It’s about time that somebody set the record straight. The GOP has spent the last 2 years of their relentless quest for power through minority rule by passing more and more restrictive voting laws in GOP controlled states.
But as the GOP squanders its winning hand, it begins to look like that might not do it. A combination of those new restrictive voting laws, a lack of police reform, and SCOTUS overturning Roe has mail in ballot requests up, new voter registration up, especially among women and minorities, community based activism is at a fever pitch, with plans to get voters to the polls, and neighborhood education on how to properly fill out mail in ballots.
Which leaves the GOP with Plan B. Threaten fear, intimidation, and possible physical violence at polling places. The RNC is openly boasting about a multi million dollar program to hire and train poll watchers to blanket polling places, and darkly hint that some of the cretins may even be armed, even though that is illegal within anywhere from 100-500′ of the polling place. If you can’t legislate them away from voting, then scarify them away instead.
Good luck with that shit, ass clowns. I wish I could remember the name of the career civil rights and voting activist Ari Melber had on his show yesterday on MSNBC, but my hearing aids were in the charger. I believe she works out of Atlanta with Stacey Abrams. When Ari brought up the veiled GOP threats of possible polling place violence, she smiled, shook her head, and demolished the GOP.
I don’t know if anybody noticed yet, but I’m black. My parents are black, my grandparents are black, and my great grandparents are black, it runs in the family. And as a little girl, I grew up surrounded by stories of the physical violence that my forebears suffered for the right to cast a ballot. If you’re a black American, physical violence is an ever present feeling you get every time you queue up at a polling place.
Thank You! Thank you for reminding everybody that after the Emancipation Proclamation, it took 100 years for the black right to universal voting in the US to be codified into law. Sweet Jesus, during Reconstruction, the US congress had to pass The Klan Act to stop racist peckerheads from assaulting and killing duly elected black officials for the crime of simply doing their job. Redneck racists beat John Lewis to within an inch of his life on the Edmond Pettis Bridge, and more white supremacist troglodytes threw a bomb into a church, killing a binch of pre teen girls just completing choir practice. Polling place violence against blacks isn’t a bug, it’s a feature!
And I’m betting that they’re not the only ones. I’m betting that when plenty of Hispanic families get together to celebrate, the oldsters tell the kids how lucky they are to grow up in a country where you can freely cast a vote. Because it wasn’t that way in the old country, you took your life in your hands if you showed up to vote against the current dictator.
These rich, arrogant, pampered, brainless twits at the RNC and running the GOP don’t seem to realize that polling place violence is not a threat to these people, it’s a long accepted potential way of life. Their ancestors bled, and in some cases died for this right, and they aren’t about to let some mob of cheap thugs deprive them of their hard fought birthright. What a bunch of total morons the GOP are.
The words of those great British philosophers Mick Jagger and Keith Richards come to mind: “Kick me like you kicked before/I can’t even feel the pain no more.” As we’ve also been seeing in Iran, there comes a point where the threats don’t work. People just get tired of getting kicked around and take the pain to take care of business. Unless the area is ruby red, I anticipate a total wipeout for the GOP in most of the competitive midterms.
PS The quote is from “Rocks Off”, opening track of Exiles On Main Street.
I like it that someone reminded the ‘pubes that there has been a war between people demanding the right to determine their future at the ballot box and cons for decades…and longer. That said the ‘pubes have just started saying “fuck it, we’re just going to get rid of your ballots and/or give out voting totals the way we want it”.
No they don’t you liar.
Yes they do fool.
It’s sad that as minorities we are used to intimidation, but I’ll tell you why I also don’t think it’s going to work. Republicans are afraid of everything, EVERYTHING! How many people are they going to be able to find to step out of their lily white enclaves to go to a neighborhood with “those people” to do that intimidating? How many will go to a majority black or Hispanic neighborhood and stay there for hours, for days? Early voting here in Georgia starts in early October and ends the week before the election, so that means the people they find would have to be available from 7a.m. to 7 p.m. for about a month. They claim that unlike us welfare queens, they all have jobs. And with us all being superhuman criminals, what with the ability to kill with no weapon and arms raised in surrender, who are they going to find brave enough to do that?
I used to live in South Fulton County and we would stand in line for hours to cast our vote, the suppression we’ve faced for years didn’t keep us away. Under Kemp, they would do things like “forget” the power cord to the voting machines so they would stop working after a couple of hours so voting would be held up for an hour or four while they located some. Or how about the time he was SOS and oversaw his election as governor and purged some 500,000 folks off the voter rolls (guess what race the majority of those people were) and won by how many votes 🤔?
But I’m going off on a tangent, the point is, the voting rights crew are on it, they are signing up people to vote. The new laws restrict mail in voting so early in person voting it is. You couldn’t stop our forefathers with violence, dogs or water hoses then, they’re not going to stop us with suppression, threats and intimidation now.
No.