anexperimentallife:

It still blows my mind that the Voting Rights Act wasn’t passed until I was five years old, and that now, forty-eight years later, the GOP has succeeded in gutting it. They claim it isn’t needed anymore, because “institutionalized racism isn’t a problem anymore.”

Yeah, explain how “racism is over” to the hundreds of unarmed black civilians shot by law enforcement every year, the thousands more who receive harsher sentences than their white counterparts for similar crimes. Oh, and explain why a pathetic excuse for a human being who calls Mexicans rapists and murderers has enough backing to be a presidential candidate.

Hell, one of the main architects of the still ongoing “war on drugs,” complete with police militarization, has admitted in interviews that it was specifically engineered to target black people and anti-war activists–because they couldn’t figure out a way to make being black or non-conservative illegal.

sterekseason:

Don’t forget that your vote does matter.  

Even if you live in a typically red or blue state, this election is about more than just the next president (but that is important so please vote for Hillary).

There’s a chance for the Democrats to take back the House and Senate.  

There are local issues to vote on, judges to elect, town council members to be voted on. 

Your one vote matters. It matters a lot. Please, if you live in the U.S., get out and vote on November 8th (or vote early, that’s always an option).

So please, please, please vote. 

dduane:

This is just a note for those of you who’re getting ready to go out and vote in the US.

There are people out there who are broadcasting their intent to “pollwatch” and (they say) make sure that illegal voting doesn’t happen. In almost all the cases I’ve seen, the intention of these people is concentrated less on the legality of the voters and more on intimidating them, ideally with the result of keeping them from voting at all. Some of these people are plainly looking to provoke violence (or provoke situations where they think they’ll be entitled to get violent themselves.) Some of them are going to great lengths to look official, with printed badges and lanyards and logo-covered buses and whatnot, the idea being to trick you on some pretext into not going into your polling area. They are in their way as nasty as the guys planning to stand around with guns and get people too freaked out to go in past them and vote.

Fortunately there are just not enough of these people for them to be a truly widespread problem – but in states where the results are likely to be close, or where a heavy turnout of people of color is expected, these people are targeting some areas. So be aware.

I want to direct your attention to the Facebook post over here by the excellent Jim Wright. Please read both the meme image and Jim’s comments, top to bottom.  Please pay attention to what he’s saying. And please either reblog this post, or share Jim’s Facebook post. Just plain old-fashioned awareness is going to be a weapon in your hands here: and in others’. So pass it on.

The commenters to Jim’s post are worth reading too. One of them points out that there are states where pollwatching is illegal. Do a little Google-homework before you vote: find out what the rules are where you live. Then go forth and exercise your franchise.

It’s important in this election that people not be intimidated. It’s also important that they not get hurt. So go make use of your right as a citizen, and keep your eyes open while you do it. (And afterwards, savor that feeling of having made a difference by what you did. I can think of few elections in my lifetime that have been as important as this one, and it’s a privilege to have been able to vote in it.)

So off you go. Make your difference! And let’s be careful out there.