Hawaii voters will go the polls Saturday in the state’s midterm primaries. The most watched race is perhaps the Democratic contest in the state’s Honolulu-area 1st Congressional District, where a crowded field of candidates is running and the Democratic nominee-elect will very likely win November’s general election. A poll last month suggested the state’s Democratic moderates have a lock on the race. Former congressman Ed Case was in the lead at 36 percent. Current Lt. Gov. Doug Chin was in second at 27 percent. Former state Senate President Donna Mercado Kim came in third with 14 percent. But it is the fourth-place candidate, 29-year-old state Rep. Kaniela Ing, who has received the most national attention.
Ing has been endorsed by the progressive group Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America as well as democratic socialist and Democratic NY-14 candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who stumped for Ing this week. The team behind a viral ad that brought Ocasio-Cortez to national prominence earlier this year has been making ads for Ing as well. The first, a largely biographical ad released late last month, highlights housing costs in the state, student loan debt, and Democratic political complacency. The campaign’s new ad, released Wednesday, is more abstract—almost existential in its concerns. It is one of the most remarkable campaign spots released by a major party candidate in recent memory.
As he sits on a beach at sunset plucking away at his ukelele, Ing offers nothing short of a new way of living:
When we talk about policies like Medicare for All, universal health care, housing for all, public education through college, cancelling student debt—these are policies that would just make everyday working people’s lives dignified, and would make sure that they’re not just living just to work.
[…]This idea that we just need to grind, grind, grind, grind—you have billionaires that barely lift a finger. The money just works for itself. There’s more than enough resources to go around for everyone. […] If you ask people the question, “What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about finances and you had your basic needs met?” the answers are amazing. People would start businesses. They’d get into art, they’d get into music and all these things that are lacking in our world. All this stuff is possible.
There have been a lot of debates over the past several months about whether the policies being advocated by self-described socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez actually amount to socialism at all rather than a return to the welfare state liberalism that defined the Democratic Party from the New Deal through the 1980s. What Ing offers in this ad is bona-fide Marxism. It is a case for policies like single payer not just to materially benefit the middle class and workers, but to allow them to radically de-center the role of work in their lives—a case for the redistribution of wealth specifically with the intention of enabling leisure. The history of post-work leftism is long; an early text is a section of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The German Ideology:
[A]s soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood.
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
A gentle reminder that the “last lynchings” were between 1981-1991, so
it’s less than 40. The CRA act was passed 54 years ago. Not enough
people want to hear or remember that.
It used to bother me a little that Star Wars characters talked as if the Empire had been around forever (”before the dark times”, Obi-Wan says, exhausted) when the prequels tell us it’s only been about twenty years.
Obviously what’s happening to these kids is horrific but should we really be calling them concentrating camps though? What do Jewish people think about this?
Hello, Mexican here. They are fucking modern day concentration camps. Children, even infants, are being ripped from their homes, forced into overcrowded abandoned Walmart’s, with only 2 hours a day of outside time. This is no way for children to live. There is a mural on the wall of Trump with the quote, “Sometimes by losing the battle you find a way to win the war.” Do you know what people call shit like that? Propaganda. You can fuck all the way off. I cannot fucking believe you chose to fucking nitpick how this humanitarian problem is discussed because you’re uncomfortable with the horrors happening right before our eyes and would rather call it “problematic.” I can’t fucking stand gringos for bullshit like this.
Hi, Jew here! They are concentration camps and any Jew worth their history will tell you that. The Trump murals, the “we’re just going to take your baby for a bath”, the photos of confiscated rosary beads, the older children taking care of younger children they have no relation to because there are no parents around.
We see this shit and it sends chills up our spines because that was the kind of shit gentiles ignored because it wasn’t “that bad”. It wasn’t “that bad” when they were just confiscating our wedding rings and throwing them into a pile because we were “prisoners”, because it wasn’t “that bad” when they were separating children from their mothers to put them into a separate barracks, because it wasn’t “that bad” when little kids were having to flee through Kindertransport without their parents.
This also isn’t the first time this has been done in America. The Japanese were held in concentration camps here during WWII. And what’s happening now sounds strikingly similar to that as well. A concentration camp is literally just a place where you concentrate a certain group of people against their will.
This is the election that counts. Start educating yourself now on who will be campaigning to be your congresspeople/governor/etc.
Register to vote NOW. Don’t wait. You can do it any time.
This is the fight we need to win. VOTE
VOTE
VOTE
Also…reminder to pay attention to all local elections and VOTE. These elected officials are the people most likely to directly impact your life in the short term.
This has to start now. Right now.
Get your birth certificates. There may be a fee or long wait times. Make sure you get a certified copy.
Make sure you have ID. Dig into your state’s laws and the whole Real ID thing, because (and sorry I can’t research this now, but pneumonia) I believe there are certain states whose driver’s licenses don’t qualify for Real ID.
Make sure you’re registered to vote. Google it. Follow the instructions for your state.
Know where your local polling place is or find out if you can vote by mail.
Vote in ALL your upcoming elections. Yes, that means the little ones for city council or dog catcher or whatever. Vote those racist, homophobic, bigots out at every level.
They’re like weeds. You can pull up every visible bit, but if you leave one tiny segment of root, they’ll just come back.
To quote Mira Grant, rise up while you can. Because the Republicans are way the hell worse than zombies.
Rebloging for the American followers! For the sake of everything that you hold dear, you HAVE to vote! Here’s your opportunity to save your country and, quite possibly, the world. TAKE IT!!!!
When you write the rules in violence, don’t be surprised when the gentle respond in kind.
What the fuck is this even supposed to mean
thank you for asking. it is a direct response to the right-wing movement’s “keep the peace” rhetoric that suffices every page of “minion memes are funny” facebook. it is a direct response to the incredibly, incredibly ignorant demand that those who are being oppressed simply deal with it.
black people are being shot for being black by a militant police. millions of dollars pour into arming individuals who report domestic violence rates of two to four times larger than the general population. when black children are arrested for attending pool parties, the police officers are given the benefit of the doubt because “blue lives matter.” black children are not given any benefit. they are told to sit down and shut up and be un-violent, with the promise that if they are a peaceful people, they’ll be slaughtered someplace less public. when a man kneels, this is seen as offensive and degenerate. but police officers committing felonies is “just how it is.”
school children are being killed because individuals love a tool more than they love the incoming generation. despite the fact we know, as an open fact, that the NRA buys politicians, we are told to sit on our hands and just buy a gun if we don’t feel safe around them. the american schooling system is entirely built to be classist and currently forces college grads who didn’t die into a system of debt that ensures little to no upwards mobility for many students, ensuring the creation of a lower class that is indebted to the higher class. students are assured that Miss betsy deVil has their best interests at heart while she absolutely annihilates every chance they’ve got.
women speaking out about sexual assault get silenced so much that it takes forty women saying “yes, he does this, it happened to me” before someone is actually charged with assault. we literally live in a world where “incel” is a real thing women have to watch out for; a community set around the idea that men are owed a woman as a reward. these men and other men kill women for rejecting them. women are assured if they stop dressing like sluts and started giving these good honest men a chance, we would be hurt so much more delicately, without the man feeling nearly so close to guilty.
two years ago was the pulse shooting, where a latinx gay community was targeted, yet nobody talked about it on tv. instead every news caster pretended to be reeling: “what could he have wanted possibly.” this world, this america, this land-of-the-free, has gay/trans “panic defense” as a legal precedent in which i can be murdered if a straight person perceives an “unwanted homosexual advance”. i will not be around to defend myself, because i will be dead. i am assured that if i want to be upset about these things, i can just take my cake to another bakery. that it’s someone’s right to discriminate against me, because apparently freedom of speech covers bigotry.
we have been told backwards and forwards and upside down that everything we do is violent. that our peaceful protests are riots. that our legal demands are taking away from real problems. that we are not being good, that the violence enacted upon us isn’t really violence, it’s just The Way It Is. They quote MLK to us while they step on our necks. the anger we have is always too much, too loud, too valid. it Upsets The Peace.
i’m saying: you made the game. you set it up and played. you made sure we were always, always, always losing.
you don’t get to be surprised when we return what you gave us. you don’t get to cry “hate begets hate” instead of stopping the original bigotry in the first place. you don’t get to say it’s not fair! when you’re the ones who made it unfair to begin with. you don’t get to turn the other cheek to nazis but call anti-nazis a disgrace while whining and keening you’re not actually a racist. you don’t get to ban abortion for the “sake of the children” and then turn your nose because people are protesting children in cages. you don’t get to wring your hands now that people are punching nazis rather than sitting them down and letting them have a say. i’m saying you made the fucking rules!!
we just figured out how to play.
THIS!!! As an European I never understood the “be kind to them” rhetoric. Got in a heated argument with someone who I quite like, about “they should forgive this old Nazi who actively participated in murder of 3,000 people in Ukraine, and not put him through the trial, because he’s old”. Well, the murdered people did not get a chance to be old.
Be kind to someone who thinks he has RIGHT to rape you and/or kill you? I don’t think so. Where’s the famed American right to self-defence? Looks like it only applies to white dudes with guns, “scared” of homosexuals and black people.
Not entirely willingly, mind. I was young, religious, and I made
the naïve mistake in thinking that all Christians were like the ones I had
encountered at my home church: warm, tolerant, kind. I fell in love, and we did
what young, hormonal Christian teenagers did: rushed into a marriage.
I realized my mistake almost immediately, but it took far
too long to get out.
Personally, I endured abuse at the hands of my new husband—mental,
physical, sexual, economic, emotional. You name it, he did it. Brutal is an
understatement. He systematically broke me down until I was a shell of a human
being. I’m still dealing with the emotional fallout and physical side effects,
and I probably will be for another decade at least.
That’s personally, but let’s talk his family. Because he was
an extreme case, yes, but he was raised with the idea that women existed to
keep their mouths shut and their legs open. I spit out two children faster than
I could whip my head, because birth control wasn’t part of god’s grand plan for
my life. I was fulfilling my purpose as a mother, and wasn’t that great? My
husband didn’t want the first baby. He wanted me for himself, see? Abortion was
unthinkable, but he fully expected to carry a baby—my baby—to term, then give
it away.
Keeping him was my first rebellion. Keeping the next one was
my second.
In the time I belonged to that family, I watched my
mother-in-law endure the same, though less extreme mistreatment. I watched every
young female family member be groped by the family patriarch. “That’s just how
it is.” I was shamed for making a fuss about it. I watched an older cousin try to sexually assault my teenage
sister-in-law and she was the one who
felt ashamed. We women made family dinners while the men sat on their asses. My
husband and I lived with his parents for a short time. She and I would go to
work each morning—an hour each way—with our husbands sitting in their robes in
the living room, playing video games. When we returned hours later, weary,
exhausted, they hadn’t moved. The standard greeting? “What’s for dinner.”
That’s his family, and yes, some families are sexist, but let’s
talk about church. That’s where all of this is validated, encouraged, taught. Imagine
my shock, when I went to my new husbands’ family church and encountered muted
xenophobia and racism, a heavy dose of homophobia, and some damned overt sexism
(see above.)
Equal roles, but different. Sound familiar? This is still
being taught to little girls today.
In church, I listened with quiet disgust as pastors preached
about how awful my sister—one of the gays—was. I piped up and asked how that
sexual sin was any different than the two young church kids who’d just been
caught “in a bad way”, soon to expect their first baby. Sexual sin is sexual
sin, isn’t it? I sure did get an earful for that one. We did church boycotts:
Disney, Target. Every Sunday School class: Job, cookies, and lets pray God
saves the moos-lims before they all come over and blow us up. We revered
people with white savior complexes who went to be jesus’s hands and feet and
save the poor, helpless Africans.
Hate and ignorance, wrapped up in the holy Scripture.
Hallelujah.
Meanwhile, I endured this abuse. This abuse, and every door
slammed in my face as my husband hit me, tortured me. “Stay true to your vows,”
the pastor would say. “You have communication issues,” our sister-in-law
would tell us. My mother-in-law: “Linds, you just have to accept it. Love is a
choice.”
“But what about the part where it says that husbands are to
love their wives like Christ loves the church?” I asked.
My brother in law, joking: “This is why women aren’t
supposed to speak in church.”
This America is alive and kicking, kids. It’s never gone away; it’s just been lurking,
behind closed doors. “Pass the casual racism and meat loaf, would you? And get
me a glass of water while you’re up. Ketchup, too.” What I’m scared about,
truly, is that I know this. And these ideas are now validated. Now mainstream. Almost
50% of our population believes this is
a good idea.
“It’s our time to take America back.”
What in the hell, if they’ve been saying these things behind
closed doors, and if they believe them In The Name Of God—what in the hell are
they going to say in the open, now? What in the hell are they going to do?
The 50s are revered as the aspirational yester-year, days
gone by. Progress, as we call it, is godlessness to them. We, the godless libs,
took Jesus out of schools. We’ve gone wrong ever since.
This is the America people want back, and that’s my first
fear.
The second is this:
I got out. And I’m terrified that this, my success story,
won’t happen anymore.
I’m the rare statistic. I un-brainwashed and educated myself.
I got counseling (against every Christian advice) to treat severe post-partum
depression. In the process of becoming a healthier person, I realized
what a goddamn mess I was.
It took three tries and a pastor-pseudo-therapist legitimately
telling me, “You know if he hits you again, Linds, I’m going to have to tell
you to leave.”
All regretful, like it was bad news.
“Why should I stick around and wait for it to happen again?”
I asked.
He didn’t have an answer. I left the next week.
It took a few boldfaced lies (it’s temporary, it’s just a separation), and a few miracles, and a
large support system of family and friends who all but plucked me out of that
hell.
For leaving? My price was excommunication. From his family,
our friends, our church. I am the heathen who Divorced my Husband and broke our
home. In that entire city, only three people talk to me now.
(No loss, but it took a long time to recognize that.)
I never, ever would have made it on my own. I had two small children,
a new job that barely paid a living wage, and I was, as I’ve said, a shell of a
human being. I left him and went straight to the human services office. Without
subsidized childcare, healthcare, and food supplements, we would have starved
or been homeless. It never would have been possible.
These are the services that will probably be cut first.
How will anyone in my situation ever be able to leave? They
won’t. Not to mention federal funding for shelters, crisis counseling for
families, healthcare for abused women, and legal services for domestic violence
victims. Throw in a court system that doesn’t value women, and a cultural mentality
that believes what happens behind closed doors should stay behind closed doors… What hope do abused, trapped women have? None in hell.
If this is what makes America great again, I want out. I’ve
been there, done that, and I’m never, ever doing it again.
You’ll take it back over my cold, lifeless body.
This is the dark, dirty secret of Amerika: Women are not free.
Steel Phoenix Studios 