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The Revolution Needs More Than Just Your Vote

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If you want to affect real change, it’s going to take more work than just your vote.

Over the past two weeks Americans have been presented with two very different approaches to our future. I won’t pretend to say that both parties were equal in their endeavor; to be sure, the two paths were so divergent I believe 2016 will go down in history as one of the major turning points of our republic. Plenty of people have already spent countless hours writing about the parties’ visions of the next four yearsincluding me – and I’m pretty sure we’re all over the theatrics and ready to get down to business.

Here’s the thing: It’s not enough just to vote in November and hope it all goes away. I wish it were, but it’s not. Voting is great – don’t get me wrong, I love voting and I’ve never missed an election day I in which I was eligble to vote. 

Voting is good. You should do it. (Register now if you haven’t already!) But voting won’t hold your candidates and representatives accountable. Voting is one of the last ways to influence policy. By the time you’re voting, your candidate’s race is over. They’ve said all they’re going to say. And when it comes time to re-elect, you’re voting either to keep them around because you’re happy with them or you’re voting to get rid of them. Voting is black-and-white, all-or-nothing. 

If you really want to change the world and the direction we’re going in, you’ve got to get in early and make yourself known.

  • Organize in your neighborhood. Local elections are often decided by a handful of votes. Here in Georgia we had a race decided last week by 8 votes. If the loser had just motivated 9 more people to vote, she would have won. Seriously. If you can manage to get 50, 100, or 250 people together on something, you can run the table in local issues. That’s huge.
  • Volunteer for a campaign. Volunteering is the absolute easiest way to make things happen, but it can also be the worst. If you don’t mind putting in the hours to make an impact, volunteering can be the stepping stone to real policy input. You’ve got to be ready to show up, make the phone calls and do the grunt work, but if you do, you’ll get noticed. I started out making phone calls for a campaign and by the week of the election I was writing the candidate’s statements because I was willing to do whatever it took to make sure the candidate (and I) was heard.
  • Get to know your local legislators. Whether it’s your city council member or state legislator, meet them. Learn their names, and make them learn yours. The majority of laws and policies that affect you will come from your state and local government. If you want to make a real change – perhaps you’ve been motivated by the thought of some sort of ”revolution” or something, this is how you do it. It won’t be through the presidency; it’ll be through the guy that decides whether your neighbor can have a permit to renovate his house or through the woman who decides that the state government can take over your local school if it’s not meeting her standards. 
  • Make yourself heard. This one’s more abstract, but just as easy. Get your voice out there. Direct action is good and fine, and it certainly has its place – but it’s just one way of many to change public opinion. The folks who vote are the same folks who actually read letters to the editor in the paper. They also read the op/ed articles and blog posts on Medium or other sites. A well written article really can change someone’s mind (unlike your aunt’s Facebook post, of course). 

It’s easy to get disillusioned with politics, I know, and there are very few times I would ever use a tactic that even remotely resembles victim blaming, but here it is: It’s too easy to get involved and influence change. If you choose not to make something happen, you deserve exactly what you get. No, it’s not going to happen over night, and it’s going to take a lot of work, but if you sit on the sidelines it will never happen at all, and we’ve sat through too many hours listening to Donald Trump open his mouth and say something disgusting for it all to be a waste of time. 

It’s time to get to work.

 

Robbie Medwed is an Atlanta-based LGBTQ activist and educator. His column appears here weekly. Follow him on Twitter: @rjmedwed

 

Image by jordi.martorell via Flickr and a CC license

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‘Disgraceful’: ICE Slammed After Allegedly Pepper-Spraying US Congresswoman

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U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) is accusing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents of pepper-spraying her in her face while she was at a local Tucson, Arizona restaurant.

Rep. Grijalva in a video on social media said she saw about 40 mostly-masked ICE agents at a restaurant she frequents weekly.

The agents were “in several vehicles that the community had stopped right here, right in the middle of the street, because they were afraid that they were taking people without due process, without any kind of notice.”

READ MORE: Warning Signs Flash as Trump Slump Raises Fears of 2018 Blue Wave Rerun: Conservative

She said that the community was “protecting their people” when she was “sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent,” and “pushed around by others when I literally was not being aggressive.”

“I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,” she continued. “So, once I introduced myself, once I did, I assumed that it would be a little calmer, but there was literally only one person that was trying to speak to me in any kind of civil tone, and everyone else was being rude and disrespectful, and I just can only imagine if they’re going to treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else.”

Congresswoman Grijalva said she saw “people directly sprayed,” including “members of our press” and staff members.

She blasted President Donald Trump, saying that he “has no regard for any due process, the rule of law, the Constitution — they’re literally disappearing people from the streets.”

Critics slammed the agents’ action.

READ MORE: Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court

U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) wrote that Rep. Grijalva “was doing her job, standing up for her community.”

“Pepper-spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for. Period,” he added.

“This is unacceptable and outrageous,” observed Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. “Enforcing the rule [of] law does not mean pepper spraying a member of Congress for simply asking questions. Effective law enforcement requires restraint and accountability, not unchecked aggression.”

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein noted, “quite the beginning for Grijalva, who wasn’t seated for weeks, [cast] the decisive vote to get the Epstein files, and now has apparently been pepper sprayed in the face by immigration agents.”

Also calling the action “outrageous,” U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) wrote: “We are Members of Congress with oversight authority of ICE. Rep Grijalva was completely within her rights to stand up for her constituents. ICE is completely lawless.”

“First they tackle a sitting Senator,” noted U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY). “Now they’re pepper spraying a Representative. It’s clear ICE is spinning out of control. We will hold the agency accountable.”

READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes

 

Image via Reuters 

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Warning Signs Flash as Trump Slump Raises Fears of 2018 Blue Wave Rerun: Conservative

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A well-known conservative commentator has a warning for the Republican Party: take action now or face a repeat of the 2018 midterms when the GOP lost 41 House seats in a landslide. And this time, he says, the Senate could go to the Democrats as well.

Award-winning writer and journalist Bernard Goldberg reminded readers at The Hill that in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term, “Republicans got walloped … and a good chunk of that had President Trump’s name written all over it.”

Trump’s “approval ratings were in the low 40s, and independents — the folks who usually decide elections — had seen enough. They broke hard for the Democrats,” Goldberg noted. “Now here we are, staring down 2026, and you can almost hear history clearing its throat, getting ready to repeat itself.”

READ MORE: Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court

Goldberg noted that Trump’s approval rating is currently the lowest it’s been this term.

“Among Republicans, his support dropped from 91 percent right after the 2024 election to 84 percent last month. Among independents, it cratered — from 42 percent to just 25 percent.”

“If the trend continues,” he warned, “Republicans could be headed for another blue wave — and this time, it could wash away not just the House majority, but control of the Senate too.”

Why?

“It’s the economy — still,” he wrote.

“Trump is out there saying the economy is humming. Biden said the same thing before him. But voters didn’t buy it then, and they’re not buying it now. Why? Because it’s not GDP numbers that matter. It’s affordability,” Goldberg noted.

READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes

That’s a word that President Trump continues to call a “con job,” while his own administration tries to claim he is focused on.

He pointed to a Karl Rove Wall Street Journal column and wrote: “The Republicans may have ‘avoided disaster’ in Tennessee, but the result should be a wake-up call for Republicans. He’s right.”

Goldberg asked: “will anyone in the Republican Party actually pick up the phone?”

“Because if Republicans don’t wake up — and fast — they’re going to find out the hard way what happens when you keep rerunning the same movie and expecting a different ending. To lose in 2026, all they have to do is nothing. And right now, that’s pretty much what they’re doing.”

READ MORE: Trump Urges Judge Aileen Cannon to Keep Jack Smith Report Secret

 

 

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Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court

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President Donald Trump is claiming that the top priority of Democrats is the “total obliteration” of the U.S. Supreme Court. His remarks came just hours after SCOTUS gave Republicans a 6-3 win along partisan lines, in the form of approving Texas’s redrawn mid-decade congressional maps that could help add five GOP-held seats to the U.S. House of Representatives. A lower court had ruled the redrawn Texas maps were likely racially biased.

Although there are different ways to measure, one study by Court Accountability this fall found that the Supreme Court has ruled in Trump’s favor 90% of the time.

“Most of these wins for the president came from the court’s ‘shadow docket’ slate of opinions — where the court has typically, in the past, only ruled on administrative measures,” according to Truthout. “However, in recent years, the Supreme Court has been making announcements on cases, issuing injunctions or allowances of actions to remain in place, that have the same effect, essentially, as a final decision.”

READ MORE: White House Touts Trump’s ‘Track Record’ on Affordability

On Friday, the president declared that the “Democrats number one policy push is the complete and total OBLITERATION of our great United States Supreme Court.”

“They will do this on their very first day in office, through the simple Termination of the Filibuster, SHOULD THEY WIN THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS,” he wrote.

Trump has strongly advocated for Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster.

“The Radical Left Democrats are looking at 21 Justices, with immediate ascension,” he wrote, claiming that Democrats would more than double the current size of the court.

“This would be terrible for our Country. Fear not, however, Republicans will not let it, or any of their other catastrophic policies, happen. Our Country is now in very good hands. MAGA!!!”

Some court reform advocates have suggested the Supreme Court be expanded to 13 justices, one for each of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals.

READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes

 

Image via Reuters 

 

 

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