The ONLY way through here for ALL of us is to continue to fight the good fight. That’s all we can do. We sink or swim together, or we no longer have a country.
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Pro-choice Underground Railroad comes to mind if any of these laws actually get to the point where they are enforced.
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If felons can’t vote & an abortion is a felony… Do you see what’s happening here America?
I need a f’ing drink, they better not outlaw whiskey, I’m telling ya.
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I think they’d answer that with a “Duh.”
They believe they have the same rights to their living room and their wife’s uterus.
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Unfortunately we’ve already dredged that up.
“Snowflake Children”(or ‘babies’, since 'babies are 143% more precious) were a culture wars talking point back during George The Lesser’s regime.
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There is a huge unspoken truth that needs to be spoken: Even in the Reddest of Red States, there’s still about 40% of the population who are Democrats. (And, unfortunately, the reverse is true.)
Take Ohio. Totally Red State, right? Worthless. (Although it touches the Northern border of the country, which is weird for a southern state, eh?)
But the presidential elections are razor thin margins, often coming down to a few thousand or even a few dozen votes. About half or more of the people in the state are Democrats.
So why does Ohio send so many Republicans to congress and why is the State government so Republican dominated?
Because they cheat, obviously.
They dump as many D votes as they can into the “trash bin” districts, that they know they are going to loose - Downtown Columbus, Downtown Cinnci, Downtown Cleveland. The edges are drawn based on party affiliation / voting history / donation history to fine tune the results. Then they go for a 60/40 or 55/45 mix in the other districts, so they can have a comfortable margin while spreading the R votes as much as possible, resulting in more R politicians elected and an obvious “Red Wave”.
Personally, I think we need to adjust the system so that the national and statewide congressional makeup reflects the total percentage of the votes, not who won each district.
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As I understand it, in Alabama there are only 3 clinics in the whole state that perform abortions, so I think some of that is already necessary. Of course, it doesn’t fix the problem.
We’re annual donors to both the local chapter of Planned Parenthood and to these guys, but neither one will be able to help people in states with regressive policies if Roe gets overturned.
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Many of them are joining the boycott or donating profits to pro-choice organizations.
You can also push your local politicians in the right direction, and push the national party in the right direction.
Yes, because this is not about GA or Alabama, it’s about gutting a woman’s right to choose. And let me remind you that Roe was decided on privacy rights, which very much will have consequences outside of women if it gets over turned at the national level, which is a possibility.
If you think it can’t happen wherever you are, you’re mistaken. Politics flip all the time, and with the democratic party where it is right now, it’s plenty easy to see them abandoning the pro-choice position in chasing conservative votes, especially if the candidate is a man who has no stake in this issue.
You ignore what happens in other parts of the country at your peril, in other words.
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And Republicans will continue not giving a single solitary shit about the quality of life of people in the state who aren’t wealthy contributors.
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As I wrote, I already do the latter. I thought your earlier post was opposing the boycott? If not, then I think we’re on the same page.
with the democratic party where it is right now, it’s plenty easy to see them abandoning the pro-choice position in chasing conservative votes
I disagree; there are a few anti-choice democrats around, including 2 in the house and 3 in the Senate, but that is far fewer than the situation 20 years ago, and I don’t think they have much say in the party.
For sure some of the current Democratic candidates are weaker on the issue than they should be. Biden has been on the wrong side of some issues (like federal funding for abortion), but has been a consistent supporter of Roe. Sanders famously talked DNC chair Tom Perez out of the latter’s attempt to make support for choice a party litmus test.
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I live here. My kid lives here. Women live here. People of color live here. This is our country, and our home, too. As an American I and all my friends, neighbors, colleagues, and family are entitled to full protection under the constitution, and we’ll fight for it. Because if any state can take MY rights away, your rights aren’t too far behind, no matter where you live. A moment of progressive thought can quickly turn in the right circumstances, especially with the current make up of the democratic party. The ONLY way through here for ALL of us is to continue to fight the good fight. That’s all we can do. We sink or swim together, or we no longer have a country.
I 100% agree with everything you wrote. I think almost everyone here agrees on the goals. What remains are strategy and tactics. The rest of us educated liberals aren’t going to move to Georgia or Alabama, not in enough numbers to shift the state’s electoral politics. As you know, these aren’t the days of Bleeding Kansas where we can just claim land and start farming, we’d just become poor unemployed educated liberals.
We have our voices, our votes, our money, and our time. If we rule out boycotts, then it makes sense to start asking for other options. I’m sick of living in a “democracy” where almost no ones opinions matter, where having a large majority of the population support a goal is irrelevant as to whether the government pursues it.
If things got bad enough, and I hope they never do, could there be a mass exodus of the non-crazy from those states, large and sustained enough to give blue states more electoral power at the national level? Or just flat out create a national crisis that made surrounding regions panic and react?
Is there any national or local organization seeking volunteers or employees in large numbers for organized, directed, sustained protests and political action in pursuit of well defined goals? I don’t think any organization like that has existed since the civil rights movement, but I could be wrong.
Is there any means of communication that is likely to actually reach and persuade people not already in agreement with you, that we can all support somehow?
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But plenty have voiced opinions that it’s an unimportant, marginal issue that we shouldn’t get hung up on, including Bernie Sanders, who I like. Since it’s considered a “woman’s” issue instead of a human rights or a privacy issue, which is what it is, there are plenty willing to go soft on protecting it.
Which I did not do. Boycotts can be incredibly effective. When I saw Endgame last week, one of the things I said at the end where the GA logo is “guess we won’t be seeing much of that soon enough.”
Like many other things, people who have money and privilege can do that. Many, many people, the people who are often the hardest hit by policies like this, can NOT do that.
No. Which is why we need to convince people who have dropped out of the political system because it’s not doing shit for them. This is what Abrams did and what got her closer than any other recent democratic candidate. We need to give up flipping the hard core and go after the apathetic ones.
I’ve said this several times, here, and in many other threads. People keep thinking that we need to flip trump voters - they are literally no more than a quarter of the population, maybe a little more. That’s it! If people who have not voted in years had a reason to vote, had something to vote FOR, we could get numbers of voters UP, especially among people of color and women, and THAT is how we win.
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Have you asked your cousin something along the lines of “If Trump is as rich as he claims, why does he need people like you to donate to his re-election campaign?”
It might be worth contacting your local colleges or universities, particularly if they’re a big men’s basketball school, and ask them to petition the NCAA to move next year’s men’s Final Four games out of Atlanta. It worked with the “bathroom bill” in North Carolina in 2017. Losing the tourism money that the Final Four brings could hurt quite a bit – that Forbes article projected $300 million to host city Houston in 2016.
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I just try and ignore him. He’s a crazy person. ha ha. Last time I sparred with him about something he said the words, “Technically, Taxes are Extortion”. /facepalm
There is just no point to engage. His little brother (who is richer and smarter) does all the sparring. I mostly spectate.
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I would argue that point, actually. Yes, it was set up as a privacy issue because of how it was argued in Roe v. Wade, but it’s really a First Amendment issue:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
I was legally required to live, and ultimately die, according to someone else’s religious beliefs codified into law. I was legally kept from my own religious heritage as part of this process. Then, by the time I was in my child-bearing years Roe v. Wade had become the law of the land and so, despite the ongoing effort to create a “death by 1,000 cuts”, at least nominally I was allowed to follow the dictates of my own beliefs in regard to my own medical care. This is what they want to take away again: the ability of citizens to NOT be subject to religious law.
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not to mention recognizing women as human and real people
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This needs to be broadcast far and wide and pounded into the heads of every Democratic party apparatchik around.
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YES. The Trump supporters are NOT the majority. They are not. They do not represent the entire country, and I’m tired of everyone acting like we need to get them fully on board to do anything, when what we should be doing is appealing to the people who’ve lost hope.
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