The Never Ending Elections

After blacking out the news for several days, Wednesday morning I turned on Morning Joe.  We won the house. Lost seats in the Senate. Women in record numbers won seats in congress, thank you Emily’s List and the Women’s March.  Many State Legislator bodies turned blue.  Early that morning Trump fired Sessions, people took to the streets to protect Special Counselor Robert Mueller. The tide has changed and the current towards democracy seems strong.

It all seemed settled and I turned to reading enjoyable memoirs, and novels.  Then today, Saturday, I turned on Joy AM, Florida and Georgia elections still in limbo.  Not just Governor races but Senate and Congress races too.  By the end of the day the governor and senator races in Florida went into recount mode.  The Georgia governor’s race still in limbo with many law suits filed to get all ballots counted. Here we go again the fight for the vote. Maybe I jumped to soon about the tide changing.

The blows came from both sides, Republicans accused Democrats of voter fraud.  Democrats accused Republicans of voter suppression.  Most news networks except maybe Fox News, report voter fraud is a rarity. When you look at how to vote even here in Washington State where everyone votes by mail, marginalized populations come up against barriers.  Most people who rent move frequently, making mail ballots hard to keep up with, and voter ID laws in other states where the address has to match where you vote can be cumbersome. 

How many ways can you count a vote, let me tell you the ways, absentee ballot, provisional ballot, at the ballot booth and more. Ballots found here and there, counting by machine, counting by hand.  Law suites filed on both sides.  It’s exhausting.  Are we living in a banana republic, in some country in Africa like the Ivory Coast, where votes are suppressed and incumbents never concede hanging on to the country for months after they have lost an election while people demonstrate in the streets?

Is this how elections are going to go in the future?  Every since Gore ran for President elections have been fought over, ending up in the legal system. Our election system for the average voter is exhausting, and discouraging.  How do we turn this around and make elections respectful without a big cash price at the end? Lately it’s been reported that elected officials spend two thirds of their time campaigning for their next election while spending one third doing their job.  No wonder elections get ugly and congress is dysfunctional.

All I can give you are questions; the ultimate answers seem a complicated road to a true democracy.  I must apologize for complaining but I feel helpless in these elections and have for a while.  If you have positive comments please leave them to bring some hope into the discussion, I would really like to hear from you.

Citizenship and the Vote

Citizenship is not just a political issue, citizenship is also a moral issue. When Trump tries to undo the central criteria for citizenship, birthright, to something more restrictive you may find somewhere in your past you could be denied citizenship.  Your future children, grandchildren and generations to come will never be citizens. Where will Trump draw the line on citizenship requirements? Will the new requirements reflect past history on citizenship?

As an example of potential citizenship policies, let’s take Bhutan’s Citizen Act of 1985.  This law requires both parents must proof citizenship before citizenship is granted to the child.  Single women who have had a child out of wedlock where the father refuses to claim the child as his cannot get citizenship for that child.  Providing proof of citizenship of both parents to get citizenship for your children is a burden.  The Bhutanese citizenship law creates a disparity in Bhutanese society with a moral dilemma.  What would this type of citizenship policy look like in your family’s background.

I looked into my past and started with my father who was born in Havana Cuba.  His mother a US citizen, his father a German citizen.  At a young age I have been told my Dad held German citizenship when he and his mother moved to Miami after she divorced his father.  Shortly after this because his mother, a US citizen, acquired US citizenship for my Dad.  This could not have happened in Bhutan because of the citizenship criteria.  Meaning if the US followed Bhutanese citizenship law I would not qualify for US citizenship even though I was born here in the United States and my mom was a US citizen.  If the US enacted a similar Bhutan Citizen Act here in the US it would set off a domino effect in my family.  Me and none of my two siblings would qualify for citizenship just because we were born on US soil.

My daughter wouldn’t qualify for citizenship because I wouldn’t be a citizen.  My sister’s two children wouldn’t qualify for citizenship and their two children wouldn’t qualify for citizenship.  You see where this is going. But what would be the impact?  This type of citizenship policy creates a stateless population.  No one with a stateless status can get a passport, they live in limbo with nowhere to go and become outcast.  Look into your families’ past and see how this type of policy would affect you.

The media keeps hounding that we are protected by the 14^th Amendment of 1868 that legalized citizenship for all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But wait a minute after 1868 some of the Supreme Court rulings have not 100% upheld this idea of birthright citizenship.  In 1876 the Supreme Court rules that Native Americans are not citizens as defined by the 14th Amendment and, thus, cannot vote.  In 1922 the Supreme Court ruled that people of Japanese heritage are ineligible to become naturalized citizens.  In the next year, the Court finds that Asian Indians are also not eligible to become naturalized citizens.  Unfortunately, the US has a long history of denying citizenship along racial lines even with the protections of the14^th Amendment leaving Trump wide open to change the definition of what constitutes citizenship.

When Trump changes birthright citizenship we can just add this to the list of law suits against Trump and the Federal Government.  The Washington State Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, has filled 33 law suits with a coalition of other State Attorney Generals all across the country for similar reasons. Since the beginning of the Trump presidency US policies have been tied up in the Judicial system starting with the Muslim Ban.  No wonder Trump and conservatives in these last two years have stacked the deck with conservative Federal Judges.

The only way to turn the tide on this conservative movement and preserve what we consider equal citizenship is to get out and vote a Democratic ticket this coming Tuesday.  Read up on the candidates and initiatives make an educated decision don’t just mark a box.  May I suggest not deciding on the voter pamphlet information alone but google the candidates and the initiatives find out what the debate is on all issues.  As Joy Reid from Am Joy said “Voting is not just a political decision it is a moral decision.” This has never been truer than in Tuesday’s election.  Exercise your citizenship privilege and responsibility, vote, not just for you, but for your family, your neighbors, and your community.  Vote as if your life depends on it.

My Heart is Full of Sadness

My heart is full of sadness.  Just as you think this country can’t go any lower a string of violent events consumes the media. These events are filled with hate followed by rhetoric of falsehoods, blaming and more hate.  Today it feels like there is no turning back to an America where we care about each other, watch out for each other.  Do you feel like people are out to get you, to get me, to get our neighbors, and just because we don’t agree with them?  Do you like me suffer from lack of hope? We are divided and I wonder if both sides suffer from a similar lack of hope or is it viciousness from one side? 

This week’s violence started on Wednesday when a white man walked into a Kentucky Kroger store killing two African Americans.  He had just made a failed attempt to barge into a black church for what they think a similar act.  This incident went under the radar, until the mail bombs were discovered and the synagogue killers took place back to back.  I can fill these pages with incident after incident of violent hate, I can’t find the caring, the unconditional acts of kindness.

A common thread in all of these acts of violence, white men killing nonwhites.  Never in my wildest dreams until Ragan became president in the 80’s did I think I would witness this kind of deathly discrimination in America after the civil rights movements’ gains of the 60’s.  The 60’s brought hope to me, through what I thought were reconciliations of the dark side of America’s history.  All that is gone this week and all I can think of are story after story of America’s violence towards Native Americans, African Americans, Jewish people, Asians, Japanese, and yes women and children.  We have gone back to the dark ages where only white men are safe.  Its as if the white men in power have other men do their bidding today keeping the rest of us in our place.

In 1992 Patrick Buchanan declared at the Republican Convention in Houston Texas, “that there was a cultural war taking place for the soul of America.  He denounced the Democratic Party as one that supports abortion, radical feminism and the homosexual rights movement.”  He accused President Clinton’s agenda as imposing abortions on women, supporting homosexual rights, discriminating against religious schools and forcing women into combat.  Buchanan claimed this is not the kind of change America wants.  Even though he didn’t declare a war on anyone who wasn’t white that’s exactly what he was saying between the lines.  Publicly racist rhetoric at this time was a big no, no.  I strongly believe the talk behind the scenes damned anyone who was not white, Christian or not on their side.  Their actions showed it and created the climate in today’s politics.

We witnessed this week the manifestation of the rhetoric started by Ronald Regan perpetuated by Patrick Buchanan and unleashed by Donald Trump.  They unleashed their agenda under the guise of freedom of the media, freedom of the individual, of religion, but the undercurrent, the real reason was for their white selves.  How do we get back to caring about the collective well being of the American people?  As I write this I try to think about a time in our history when all Americans ever had what was promised in the words of our Constitution;

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity……

And I slump into despair, I am not optimistic today, I was not optimistic when Trump got elected and I wish I could fill you with hope but today I have a hard time finding hope.  What kept me going over the last couple of decades was my right to vote, but today I feel like even my vote be has been manipulated into meaninglessness.  I will vote and I will vote against hate.  I wish I was voting for compassion, for hope for all of us but this has been taken away from us through Citizen’s United, big money, gerrymandering, and other tactics to suppress common peoples’ say in our government. 

The only hope I can grasp onto are acts of kindness towards my neighbors no matter who they are and hopefully that kindness will spread to the next neighbor, and the next neighbor and grow into a movement because my only hope today is to build a grassroots movement built on a chain of human kindness.  Pass it on.