Local Elections Matter

Our country is composed of a diverse network of states, cities, metro areas, smaller towns, and rural areas. In the last election 6,066 state legislative seats were up for election.  Do you know your state representatives?  After carefully analyzing potential state legislative elections I gave $25 to several candidates around the country including a Senate race in my state of Washington where the state Senate was under Democratic control by one vote. State legislatures are important to our diverse network of local communities making them critical to the health of our nation as whole.

At the local level politicians make a big impact on people’s lives. Unfortunately, many local leaders see their role not as partners in improving the lives of their constituency but in blocking public policy they see as part of a liberal agenda.  In this way the political divide plays out in local communities around the country.  These communities have gotten stuck the time before the tech industry leaving vast areas of our country behind in the new age of the tech boom.  Policies that promote inclusive economic growth in the digital age are further hindered by politicians promoting tax breaks building a climate of “Don’t Tax Me!” and “Government is nothing but big brother looking over my shoulder.”

State legislatures play a major role in limiting economic growth.  In recent years Republican controlled state legislatures have obstructed progress.  Laws preventing any chance of promoting inclusive economic growth have passed in theses states.  Laws such as outlawing paid sick and family leave; regulating fracking; LGBTQ rights; and increases in the minimum wage make cities and counties lame duck governments at the mercy of state law makers. These policies limit any grassroots organizing such as the $15 an hour minimum wage movement that in 2014 spread to 230 cities as workers demanded a $15 minimum wage and the right to unionize without fear of retaliation.  So much is at stake in our state legislatures we can not overlook these elections because they are important ways of using our vote for change.

States control voting systems too.  Voting suppression implemented by Republican controlled State governments have passed polices such as voter ID laws, gerrymandering, limiting absentee ballots, and moving or closing polling places.  These changes have been implemented by state Republican Attorney Generals.  These policies have led to the unjust voting system we have today but Republicans didn’t stop there.  The latest Republican tactic goes beyond the vote and centers in state legislatures in three states where a Democratic Governor won over an incumbent Republican governor.  In North Carolina a GOP controlled State legislature changed laws limiting the elect Democratic Governor’s powers making the state legislature more powerful.  In Michigan and Wisconsin legislatures followed suit changing laws to limit the elect Democratic governor. In a desperate move to keep Republican control in these three states the GOP controlled legislature went against the State Constitutions that define the division of power between the three branches of government.

These actions that changed basic US government’s philosophy of checks and balances in government did not just start here nor did it start when Donald Trump hinted during the 2016 election that he would not concede the election if Hillary won.  It started during the Obama era when Mitch McConnel would not hold hearings on a Supreme Court Judge, and as leader of the Senate he stated he would not approve any federal judges nominated by Obama. Since Trump was elected the Senate has approved a record number of Federal Judges, many have been called out by the National Lawyers Guild to be unfit.  How deep will this power grab go we don’t know.  It brings a sense of demise to our democracy on all fronts from our national government to our local communities. 

As President Obama said, “Democracy is not a spectator sport.”  When we vote no matter how insignificant we see the candidate’s office we are voting so that the candidate can make changes to local polices to benefit us.  Local public officials are where the rubber of politics hits the road touching our lives in profound ways.  During the 2018 elections when voters came out beyond the standard 27% in past elections we seem to be moving in the right direction.  The media covered controversial elections such as the Florida and Georgia governor races, and the voter fraud allegations still in dispute in North Carolina.  This media coverage is helping us all get schooled on voting processes and how local elections can shape our lives.  I learned so much about local elections that have changed my perspective forever and hopefully all of yours too.

Positive Steps Towards Racial Justice

In one of the darkest years in our country’s history there is good news for the holidays amidst a government shutdown. Two amazing pieces of legislature passed by both the House and the Senate brings us closer to racial justice.  Prison reform and outlawing lynching as a federal crime is now the law of the land. Both of these issues have been embedded in our racist laws, policies and social norms for a long time. Prisons and lynching strip individuals of their human rights representing the dark side of our democracy.  Today there is some hope for reform.

The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018 passed the Senate unanimously. Led by three black members: Kamala Harris, a California Democrat; Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican; and Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat. Congress has made over 200 attempts to pass anti-lynching laws since 1882. More than 4,700 people, the vast majority of them black, were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968, according to the N.A.A.C.P. Perpetrators were rarely prosecuted. This piece of legislation added a section entitled “lynching” to federal civil rights law, stating that if two or more people kill someone because of that person’s race or religion, they can be sentenced up to life in prison if convicted.

Lynching could be called the vigilante arm of law enforcement the Victims of Lynching Act of 2018 changes that but the prison system even with the First Step Act just passed by Congress has a ways to go towards racial justice.   Prisons can strip people of their community and dignity or they can rehabilitate people to reenter society.  For centuries prisoners have been used as slave labor.  This practice goes on today, where private industry contracts with prisons to hire prisoners for minimum wage but the prison system takes out legal financial obligations for room and board and restitution leaving the prisoner with $14.00 to $20.00 a month.  If the prisoner works for the prison itself, they get much less.  Prison reform both in prison and afterwards is critical to helping rehabilitate people back to being contributing members of society.  Something most people can accomplish with the help of the community.

The importance of prison reform cannot be understated.  Included in the recent First Step Act passed by the US congress are rehabilitation programs for former prisoners and a reduction in mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes. This piece of legislation begins to reform the tough on crime policies started under the Nixon administration. Various scholars believe the racial and class disparate outcomes started by Nixon and today is part of the modern criminal justice system can be traced to a backlash against the progressive gains of not only the Civil Rights Movement but other social movements of the 1960’s.  We can trace the start of this backlash and the first tough on crime policies back to Nixon’s War on Drugs when he identified drug users as criminals deserving incarceration and punishment and not social reforms as alienated youths whose addiction was caused by an inequitable society.   

Furthering the criminal crackdown Reagan signed into law the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Frontline writes that the law allocated funds to new prisons, drug education, and treatment. But its main purpose was to create mandatory minimum sentences thus the need for more prisons and the birth of the current prison system we have today. States started passing the infamous three strike laws in 1993 starting with Washington State bringing mandatory prison sentences into public policy. These three strike laws sealed the deal to build a mega prison complex. Societies attitudes changed with these polices.  Today the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in world.

The judicial system disproportionately impacts individuals in poverty and people of color thus becoming one of the main institutions holding people back from being successful individuals. The prison system as part of the judicial system adds to this by breaking up families, bringing down a person’s social network, and making any work experience become irrelevant even when the person gets out.  Prisons for the most part don’t offer life expanding opportunities but than either did the poverty that most prisoners come from.  Prisons have always been an interictal part of our societies cycle of poverty and racism that keeps people in poverty with little hope to improve their lives.

The First Step Act, endorsed by many conservatives, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Koch brothers and a number of progressive groups, including the ACLU will help prisoners earn good-time credits so they can reduce their sentences for good behavior. It would offer them more training and work opportunities, as well as the chance to earn money that would go into escrow accounts to pay for post-release expenses. It would bolster programs to help prisoners reintegrate into society after release. It would ban shackling of pregnant women. This legislation also relaxes some mandatory-minimum sentences, mainly on drug charges, and gives judges more discretion to sentence people to less than the mandatory amount of time if they are convicted.

These two pieces of legislation for progressives means things are looking up in Washington D.C. during this holiday season bringing hope to people around the country.  The Democratic ruled House starting next year also brings optimism to the new year.  Keep up the resistance never giving into Trump being normalized.  May we see more bipartisan and cooperation bringing us all a little closer in the year to come.

LGBTI Advocacy Week at the UN

OutRight, an LGBTI rights organization, just wrapped up their advocacy week with the Out-Summit conference.  I was privileged to be a part of this.  After studying Human Rights in Thailand my interest in international human rights deepened. Volunteering with OutRight gave me an opportunity to meet LGBTI activist from all over the world, hear their stories, their work and get to know them personally. It gave me an opportunity to satisfy being a part of the human rights movement at the United Nations level.  Now that I’m back home I’m processing this experience, looking at what I can do next to further LGBTI rights globally.

The LGBTI activist starting coming in on Monday, some were seasoned travelers others had never been out of their country.  Meeting a transwomen from Fiji and Turkey, lesbians from Kenya and Sri Lanka, and gay men from Russia and Indonesia at the airport was like a family union.  We instantly bonded over who we are, as well as our goals for human rights.  These bounds lasted for the rest of the time we were together.  Through meetings and workshops their daily struggles came out with how they counteract these struggles with daily activism both in their community and in their country.

Luckily, I got invited to several United Nations’ meetings, the E.U. Mission, the Equal Rights Committee and the LGBTI Core Group.  Of all these I thought the Equal Rights Committee would cover their work with LGBTI rights in depth and the information on the status of LGBTI people around the world more extensive.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  At the E.U. Mission meeting the room was packed with LGBTI activist and many member states of the E.U.  The E.U. Mission listened to the activists questions and suggestions.  The questions were answered in depth by staff members from many state members of the E.U.  Activist engaged in conversations about E.U.’s global human rights work.  I left this meeting inspired, full of hope for the work ahead.

The Equal Rights Committee of the United Nations took place at the Canadian Mission.  They led us into a great conference room with snacks laid out for us.  At this meeting only the two chairs of the committee attended along with all of us activist.  The dialog couldn’t have been more different, leaving all of us confused when we left.  We all went on to meetings, training sessions or took time to grab some free time.  All we could do is move on and keep up with the work we came to New York and United Nations to do.

After these two meetings I was invited to attend the United Nations LGBTI’s Core Group the next day.  We met early in front of the UN.  They handed out our visitor passes.  When everyone arrived, we got in line.  Taking it all in when I entered the halls of the UN I became speechless. Looking at the history on the walls a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt holding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a moment that changed history when the UN became real.  The LGBTI Core Group meeting reviewed the past weeks of meetings reporting on a mix of positive and hard conversations. So glad the LGBTI Core Group at the UN exists.

Karamo Brown of Queer Eye a key speaker at the Out Summit conference gave the opening address.  He summed up our role in the struggle for LGBTI human rights around the world.  He said our stories are a gift to others who want to grow and build a better world.  He said our stories are a roadmap to the courage for those who want to do this work.  These words captured the essence of what we expressed in past week and continued in the workshops of Out Summit.

It didn’t matter whether you were a seasoned LGBTI activist like me, or someone new to the movement the personal stories from activist gave us inspiration, gave us courage to carry on with the work of demanding freedom to live our lives with respect.  These stories identified the common thread we have in our lives.  We all were at some place on the continuum of the road to freedom.  Those of us in the USA told stories of getting married, the LGBTI from Egypt talked about being afraid for their life living as an LGBTI person every day.  The gay man from Lebanon shared inroads to building a movement and the transwoman from Turkey talked about how repressive acts make it hard to have a stable life.

All of this confirms that LGBTI rights are now a global movement.  A lot of the struggles don’t get into the media partly for security reasons, peoples’ lives are in danger if their identity were to revealed and their struggles become headline news anywhere in the  For us in the US its important to support international human rights movements and actions.  OutRight an international LGBTI organization that sponsored the Advocacy Week and OutSummit conference is the only LGBTIQ organization that has a permanent presence to advocate at the United Nations.  For more information to by some chance if you want to donate and be a part of the global human rights movement for LGBTI here is a link to their website.  https://www.outrightinternational.org/

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