Dan,
A lot of us in the swing states are fighting this. I'm part of a large group of poll observers who will be in our urban neighborhoods in Cincinnati and other big cities in Ohio and elsewhere, making sure these intimidation tactics don't work. I did it in 2008 and it was incredibly rewarding.
Seriously, that was my first thought as well - but then, can you imagine the shit-storm that would ensue if a couple dozen Panthers showed up at a polling place in, say, River Oaks, and began sniffing around the precinct officers' tables? The entire fucking Houston SWAT Team would descend on them like rain from a cumulus cloud.
Goddamned old, white racist bigots - can't die off soon enough, SFAIC...
It's already against the law to intimidate voters. Poll workers ought to be all over their asses for pulling this shit. When we go to a restaurant and someone is bothering us there, we call the fucking manager and have their asses thrown to the sidewalk. Poll workers should do that, too, by calling the cops.
I don't see any benefit to that. If people have the time, they should do what @3 said and monitor minority-leaning polling places to make sure this shit doesn't fly there.
I volunteered as a Voter Protection Attorney in prior elections ... "someone" is doing something about this... at least here, but Seattle is not like these other places.
Everyone here was very helpful. And now, with our vote by mail system, intimidation is a bit more difficult. And we are not a swing state.
If only we knew some progressive national figure who had experience organizing national grassroots projects. :( Maybe someone with a tv show or podcast or newspaper column or blog or something.
I agree with the folks here who there this is a terrible idea. You can't supressing votes and call it a "symbolic action". If you are fucking with the process, you are responding at their level. There must be clever ways to do this without actually "mock" indimidating white voters. If we can't get real U.N. election monitors, how about dressing up as UN monitors at a number of high-profile polling places to make the point? You could even figure out which place Romney votes at and other republicans in congress who support these laws, and get photos of "UN monitors" making sure they are not frauds?
I don't know, but anything is better than resorting to their level. I haven't read Rules for Radicals in a while, but I don't think Alinsky would be into that. (Is there any way to integrate a "Shit In" into this?)
If we did that, it would just devolve into yet another "It's-OK-If-You're-Republican" debacle, where politicians and media only focus on vilifying the progressive "patriot" groups.
What we need is for people to simply keep these Republican fucknuts out of polling places. Shove them away from any voters that they hover over; block their way into the general vicinity; etc. The challenge is finding a way to do this without committing assault on these people (tempting as that may be).
Why shouldn't we do this? Because the police will happily ignore suburban Republicans and teabaggers intimidating poor and Latino and black voters, but they would arrest and beat and taser poor and Latino and black people doing the same thing to wealthy whites. That's why we shouldn't do it.
Hey, Dan. How about sending some love to Our Vote Our Future, the Minnesota organization that is fighting what would be the second-in-the-nation (after Mississippi) state constitutional amendment restricting the right to vote. They've been making great progress in educating voters (support for the amendment is down to 52%, from 80% earlier this year). But they really could use a boost from you and your twitter, facebook, and column readers/followers: http://www.ourvoteourfuture.org/
Democrats are the young, working, breadwinners and college students of this country.
Republicans are mostly old retired people or "soccer moms" who are simply obeying their husbands' orders.
Don't believe me? Re-read the Urban Archipelago, or Goldy's posts about city dweller's taxes subsidizing the rural dwellers.... Democrats are the makers, republicans are the takers.
@23's right. I'd think Dan could have figured that out. It always amazes me when white people say that brown/black people should do "X" or "Y". Especially in Texas.
FTW-
"But it won't be an external power that brings the whole house of cards down, should things eventually tumble: I have seen the enemy, and He is Us."
Very True.
We fear your refusal to surrender to pessimism may be too optimistic.
The nation has reached a stark divide, ideologically and financially.
Those who pay the bills,
the half of the population paying Federal Income Taxes,
have made it clear that they can not pay more.
Those who consume government, the takers,
have made it clear they don't care,
they refuse to pay themselves and they continue to demand more.
The issue will come to a head as our debt becomes unsustainable.
Very soon.
The productive class will,
forcefully if necessary,
have to cut loose the moochers.
It will not be difficult but it will be very ugly.
If Obama thought the right was clinging to their guns before he has no idea.....
We think an Obama victory is very possible.
And it will bring a tipping point that the nation will not be able to avoid.
Psychologically the Right is coming to grips with that inevitability,
and with what will follow.
We do not ask for this conflict but will not shrink from it.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
But not necessarily in equal measure....
The side that can not even provide their own healthcare will not last long.
People who say they're unwilling to "stoop to their level" seem unwilling to recognize that that's how you win. Tit-for-tat is depressing and time-consuming, but if it works and if it's necessary and if the ultimate result is that the other side drops it as a tactic, but by God you've just got to do it.
This is probably the only time that I'll wish I lived in Texas so that I could participate in something like this.
I completely understand Dan's outrage. I hope, however, that now that the Repubs' voter intimidation campaign has been exposed, Democratic poll watchers will be out in force to make sure that Blacks/Browns are not harassed when exercising their voting rights.
I don't live in a Red State, but any Dem from Texas who's reading this should volunteer as a poll watcher in places where the "Patriots" may be active.
Just shows that Repubs are such a dying party that they have to go to these extremes in their attempt to intimidate voters. Pathetic.
There's something to the "U.N. Election monitor" thing that I like. It's visual, and that helps... but I admit that as a white citizen of the US I've always been intimidated by the jurisdiction of Texas. Fundraising would have to include the inevitable legal defense of participants, as well as any health care costs from the pepper-spray/ ringworm etc. incurred while enjoying the judicial system of the Lone Star State.
Totally agree with your outrage, but I just don't think it would be a good idea. Tit-for-tat culture wars never end well for people of color, especially in places like Texas. I think we are best to spend our time fighting this type of behavior, and arrest those that are intimidating voters.
@29: In other words "because we can't win the election, we're going to get all butthurt and try an armed uprising". Wow, sour grapes much?
And I really hope you know that it's the RED states, not the BLUE ones, that tend to have the most people not paying Federal income tax.
The problem, I believe, is that if you pour a bunch of minorities into a white suburbanite neighborhood for any reason, they're going to get arrested. And that's the old school method of voter suppression.
Standing outside voting areas and informing voters on their rights and reminding them to report any voter intimidations, now THAT I'm on board with. But come on Dan, you're a dad... Two wrongs don't make a right.
As with the workers in Wisconsin, immigrants in Arizona, and teachers in Chicago, where are the Democrats? Ignoring or brutalizing their base for over a generation was the opening to racist rednecks redlining the vote. While I understand Dan's anger, responding in kind isn't the solution, and definitely not in Houston Goddamned Texas.
If there's a voter-rights Stonewall to be had, it will be done by terrifying complacent Democrats. In this age of Citizens United, the key civic lesson is that politicians are hired hands. Scaring the shit out of them will get results.
>Through our state of the art hotlines: 1-866-OUR-VOTE (administered by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law) and 1-888-Ve-Y-Vota (administered by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund), this website, and comprehensive voter protection field programs across the country, we provide Americans from coast to coast with comprehensive voter information and advice on how they can make sure their vote is counted. Made up of more than 100 local, state and national partners, this year's coalition will be the largest voter protection and education effort in the nation's history.
1) There just aren't as many douche bags on our side. You have to be a pretty hardcore exclusionary judgmental douche to go do stuff like this. Sure, we have PETA, ELF and radical vegans on our side, but those are really very tiny slices of the left. The right has a much bigger pool from which to draw.
Also, our douches already have their pet projects. The right has douches just sitting around ready to be fired up for the next cause and since they are hierarchical, they respond well to organization and direction from the top. We just don't.
2) You gotta believe. Elites on the right mostly know this is a made up issue. The base does not. Even a lot of the elites have been sucked in by the B.S.
People just aren't going to go out and crusade on the basis of an issue they know to be false. Righteous indignation could perhaps make a few people do something like this once. In order to keep doing it they would need to believe they were doing something real. We know it is not real. We won't show up.
Keep in mind how exhausting the idea of being a jerk to strangers who are minding their own business is. You need a really powerful motivation to get there. We just don't have it.
@1 - In San Francisco, mail-in ballots do not need a stamp, but I think that varies county by county in California.
California State Law allows any registered voter to vote by mail without excuse or justification needed. While I love the process of voting in person, I am nevertheless registered as a permanent absentee voter. Some years I drop off my absentee ballot at my regular polling place on election day just so I can be a little bit part of the in-person voting process.
Dan, people of color cannot (and probably should not) do the same thing in white neighborhoods. Why? Because white privilege. For attempting this sort of action, non-whites would be putting themselves in much greater danger of being arrested, beaten, and maybe even killed. These white people are doing this because they *can* as whites they have the privilege to haunt other communities without fear of serious physical or legal repercussions.
Of course, people of color could respond in kind in spite of those risks, and perhaps that would be an even more powerful statement, but it would be a mistake to equate the actions and risks taken by of those communities with the actions and "risks" taken by these white communities.
"Why the fuck aren't liberals and progressives organizing "patriot" groups of our own?"
How about because you are all mindless drones that cannot actually think for yourselves? Do some research and see who actually controls the national Democratic Party? You sheeple are so naive. . .
Every election cycle, Democrats try to deceive blacks by claiming falsely that Republicans engage in āvoter suppressionā and want to ādisenfranchiseā blacks, even though blacks are voting in record numbers, particularly in the 2008 election when President Barack Obama was elected. Notably, after several investigations in 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2101 by civil rights organizations and liberal newspapers, Democrats have produced no blacks who were denied the right to vote. If even one black person had been denied the right to vote, that personās name would have been blasted on the front page of every newspaper in this country. Democrats gleefully ignore the charges, investigations and convictions of the Democrat-controlled group, ACORN, for massive voter fraud in several states. Democrats also vigorously fight the enactment of voter identification laws that would prevent voter fraud.
Real voter intimidation was done by Black Panthers who wielded weapons, hurled racial insults at voters and blocked polls at a Philadelphia polling place in the 2008 Election. Incredibly, the charges were dropped by President Obama, which resulted in a unanimous Civil Rights Commission decision expressing outrage. Jerry Jackson, one of the Black Panther defendants is an elected member of Philadelphiaās 4th Ward Democratic Committee and was a credentialed poll watcher for Obama and the Democratic Party.
Think that this is not true? Do your own research and learn how to think for yourself.
Dan, you are getting some serious bromance love from me. But do us a favor, will ya? Can you tell your buddies as MSNBC about all the voter suppression that Republican Sam Reed is trying to pull off in our own state? That own bullshit about trying to use the same database Florida is using to suppress legitimate American citizen voters. And the monkey business about trying to suppress votes by sending 1.1 million registered voters in our state and telling them they are not registered to vote... when they are. This stinks to high heaven. We shouldn't be just wagging our fingers at these lawbreaker Republicans in other states. We should be seriously freaked out about what is going in our own state. Be ever vigilant.
Voting is just a ruse to make people believe that they are part of the system and that there is some control that they are able to access. In reality, the machine is in control. Obozo has continued both of the wars just as G W Bush had already planned. In fact he has used the exact time table that was already in place for Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009 and 2010 when the Demokrats were in complete charge they only were able to get a poorly crafted health care program through, one that has no real public option than the ones already available. No immigration, no tax code revision, no break up of the big banks; Nothing. He wasted two years! Gitmo still open for business and torture! War in Libya but a free pass for murder for Syria.
The great opportunity was not entirely wasted because we have not already decreased the value of the US Dollar by 25% and are printing $10 Billion a week. Soon it will be worthless and the game will be ours! Another four years should be plenty of time to bring on the total collapse, just like China needed to transition into to become the greatest power in the world. Soon China will have an aircraft carrier a few miles off the of Washington State. All paid for by the naive Americans via trinkets from Wal-Mart. The Great Leap FORWARD!
āThe future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islamā - Obama is Great
A lot of us in the swing states are fighting this. I'm part of a large group of poll observers who will be in our urban neighborhoods in Cincinnati and other big cities in Ohio and elsewhere, making sure these intimidation tactics don't work. I did it in 2008 and it was incredibly rewarding.
Goddamned old, white racist bigots - can't die off soon enough, SFAIC...
Based on the last few elections in Washington State, I'd think you'd be calling for UN Observers to participate.
Anyone want to take a whack at a potential WA state initiative covering this? Turn the tables on the louts?
Everyone here was very helpful. And now, with our vote by mail system, intimidation is a bit more difficult. And we are not a swing state.
Someone call Jimmy Carter.
Because we believe in democracy.
I don't know, but anything is better than resorting to their level. I haven't read Rules for Radicals in a while, but I don't think Alinsky would be into that. (Is there any way to integrate a "Shit In" into this?)
What we need is for people to simply keep these Republican fucknuts out of polling places. Shove them away from any voters that they hover over; block their way into the general vicinity; etc. The challenge is finding a way to do this without committing assault on these people (tempting as that may be).
We've got jobs. Or we're in class.
Democrats are the young, working, breadwinners and college students of this country.
Republicans are mostly old retired people or "soccer moms" who are simply obeying their husbands' orders.
Don't believe me? Re-read the Urban Archipelago, or Goldy's posts about city dweller's taxes subsidizing the rural dwellers.... Democrats are the makers, republicans are the takers.
We don't have the time to do this kind of shit.
Not a good idea.
Hopefully that statement is satirical.
FTW-
"But it won't be an external power that brings the whole house of cards down, should things eventually tumble: I have seen the enemy, and He is Us."
Very True.
We fear your refusal to surrender to pessimism may be too optimistic.
The nation has reached a stark divide, ideologically and financially.
Those who pay the bills,
the half of the population paying Federal Income Taxes,
have made it clear that they can not pay more.
Those who consume government, the takers,
have made it clear they don't care,
they refuse to pay themselves and they continue to demand more.
The issue will come to a head as our debt becomes unsustainable.
Very soon.
The productive class will,
forcefully if necessary,
have to cut loose the moochers.
It will not be difficult but it will be very ugly.
If Obama thought the right was clinging to their guns before he has no idea.....
We think an Obama victory is very possible.
And it will bring a tipping point that the nation will not be able to avoid.
Psychologically the Right is coming to grips with that inevitability,
and with what will follow.
We do not ask for this conflict but will not shrink from it.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
But not necessarily in equal measure....
The side that can not even provide their own healthcare will not last long.
A purging.
@23 That's why white folks have to step up on this one.
People who say they're unwilling to "stoop to their level" seem unwilling to recognize that that's how you win. Tit-for-tat is depressing and time-consuming, but if it works and if it's necessary and if the ultimate result is that the other side drops it as a tactic, but by God you've just got to do it.
This is probably the only time that I'll wish I lived in Texas so that I could participate in something like this.
Yeah, I mean all that LARP-ing has to pay off some time.
I don't live in a Red State, but any Dem from Texas who's reading this should volunteer as a poll watcher in places where the "Patriots" may be active.
Just shows that Repubs are such a dying party that they have to go to these extremes in their attempt to intimidate voters. Pathetic.
you don't know your President, sweetcakes
And I really hope you know that it's the RED states, not the BLUE ones, that tend to have the most people not paying Federal income tax.
No.
You must be a product of the Chicago pubic school system.
We are going to cut off the welfare state spigot.
The Moocher Class will riot.
film at 11.......
Standing outside voting areas and informing voters on their rights and reminding them to report any voter intimidations, now THAT I'm on board with. But come on Dan, you're a dad... Two wrongs don't make a right.
How exactly do you propose doing that with an Obama victory?
If there's a voter-rights Stonewall to be had, it will be done by terrifying complacent Democrats. In this age of Citizens United, the key civic lesson is that politicians are hired hands. Scaring the shit out of them will get results.
Seriously. Look at a map of who's paying tax dollars vs. who's using tax dollars. The conservatives are the ones sucking at the welfare spigot.
>Through our state of the art hotlines: 1-866-OUR-VOTE (administered by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law) and 1-888-Ve-Y-Vota (administered by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund), this website, and comprehensive voter protection field programs across the country, we provide Americans from coast to coast with comprehensive voter information and advice on how they can make sure their vote is counted. Made up of more than 100 local, state and national partners, this year's coalition will be the largest voter protection and education effort in the nation's history.
1) There just aren't as many douche bags on our side. You have to be a pretty hardcore exclusionary judgmental douche to go do stuff like this. Sure, we have PETA, ELF and radical vegans on our side, but those are really very tiny slices of the left. The right has a much bigger pool from which to draw.
Also, our douches already have their pet projects. The right has douches just sitting around ready to be fired up for the next cause and since they are hierarchical, they respond well to organization and direction from the top. We just don't.
2) You gotta believe. Elites on the right mostly know this is a made up issue. The base does not. Even a lot of the elites have been sucked in by the B.S.
People just aren't going to go out and crusade on the basis of an issue they know to be false. Righteous indignation could perhaps make a few people do something like this once. In order to keep doing it they would need to believe they were doing something real. We know it is not real. We won't show up.
Keep in mind how exhausting the idea of being a jerk to strangers who are minding their own business is. You need a really powerful motivation to get there. We just don't have it.
California State Law allows any registered voter to vote by mail without excuse or justification needed. While I love the process of voting in person, I am nevertheless registered as a permanent absentee voter. Some years I drop off my absentee ballot at my regular polling place on election day just so I can be a little bit part of the in-person voting process.
Of course, people of color could respond in kind in spite of those risks, and perhaps that would be an even more powerful statement, but it would be a mistake to equate the actions and risks taken by of those communities with the actions and "risks" taken by these white communities.
Seriously? Intimidating little old ladies, who tend to be the volunteers at these things? How could we NOT want to put some muscle behind them?
How about because you are all mindless drones that cannot actually think for yourselves? Do some research and see who actually controls the national Democratic Party? You sheeple are so naive. . .
Every election cycle, Democrats try to deceive blacks by claiming falsely that Republicans engage in āvoter suppressionā and want to ādisenfranchiseā blacks, even though blacks are voting in record numbers, particularly in the 2008 election when President Barack Obama was elected. Notably, after several investigations in 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2101 by civil rights organizations and liberal newspapers, Democrats have produced no blacks who were denied the right to vote. If even one black person had been denied the right to vote, that personās name would have been blasted on the front page of every newspaper in this country. Democrats gleefully ignore the charges, investigations and convictions of the Democrat-controlled group, ACORN, for massive voter fraud in several states. Democrats also vigorously fight the enactment of voter identification laws that would prevent voter fraud.
Real voter intimidation was done by Black Panthers who wielded weapons, hurled racial insults at voters and blocked polls at a Philadelphia polling place in the 2008 Election. Incredibly, the charges were dropped by President Obama, which resulted in a unanimous Civil Rights Commission decision expressing outrage. Jerry Jackson, one of the Black Panther defendants is an elected member of Philadelphiaās 4th Ward Democratic Committee and was a credentialed poll watcher for Obama and the Democratic Party.
Think that this is not true? Do your own research and learn how to think for yourself.
The great opportunity was not entirely wasted because we have not already decreased the value of the US Dollar by 25% and are printing $10 Billion a week. Soon it will be worthless and the game will be ours! Another four years should be plenty of time to bring on the total collapse, just like China needed to transition into to become the greatest power in the world. Soon China will have an aircraft carrier a few miles off the of Washington State. All paid for by the naive Americans via trinkets from Wal-Mart. The Great Leap FORWARD!
āThe future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islamā - Obama is Great