Category: Equality
Thirty Reasons to Vote: #23
Thirty Reasons to Vote: #20
- Adam Liptak. “In Narrow Decision, Supreme Court Sides With Baker Who Turned Away Gay Couple,” New York Times. June 4, 2018.
- Nina Totenberg. “Supreme Court Delivers Major Victory To LGBTQ Employees,” NPR. June 15, 2020.
Update, 22 September, 2020:
Lucas Acosta. “Amy Coney Barrett is an Absolute Threat to LGBTQ Rights,” HRC, 22 September, 2020.
Thirty Reasons to Vote: #19a
TRIGGER WARNINGS: The following post deals with miscarriage, mental illness, the consequences of denying women the right to an abortion, racism, violence, and murder.
Kansas is an odd place. In many ways, it is very conservative, but it has some of the more liberal abortions laws in the country. Back in the early 1990s when Dr. George Tiller’s clinic was besieged by Operation Rescue protestors, my mother was one of the counter-protestors who stood to protect the clinic and its clients, even though the clinic had been bombed in 1986 and the threats of violence from people who called themselves pro-life were constant and real. In 1993, Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms, and in May 2009, he was murdered in his church while welcoming congregants to services.¹
The battle carried over to the op-ed pages of the Wichita Eagle. My mother showed up there, too, in this letter to the editor she wrote in response to a young woman making a case for adoption. One additional note: in her letter, my mother uses the racist term “mongoloid,” which was, for a time, the descriptor used for people with Down’s syndrome. I do not excuse her usage, but would like it noted that she quickly became aware of the hurtful nature of the word, and quit using it shortly after she wrote this letter.
Most women who have an abortion do so to save their lives, their sanity, their health, their jobs and finances, their family’s well-being. Vote for choice.
- Joe Stumpe and Monica Davey. New York Times, “Abortion Doctor Shot to Death in Kansas Church.” May 31, 2009.
Thirty Reasons to Vote: #19
Thirty Reasons to Vote: #18
Thirty Reasons to Vote: #16
Thirty Reasons to Vote: #4
Lamy Crystal Azurite
Vote to elect representatives who will end voter suppression and will support just redistricting. When we deny people their voice, their vote, then protesting becomes the only reasonable option.
Here in Colorado, we have new laws designed to eliminate, as much as possible, the partisan gerrymandering that has impeded fair elections. A panel of diverse members will take over the redistricting. We hope to set an example for other states struggling for more equitable elections.
- ACLU “Block the Vote: Voter Suppression in 2020.” February 3, 2020.
- TIME “Voter Suppression Is Still One of the Greatest Obstacles to a More Just America.” June 12, 2020.
- The Colorado Independent “The High Court punts on partisan gerrymandering. Colorado’s new redistricting laws could offer a model for the nation.” July 5, 2019. Also “Amendments Y and Z to take politics out of redistricting: Here’s how they’d work.” October 18, 2018.
Thirty Reasons to Vote: #3
We shouldn’t have to say it any longer, but we do. Black Lives Matter. And today the news has given us a new name to say:
Daniel Prude
Mr. Prude was killed back in March, but the circumstances of his death while wearing a spit hood the police put on him only recently came to light. I’ll let you read the details in the accounts below.
There are other groups whose lives we similarly devalue. Some are subsets of the Black community (Black trans folk, Black women) and some are not (BIPOC groups) or may not be (Jews, Muslims, other minority religions). I’m not sure how to talk about these groups without seeming to diminish the BLM discussion,* but for the moment, perhaps the ink offers an analogy. The ink looks black when left alone, but a little water shows it comprises other colors and shades. I will continue to find a more elegant and effective means to discuss the broad swathe of people whose rights we need to affirm and whose wrongs — the ones done to them in the past and the ones we continue to tolerate, propagate, and commit — we must work to assuage.
Vote.
* 4 September, 2020: I just read in the New York Times this excellent distinction made by Daria Allen, a sixteen-year-old who has been protesting in Portland, Oregon:
One of the few chants she consistently recites is “Black lives matter.” It annoys her that the phrase has become a subject of controversy, often met with the diminishing response “All lives matter.”
“When they have the breast cancer runs, you don’t see people out there yelling, ‘What about lung cancer?’” she said. “Just because I’m talking about what’s happening to me doesn’t mean I don’t care about what’s happening with you. Why do I have to constantly remind these people that I matter?”
When Ms. Allen
posted a link to the fund-raiser in a neighborhood Facebook group, a woman confronted her. Ms. Allen was destroying the city, she said. Ms. Allen fired back, arguing that the police were polluting the city with tear gas. The argument ended with the woman sending her a direct message, which Ms. Allen has saved in her inbox, just to remind herself of the mentality she is fighting against.
“If I see you on the street, you will be the next Black person hanging from a tree,” the woman wrote.
It makes me ill that anyone would throw the hateful and horrifying spectre of lynching at a Black teenager, one who is raising her voice and risking her health and life to call for justice and equality. Vote for Daria Allen because Daria Allen isn’t yet old enough to vote for herself.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/portland-protests.html?searchResultPosition=2
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Ink: Taccia Sharaku Kurocha
- Washington Post “Seven police officers suspended after video shows hood placed on head of Black man who later died.” September 3, 2020.
- Washington Post “Body-cam video in Daniel Prude case shows Rochester police placing hood over Prude.” September 3, 2020.
- Wall Street Journal “Seven Officers Involved in Daniel Prude Death Have Been Suspended.”
Thirty Reasons to Vote: #2
Noodler’s Luxury Blue Eternal Ink
Please write your senators, your congressional representatives, your secretaries of state, and your state attorneys general to urge them to keep voting safe and accessible and to stand up to everyone who is trying to undermine the postal service. Public pressure matters. Apply some daily.