thisfinecrew | Recent Entries

An opportunity to directly support trans youth:

Today, Transanta started posting letters for this year.

Founded in 2020, it "connects anonymous gift-givers with trans youth who are unhoused, in foster care, or otherwise without crucial support they need to thrive."

(The youth create Amazon wishlists, so you can buy them stuff to be shipped to them without them having to share their mailing address publicly. I hate using Amazon, but I totally understand why the org uses it for this and I definitely buy stuff off the wishlists every year.)

The org will be posting letters through November and December, so feel free to check it out anytime.

You can browse the letters on their Instagram or on buy.transanta.com (which also direct-links to the Amazon wishlists, and lets you sort by most recently posted letters or oldest posted letters with the least amount gifted).

petra

HR 9495 Again - Republicans want to label not-for-profits as terrorist orgs

This bill was defeated on 11/12/24, but it's not gone.

An article in the Intercept from 11/15 says they're bringing it up again ASAP.

I recommend checking to see whether your Representative opposed it the first time, praising or chiding them accordingly, and encouraging them to either keep doing what they're doing or change.

gingicat

It's exactly what I needed her to say.

I liked the CBS summary. Includes video.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-election-loss-speech-howard-university/

Vice President Kamala Harris conceded the election to President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday, urging her supporters in a speech delivered from her alma mater not to despair, but to continue "the fight that fueled this campaign."

Harris addressed a crowd of supporters, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, from Howard University in Washington, D.C., after she was defeated by Trump in the race for the White House.

"Let me say my heart is full today. My heart is full today, full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country, and full of resolve," Harris said. "The outcome of this election was not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for, but hear me when I say the light of America's promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting."

The vice president expressed gratitude to her family, President Biden, first lady Dr. Jill Biden, her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and her campaign staff. Mr. Biden watched the remarks from the West Wing, the White House said.

"I am so proud of the race we ran and the way we ran it. Over the 107 days of this campaign, we have been intentional about building community and building coalitions, bringing people together from every walk of life and background, united by love of country with enthusiasm and joy in our fight for America's future," Harris said. And we did it with the knowledge that we all have so much more in common than what separates us."

Harris said the results of the election must be accepted and reiterated that she had spoken with Trump and is committed to a peaceful transfer of power.

"A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results," she said. "That principle as much as any other distinguishes democracy from monarchy and tyranny, and anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it."

Harris said the nation does not owe loyalty to a president or party, but to the Constitution, "our conscience and to our God."

"My allegiance to all three is why I am here today — to say while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign," she said.

The vice president pledged to continue fighting for democracy, the rule of law and equal justice.

"Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn't mean we won't win," she said, delivering an appeal directly to her young supporters.

Harris continued, "Do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together."
( rest of article, summarizing the situation )

toastykitten

If you're looking for something productive to do, apparently the Senate race in NV is too close to call, and you can assist by phone banking and canvass for people to fix their ballots.

https://linktr.ee/NVCure

Interesting aside - Gen Z voters never learned cursive, and struggle with signing their names, which is affecting their ballots and causing them to get rejected.

tanaqui

This is not the "day after" post I wanted to be writing. This is not the "day after" post you all wanted me to be writing.

It is a place for you to post whatever reactions you feel the need to post. Where we can commiserate with each other.

And if you do have good news for down-ballot races and propositions from your area, please let us know. (We could all do with some crumbs of comfort.)

In a few days time, I'll put up a post to discuss what we want out of the comm for the next four years. But for today, let's give ourselves this space to breathe, feel, grieve....

tanaqui

Election Day is almost upon us!

This is a post for you to talk about what you've been up to and what you're still planning to do before (and on) Tuesday.

any last minute GOTV efforts
your experiences of voting yourself (mail-in, in-person early voting, in-person on the day)
what's going on locally (polls, downballot races, etc)
what you'll be doing on Election Day itself (are you a poll worker? In which case, thank you!)
anything else you want to chat and cheerlead about!

(Apologies for the short post: I had a busy weekend which was not helped by a major travel SNAFU that meant I didn't get home from the fun thing I was doing yesterday until this morning, after not enough sleep.)

gingicat

I thought folks here might be interested in this article about the early voting ballot process. There's a video to go with it.

https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/what-happens-to-mail-in-early-ballot-before-election-day/

What happens to early voting and mail-in ballots before Election Day in Massachusetts?
By Kristina Rex
Updated on: October 30, 2024 / 7:54 AM EDT / CBS Boston
( text of article below )

I found this to be very interesting! In past years the early and mail-in ballots have been brought to the relevant precinct by a police officer to be processed by the warden and clerk; this is certainly more efficient and probably more secure.

Current Mood: hopeful

rydra_wong

In case anyone's interested:

https://fremedon.tumblr.com/post/763191310815576064/i-did-my-first-phone-bank-of-the-season-tonight

Extract:

I know we all hate the phone around here. But as a raging introvert with an audio processing disorder, I actually find phone banking hugely easier than almost any other phone interaction (and many in-person ones).

So I thought I’d write up a brief explainer of how it works.

gingicat

I was looking for a reasonable simple text summary for my 19-year-old, and found this:
https://cspa.tufts.edu/2024-ballot-questions

Seems reasonably unbiased (much more so than the official voter booklet) and is definitely easier to understand.

tanaqui

Election day is almost upon us! I'd like to flag up another reminder for everyone to check their voter registration, as some states are being very aggressive about removing people from the rolls for spurious reasons and don't allow various forms of same-day registration or other options to ensure people who are entitled to vote can do so. (And you can bet that certain states will be aggressive post-election about trying to throw out votes to the benefit of Republican candidates.)

Another reminder:

minoanmiss left a comment on an old post about voter intimidation near polling and registration places which gives information about the law in all 50 states — a good resource to check if that's the kind of thing that may go on where you live.

minoanmiss also suggested we should have a fresh roundup of the latest election resources. We do have an old one from the last (presidential) election, but I'm afraid I don't have time to update it myself this time (life is very busy for me right now). If anyone else is willing to take on checking the entries on that post and going back through the posts in the comm to add to it, I'm sure our comm members will be very grateful.

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who's posted resources and suggestions over the past month. Here are the posts that have been made

OSHA proposed regulations for worker heat protections: comment period until Dec 30, 2024
[Post on a step you can take as an ally]
National (US) Voter Registration Day!
Musicians for Kamala!
Community for Climate Action
This might be relevant to our interests....
More postcard signups available

Finally, here's the poll (behind the cut) for you to tell us what you've been doing in the last few weeks.Do tell us more in comments about what you've done or let us know what you plan to do next.

( Poll behind the cut )

As always, everyone is free to make posts about any issues and actions they think the comm should know about. You can also drop some information into a comment to our sticky post if you'd like the mods to do it.

If you're looking for information on anything else, you can use our tags to check for any ongoing actions or resources relevant to the issues you care about. (And a quick shout out to

redbird for all the tagging work that keeps the comm running smoothly.)

hermionesviolin

For anyone who missed signups from Postcards to Swing States: A Progressive Turnout Project Initiative, I just got an email from them:

Sign-ups for postcards are back open as we make a final push for 40 million postcards to rally Democrats to vote! We will likely send you postcards for a competitive US House district or Florida, though we have some additional voter lists for swing states and Ohio. If you aren't willing to write to voters for whatever list we send you, please do not sign up.

The mailing dates for these final orders are between Oct 24 and Oct 29. We'll ship the postcards as quickly as possible.

There's also an option to opt-in to write postcards to persuadable seniors about the importance of voting for Democrats in order to protect social security from Republican proposals to cut this vital program.

Please note: You will be responsible for providing Postcard Stamps, which are currently $0.56. We'll mail you free postcards, along with voter lists and instructions with proven message options.

I suspect it is still true that you can add a note with the number of postcards you want (in increments of 25) if you don't want to do 200 (the minimum number on the drop-down menu).

sathari

Geeks and Nerds for Harris, which is holding a livestream tomorrow, hosted by Lynda Carter.

cream_and_custard

Hello, the admin

tanaqui invited me to promote my comm

green_joy!

Tired of just hearing bad news and having no where to direct my feelings, this community was created for discussing actions we are taking to help the environment.

The purpose of this is to celebrate, bring awareness to, and encourage more action for our betterment. So if there is anything you've done, either personal or political to help the environment please join and tell us what you're doing!

Our latest post is about raising awareness for the organization Fossil Fuel treaty and their goal to put an end to the proliferation of fossil fuels globally.

If you make an awareness post anywhere, share any of their materials, create your own, or have contacted your representatives to encourage them to sign the treaty, please share it with us a post!

sathari

Musicians for Kamala is livestreaming right now! Three hours of performers and activists! Here's a list of performers.

sathari

It's National Voter Registration Day! To honor the day, here are a grab-bag of links to sites where you can check your voter registration and/or register to vote:

Change.TurboVote.org

Common Cause

Healthcare Voter

National Voter Registration Day

I Will Vote

Human Rights Campaign

And, yes, I know these all pretty much do the same thing, but this way if one site is down, or if you want to give traffic to a particular organization, or if you're working a voter registration drive with a specific theme or group attached, you can pick the one or ones that work best for your needs. (Mods, do we need a "2024 election" tag?)

otter

I've spent some energy the past couple days inviting my white friends who have posted jokes about eating pets to consider the racism they are spreading by doing so. I'm doing this in support of friends who have posted about how hurtful it is to them as Japanese and Chinese people. For instance, one friend wrote - "There’s a lot to process today but one thing that keeps surfacing for me is the baseless accusation of immigrants eating pets. This old trope has been aimed at Asian communities for decades. Maybe it was worse in the 70s and 80s and that’s why it is poking at a personal wound." Another wrote "Okay, I am copying and pasting this, so I am making a post. Leave the bullshit pet eating thing alone. Most of the jokes about it that I have seen are sarcastic and play into it, and sarcastic racism is still racism. And it puts my kids and other immigrants in danger. Cut it out." I grew up hearing this crap pointed at the Hmong and Laotian refugee communities in my city. Coincidentally (?), it's only white friends who have been sharing the memes. Nearly all of those I've messaged directly have taken down the memes.

azurelunatic

So the US doesn't have federal heat protections for workers; OSHA is trying to change that. Request for comment is now open, until the end of December.

This form is a streamlined version of the official one, with some suggested text, but submits to the official form: https://act.seiu.org/a/federalheatregcomments?ms=social

It has a link to the official site: https://www.regulations.gov/document/OSHA-2021-0009-4761 where you can download the whole shebang, which is Long: 3,173 kb of very light HTML, for those of us who can remember calculating fanfiction length by text file size rather than word count.

There are various Requests for Comments scattered throughout the document that you can use to focus your thoughts into something potentially more useful than just "yes this is good and necessary, and while it may not be complete it is important to get basic heat protections for as many workers as possible"; you can search the document for "Requests for Comments" and I believe find them all that way.

(via

ladybusiness)

tanaqui

Apologies that I missed putting up a check-in post in August. Here's one for September!

We've had quite a few posts since the last check in:

Kamala Harris Presidential Campaign Donation Link
Memes To Spread The Word About Project 2025
Postcards To Swing States: Write Postcards To House Districts!
Democratic Stickers
Get Out The Vote With Postcards And Letters!

Here's the poll (behind the cut) for you to tell us what you've been doing in the last few weeks.Do tell us more in comments about what you've done or let us know what you plan to do next.

( Poll behind the cut )

As always, everyone is free to make posts about any issues and actions they think the comm should know about. You can also drop some information into a comment to our sticky post if you'd like the mods to do it.

semielliptical

Writing postcards and letters is one way to help get out the vote for US elections.

hermionesviolin posted here last month about Postcards to Swing States, which is a great campaign, but they have completed their sign-ups for this year.

So if you are looking for other opportunities to write to US voters, or if you signed up for Postcards to Swing States and want to write while waiting for those postcards to arrive, consider the organizations below. I have written for all of them over the last several years; the variety of messages and styles has helped me maintain my motivation to reach out to voters.

I listed supplies needed in case that is helpful; check out the websites for full instructions.

Center for Common Ground / Reclaim Our Vote
“Fighting for Voting Rights and Mobilizing Voters of Color.”
Uses messages that are respectful and culturally sensitive, and includes personalized, local voting information
Supplies needed:

Order and use only their postcards.
Postcard stamps.
Not absolutely necessary, but very helpful: access to a printer for printing labels with local voting information.

Postcards to Voters
“Friendly, handwritten reminders from volunteers to targeted voters giving Democrats a winning edge in close, key races coast to coast.” Write for a variety of campaigns, both large and small. You’re usually instructed to mail the postcards immediately so you can feel accomplished right away.
Supplies needed:

Postcards: provide your own, either from their Etsy store or any other source with suitable designs. You can even use pre-stamped postcards from the USPS; very cost-effective.
Postcard stamps.

Vote Forward
Add a personal, heartfelt message to get-out-the vote letters targeting voters in swing states.
Supplies needed:

Access to a printer for printing letters.
Envelopes and stamps.

If you have other organizations or campaigns to recommend, please comment!

oldtoadwoman

I started compiling this list for myself because I love stickers and thought I could combine my love of stickers with supporting good causes. But I'm also on a tighter budget than I was four years ago when I filled my sketchbook with progressive stickers, so this was also a bit of a wish list to send to my friends. And then someone said I should post this here, so I'm sharing.

I'm conflicted on what the strategy is with supporting state Democratic Parties. Should you put money into the "swing" states? Put money into the "red" states in the hopes of moving the needle? Shore up the "safe" states because we can't take them for granted? (When I was spending money in 2020, I kind of just went with whichever states had the coolest stickers because I'm shallow like that.)

I perhaps unfairly gauge a state party's optimism by how many sticker designs they offer and it was sort of interesting to see who has a huge and interesting selection and who doesn't even attempt to sell merchandise.

Most of the states that sell stickers, do so in packs of two which means even if you collect them yourself, you've got a spare to share with the world. (I like to put them on the backs of my letters when I write to an elderly relative who keeps sharing right-wing talking points when we talk on the phone.)

The links that I've provided go to each state's official Democratic Party's merchandise site (if they had one), but you can easily navigate from that page to just sending a donation directly. (I also compiled this list over two days a week ago, so some of the information may already be outdated. At least one site that only had one sticker design when I first looked already has more now.)

( list of links to each state's Democratic Party official merchandise )

Does anyone have an option about MoveOn? I saw they have a lot of progressive stickers (and they have the only site that sells them in packs of 10 instead of just 2 like most of them do), but I'm not sure if that's helping the cause or redirecting money away.

Are there any other progressive candidates or organizations selling stickers?

Current Mood: tired

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Never Give Up, Never Surrender

June 2025

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Page Summary

hermionesviolin - Transanta
petra - HR 9495 Again - Republicans want to label not-for-profits as terrorist orgs
gingicat - statement from Kamala Harris, with video
toastykitten - cure ballots in NV
tanaqui - Here we go again....
tanaqui - Elections 2024
gingicat - Early voting & mail-in ballot process (Massachusetts)
rydra_wong - Guide to phone-banking
gingicat - Massachusetts ballot questions
tanaqui - Check In 6 October
hermionesviolin - more postcard signups available
sathari - This might be relevant to our interests....
cream_and_custard - Community for Climate Action
sathari - Musicians for Kamala!
sathari - National (US) Voter Registration Day!
otter - (no subject)
azurelunatic - OSHA proposed regulations for worker heat protections: comment period until Dec 30, 2024
tanaqui - Check In 2 September
semielliptical - Get out the vote with postcards and letters!
oldtoadwoman - Democratic stickers

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Never Give Up, Never Surrender

Links and Positive Action for the next Four Years

Recent Entries

Transanta

HR 9495 Again - Republicans want to label not-for-profits as terrorist orgs

statement from Kamala Harris, with video

cure ballots in NV

Here we go again....

Elections 2024

Early voting & mail-in ballot process (Massachusetts)

Guide to phone-banking

Massachusetts ballot questions

Check In 6 October

more postcard signups available

This might be relevant to our interests....

Community for Climate Action

Musicians for Kamala!

National (US) Voter Registration Day!

(no subject)

OSHA proposed regulations for worker heat protections: comment period until Dec 30, 2024

Check In 2 September

Get out the vote with postcards and letters!

Democratic stickers

Profile

June 2025

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