly have while not actually having been President. 

Like, I don’t think POTUS is a job you can really be overqualified for, but if it was, HRC is it. 

She’s worked so hard for so much of her life, and she’s done so much, and she lost to a man who has literally NO experience in politics, a man who rarely (if ever) gave any concrete answers on what he would actually do if elected or laid out policy plans, a man who lied to the American public time and time again, pretended he never said things he absolutely said, a man who is probably at this moment still panicking over the fact that he won and has no idea what to do now.

They say a woman has to work twice as hard to be half as respected as a man, but goddammit, HRC must have worked like twelve times harder than Trump ever has in his life, and he still got handed the Presidency because of an outdated system, because other Republicans were too chickenshit to stand up to him (@ PAUL RYAN) and most of all because people who opposed him still hated HRC so much they couldn’t be fucking bothered to show up.

And I know we have bigger problems but I can’t wrap my head around the injustice of it all, all I can think is that it’s not fair. HRC deserved to be president, she deserves the White House, she deserves the title, she deserves the respect. I know that’s not why she ran (unlike Trump, whose entire campaign was an ego stroke and we all know it). I know the presidency isn’t like, a medal you get for working hard, it’s a job. I know that, but it still pisses me off so much. 

Like maybe if she had lost to someone who was at least remotely qualified to lead this country, it wouldn’t bother me so much, but she didn’t. She didn’t even lose to Trump; she won the popular vote. She lost to 40 years of misogyny and mud-slinging and conspiracy theories and slander and flat-out lies, and now it feels like that misogyny won. 

She worked so hard, she’s done so much for a country that spat on her time and time again, and she’s still working despite it, even now, and she deserves better than this. 

This has to be for Hillary Clinton since there’s no way she’d call for an audit herself. Jill Stein knows good and well she didn’t win any states.

From CNN: “The computer scientists believe they have found evidence that vote totals in the three states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan) could have been manipulated or hacked and presented their findings to top Clinton aides on a call last Thursday.”

You can donate here, if you’d like.

Reblogging here to get word out as fast as possible. Donations to the fund for a recount are needed by THIS FRIDAY by 4 PM CT.

Even if you feel in any way uncertain about this, isn’t it better to donate the money and it go to nothing, than to not donate and find out something that could’ve been done wasn’t due to lack of funds?

So the deal as I understand it is:

* If Clinton were to call for a recount in any state, and the recount in that state did NOT turn out to elect her in that state instead, she would be required to pay the cost of the recount in that state.

* They do that to keep people from just vengefully, constantly demanding recounts for no reason.

* There’s plenty of reason to check those states out, although the CNN article may not have the correct info; the details, from the election security experts who have been trying to get Clinton’s team to ask for a recount, are right here. 

* When it says Wednesday here, it means today. As I write this. November 23rd. (Awww, it’s also the 53rd anniversary of the first episode of Doctor Who! ANYWAY)

* When I first saw the call for donations, it was at $45,000 out of their $2,500,000 goal. An hour or two later, it was at $80,000.

* It’s been less than 12 hours and they’re now up to $1.3 MILLION, more than halfway to their goal.

* They’re actually going to pull this off.

* I am not going to look it up for each state (you can google “who can ask for a recount in Wisconsin” or wherever but WI has a whole book about it and no thanks), but it looks like yes, Jill Stein can in fact ask for a recount. In Michigan, you have to be one of the people who ran, and lost, to ask for a recount. That seems to be standard practice.

* If Jill Stein calls for a recount, she DEFINITELY has to be the one to pay for it, since there is no fucking way it’s going to be like “Hey, guys, Jill Stein actually won!”

* I honestly think this is amazing. Even if it doesn’t work.

* Because this means that there were like… unless there are other third-party candidates that were on all three states’ ballots, there were probably only three people on this earth who had the ability to call for a recount. Two people with the interest. And one who is actually doing it.

* And for the first time in history, there is actually a way for everyone who wants this to immediately find out that it’s possible and throw money into the pot.

* Everything Trump is already doing is so fucking horrible, and the only saving grace is how incredibly hard people are organizing around every. freaking. single. thing. Again, we’ve never simultaneously had an election like this here, and an organizing tool like the internet, and it’s just.

I have multiple friends who are spontaneously posting to Facebook with shit like, “I am horrified that it has taken this kind of election for me to finally start hearing through my white privileged ears. I was not in action. I was complacent. No more.” (actual quote from a middle aged, upper-middle-class, straight cis white woman in Minnesota)

People who were already radical are now even more radical. There’s a powerful shift happening, and powerful communities being built. I’m seeing people come together to support projects and nonprofits and communities and issues that were already SUPER necessary, that they are finally realizing desperately need support. Doing things that were always needed, that now they perceive as an emergency and want to do anything to fix. Everything is so horrifying, but this gives me so much hope in the middle of it. Like, earlier today I was crying because Trump announced he was going to eliminate funding for NASA to study climate change because he thinks it’s “politicized” science. Now I’m crying because I’m so moved by all of these people giving whatever they can to make sure there is a recount in the most important states. By the visible evidence that we’re a real force now; that people aren’t just committed at a “tweeting/reblogging about it” level, people are like, NO. WE FUCKING STOP THIS NOW.

* And in the time it took me to write this, they’re now at more than $1.4 million.

@vaspider 

I put my two cents in the kitty to help with a recount in my state. I never thought I’d say this but:

Good for Jill Stein.