"Purity tests are what brought us MAGA." No that's white people, actually. 
Sundrop
@sundropc.bsky.social
“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.” - Ursula Le Guin Organizer, facilitator, coach. I speak only for myself. She/they. 📍AZ
so the thing about going on a strike is you have to withhold something people *want* from you
Microplastics Sommelier@leastactionhero.bsky.social · 4w agosorry for screenshotting some twitter rando but you guys need to see this
The fun part about a representative democracy is that it's the job of citizens to speak up when their representative isn't representing them. Telling folks not to critique the flaws of your favorite politician because they are your preferred party is cop shit.
I don’t live in Maine, so haven’t been actively following the online Platner saga. I have been following Shay for years and respect her writing and analysis and hope people really listen to what she is saying here.
Shay Stewart-Bouley@blackgirlinmaine.bsky.social · 4mo agoMy final piece on Graham Platner and the US Senate race. At almost 5000 words, it's long but based on several meetings with Platner and others. I'm not arguing with people online, so there are no comments. Life is too short to be stressed. open.substack.com/pub/shaystew...
The world’s vast and strange, Hara, but no vaster and no stranger than our minds are.
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
Put another way, gutting the Voting Rights Act was to gut Black representation in the government. Proposed solutions that don’t center that representation aren’t really getting at the problem at hand.
🎃 Imani Gandy Corn 🎃@angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 5mo agoI need white people in hella white states to think about what they are saying when they insist redistricting blue states will solve the problem that Black people in Memphis just got disenfranchised. Redistricting Colorado is not gonna solve the problem. There's like 16 Black people in Colorado.
I need white people in hella white states to think about what they are saying when they insist redistricting blue states will solve the problem that Black people in Memphis just got disenfranchised. Redistricting Colorado is not gonna solve the problem. There's like 16 Black people in Colorado.
so you'll be able to get a glock but not an abortion pill. that tracks.
USPS could soon allow people to ship handguns, undoing 100-year-old rule
The US Postal Service could soon allow handguns to be mailed for the first time in nearly a century.
usatoday.com
I keep coming back to the idea of "Optimistic Passivity." It’s that collective sigh of relief the broad liberal-left coalition seems to feel in between the waves of acute, highly visible crisis. I think the media environment plays a part. The lack of a coherent theory of social change does as well.
Been thinking a lot lately about the "physics" of broad social movements. It feels like we’re in a strange lull, and I’m trying to parse whether that’s a sign of recovery or a symptom of a deeper tactical cycle we keep getting caught in.
the Voting Rights Act was a plainly appropriate exercise of Congress's constitutional authority to rewrite the VRA, the Republican justices had to rewrite the Constitution itself that's a threat to ANY future congressional effort to build a multiracial democracy ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...
Samuel Alito Didn’t Only Gut the Voting Rights Act. He Rewrote the Constitution, Too
The Court’s decision in Callais will make it more challenging for Congress to pass laws designed to protect multiracial democracy.
ballsandstrikes.org
to be clear, this isn't something that the Constitution requires it's something the white supremacists on the Court made up you can read the Fifteenth Amendment for yourself: it's a concise yet capacious grant of authority to Congress to protect voters of color ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...
In Callais, the GOP justices said Congress *exceeds its authority to protect voters of color under the 15th Amendment* unless a law is precisely calibrated to address ONLY conduct so obviously racist that even Alito admits it's intentional racial discrimination ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...
Samuel Alito Didn’t Only Gut the Voting Rights Act. He Rewrote the Constitution, Too
The Court’s decision in Callais will make it more challenging for Congress to pass laws designed to protect multiracial democracy.
ballsandstrikes.org
so far, much of the analysis of Callais out there is focused on what the Court's rulings did to the Voting Rights Act, which is reasonable but now I want to talk about what the Court did to the Constitution bc the threat of Callais goes far beyond the VRA alone ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...
Samuel Alito Didn’t Only Gut the Voting Rights Act. He Rewrote the Constitution, Too
The Court’s decision in Callais will make it more challenging for Congress to pass laws designed to protect multiracial democracy.
ballsandstrikes.org
We don't have an independent Supreme Court that has the power and credibility to stand up to tyranny. We should fix SCOTUS by permanently weakening it as an institution because for the vast majority of US history it has been a bastion of oligarchy and white supremacy--and still is today.
Steve Vladeck@stevevladeck.bsky.social · 5mo agoThere are many who want to "fix" #SCOTUS by permanently weakening it as an institution. I *understand* that impulse, but fear it's myopic. Where would we be with the Trump administration *without* an independent judiciary that has the power and credibility to stand up to tyrannies of the majority?
One earnest and sincere question I have for folks who position the restoration of "the social contract" as the way out of this: How can you restore a social contract among people who no longer experience a shared reality? This is not snark. I'm asking.
If we absolutely positively know who’s destroying the country. And we know they won’t stop. And we know HOW they do it. Why do “WE” have a crisis?
I’m not saying there is no crisis. But here’s the question: IF the only thing that changes is WHO gets to vote. And if white people ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS vote the same way… And they elect people to uphold Jim Crow, mass incarceration and anti-democratic principles And NO ONE ELSE EVER DOES…
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