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Students share motivations ahead of Youth Climate Strike

by OrvilleMcfall Posted on March 14, 2019

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Young people around the globe are gearing up for the International Youth Climate Strike on Friday, March 15. Students at tens of thousands of schools are expected to leave their classes and take the streets to demand world leaders act on climate change.

The global movement started last year when Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, who was just nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, began a solo protest calling for climate change action by holding up handmade signs outside her country’s Parliament every Friday. Thunberg’s actions sparked the hashtag #FridaysForFuture — now a worldwide youth climate movement.

Following last month’s massive youth walkouts in Europe, the March 15 Youth Climate Strike will now bring the school-based environmental action stateside. According to the U.S. website for the strike, the students’ demands include a Green New Deal that will prioritize communities most impacted by climate change, a 100 percent renewable energy target by 2030, and comprehensive education on the impacts of climate change.

“It’s important to talk about what climate change does to marginalized communities, and what it could do to your community,” said Isra Hirsi, one of the U.S. co-leaders of the walkout who also happens to be the 16-year-old daughter of Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. “I think that’s a really great way to get more people involved.”

As united as Friday’s protests will be in their call for meaningful climate action, the reasons young people have for participating are also grounded in their regions’ unique climate concerns. Grist reached out to Youth Climate Strike organizers around the country to get a sense on why they’re participating and how climate change is impacting their communities.

The following quotes have been edited for clarity and length.

Image courtesy of Aditi Narayanan

Aditi Narayanan, 16 – Phoenix, AZ

I have seen the impact of climate change on my community members, such as extreme heat and lack of trees in urban, more low-income, majority-POC areas in South Phoenix. Extreme heat, lack of water, the use of solar energy, and fracking are all huge issues on the Arizona state legislature’s plate right now.

Solar energy is one I care about most, as Arizona is so capable of using solar energy, but big energy companies are disincentivizing consumers from using solar, and in turn promoting fossil fuels. [Adults here] have had mixed responses, but, disregarding some not-so-nice online comments, most have been nothing but supportive.

Chelsea Li, 18 – Seattle, WA

Here in North Seattle, we definitely are more concerned about the issue compared to other parts of the country. But it’s kind of ironic — we have a fairly privileged perspective. Even though we emit the most greenhouse gases with our lifestyles, we’re not the ones who are most impacted compared to people living on islands that are going to flood or need to be relocated, or climate refugees. I feel like, even though — our community, even in Seattle, does care about the issue, the amount of caring doesn’t match the amount it’s talked about.

Climate change will be brought up in classes, of course, but outside of that, no — it’s weird, to me it’s such a pressing issue! Why isn’t everyone talking about it all the time? I don’t feel like it’s talked about that much. Not only at my school, but outside of that in the greater community either.

Image courtesy of Athena Fain

Athena Fain, 15 – Seattle, WA

These past couple weeks have been spent going to a lot of club meetings, trying to spread the word [about the strike] at my school. I want the strike to be a diverse movement because marginalized people get left out of climate movement, so I’ve been going to the Black Student Union, the Human Rights Club, the Gay-Straight Alliance, and telling them about it.

For me, it’s not just me trying to protect my future, it’s trying to protect my [present]. I’ve been doing climate activism for five years. People in government and people who have power in society, they’re not taking the proper actions. I care about the environment and nature and I love the world around me but the biggest thing I care about is humans. I want us not only to be able to survive but to prosper. If we allow this to continue, that won’t be an option.

Nadja Goldberg, 15 – San Francisco, CA

(Goldberg was one of the students who gathered to ask California Senator Dianne Feinstein to support the Green New Deal. She and the group will be marching from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office to Feinstein’s office. She says students plan to put sticky notes on either the politicians’ doors or the doors of the building.)

We were there with a small group of people on a Friday, and now we are coming back with thousands. I hope.

Image courtesy of Virginia Gaffney

Virginia Gaffney, 19 – Austin, TX

Texas summers have been getting progressively warmer every year for longer than my entire lifetime. It’s getting to the point where we’re breaking 110, 115 degrees F during the day. We’re going way too long without rain so everything is evaporating, but then it gets caught in the coastal winds because Texas has a significant coastline. It’s all being pushed away. So there are areas that are getting flooded and areas that have been in a drought for a decade.

Texas covers just about every major biome. We have Hill Country, coastal plains, forest, desert, marshland. Because of that [climatic] divide and [with half the state] getting too much rain and the other no rain at all, Texas faces the unique problem of not being able to make any direct action at the legislative level so far because when you tell the Eastern half we need to do something about the drought, they say, ‘What drought?’ And when you tell the Western half of the state, ‘Hey, we need to do something about the flooding, they say, ‘What flooding.’

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Melissa Patterson, 20, Portland, OR

For some students, leaving school for one day is a very taxing ask, so there are some concerns about unexcused absences during the walkout — although, that is what makes the event so powerful. This is a global movement encouraging young people to advocate for a safe future, so in perspective, many young people are eager to miss a day of school to participate. Portland Community College has been receptive to the idea, and local high schools have also been generally cooperative in allowing us to promote the strike.

It has been challenging to get this movement the momentum it deserves in the U.S. In other countries, it has really taken off. Considering the enormous role our country plays in climate change, the success of this event and future events involved with this movement is vital to the future of young generations.

Image courtesy of Shania Hurtado

Shania Hurtado, 16 – Houston, TX

I live in Houston and recently, in 2017, Hurricane Harvey devastated our city. It was a time when my family and my friends were in a state of fear. It was terrible. This is truly why I’m striking. It’s why I’m organizing the strike. It’s something that affects me personally and we have the power to prevent and we should do something about it.

Climate very rarely comes up in the classroom. It’s come up on occasion. Ninety-nine percent of the research I’ve done on climate change, I’ve done on my own. The school system was very lacking. If schools were involved in teaching climate change then we wouldn’t have this doubt and we wouldn’t have this negligence we have today. That’s one of the biggest parts. Education is power.

With that being said, Texas is strong. We are all so very passionate. Especially because Texas has so much oil and gas, it’s important that we acknowledge this. We really believe that we can make this change as long as our voices are united in one single front.

Gudrun Campbell. Image courtesy of Elizabeth Stark.

Gudrun Campbell, 11 – Charlottesville, VA

I’m choosing to participate because time is running out. We have 11 years to save our planet, and it’s the only planet we have. We cannot spend precious time, of which we have too little, in silence. We must fight for our futures if others will not.

The main local issues are stopping the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and Mountain Valley Pipeline and divesting from fossil fuels. I think stopping the pipelines is important because it’s a way to combat the fossil fuel industry at a more local level and in an achievable and impactful way. The pipelines have also raised issues of environmental racism.

My parents have been pretty supportive from the start. I think I first started getting into environmental activism when my teacher showed us a video of Greta Thunberg giving a speech. She told a room full of adults that they were acting like children. When I got home I showed the video to my parents, and a few weeks later, my mom showed me an article about Alexandria Villaseñor and the school strike, and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’

Sabirah Mahmud

Sabirah Mahmud, 16 – Philadelphia, PA

“It’s really important for every single student in America to have their voice heard. [There are] definitely barriers. People tell us that we can’t change climate change because we’re just kids. Of course, we know we can’t vote but we still have a voice. We still have the ability to stand up for something. We need to stand up for our right to protect our future, and I’m just baffled. It’s often very discouraging.

The strike isn’t just an opportunity to leave school or to walk out, it’s an opportunity to make change. All my life I’ve been asked, ‘What are you going to do in the future? What are you gonna do when you grow up?’ I can’t really think about the future with all this. It’s really ironic. That’s why it’s really important for this to happen, not only just Philadelphia but everywhere. Because we are the young people, the next generation and we need to take action now.”

Image courtesy of Kendall Greene

Kendall Greene, 17 – Atlanta

I’m striking for my future, for the air that I breathe, for the land that my grandparents have been living on, and for the land that my children, I hope, can live on.

I’m really passionate about food and food justice and specifically how marginalized communities are impacted by food and food scarcity and food security (and lack of food security). Just thinking about farmers in Georgia and how they recently dealt with a drought last year and the year before with peaches and pecans. I just don’t know what that looks like long term for farmers and people that rely on that mode of work, being in the South, being in Georgia. I’m really passionate about a lot of the organic farms here and locally-owned farms. I prefer to get my food from farmers markets, and I’m worried about how they’ll be impacted if climate catastrophe is on the way.

The adults in my life have been supportive [of my striking]. My mom has been really supportive. We’re about to go to a talk at a church about the morality of climate change tonight. At my school, they’ve been incredibly supportive — one of my teachers actually introduced this movement to me. I’m the leader of our sustainability group, “The Green Team,” and they’re hosting their own strike during lunch. But I want to connect the whole city of Atlanta at the Capitol.

Additional reporting by Eve Andrews,  Justine Calma, Teresa Chin, Eric Holthaus, Nathanael Johnson, Naveena Sadasivam, Zoe Sayler, Nikhil Swaminathan, and Claire Thompson.

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Students share motivations ahead of Youth Climate Strike

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The Koch brothers hate public transit. But they can’t always stop projects in their tracks.

by Selma4889gkgw Posted on June 20, 2018

The infamous Koch brothers have bankrolled climate deniers, propped up polluting industries, and even tried to turn the black community pro-fossil fuel. But, as a recent New York Times story shows, the billionaire conservatives have been steadily exerting pressure against public transit as well.

Americans for Prosperity, a conservative lobbying group funded by the Koch family, has rallied against public transit works across the country. With a mix of political ads and door-to-door campaigning, the organization managed to get a transit tax increase shot down in Little Rock in 2016. Koch-linked groups have successfully watered down legislation in Indianapolis and blocked efforts in Florida.

This spring, the organization financed conservative activists in Nashville, Tennessee, to oppose a mass transit referendum. The plan would have increased the city’s sales tax in order to fund a light rail system, eight new bus lines, and 19 transit centers in the city. The anti-transit campaigners knocked on 6,000 doors and made 42,000 phone calls, all while repeating the anti-tax party line. The referendum, once a sure bet, failed, with almost 64 percent of voters rejecting it. Public transit experts were disappointed, but unsurprised.

Yonah Freemark, a transport researcher and doctoral student at MIT, says that the Koch effort has been around for years. “They have been focusing on regions without a strong transit constituency [or] historical support for transit investment,” he says. That’s perhaps why Americans for Prosperity has not focused as much on Seattle, San Francisco, or Los Angeles — but has targeted relatively conservative cities.

While it might seem puzzling that any group would be stridently opposed to public transit, the Kochs have both financial and ideological reasons to reject transit spending. The New York Times cited their extensive financial interest in the automotive industry, combined with a libertarian and anti-tax ideology.

“It’s part of their overall agenda of conservatism, and part of an ideology tied up with cities and transit being bad, and suburbs as good,” says Jeff Wood, a transit consultant and blogger based in San Francisco.

Luckily for transit enthusiasts, the Kochs have not always been successful, even in sprawling cities with a sizable Republican base. Phoenix, Arizona, successfully expanded its light rail system in the face of opposition from the organization’s state branch.

And the Nashville plan had other, compounding factors. Mayor Megan Barry, who introduced the referendum in October 2017, became embroiled in a sex scandal with her head of security and eventually resigned in March. Her resignation further ignited the already bitter conflict between pro- and anti-transit activists.

So transportation experts are still hopeful that the Koch brothers will not derail many more projects. “Despite the fact that we have these people going out and running smear campaigns against public services, the large majority of such referenda have passed,” says Freemark. In 2016, large transit plans were passed in Atlanta, Seattle, Raleigh, and Los Angeles. “Americans are not universally buying into these tactics,” he concludes.

Wood is similarly optimistic, and believes that the Nashville failure can inform future efforts. “I think we are going to see other places learn from this,” he says. “I don’t think this ideology can win forever.”

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A New Wave of Left-Wing Militants Is Ready to Rumble in Portland—and Beyond

by KathleneT54 Posted on June 4, 2017

Mother Jones

One week after two men were stabbed to death while defending two girls from a racist and Islamophobic diatribe on a commuter train, Portland, Oregon, is bracing for more violence. On Sunday, over the mayor’s objection, a right-wing group will hold a pro-Trump “free speech rally,” while anti-fascist activists are preparing to protest the gathering.

It’s a pattern that has played out across the country since the election: Pro-Trump events from Pikeville, Kentucky, to Berkeley, California, attract white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen along with other provocateurs from the so-called “alt-right.” And, predictably, “antifa” counterprotesters mask up to oppose them—often physically.

Yet joining up with the well-established networks of antifascists and anarchists is a new generation of militant organizers. In Portland, Rose City Antifa’s coalition at this weekend’s pro-Trump rally will include the local chapter of Redneck Revolt, a national network whose outreach has targeted right-wing militia members.

Redneck Revolt is just one among a handful of left-wing groups that have pledged to resist emboldened white supremacists and right-wing extremists through “direct action” that sometimes goes beyond nonviolent protest—including picking up arms. Some see themselves as the heirs of ’60s radicals like the Black Panthers, while others look to the antifa movement for inspiration. Here are a few:

Bastards Motorcycle Club: A couple of years ago, South Carolinians Steven “Chavez” Parker and Joseph Guinn organized an anti-racist, LGBT-friendly motorcycle gang. Traditional biker clubs, Parker thought, “were all going to think one thing: ‘What a bunch of bastards.'” Since then, the Bastards Motorcycle Club has rolled up to oppose racist events across the South, sometimes armed and ready to rumble. April 2016 they joined a small army of counterprotesters at a rally of white supremacists in Stone Mountain, Georgia, home of a rock carving honoring the Confederacy. They’re now looking to set up new chapters—women need not apply. That’s “not the way things work,” says the group’s president, who insists on being called by his biker name, Gigolo.

By Any Means Necessary: BAMN formed in 1995 to fight California’s rollback of affirmative action. The group, which is led by civil rights lawyer Shanta Driver, has organized anti-Trump rallies and high school walkouts. But it also supports more aggressive tactics. “When we say ‘by any means necessary,’ we mean everything from doing legal cases to organizing more militant actions,” Driver says. “We are not people who believe, in situations where we’re under attack, that we should turn the other cheek.” Last June, BAMN teamed up with antifas to confront a small group of white nationalists marching outside California’s Capitol building in Sacramento. Anti-racist protesters, many in black clothing and masks, pelted marchers with water bottles and hit them with wooden bats. Several people from both camps were beaten or stabbed. “They are organizing to attack and kill us, so we have a right to self-defense,” BAMN activist Yvette Felarca told a TV crew. “Anyone who’s thinking about joining them, don’t. Because it’s not going to be a good day for you.”

Redneck Revolt: This network, largely made up of anarchists and libertarians, is focused on anti-racist organizing among the white working class. Inspired by the Young Patriots—white Appalachian activists who allied with the Black Panthers in the late 1960s—the group now claims chapters in more than 30 regions. Redneck Revolt’s members can speak to their neighbors more easily than ivory-tower liberals, says Lucas Kelly, a member of the Phoenix chapter. “‘Privilege’ means one thing to them. It means a different thing to working-class folks who put in 60, 80 hours a week to support their family.” The group also runs firearms trainings. Last December, Kelly’s chapter sent members to a gun show, where they handed out posters tagged with the slogan “Fighting Nazis Is an American Tradition: Stop the Alt-Right.”

Huey P. Newton Gun Club: After a white Dallas police officer killed an unarmed black man in 2013, community organizers Yafeuh Balogun and Babu Omowale launched the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, a coalition of black self-defense groups named after the co-founder of the Black Panthers. “We’re going to educate black, brown, and poor white people to arm up or at least get familiar with weapons,” Balogun says. “So if a situation does arise, if they feel threatened, at least they can defend themselves.” When an anti-Muslim group held an armed protest outside a Nation of Islam mosque in South Dallas in April 2016, armed Gun Club members showed up to counterprotest. Balogun says his group, which operates armed patrols in South Dallas, has drawn the attention of the FBI. But he also emphasizes that it’s not just about guns: “What we advise people is to not necessarily be so quick, so fast, to pick up arms.”

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A New Wave of Left-Wing Militants Is Ready to Rumble in Portland—and Beyond

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20 Houseplants That Clear Toxins From Your Home

by Ilariaujg Posted on April 26, 2017

Bringing a bit of nature into your home does more than brighten the atmosphere. Introducing houseplants into various rooms in the house can help reduce the chance of getting seasonal sicknesses (such as the common cold), remove airborne contaminants (volatile organic compounds, or VOCs), reduce the chance of headaches, lift your mood, decrease your blood pressure, reduce allergies, improve sleep and much more.

The 20 plants listed below are specifically known for their air purifying properties. And while an open window may feel like all the fresh air you need, did you know that everything from toilet paper to common household cleaners can contain chemicals and release toxins like formaldehyde? Or that VOCs like benzene can be released into the air by everything from the paint on your walls, to the printed material found in your home?

So why not breathe a bit easier and enjoy the beauty of a new houseplant at the same time! A warning for pet owners: some common plants can cause toxicity in pets. Please check this list of common poisonous plantsbefore bringing home a house plant.

(All plants listed will clear CO2 and may clear more VOCs than noted.)

Related: 7 Indoor Plants That Will Survive In the Darkest Rooms

1.Golden pothos

Golden Pothos(Scindapsus aures): clears formaldehyde and other VOCs.

2. Ficus alii

Ficus Alii (Ficus maeleilandii alii): Good general air purifier.

3. Spider Plant

Spider Plant (Chlorophytum comosum): Clears benzene, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide and xylene.

4. Lady Palm

Lady Palm (Rhapis Excelsa): Good general air purifier.

5. Snake plant

Snake Plant (Sansevieria trifasciata Laurentii): Clears formaldehyde.

6. Aloe Vera

Aloe: Clears formaldehyde and benzene.

7. Moth Orchid

Orchid (Phalaenopsis): Clears formaldehyde.

8. Dwarf/Pygmy Date Palm

Pygmy Date Palm (Phoenix roebelenii): Clears formaldehyde and xylene.

9. Chinese evergreen


(Aglaonema Crispum ‘Deborah’): Clears air pollutants and toxins.

10. Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemums(Chrysantheium morifolium): Clears benzene.

11. Gerber daisy

(Gerbera jamesonii): Clears trichloroethylene and benzene.

12. Red-edged dracaena

(Dracaena marginata): Clears xylene, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde.

13. Weeping fig

Weeping Fig (Ficus benjamina): Clears formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene

14. English ivy

(Hedera helix): Clears airborne fecal-matter particles.

15. Azalea

(Rhododendron simsii): Clears formaldehyde.

16. Heart leaf philodendron

(Philodendron oxycardium): Clears formaldehyde and many other air pollutants.

17. Warneck dracaena

(Dracaena deremensis ‘Warneckii’): Clears pollutants such as those associated with varnishes and oils.

18. Boston Fern

Boston Fern (Nephrolepis exaltata Bostoniensis): Clears formaldehyde. | Image credit: melissa b. via Flickr

19. Bamboo palm

(Chamaedorea sefritzii): Clears benzene, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde.

20. Peace lily

(Spathiphyllum): Clears formaldehyde, benzene, trichloroethylene, toluene and xylene.

Related Stories:

24 Common Plants Poisonous to Pets
 4 Unexpected Health Benefits of Basil
5 Surprising Benefits of Hemp
How I Finally Kicked Xanax to the Curb with CBD

Sources:
 Science Daily
 Mother Nature News
 Sustainable Baby Steps

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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20 Houseplants That Clear Toxins From Your Home

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These Could Be the Most Vulnerable Immigrants in Trump’s America

by roselaurence306 Posted on February 9, 2017

Mother Jones

Labor and immigration rights advocates are worried that the policies being rolled out by President Donald Trump will make life particularly difficult—perhaps even dangerous—for an especially vulnerable worker population: immigrant day laborers.

In the executive order he signed on January 25, Trump prioritized the removal of undocumented “criminal” immigrants. Specifically, his interior enforcement plans call for the removal of undocumented immigrants who have been charged or convicted, or have even just “committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense,” which could include everything from entering the country illegally to getting paid to work or driving without a license. Such a broad definition of criminality—the order also tells immigration agents to focus on those who are a “risk to public safety or national security”—has advocates for day laborers more than a little concerned.

“What President Trump wants to do is increase that kind of enforcement and target—not just certain crimes, but anybody that has any kind of criminal past, any kind of ticket or infraction,” says Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center. “That’s the danger” for day laborers.

While reliable numbers are hard to come by, a 2006 national study of day labor estimated that 117,600 people seek this kind of work daily. The laborers often stand out on public streets near lumber yards or home improvement centers in the hope that a contractor or homeowner will hire them for help with heavy jobs such as landscaping, hauling, clearing, or moving.

This makes them highly visible to law enforcement. And while it is legal to solicit work in public in many cities, local ordinances banning loitering or jaywalking can get laborers ticketed and their names put into police databases. If undocumented immigrants are detained and fingerprinted, for whatever reason, they have more to fear. Under Secure Communities, a controversial and since shuttered Obama-era program, fingerprints were automatically sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose agents could ask local officials to hold undocumented immigrants for deportation.

And Trump isn’t just bringing back Secure Communities. After the presidential election, the Los Angeles Times reported that administration hardliners want to vastly expand expedited removal, a process in which ICE can deport people without so much as a hearing. It is currently used only within 100 miles of the border to remove people who cannot show proper documentation.

Already there have been reports of anti-immigrant vigilantes photographing and harassing day laborers and, in one incident, going into a labor center in Hollywood and taking pictures of signup sheets bearing laborers’ names. “Now it’s going to be much more violent, much more explicit because of the xenophobia and very explicit racism that we see from this administration and from his supporters,” National Day Laborer Organizing Network spokesman Armando Carmona told me. “This is going to be much more dramatic.”

In defiance of the Trump administration, Los Angeles city officials have agreed to draft a law that decriminalizes the work of street vendors—many undocumented—who sell hot dogs, fruit, and other foods on streets. For years, their actions were illegal. The next push by the city’s pro-immigrant advocates is to convince officials to grant amnesty to those vendors who still face criminal charges in the hope of helping them avoid deportation. (Trump’s order also calls for cities that don’t comply with federal immigration law to lose discretionary federal funding.)

In any case, the threat of deportation and physical violence isn’t going to stop people from seeking a livelihood, says labor organizer Salvador Reza, who works with day laborers in Phoenix. “Day laborers are here to work. They need to work. In order to work, they will face the Minutemen, they’ll face the racists, they’ll face the police,” he says. “If you take Arizona as an example, we can fight it and we can win it—but it’s just massive.”

President Trump, adds Reza, “is taking on the whole nation.”

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These Could Be the Most Vulnerable Immigrants in Trump’s America

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Here’s What the Biggest Police Union Wants From Trump

by JosefinGSU Posted on December 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump didn’t earn too many endorsements from unions during his presidential campaign, but one enthusiastically supported him. The national Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), which boasts more than 330,000 members and is the country’s largest police union, announced in September that it would be backing Trump because he “understands and supports” its priorities. (The organization declined to make a formal endorsement in the 2012 presidential election but in 2008 backed John McCain.) Trump’s rhetoric on safety and law and order seemed to align with the right-leaning union. “Our members believe he will make America safe again,” the group explained when it announced its support. About a week after Election Day, it offered the president-elect a list of its priorities for the first 100 days of his administration.

The policy ideas, released through the union’s official website with little fanfare, includes more than a dozen proposals. Many involve aggressively dismantling the modest reforms suggested by the Obama administration in a 2015 plan called President’s 21st Century Task Force on Policing, such as increasing the use of body cameras nationwide and implementing a national database on police use of force. The FOP also wants Trump to bring back racial profiling in federal agencies by lifting or changing the 2003 ban put in place by the Bush administration. The union suggests he should cut off some or all federal aid to “sanctuary cities” and bring an end to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), using its database to deport the individuals who had been protected by being included in it. Using police officers to participate in the deportation of undocumented immigrants was an idea Trump suggested in his immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona, last August. Several large cities have indicated they will not use police officers or relinquish their status as sanctuary cities to help deport immigrants.

The Fraternal Order of Police’s resistance to change and embrace of Trump and his policies is directly at odds with police officers of color and other cops who believe law enforcement agencies need to reform to better serve all Americans. The Blacks in Law Enforcement of America opposed the FOP’s endorsement of Trump, writing, “Is this endorsement the result of a few individuals who may stand to benefit from a so-called law and order candidate who knows nothing about the Criminal Justice System and is opposed to necessary reform of the institution?” Civil rights groups have criticized the FOP’s priorities. “The FOP’s agenda for Trump’s first 100 days is abhorrent,” the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, DC, wrote on Twitter. Changing the way police officers serve their communities has been a high priority for many politicians and activists alike and some gains have been made, but if the FOP’s proposals can further influence the Trump administration, police reform may get a lot more difficult.

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Here’s What the Biggest Police Union Wants From Trump

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Why Did Hillary Clinton Send Michelle Obama to Arizona?

by LucioK20ml Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Clinton campaign is going all-in for a state it doesn’t even need to win. On Monday, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager announced that her campaign would spend $2 million on ads and direct mail in Arizona. Perhaps more important, the campaign is redirecting some of its top surrogates from traditional battleground states to Arizona, including Chelsea Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and perhaps the campaign’s most valuable asset, Michelle Obama, who spoke in Phoenix on Thursday afternoon.

Sometimes presidential candidates with a commanding lead try to expand the electoral map simply because they can; a dominant win can translate into a mandate once in office. In 2008, for example, Barack Obama’s campaign was so far ahead in polling and resources that it started investing in Indiana. Obama won the state, which became a symbol of how big his 2008 victory really was.

But Arizona could serve a strategic purpose that Indiana did not. Unlike the Hoosier State, it has a large and increasingly politically active Latino population. Tellingly, when Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook announced the investments in Arizona, he also announced an ad buy in Texas, another state with a large Latino population that was thought to be out of play for Democrats until the Donald Trump campaign began its recent implosion. If she wins Arizona, Clinton could bring Republicans to the table on immigration reform by proving to them that they have no shot at the White House—that even formerly safe red states will turn blue—if they continue to hold the Trump line on immigration.

“We have been able to move the Latino community to participate in the civic life of Arizona on the issue of immigration,” says Ben Monterroso, executive director of Mi Familia Vota, a group that has worked to register Latinos in Arizona and other states this year. He points out that in 2010, the year Arizona passed its draconian anti-immigrant law, there were 50,000 Latinos registered to vote by mail. Today, he said, there are more than 350,000. “I hope that Hillary Clinton and her campaign see this as an opportunity to send a clear message to Republicans that enough is enough to be playing around with the issue of immigration.”

The fact that Clinton has sent the popular first lady to Arizona is a sign that the campaign is in it to win it. “Sending Michelle Obama sends a signal that a lot of it will hinge on turnout, and in that state particularly Latino turnout,” says Gabriel Sanchez, a pollster with the firm Latino Decisions. Sanchez says his survey data shows that if the campaign can ramp up turnout among Latinos, it has a “legitimate” shot at winning Arizona. Obama did not disappoint; the first lady delivered a rousing speech to a sea of fans in Phoenix. Of course, there will still be hurdles to accomplishing immigration reform in Congress, thanks largely to the uphill battle Democrats face in taking back the House of Representatives. But it would be a warning shot to Republicans in Washington to help move on immigration reform—and to future Republican presidential candidates that Trump’s hardline immigration stance was a losing electoral strategy.

Monterroso believes Arizona is more like California than like Indiana. Just as Arizona’s Barry Goldwater helped launch the conservative movement with his 1964 presidential candidacy, California was once a home base for the Republican Party, sending Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to the White House. In 1994, California’s Republican governor supported an anti-immigration ballot initiative known as Proposition 187. The move is largely credited with turning the state solidly blue by mobilizing Latinos against the GOP. “Look at what happened in California,” he says. “I think Arizona is in the same direction if the Republican Party doesn’t do anything different in this election.”

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Why Did Hillary Clinton Send Michelle Obama to Arizona?

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Donald Trump Has to Reassure Supporters That He’ll Win Arizona

by weask Posted on June 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Saturday afternoon in Phoenix, Donald Trump did something no Republican nominee has had to do two decades: He promised to win Arizona.

He also promised to win Connecticut, said he would do “unbelievably well with the Mexicans,” and promised to solve “all of our problems” if elected president. But less than one month after he secured enough delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination, Trump’s usual bombast was surrounded by signs of his campaign’s own mortality.

For one thing, there was the fact that he was even appearing in Phoenix at all. Arizona was a strong state for Trump in the presidential primary, but it is an unusual place for a candidate to spend much time after winning the nomination. The state hasn’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential year since 1996. No Democrats hold statewide office here, and Mitt Romney won the state by more than 10 points in 2012. If Arizona were to become a battleground state, it would most likely signify a landslide. But Clinton leads Trump in Real Clear Politics‘ polling average of the state, and Trump’s rally on Saturday, at the Phoenix Memorial Coliseum—known locally as the “Madhouse on McDowell”—seemed to belie the state’s deep-red reputation. Trump told the crowd he was “up big in the state,” but then said it was “a very important state” and he would win it in the fall. Speaking a short while earlier, former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who joined was joined at the event by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, drew a cheer from the crowd when she promised to “keep Arizona red.” They just might; but the biggest story was that it even needed to be said.

Throughout the event, Trump projected an air of confidence—”I feel like a supermodel except times 10,” he said of his media saturation—but there were signs that all was not going so swell with his campaign. He mocked a Politico story that quoted a Trump adviser suggesting Trump would consider giving up his presidential bid for the right amount of money. According to the story, Trump might accept a $150 million buyout. To hoots from the crowd, Trump boasted that he wouldn’t accept five times that much—but, he conceded, if they offered him $5 billion, he’d be foolish not to consider it. In the build-up to his grand entrance, one surrogate after another had engaged the audience in a call and response. The question was “Who’s the nominee?” After the week he’d had, it was starting to feel a little less than rhetorical.

In his most audacious promise, Trump recalled how he had won victory after victory in northeastern blue states during the Republican primary. His strong showings were a sign, he suggested, that he could compete and win in places like Connecticut in the general election. (A cynical person might note that Republican primaries are usually won by Republicans.) But Hartford will have to wait for another time; for now, he’s just trying to win Arizona.

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Donald Trump Has to Reassure Supporters That He’ll Win Arizona

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The Election in Arizona Was a Mess

by Trinidad36A Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Faith Decker, a 19-year-old sophomore at Arizona State University, got off work a little early Tuesday night so she could vote in her first-ever primary. She arrived at a church in southeast Phoenix just before 7 p.m. to find “the line wrapped completely around the corner, 300 to 400 people.” After waiting in that line for more than three hours, she finally reached the check-in desk. She was told that she couldn’t vote—not because the polls had closed three hours before, but because she was registered in a different county.

Decker says that while waiting in line, she saw several people get frustrated and leave before they cast their ballots, and that the election workers seemed confused, taking a long time to process voters once they got to the table.

“It’s just kind of all a giant disappointment to everyone who usually comes out and votes in person,” she said. And as a first-time voter she was shocked “to see that it was so unorganized, or disorderly.”

Decker’s long wait and disappointing outcome was shared by many voters in Maricopa County, Arizona, the state’s biggest county, with 2 million registered voters, who live in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Glendale, and other larger communities. Images of people waiting hours under the hot sun and into the night filled Twitter timelines and cable TV broadcasts. The last person to cast a ballot didn’t do so until after midnight, according to the Arizona Republic, nearly five hours after the Democratic race had already been called for Hillary Clinton, and a few hours after Donald Trump was declared as the Republican winner.

Election officials said that the long lines were due, in part, to a large number of unaffiliated or independent voters trying to vote. Only those registered with one of the recognized parties were allowed to cast ballots. The state’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, issued a statement Wednesday morning calling the situation “unacceptable” and called for allowing independents to be able to vote in presidential primaries.

But Arizona has a long history of problems at the ballot box. Until 2013, the Grand Canyon State was one of 16 states required to clear all changes to voting law and procedures with the US Department of Justice, under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, because of its history of discriminatory and racist election practices. The two-part formula used to determine which jurisdictions would fall under the Department of Justice’s review process was created nearly fifty years before in 1965 and attempted to insure that the voting age population actually was able to vote. The first criteria was if a jurisdiction had a “test or device” that restricted the opportunity to register to vote on Nov. 1, 1964. The state would also be scrutinized if less than half of voting-age people in a jurisdiction were registered to vote, or if less than half of the voting-age population actually did vote in the presidential election of November 1964.

The formula was ruled unconstitutional in the 2013 US Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder, in which an Alabama County argued that jurisdictions covered by Section 5 “must either go hat in hand to Justice Department officialdom to seek approval, or embark on expensive litigation in a remote judicial venue.” With the court’s ruling, Arizona (and the other states and jurisdictions previously covered by so-called “pre-clearance”) could make changes to voting laws and procedures without federal oversight. But in a state that took six years to adopt a Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, is the home of the controversial Maricopa County Sheriff, and Donald Trump supporter, Joe Arpaio, and where SB 1070 required police to determine a person’s immigration status when there was “reasonable suspicion” that they were in the country illegally, the difficulties in voting raised some concerns about darker motivations.

Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, the woman in charge of administering the county’s elections, said in an interview with a local news reporter Tuesday night that “the voters, for getting in line” were at least partly to blame for the long lines:

On Wednesday she told the county board of supervisors that she would “do it differently” if she could do it again, and that she “takes the blame” for what went wrong. She also blamed independent and unaffiliated voters who tried to vote for slowing down the process. Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo said, “I just don’t buy that,” according to the Arizona Republic.

Purcell couldn’t be reached for comment.

One reason for the long lines is the fact that the county went from 200 polling locations in 2012 to just 60 in 2016. As Republic reporter Caitlin McGlade noted Tuesday night, Maricopa County’s 60 polling locations worked out to about one for every 20,833 eligible voters, compared to one polling station serving 2,500 voters in other Arizona counties.

State Sen. Martín Quezada, (D-Phoenix), offered his own explanation for the lack of polling locations in his area on Wednesday:

Tammy Patrick, the county’s former federal elections compliance officer, is now a senior advisor of the Democracy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington DC, where she consults with jurisdictions around the country about voting administration best practices. She said that the comparison between 200 polling stations in 2012 and 60 in 2016 is misleading because the 200 polling stations in 2012 were “precinct-specific”, while the 60 this year were so-called “voting centers,” where voters could cast ballots anywhere in the county. Jurisdictions in 33 states are moving to or already use a vote-center model, she says, which are attempts by local election officials to help voters who appear at incorrect precinct voting locations.

“This alleviates all of that,” she says. “People could go anywhere, but it also meant they had to have much larger facilities. So they had fewer number of options on where they could get a facility large enough to be a vote center that would allow them in.”

Patrick’s job from late 2004 through the end of the Voting Rights Act coverage in 2013 was to make sure Maricopa County voting decisions complied with federal laws. She said her former county election colleagues “were all very disappointed when the Voting Rights Act enforcement went away because it kind of protected them from the crazy legislature down the street.”

The question remains why county level officials limited the number of vote-centers to just 60, but Patrick suggests it might have to do with finding locations around the county that could accommodate large groups of people and would likely have occurred under the old Voting Rights Act requirements, despite suggestions to the contrary. She admitted, though, that there’s a context for concerns about discrimination.

“It’s a heightened environment, without a doubt,” she says. “Anything that doesn’t go absolutely perfectly is going to be viewed as some sort of a tactic. Now when it comes to things like legislation, that’s quite possible that there are legislative acts that are done down the street that maybe have that sort of intent, but that’s certainly not the case at the local level.”

The Arizona Republic called the entire situation an “outrage” in an editorial Wednesday, and added that the decision to switch to a vote-center model was a “cost-cutting measure” that was “badly bungled” by county election officials who “did not account for such things as high turnout or parking.”

Whoever’s to blame, the net result was the same: thousands of people stood in line for hours, some of whom gave up and ended up not voting. Erika Andiola, the national press secretary for Latino outreach for the Sanders campaign, said she heard from her volunteers about people leaving lines and waiting hours and hours to vote.

“I’m pretty sure that other campaigns were concerned,” Andiola says. “It’s not just about Bernie Sanders, but it’s really about Arizona. How can you have such a big number of people who are trying to participate in our elections that are treated this way? We want to encourage voting, we don’t want to discourage voting. That’s definitely not something we should be doing in any state.”

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The Election in Arizona Was a Mess

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John McCain Concedes the GOP May Have Lost Hispanics

by RayfordHaydon Posted on March 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., appears to have conceded that the Republican Party has alienated Hispanic voters and will have to rely increasingly on white voters to win in November.

“An interesting phenomenon right now is the huge turnouts for the Republican primaries, low turnout for the Democrat primaries,” McCain said in a Sunday appearance on the Phoenix-based show Politics in the Yard. “Now if all those people would get behind the Republican candidate, I think we could win this election despite the alienation, frankly, of a lot of the Hispanic voters.”

McCain will face perhaps his toughest re-election fight this fall. A former champion of comprehensive immigration reform, he is likely to struggle in a year in which Donald Trump is pushing Latinos away from the Republican Party. McCain will face off against several Republican primary challengers in August. Polls show McCain currently tied with his general election opponent, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.).

McCain has steered clear of Donald Trump, who is the favorite to win the Arizona Republican primary on Tuesday night. The Hill reported last week that McCain would not attend any of the rallies Trump held in Arizona this weekend. McCain endorsed his colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in the presidential primary; after Graham dropped out, McCain said he would not endorse anyone.

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John McCain Concedes the GOP May Have Lost Hispanics

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