[image description: a tweet by user @indigenousAI saying
“fun fact: as a DV survivor i cannot register to vote because doing so makes my address public. anyone who is fleeing or hiding from an abuser is automatically disenfranchised from the political process and this is a feature, not a bug”]
I don’t know of the original poster might not be aware
but!
if you’ve been a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, you can enroll into the address confidentiality program (free of cost!) and be registered to vote as an absentee voter and your name and address will not be made available for the public
it is super easy to get enrolled - the application takes like 5 minutes, but it has to be with someone who is certified to do it (most likely an advocate! try going to a family justice center in your area or calling the Attorney Generals office in your area!!!!)
ALSO :
you don’t need to have any police reports or have a protection order to qualify!!! you just have to sign stating that you’ve been a victim of one of the aforementioned crimes.
Links to the info for every state in the Wikipedia article:
also because I know a lot of people who assume american standards apply to other countries
this is not the case in the UK, you can chose to have your details on the electoral register private (known as the closed register) when you register, and if you’re currently on the open register you can change it at any time
Oh wow I DID NOT KNOW THAT THIS IS GREAT NEWS
That ADHD feel when you go to add an image description to something because you forgot it already had an image description
️ Ruth Ellis (1899 - 2000) was the daughter of former slaves. She came out as a lesbian when she was 16-years-old to the complete acceptance of her family. In 1937, Ruth and her longtime partner moved to Detroit from their hometown of Springfield, Illinois for the promise of higher wages. There, she became the first woman in Michigan to run her own printing business. She printed fliers, posters, and stationary in the front room of her home, which also quickly became a hotspot for Black LGBTQ social life. Before long, Ruth was helping those who came around in any way she could, including by paying for college tuitions. After the Stonewall uprising, 70-year-old Ruth began giving speeches in support of gay and lesbian rights all across the country. She remained an activist for the rest of her long life and even spent her 100th birthday leading the San Francisco Dyke March. At the time of her death at 101, she was recognized as the oldest out lesbian in the US. She is the subject of the documentary “Living With Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100” and is the namesake of the Ruth Ellis Center, a shelter for homeless and at-risk LGBTQ youth in Detroit.
Good news of you have a low income and a high internet bill: The Biden Administration is changing that.
The Affordable Connectivity Program will provide plans of at least 100 Megabits per second of speed for no more than $30. An estimated 48 million Americans will qualify.
Twenty internet providers, including national companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, as well as regional companies, such as Hawaiian Telecom and Jackson Energy Authority in Tennessee, have committed to the program.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would strip “woke corporations like Disney” of special protections enabling companies to hold copyright material for decades.
The Copyright Clause Restoration Act would limit copyrighted material to 56 years and apply the new rule retroactively, meaning Disney and other companies could immediately lose some copyright protections if the law were passed.
The measure is the latest Republican attack on Disney, which last month was stripped of its self-governing status at its amusement park in Orlando, Fla., after Gov. Ron DeSantis took issue with the media company for speaking out against the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade.
Hawley’s bill goes after Disney’s long-running list of iconic characters stretching from Mickey Mouse to Marvel superheroes.
Hawley said in a press release that “the age of Republican handouts to Big Business is over.”
All this, because Disney did the bare minimum of performative tolerance, after their previous republican support hurt the bottom line…
Okay so, is this a good thing, a bad thing, or some mix of the two?
Limiting copyrights held by corporations: Good. Unquestionably.
Limiting copyrights generally: Depends. The Tolkien and Doyle estates are pulling one sort of fuckery; the sheer volume of decades-old art that’s difficult to preserve and impossible to make publicly accessible on account of the copyright holder being unknown or uncontactable is itself another kind of fuckery; but making it so an individual creator who’s lucky enough to get consistent income from their work still can throughout their life, and their family still can after their death, is not itself fuckery, and changing that really could be.
Limiting copyrights to punish corporations generally: Um. On board with the concept, got some questions about mechanism.
Limiting copyrights to punish Disney specifically: There’s a reason the most recent copyright term extension is in law nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act, and that reason is it was mostly pushed for by Disney, who is also one of the biggest beneficiaries. That extra twenty years of copyright protection certainly hasn’t been helping individual creators any.
Limiting copyrights to punish Disney specifically for pausing political donations to Florida legislators who support hideously bigoted legislation? Not even stopping, just pausing? Fuck off.
Admitting the reasoning is to end government handouts to Big Business? Raise your voice a little, Senator Hawley, I don’t think I quite heard the quiet part you’re shouting…
Just me crying in the bathroom so I don’t wake my partners with this, fuck.
So to sum up: CT and DC have passed laws making it illegal to extradite someone to another state if they are being charged in that other state for crimes pertaining to abortion or trans health care, and makes it legal to sue and get your money back if you are targeted by a TX-style “bounty” law. DC also includes “crimes” of consensual adult sex, gay and interracial marriage and cohabitation and providing or using contraception.
This is, as the thread explains, basically legal interstate warfare. CT and DC’s laws bar compliance with such laws.
This is, on one hand, kind of terrifying, because this is where we are now. It’s going to get worse long before it gets better.
On the other hand… holy shit, someone fucking did something.
Someone fucking did something real.
Okay folx so… this kind of tags has been fairly common on this post.
I’m glad people are checking, but! If you didn’t know, this is what it looks like now if you post a link to Twitter on Tumblr. And!
Here are the screenshots of CT’s amendment. The important stuff in the 2nd screenshot is what’s underlined. There is too much text for alt text, it’s on the link above, but the tl;dr is “it covers abortion and gender-affirming health care.” It has been passed and signed by the Governor as detailed on the ct.gov link:
So yes, this is very very real, and Tumblr changed how they display Twitter links - the thread had all of this info in it except for the link to The Hill. :)
Please reblog this version before I lose my fucking mind over people reblogging the original post saying “I haven’t checked this and I don’t know if it’s real.”
Fully trusting Spider on the alt text here (he’s great about adding it in!), and not currently supplementing with a transcript, because I just got back from work and am le tired but this is still important.
I have two thoughts that coexist, though they may seem contradictory at first glance.
The first thought: I will never tell a black person, disabled person, person of color, or transgender person that they are wrong when they say, “Both political parties are bad.”
Frankly, they’re right. The terrible things that white, cisgender, able-bodied people are afraid of right now have been the reality for marginalized people in the United States for centuries. Lack of access to healthcare, including abortions. Lack of access to employment, income, and housing. Lack of support in the criminal justice system; being criminalized for existing. Lack of freedom to vote, to gather, to live where they want, to say what they want. This has been the case when Democrats are in charge and when Republicans are in charge. Period.
Therefore, when marginalized people - and my list above is not an all-inclusive list - say that they cannot support either political party, I do not fault them. I do not tell them they are wrong, and I respect their decisions regarding their activism and political action, or lack thereof.
The second thought: I wholeheartedly believe that when you do not belong to those targeted groups, when you have the freedom and ability to vote, to speak and be heard, to raise money, to go where you want and live where you want, to escape the criminal justice system with your life intact - and you base your lack of political action in a “both parties are bad, so I refuse to vote for either of them” philosophy… you are not doing the right thing. You are causing harm. You are wasting your privilege instead of putting it to good use. Whether you realize it or not, you are sitting comfortably on your moral high ground, flaunting the fact that you will be able to survive bigoted policies pushed through by emboldened elected officials at every level. There would not be such terrible federal court cases if our local judges knew we would punish them for even showing interest in starting such despicable work.
The work of activism is both the work of acknowledging that the system is inherently harmful and protesting its very existence, and also the work of doing everything you can within the system to stall the people who desire and enable that harm. There is value in both the revolution and the incremental labor. In fact, I believe both are necessary, if we are to save this nation.
