Resist Voter Suppression

This week we’re going to zero in on one story that tells you all you need to know about the stakes in the 2024 election. In the full scope of things, one might argue that we need more than one event. Perhaps. But hear us out anyway.

The story starts with a 6 a.m. hard knock at the door in Texas. The residence is that of an 87-year-old grandmother, Lydia Martinez. She happened to be up, still in her nightgown, watering her plants.

On the other side of the knock were armed police and other agents of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a far-right, thuggish advocate of voter suppression and other reactionary MAGA measures. They surrounded Ms. Martinez, and for the next three hours, ransacked her home, seizing electronic devices and documents. ‘They even went through all my underwear,’ she noted.

Why Ms. Martinez? She happens to be a leader of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens. It’s the oldest and most influential advocacy organization for Chicanos and other Spanish-speaking residents in the U.S. LULAC mainly does voter registration of citizens and helps everyone with legal assistance regarding immigration and the path to citizenship. You can think of them as the NAACP for this population. So imagine if raids of this type came down on the NAACP leaders in your county or city. We may not even need our imaginations as the weeks unfold.

The Paxton ‘election police’ also raided several other homes. Foremost was that of Manuel Medina, chair of Tejano Democrats. His home was forcibly entered while he, his wife, and two young daughters were still in bed. Again, his home was ransacked, seizing 65 cell phones and 41 computers. Medina used his home for phone-banking and building up voter ID databases, a practice common to nearly all local Democrats across the country working is a serious way to maximize voter turnout.

But Ken Paxton stands in opposition to maximizing voter turnout. He can read Texas demographics as well as anyone, and the trends show the prospects of increasing Democratic victories. His solution? Suppress the vote, by any means necessary, including surrounding 87-year-old grandmothers with armed thugs.

Paxton’s raids are a clear and present attack on the self-determination of Chicanos in all of the Southwest. They a also a threat to the rights of everyone. His excuses for the raids—false papers, illegal SS numbers—are baseless. But he’s sending a wider message to all MAGA Republicans everywhere. Get busy on driving down voter registration and voter turnout in all areas with populations that might lean Democratic.

So, the moral of this story is a simple one. One side in or current electoral contest wants to win by using lies, intimidation, and even armed thugs in the early morning raids to reduce voter turnout and participation. The other side wants to win by expanding the electorate and working to increase registration. They are urging the greatest number of legal voters to cast their ballots and take part in the political progress at the grassroots. 

Our task? Stand up against any all voter suppression thugs, with or without badges. And stand with all grandmothers working to enhance the political power of those held down by exclusion.

Carl Davidson.

See more below.  

Mijente campaign of voter mobilization

 

There are 66 days left until the election, and we’re putting in every effort to mobilize voters on the frontlines of demographic change against Trump and the MAGA movement. At Mijente, the majority of our members, hub organizations, audiences and staff come from family histories and countries with civil unrest, economic inequality, and mass exploitation. And we come from peoples who have organized countermovements in resistance to authoritarian rule.   This is the energy we’re leaning into this fall, as we make sure to turn back Trump from a second term – and we need your support to reach voters in new and innovative ways. That’s exactly why we’ve been hitting key cities across the country with our Chisme 2024 tour. The tour is bringing more people into the conversation by using music, art, and culture to have meaningful discussions about the threat of another Trump presidency, the hope that we see in our local organizing, and how we build the future we want for our families.

We will not stand on the sidelines and clear a path to victory for Trump and the party that seeks to advance a disastrous agenda. Mijente Political Director Tania Unzueta shares it best saying: “In order to be able to expand the people that are involved in what’s happening in the country at the moment, we need to use different strategies. That’s the idea even behind the name of chisme, the idea that politics can look very different ways.”

Raids on Texas LULAC Voter mobilization

 Raids of Latino political, civil rights leaders' homes set up voting rights battle in Texas 

The raids have triggered outrage and cries of voter suppression in a state with a long history of discrimination against citizens of Mexican descent, which helped give rise to LULAC.

 

 

On Monday morning, LULAC leaders, state legislators, activists of other Latino groups and supporters and some of the people whose homes were raided protested outside the San Antonio office of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican. 

“This is point blank voter intimidation, and LULAC will fight for the right of every Latino to exercise the right to vote,” said Roman Palomares, LULAC's national president.

A copy of a wide-ranging search warrant left with one of the people targeted, LULAC volunteer Lidia Martinez, 87, of San Antonio, offered a window into the investigation’s interests. The warrant ordered the seizure of all electronic devices at her home, allowed for the opening of documents that were business-, organization- or election-related, and authorized swabbing for DNA. According to the warrant, the purpose of the search was to look for evidence of violations of the Texas election laws regarding vote harvesting and identity fraud.

 

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/house-raids-texas-democrats-ken-paxton-voting-rights-lulac-rcna168216

 

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LULAC Releases Report on Project 2025

  

LULAC Releases Report on Latino Civil Rights vs. Project 2025

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Nation’s largest and oldest Latino civil rights volunteer-based organization, today released a report titled “The Battle Ahead: Latino Civil Rights vs. Project 2025” outlining ten specific ways in which Project 2025 negatively impacts Latino civil rights.

The report includes analysis from LULAC Policy and Legislation Fellows Adriana Varea, Ari Kittrie, and Joaquin Macias and focuses on the following areas of Project 2025:

• Establishing a Unitary Executive Branch
• Mass Deportations
• Cutting off Legal Immigration
• Making Federal Funding & Benefits Contingent on Immigration Laws
• Criminalization of Reproductive Rights
• Dismantling the U.S. Department of Education
• Social Program Cuts and “Reforms”
• Repealing Vital Protections for Latino-Dominated Industries
• Refocusing Environmental Policy Away from Climate Change
• Ending Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives

 

 

2. Mass Deportations

“Prioritizing border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation, is critical if we are to regain control of the border.” (Project 2025, pg. 135)

Project 2025 plans to repeal parts of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 to allow for the large-scale use of detention facilities to mass incarcerate migrants. It also will change Title 8 of U.S. Code § 1226 to require mandatory detention for unauthorized migrants caught within the U.S. interior (pg. 150). To compound this, Project 2025 will also increase Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) capabilities by removing all sensitive zones where ICE personnel are prohibited from operating, allowing for raids in schools, churches, and businesses (pg. 142).

Project 2025 calls to authorize state and local law enforcement to participate in immigration and border security actions (pg. 150). Through deputizing local law enforcement, there will be a lack of oversight and accountability, allowing for abuses of the system that would disproportionately hurt the Latino community. Additionally, Latinos would have a more difficult time receiving impartial hearings and legal representation, especially because detainees are not entitled to public defenders as criminal defendants are. To compound upon this, the Supreme Court Case Loper Bright Entreprises vs. Raimondo, which repealed the Chevron Deference, has the potential to take immigration hearings away from the United States Immigration and Citizenship Services and shift them to the local courts. These local courts notoriously have long backlogs and a limited understanding of immigration policies and laws, which would force Latinos to have long and unjust trials.

3. Cutting Off Legal Immigration

“Victimization should not be a basis for an immigration benefit.” (pg. 144) “If CISOMB continues as a DHS component, a policy should be issued that prohibits CISOMB from assisting illegal aliens to obtain benefits. Currently, approximately 15 percent–20 percent of CISOMB’s workload consists of helping DACA applicants obtain and renew benefits, including work authorization. This is not the role of an ombudsman.” (Project 2025, pg. 166)

Project 2025 proposes to cut down on legal immigration by limiting interim immigration into the United States. For example, it calls for an increase in visa application fees. It plans to limit the issuance of H-2A and H2-B visas for seasonal agricultural workers, as well as the complete elimination of T and U visas meant to protect trafficking or crime victims who are actively cooperating with law enforcement as a witness (pg. 612, 141). Project 2025 calls to remove and deport all Temporary Status designations for migrants whose home countries are considered unsafe to live in (pg. 145). Finally, Project 2025 will phase out DACA for the over 500,000 recipients by eliminating staff time for reviewing and processing renewal applications which will make it very hard for DACA recipients to renew their status given the proposed lack of staff present to do so (pg.145).

4. Making Federal Funding & Benefits Contingent on Immigration Laws

 

 

Understanding Venezuela Election

Marc Cooper , from his substack. 

I HAVE to say something about Venezuela. Too much of the American Left along with a few groupuscles in Latin America are the only people in the world still believing that the Maduro Dictatorship in Venezuela is actually an anti-imperialist beacon of socialist solidarity and prosperity.

In fact, it is a hell hole from which a full quarter of the population — some 8 million— have fled. And having run into some of the 700,000 who are now in Chile, these are poor people who were plain hungry and tired of the Chavista-Maduro bullshit.

Maduro has created a new class of wealthy government lackeys, parasites, and favored loyalists who are swimming in money — and not exactly short on cocaine (google Maduro’s wife and family for that one). As Chavez dubbed his regime Bolivarian, the new rich are called the Boliburgueses.

Since the election a week ago Sunday, hundreds of thousands of protesters have come into the streets denouncing the obvious fraud perpetrated. Around 20 have been shot dead. Among the various election observers, many from progressive Latin American organizations, the Carter center, the international press, and the opposition itself, it appears that Maduro actually lost by a margin as big as 2 to 1 but simply declared victory.  The AP has concluded he really lost. Duh. So has everybody else. Well, almost everybody. There are still American progressives like acrobats in pain, contorting themselves to justify one of the most fixed elections in recent history.

Much of the American Left cannot articulate a strong critique of regimes like Venezuela or Cuba for that matter, and currently not even Russia, because there is a large percentage of American lefties who are wittingly or otherwise, are what we Old Leftists call “campists.”

They believe in their hearts that only the US has imperialist or military agency and that any country in the world, regardless of its regime, is to be supported if it is “anti-imperialist” which in the end translates as anti-American. So… for these campists, yeah, Iran and China and even Russia and certainly Venezuela, are seen ONLY as victims of US imperialism with absolutely NO regard for the living conditions of the respective populations. Nor is any independent agency ever assigned to these “anti-imperialist” states because whatever they do, whatever evil they perpetrate on their own people or others, is rotuinely justified by these campists as legitimate resistance to.. multiple choice: a)the cia b) the state department c) NATO, D) and generally, US Imperialism. 

And while leftists are properly quick to point out all the anti-democratic aspects of American elections they are usually dead silent on these sort of chronic human rights violations imposed by various dictatorships — so long as they call themselves socialist (they are not) or, simply engage in phony anti-Imperialist rhetoric. The case study for the latter is Nicaragua where the dictatorial Ortega family has buried both the Sandinista Revolution and basic democracy and in the name of Sandino has imposed a ruthless pro-capitalist dictatorship with socialist rhetoric. I guess that is the China model. Savage capitalist dictatorship with enormous inequality all in the name of Chinese socialism. I mean, how do these reptiles get through a party convention without cracking up in laughter (but dont ask Code Pink about Chinese democracy because China is a victim of US Imperialism — and also a pretty direct funder of Code Pink!

This chronic inability to liberate themselves from these Stalinist impulses, their ability to apologize for brutally anti-democratic dictatorships so long as they are a thorn in the American side. render this sort of American leftist politically inert at best — radioactive at worst.

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Many of us will remember Marc Cooper from his informed writings on Chile at the time of the coup, and during the dictatorship.

(https://thecoopscoop.substack.com/p/coop-scoop-do-progressives-really(https://thecoopscoop.substack.com/p/coop-scoop-do-progressives-really))

 

AP Results.

https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-maduro-machado-biden-gonzalez-a625eb01979bc9cf5570d03242f198b1

  

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