#UP Assembly Election Result

[maddy-ferguson]

i love that the last people heard the leftist coalition won the french legislative elections so they think we have a leftist government now lol

[robertreich]

How Trump is Following Hitler's Playbook

You’ve heard Trump’s promise:

TRUMP: I’m going to be a dictator for one day.

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

In a previous video, I laid out the defining traits of fascism and how MAGA Republicans embody them. But how could Trump — or someone like him — actually turn America into a fascist state? Here’s how in five steps.

Step 1: Use threats of violence to gain power

Hitler and Mussolini relied on their vigilante militias to intimidate voters and local officials. We watched Trump try to do the same in 2020.

TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.

Republican election officials testified to the threats they faced when they refused Trump’s demands to falsify the election results.

RAFFENSPERGER: My email, my cell phone was doxxed.

RUSTY BOWERS: They have had video panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile.

GABRIEL STERLING: A 20-something tech in Gwinnett County today has death threats and a noose put out saying he should be hung for treason.

If the next election is close, threats to voters and election officials could be enough to sabotage it.

Step 2: Consolidate power

After taking office, a would-be fascist must turn every arm of government into a tool of the party. One of Hitler’s first steps was to take over the civil service, purging it of non-Nazis.

In October of 2020, Trump issued his own executive order that would have enabled him to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. He never got to act on it, but he’s now promising to apply it to the entire civil service.

That’s become the centerpiece of something called Project 2025, a presidential agenda assembled by MAGA Republicans, that would, as the AP put it, “dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision.”

Step 3: Establish a police state

Hitler used the imaginary threat of “the poison of foreign races” to justify taking control of the military and police, placing both under his top general, and granting law-enforcement powers to his civilian militias.

Now Trump is using the same language to claim he needs similar powers to deal with immigrants.

Trump plans to deploy troops within the U.S. to conduct immigration raids and round up what he estimates to be 18 million people who would be placed in mass-detention camps while their fate is decided.

And even though crime is actually down across the nation, Trump is citing an imaginary crime wave to justify sending troops into blue cities and states against the will of governors and mayors.

Trump insiders say he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to have the military crush civilian protests. We saw a glimpse of that in 2020, when Trump deployed the National Guard against peaceful protesters outside the White House.

And with promises to pardon January 6 criminals and stop prosecutions of right-wing domestic terrorists, Trump would empower groups like the Proud Boys to act as MAGA enforcers.

Step 4: Jail the opposition

In classic dictatorial fashion, Trump is now openly threatening to prosecute his opponents.

TRUMP: if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business.

And he’s looking to remake the Justice Department into a tool for his personal vendettas.

TRUMP: As we completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI, we will also launch sweeping civil rights investigations into Marxist local district attorneys.

In the model of Hitler and Mussolini, Trump describes his opponents as subhuman.

TRUMP: …the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country…

Step 5: Undermine the free press

As Hitler well understood, a fascist needs to control the flow of information. Trump has been attacking the press for years.

And he’s threatening to punish news outlets whose coverage he dislikes.

He has helped to reduce trust in the media to such a historic low that his supporters now view him as their most trusted source of information.

Within a democracy, we may often have leaders we don’t like. But we have the power to change them — at the ballot box and through public pressure. Once fascism takes hold, those freedoms are gone and can’t easily be won back.

We must recognize the threat of fascism when it appears, and do everything in our power to stop it.

[hedgehog-moss]

Update on May 1st protests and how the french goverment handled them?

^ The May 1st protests were pretty violent esp. in Paris; two cops were set on fire (they're ok, one has 2nd degree burns), lots of destruction in city streets, and hundreds of injured protesters. The French gov is sticking to its M.O. of denying any police violence against protesters, emphasising protesters' violence and portraying it as mindless anti-democratic savagery rather than the result of their own anti-democratic policies.

There were more people protesting in the streets on Monday than at any other May Day protest in the past 20 years (by a large margin—7 to 10x more people than usual.) And the numbers are still impressive in terms of this current social movement—there were about 1.2 million people at the first protest against the pension reform in January, 900K at one of the February protests, around 1.1M on March 7 and I think 1.2M on March 23rd... We're in May and there were 800K people in the streets on Monday (using the police's probably low estimate). The first marches earlier this year were peaceful; people started destroying shit in March after the 49.3 (=the gov not letting elected representatives vote on the reform); in the following weeks we saw a brutal escalation of police violence + suppression of just about any means of non-violent protest, which results in more violence.

The vast majority of protesters are still peaceful, but in terms of providing context for the increased violence, well—people protested peacefully, peaceful protests got banned. People banged pots and pans, pots and pans got banned and confiscated. People started a petition on the National Assembly website which got a record number of signatures, the petition was closed before its deadline and ignored. MPs asked (twice!) for a national referendum on the reform to be held, their requests were denied. Electricity unionists cut power in buildings Macron was visiting, now he travels around with a portable generator. Unions tried to distribute whistles and red cards (penalty cards) to football supporters before the French Cup finale last week, so the ones who wanted could use them if Macron showed up (he ended up hiding and greeting the footballers indoors rather than publicly on the stadium lawn); the police prefecture tried banning union members from gathering outside the stadium to distribute these items (although the ban was struck down by the judiciary as it was illegal, like most bans these days...)

Confiscating saucepans was already so absurd it felt like a gratuitous fuck you, but now they're trying to prevent the distribution of pieces of red paper. Cancelling petitions that would have had no real impact anyway. Prosecuting people for insulting Macron. Arbitrarily arresting hundreds of nonviolent protesters to intimidate them out of protesting (guess who's left then?). The French gov is systematically repressing democratic or nonviolent means of making your opinion heard, and when people get more violent they're like "This is unacceptable, don't these terrorists know there are other means of expressing dissent??" Where? This week a 77-year-old man was summoned to the police station and will be forced to take a "citizenship course" for having a banner outside his house that read "Macron fuck you" (Macron on t'emmerde). Note that he would have been arrested (like the woman who was arrested at her home and spent a night in police custody for calling Macron "garbage" on Facebook) but they decided not to only because of his age.

So that's where we're at; on Monday two cops caught on fire (well, their fireproof suit did) after protesters threw a Molotov cocktail at them. (The street medic who tried to help them with their burns ended up getting shot by a cop's riot gun a few seconds later—with French police no good deed goes unpunished!) The media talked a lot more about this incident than about the fact that the cop who got most severely injured on that day (broken vertebrae) was injured by an explosive grenade that a colleague of his meant to throw at protesters (you can see it at the end of the video below). If police with all their protective gear get so badly injured by their own weapons, no wonder the worst injuries have been on the protesters' side. (nearly 600 injured protesters on May 1st, 120 severely, according to street medics.) I'm not including images of these incidents in the video but on May 1st a protester had his hand mutilated by a police grenade + a 17 year old girl was hit in the eye by a grenade fragment, may end up losing it (during the Yellow Vests protests, Macron's first attempt at repressing a social movement, 38 protesters lost an eye or a hand).

What you see in the video: cops charging the front of a march to tear a banner off people's hands then retreating and drowning the street in tear gas when protesters throw paint bombs at them (protesters have umbrellas because of police drones); at 0:30, a journalist saying "They're not even arresting him, just kicking him when he's down—they kicked him right in the face!" then police spraying with tear gas protesters who try to fend them off; at 0:46 when a protester being arrested asks a journalist if he's filming and starts reading out loud a cop's ID number, another cop shoves the journalist and throws him to the ground; at 0:54, an Irish journalist runs away from the police tear gas grenades that you hear going off, at 01:08, the incident mentioned above when a cop drops a grenade he tried to throw, which explodes in his group, breaking another cop's vertebrae. There's a lot more I'm not including, like how CNN said "there's so much tear gas in Paris, our foreign correspondent can barely breathe", how another journalist was hit by a sting-ball grenade (he was also bludgeoned on the head so hard it broke his helmet—even though cops know the people wearing helmets are journalists...), and yet another journalist who was calling out a cop for aiming at people's heads with his riot gun (which is illegal) ended up having the guy aim the riot gun at his head from 2 metres away (getting shot with this "less lethal weapon" from that distance would be lethal.)

All of these videos are from May 1st (most of them from this account monitoring police violence.)

So yeah, nonviolent protests followed by violent police repression and bans of nonviolent means of protesting result in more violent protests. The French government responds by a) pikachu surpris, b) condemning violent protesters and praising violent police to the skies, c) continuing to ban everything they can think of. Confiscating saucepans didn't work but confiscating pieces of red paper will do the trick! Let's prosecute people for bashing or burning an effigy of Macron, because banning symbolic violence always works to prevent actual violence! And this week after the May 1st protests we learnt that the gov is thinking of making street barricades illegal, because that'll definitely solve everything. It's going to be interesting for history teachers to teach students about the 1789 revolution that allowed us to take down an absolutist regime and become a republic, under a government that banned barricades because they see them as terrorist anti-republican structures.

^ Statue symbolising the French Republic (on Place de la République in Paris) dressed with a 'Macron resign' shirt by protesters on May 1st.

[purplelea]

So. If you guys want some news from France.

European Parliament election results just dropped. Far-right is up to 37% and is getting as many seats out of 81 seats. In return the French President announced he wanted to dissolve the French National Assembly and organise a new election on June 30th.

This election would give the far-right control of the French National Assembly with between 243 and 305 seats out of 577. A far-right Prime Minister and government. In less than a month.

For some good news, the very first French-Palestinian MEP has been elected (Rima Hassan, international jurist).

Expect things to heat up in France again. We won't go down without a fight.

[tomorrowusa]

The Brits don't mess around. 🇬🇧

The polls closed on Thursday at 10:00 PM BST. Shortly thereafter exit polls were released saying that Labour would end up with 410 seats out of 650. At 4:58 AM on Friday the BBC results showed Labour passing 326 seats – what's needed for a majority. By early afternoon on Friday, Rishi Sunak had effectively handed in his resignation to King Charles III, Keir Starmer was asked by the King to form a government, and Sir Keir was outside 10 Downing Street giving his first speech as prime minister. 15 hours after the last votes were cast, the new PM was at his desk assembling a cabinet.

To his credit, Rishi Sunak did not have a sore loser temper tantrum, did not attempt a coup, and did not call election officials to try to get them to alter returns. In fact, he gave a gracious goodbye speech in which he apologized for his mistakes and wished his successor well.

This whole sequence of events seemed, by recent standards, VERY un-American — but in a good way. This is the way democracy is supposed to work.

Labour won its second largest parliamentary victory since its founding and the Conservatives suffered their worst defeat ever. Also, the Lib Dems had their best results since the old Liberal Party merged with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the current party.

I'll post more about this over the weekend, but here are results with 649 out of 650 constituencies reporting. The constituency of Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire in Scotland is conducting a recount on Saturday morning.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dan Rather at Steady:

If their national convention didn’t motivate Democrats to register, volunteer, donate, and vote, perhaps the prospect of a widespread voter suppression plan at the hands of the Republican Party will. Just listen to Marc Elias, one of the foremost election lawyers in the country, who recently said that the “Republicans are building an election subversion war machine.” Last week, Elias began working with hundreds of lawyers and thousands of volunteers already teamed up with the Harris campaign to combat the Republican voter suppression effort. He will focus on recounts and post-election litigation.

This is not a new tactic for the MAGA right, but in this election cycle, “the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared [than ever before],” Elias told Rolling Stone magazine. Here’s the Republican playbook, according to The Brennan Center for Justice. “Over the last 20 years, states have put barriers in front of the ballot box — imposing strict voter ID laws, cutting voting times, restricting registration, and purging voter rolls.” But this election cycle, new MAGA tactics seem even more insidious — including delaying or refusing vote certification. So if someone in, say, Georgia doesn’t like the election results, Republican officials could question the count, seriously slowing down or stopping the process of announcing results. That’s a very big deal. The 2024 pre-election period has already seen dozens of lawsuits filed in 25 states by Republicans trying to manipulate or change laws to, among other things, make it easier to challenge ballots and voter eligibility and to deny election certifications.

In an investigation of local election boards, Rolling Stone found 70 pro-Donald Trump conspiracy theorists working as election officials in key counties in battleground states. Since 2020, Republicans have refused to certify results at least 25 times. I know I may sound like a broken record saying Donald Trump is an existential threat to American democracy. But he is, and this is a terrifying example of his cult leader-like ability to get others to do his undemocratic bidding. At an Atlanta rally, he recently called out pro-Trump members of the Georgia State Election Board as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.” Seriously. In 2020 he primed the voter suppression pump before the election, knowing he was likely to lose the race, and then promoted the “Big Lie.” Hundreds of lawyers, dozens of lawsuits, and an insurrection later, he still lost, but all those efforts laid the groundwork for a more organized Republican push, or perhaps putsch is a better word. Fortunately the Republicans aren’t the only ones gearing up for this battle. The Harris campaign has assembled the largest Democratic legal team ever to protect voting rights. It is 10 times larger than the 2020 team. Ten times.

[...] The Democrats’ voter protection program is focused on eight battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and four states of interest: Florida, Maine, Minnesota, and Virginia. Their pre-election efforts are two-fold: First, protecting voters’ ability to register to vote while also having unfettered access to the ballot box. They are doing this by fighting all the legal challenges Republicans are launching. Second, they are educating voters. All of this is a serious shift in how elections are run in this country. “The expansive new Democratic legal team, and the opposing group at the Republican National Committee, is a reflection of the legal arms race that is the new reality of American elections since Mr. Trump’s election victory in 2016. The battle over whose votes count — not just how many votes are counted — has become central to modern presidential campaigns,” explained Nick Corasaniti of The New York Times.

The Democrats are learning to fight the battle to ensure that the votes from this election are counted properly to ensure that a repeat of 2020 doesn’t happen.

[bestworstcase]

klasdaskdasldas. i have a. great multitude of follow-up questions after the incarnadine post and i am struggling to decide which to ask, if that's okay? uhhhhhhh. i'm definitely curious about the Alsius Meritocratic Party/changes between Mantelian government and Atlesian government!

( the incarnadine post )

brief background: the pre-war mantle had a legislative assembly for which all adult citizens were eligible and selected by lot each year; military and civil magistracies were both elected by the assembly, and the assembly’s agenda was set for it by a theocratic executive body called the chancery. (the state religion was a highly syncretic form of madagian – worship of the four maidens – which remains the dominant religion in atlas today). notionally, the chancery was an elective body but in practice the state church was the king-maker, and decades preceding the great war were marked by a steady erosion of state power from the assembly and the (already somewhat impotent) judiciary.

post-war, reforms imposed by the vytal accords stripped executive power from the chancery (which still exists as the governing body of the state church, itself much diminished in political power) and replaced it with an executive council (6 elective seats, 3 appointed by the elected councilmen). the magistracies and judiciary were also restructured and strengthened but that’s not particularly relevant for the subject of this post; the assembly largely did not change, other than penalties for absences being reduced and the establishment of a procedure for the assemblies to impeach members of the council under certain circumstances.

so!! the executive council has no direct legislative power but because it sets the agenda for the assembly, it exercises quite a lot of indirect legislative influence (in that the council can kill any proposed law by declining to call the assembly for a vote). that plus it’s being elective plus its small size makes it the most powerful branch of the atlesian government and the one political parties typically focus most on controlling.

the AMP arose in reaction to post-war social reforms, primarily related to faunus civil rights but also a raft of new labor laws, which precipitated a migration of wealthy mantelians (in particular, former slave owners, most of whom had operated dust mines reliant on enslaved labor) to the swiftly-growing suburb surrounding atlas academy. (before the great war, atlas academy had been called alsius; hence ‘alsius meritocratic party’)

early on, the main thing the AMP stood against was a set of government programs to bring newly-emancipated fauni into a level economic playing field, which were funded largely by taxes targeted narrowly on industries where slave labor had been ubiquitous. by the present day, the party platform has moderated away from overtly anti-fauni policies (as these are politically toxic) to a broader anti-regulatory, anti-union position. the AMP is reviled in mantle but popular in atlas, which—because four of the six elective council seats are allotted to districts in atlas—has resulted in the AMP holding council majorities more often than not for the last few decades.

aside from the disdain for business regulation and worker rights, the modern AMP platform is built around a philosophy that equal opportunity is desirable, but shouldn’t be achieved by ‘penalizing success’ (i.e., imposing regulations or higher taxes on corporations and wealth). staunchly pro-military, strong support for heavy investment into public education and healthcare, socially egalitarian (nominally; there’s a noticeable covert hostility toward faunus rights still), against government subsidization of industries except for dust mining (although the fringe of the party wants to slash these too; the problem is that atlas/mantle would be uninhabitable without dust, but dust mining in the tundra is incredibly costly. the SDC runs its solitan mines at a loss it offsets in other more profitable markets, further shored up by military contracts; every other atlas-based mining competitor is dependent on government subsidies to stay afloat.)

currently the AMP holds four seats on the council. there’s a popular movement in mantle to expand the number of council seats to eleven by breaking up the mantle ‘districts’ into a seat per major borough, but that has virtually no chance of getting off the ground until/unless an atlas seat flips.

(the non-elective seats are held by 1. headmaster of atlas, 2. army general, and 3. governor of mantle, with the former two currently both held by ironwood; the votes for/against calling an assembly to vote on this proposal are currently three for, five against. if one of the AMP-held atlas seats flips it’ll be four-four and the thinking is that ironwood may be persuadable. if it goes to the assembly it’s all but guaranteed to pass, because the nature of the assembly—a set proportion of the citizen population, selected annually by random lot—means it’s statistically likely in any given year that the assembly’s majority will be working- and middle-class mantelians)

[empirearchives]

Councils of Prud'hommes

The Councils of Prud'hommes were a labour council created by Napoleon. As one of Napoleon’s many working class reforms, they were elected councils which solved disputes between workers and their employers.

Historian Robert B. Holtman called them “an early attempt at satisfactory management-labor relations in the new era of industrialization” and said “Through the councils of prud'hommes France became the first modern state to have a court for industry” (The Napoleonic Revolution).

First appearing in Lyon in 1806, conseils de prud'hommes were conceived as industrial justices of the peace that also developed a conciliatory approach while specialising in the regulation of economic activities. Proposals to establish such councils had already been formulated in the context of eighteenth-century conflicts between artisans and guild officials, in order to cope with the issue of subordination in labour relations. The need to establish local institutions to monitor labour relations had also been noted by the Constituent Assembly in 1791. But the creation of conseils de prud'hommes also resulted from powerful struggles led by workers over the revolutionary period. As noted by Guicheteau, it represented the outcome of multiple experiments led by different actors, most notably in Lyon, with the aim of applying revolutionary principles to the field of labour relations.

The councils’ officials were representatives elected from within trade communities—merchants, master-artisans and eventually also workers. Their success was also impressive, and new councils were soon created in other cities, so that by the end of the century they had spread throughout the country. In cities where prud'hommes remained absent, justices of the peace continued to deal with labour conflicts. Though at first also created to deal with commercial matters such as brand and quality control, prud'hommes rapidly narrowed their focus down to labour relations. It is crucial to note that, though they were ruling on individual disputes, their decisions had crucial collective implications.

Prud'hommes pronounced judgements and gave conciliatory advice on every aspect of labour relations, and thus played a pivotal role in the structuring of social relations of production. In doing this, they systematically refused to grant arbitrary powers to employers or to let unfettered market competition determine working conditions. A close analysis of prud'hommes’ decisions conducted by Cottereau clearly and amply confirms this. Whenever they felt that their rights were not respected, workers would appeal to these courts.

Employers were not granted the right to define individual tasks or the organisation of work. Methods of production could only be established by workers alone or jointly with employers, according to local trade usages, but could not simply be imposed from above by employers. Until the last third of the nineteenth century, prud'hommes objected to the establishment of all internal factory or workshop regulations that did not respect customary trade customs. In this, they were often backed up by municipal and regional political authorities.

Bargaining also took place within a framework defined by municipal policies and the decisions of conseils des prud'hommes, establishing minimum wages and tariffs; and whenever the bon droit was infringed upon, discussions, arguments and (sometime violent) conflicts emerged.

The point is not simply that the employers’ powers were importantly circumscribed. Over the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, such powers, at least in a unilateral form, were nowhere to be found. Prud'hommes and local or regional authorities justified their decisions and interventions by stressing the fact that issues pertaining to labour relations and the organisation of production were ‘public matters’. The separation of ‘economic’ and ‘political’ spheres specific to capitalism, which implies the privatisation of political powers to organise production, and their confinement to an ‘economic’ sphere, simply did not exist in France until the last decades of the nineteenth century, an authentic relationship of reciprocity characterised labour relations and was largely accepted, and sometimes even actively defended, by most employers, as well as by workers. As Cottereau explains, justices de paix and prud'hommes enforced, and helped to define the contours of, a moral economy, and this economy was at times also upheld by collective struggles.

The reason why so many historians have overlooked prud'hommes:

Importantly, these trade communities were also no longer backed by the central state. Sets of customary norms represented a kind of local and semi-clandestine legislation. Consequently, prud'hommes made sure not to over-publicize some of their decisions, as many could have been—and were, in fact, on relatively rare occasions, until the last third of the nineteenth century—recognised as illegal by superior law courts and high state officials and politicians. This partly explains why their crucial regulatory role within the nineteenth-century French economy has been so often ignored by historians.

Thus, for instance, after the central state’s intervention to abolish the tariffs set by Lyon’s municipal government for the silk industry in 1831, and following the popular revolts that ensued that same year and in 1834 (which will be discussed in the next chapter), the city’s prud'hommes continued to administer and to enforce piece rates clandestinely, with the support of the trade community and in direct opposition to the official liberalism.

Source:

Xavier Lafrance, The Making of Capitalism in France — Class Structures, Economic Development, the State and the Formation of the French Working Class, 1750-1914, ch. 3

[mariacallous]

India is in the middle of a 44-day exercise to elect its next government, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi tipped to return his Bharatiya Janata Party to power for a third consecutive term. Modi, who aims to win nearly three-quarters of the country’s 543 parliamentary seats, has surprised many observers by using dehumanizing anti-Muslim language on the campaign trail—rhetoric that is more direct than that of his past speeches.

So far, the BJP campaign has focused on creating an irrational fear among India’s Hindu majority that if Modi doesn’t return as prime minister, a share of their private wealth and affirmative action job quotas will be given to Indian Muslims. Modi and his party have doubled down on this narrative at a moment when reports suggest that their quest for a supermajority is unlikely to succeed. The brazen continuation of such anti-Muslim rhetoric differentiates this campaign from the two others that have put Modi in the prime minister’s office.

Hate speech is a criminal offense in India, and it is specifically barred during an election campaign. However, Modi chose the three leaders of India’s Election Commission, the agency charged with conducting free and fair polls, and it has ignored his flagrant violations of the election code. As a result, as the campaign continues through the end of May, so too will Modi’s anti-Muslim tirades. India is expected to announce its election results on June 4.

If the BJP wins and Modi is once again crowned prime minister, his Islamophobic rhetoric will not simply disappear. Many political leaders campaign in poetry and govern in prose, but hateful rhetoric has real-life consequences. Modi’s campaign speeches have put a target on Indian Muslims’ backs, redirecting the anger of poor and marginalized Hindu communities away from crony capitalists and the privileged upper castes. It underscores an attempt to make members of the Muslim minority second-class citizens in a de facto Hindu Rashtra, or state.

These social schisms need only a small spark to burst into communal violence, which would damage India’s global status and growth. Furthermore, Modi’s campaign rhetoric is matched by the BJP’s choice to not put up candidates in Muslim-majority Kashmir, reducing its stake in ensuring robust democracy in a region that New Delhi has ruled directly since 2019. His language will also have a direct bearing on India’s fraught ties with its neighbor Pakistan. Finally, the state-backed ill treatment will likely not be limited to Indian Muslims—meaning that other religious minorities, such as Christians and Sikhs, will also be affected.

Around 200 million Muslims live in India—the second-largest Muslim population in the world, after that of Indonesia. Few mainstream Indian political leaders have plummeted to such depths in castigating these citizens. Modi’s campaign rhetoric makes clear that if he is elected to a third consecutive term, the nation’s Muslims will stand politically disempowered, economically marginalized, and deprived of their constitutional rights.

Modi’s political rise came in the wake of significant violence against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, when he was the state’s chief minister. Due to his role in the violence, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States all temporarily barred his entry. Leading the party’s campaign to victory in the state assembly in the same year, his campaign speeches were full of crude language against Muslims. But the BJP’s electoral success in Gujarat—winning the next two assembly elections before the launch of Modi’s national campaign—ultimately gave Modi political credibility within an extreme fringe of the party.

By 2011, Modi had started reinventing himself as a business-friendly leader with an eye on a national role. By the time he became prime minister three years later, the narrative of a so-called Gujarat model of economic development concealed his anti-Muslim ideological moorings. Modi’s mask slipped occasionally, but he often spoke with a dog whistle. Mostly, the prime minister reiterated an imagination of India as a Hindu nation. In a post-9/11 world, Modi presented an alternative model of battling Islamic terrorism and consolidated a Hindu majoritarian voter base—delivering a stunning election victory in 2019 after an attempted airstrike against an alleged terrorist training camp inside Pakistan.

This year, Modi has not campaigned on his track record of the past decade or on the party manifesto for the next five years as often as he has attempted to further polarize Hindus and Muslims. In a speech given on April 21, Modi suggested that the opposition Indian National Congress party, if elected, would redistribute property to Muslims. The party would “calculate the gold with [Hindu] mothers and sisters” and transfer it “among those who are infiltrators and have more children,” he said—using terms by which his supporters regularly describe Muslims.

Elsewhere, Modi alleged that Congress was helping Muslims in a plot to take over India: “The opposition is asking Muslims to launch vote jihad,” he said in March. Speaking at a rally in Madhya Pradesh in early May, Modi said that voters would have to choose between “vote jihad” and “Ram Rajya,” the latter being a term referring to a mythical, idealized society that purportedly existed during the rule of Lord Rama, the hero of the famous Hindu epic Ramayana.

The prime minister’s economic advisory council soon released a paper that sought to stoke anxieties about a decline in the proportion of Hindus in India; during the period it covered—1950 to 2015—India’s population actually increased by five Hindus for every one Muslim citizen, but BJP leaders soon deployed the report to further demonize Indian Muslims.

The party’s official messaging has echoed Modi’s rhetoric. A now-deleted video posted on the Instagram account for the BJP’s Karnataka branch this month said, “If you are a non-Muslim, Congress will snatch your wealth and distribute it to Muslims. Narendra Modi knows of this evil plan. Only he has the strength to stop it.” It was followed by an animated clip depicting Congress leader Rahul Gandhi hatching a plan to benefit Muslims at the expense of Hindu groups.

Other Indian democratic institutions have done no better. Despite formal complaints from opposition parties and civil society groups, the election commission has neither punished nor restrained Modi. A petition in the Delhi High Court seeking immediate action against Modi for his “communally divisive speeches” was dismissed, with the judges arguing that it was “without merit” because the commission was already looking into the matter. “We can’t presume that they won’t do anything,” one judge said. But as the elections near the finish line, that is precisely what has happened.

Some observers are likely to dismiss Modi’s recent language as par for the course during an election campaign, when tempers run high. However, most surveys and polls have predicted an easy victory for the prime minister and the BJP; he has no need to resort to pandering to base emotions with toxic rhetoric. In an interview, Modi denied that he had uttered a word against Indian Muslims; he was proved wrong by fact-checkers and video evidence. India’s top political scientist said that through his denials in interviews, Modi is trying to influence the naive chroniclers while he continues with his anti-Muslim speeches for the masses and his supporters. Modi’s No. 2, Amit Shah, insists that the party will continue with this anti-Muslim campaign. By persisting with hateful speech, the BJP leadership is fueling a narrative that is likely to intensify discrimination against Indian Muslims during Modi’s rule.

As prime minister, Modi has spearheaded a project for the political disempowerment of Indian Muslims. For the first time in the history of independent India, the ruling party does not have a single Muslim member of parliament. In the current election, the party has put up just one Muslim candidate—on a list of 440—who is running for an unwinnable seat in Kerala. More broadly, religious polarization has made it difficult for Muslim candidates to win seats in areas without an overwhelming Muslim majority. During recent elections, there have been complaints of authorities barring voters in Muslim-majority localities in BJP-ruled states. Modi’s message to Indian Muslims is unequivocal: You do not matter politically.

India’s Muslims are economically disadvantaged, too. A 2006 committee under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress government found that the Muslim community faced high levels of poverty and poor outcomes on almost all socioeconomic indicators. India’s opposition parties have promised a new socioeconomic survey that could inform future policy without a focus on religion. Modi’s government, by contrast, opted to not conduct even the regular census in 2021—the first such instance in 140 years—due to COVID-19; it has not been conducted since.

Rather than relying on data, Modi and his supporters prefer an emotional response that pitches poor and marginalized Hindus against Muslims. India is a highly unequal country: About 90 percent of the population earns less than the average income of $2,800 per year. This gap has widened under Modi, with the richest 1 percent now owning 40 percent of India’s wealth. By othering Muslims, Modi puts them at risk of becoming the object of other deprived groups’ ire, which could lead to further communal violence. A Muslim man was allegedly lynched in Gujarat during the current election campaign, without making national  headlines.

Islamophobia is at the core of the project to make India a Hindu state. Modi and the BJP frequently weaponize terrorism discourse to delegitimize critics and political opposition. In Kashmir, where the BJP is not running candidates this election, this tactic has fueled anger and hostility. The high turnout in the region seems to be an expression of rage against Modi’s 2019 decision to revoke its semi-autonomous status. When the ruling party leaders conflate Islam with terrorism, there is little chance of extending any hand of peace toward Pakistan, either. Modi and his ministers have vowed to take back Pakistan-administered Kashmir by force if necessary—no matter the grave risk of conflict between two nuclear-armed countries.

Finally, Modi’s rhetoric does not bode well for other religious minorities in India. In the border state of Manipur, the largely Christian Kuki community has suffered state-backed majoritarian violence for more than a year. In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populated state, Christian priests and worshippers are being jailed, beaten, and threatened by both Hindu majoritarian groups and state police. Meanwhile, the BJP has demonized the Sikh farmers who led protests against agricultural laws in 2020 and 2021, labeling them as separatist Khalistani terrorists. (Last year, Modi’s government was accused of involvement in the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada as well as in an attempted assassination in New York.)

Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians are India’s biggest religious minorities; they make up nearly one-fifth of the country’s population. To disempower these groups would spell the end of the historical bond between India and ideas of universal justice, human rights, and democracy. A majoritarian Indian state—a Hindu Rashtra—would instead make a covenant with bigotry, discrimination, and violence. The bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has repeatedly asked Washington to blacklist Modi’s government for its suppression of religious freedom, but the Biden administration has refused to act so far.

However, the evidence is there for all to see—and Modi has further substantiated the charge of bigotry with his campaign speeches targeting Indian Muslims. No matter if the BJP achieves its supermajority, this rhetoric will have significant consequences for India. Modi is serving a warning. The world should take note before it is too late.

[sneakerguybln]

21 year old Marvin (left) is presenting his 19 year old disciple Damian (right) to other members of their fitness sect. Marvin is on his way to full membership. Members are fully brainwashed into building their entire life around gym and working out. The membership is organised in four stages: disciple stage, comitted mentors stage, full membership and presidency.

Disciples are new applicants. With their application they move into so-called congregation houses. A mentor is taking over to restructure the applicant's life. Marvin is Damian's mentor. From day one applicants are watching and listening to brainwashing hypnosis. Contacts to family and friends are under scrutiny and reduced if necessary. All sect members are wearing identical clothes. A mentor is monitoring a disciple's training routine, his nutrition and enforcing the hypnosis. Within the congregation houses the disciples are living in small cells. Applicants have to be without tattoos. Tattoos are forbidden within the first two stages of membership.

Comitted mentors are sect members who are passed the first stage. They're already brainwashed. For them the sect is the family. Marvin entered the sect a few days after his 18th birthday. On his 19th birthday he became a comitted mentor. The ceremony is consisting of giving up his old life formally, ceding all possessions to their church. After the signature a comitted mentor is branded with a stylized dumbbell on the back of the neck. At the end of the procedure they get a vasectomy as church members aren't allowed to start a family. From that point on sex is allowed with other sect members only. They have to lead at least five disciples from application to comittment before being eligible for full membership. They sleep in three men dorm rooms in the congregation houses.

Full members are getting some freedoms back. They can leave the congregation house as they want. Their life is fully developed. They made progressing within their training routine the center of their lives and are fully brainwashed. They have a job that allows them to focus on gym but to earn money for the church at the same time. The result is that their schedules are consisting of working and working out. Within that stage the members get their entire bodies covered in the same tattoos like the church's founder and prophet. They're allowed to build up 'own' companies (in truth the church is owning their companies). They're electing some members of the presidency.

Members of the Presidency are the officials of the church. Each congregation house has two leaders. An administrative leader is elected every second year at every congregation house. Spiritual leaders are full members selected by the prophet. While the administrative leader is taking care of all house related matters the spiritual leader is presiding over the hypnosis and brainwashing routines. Ten congregation houses are forming a ward. The ten administrative leaders are electing an administrative ward leader and the prophet is selecting one of the spirital house leaders as spiritual ward leaders. These ward leaders are delegating disciples and mentors from one house to another if necessary. They're calculating the budgets of the houses within their ward. All house leaders - administrative and spiritual - are forming the General Assembly that elects the President, the Vice-President and the General Secretary of the church on the same day as the US is electing their president. They will be sworn in by the prophet on Jan 20 after their election.

The Prophet is a 47 year old bodybuilder who says that Christ appeared to him and dictated him the 'true' testament of Christ. The prophet struggled in life as he was younger. He married at 20 but was forced into a cuck relationship by his wife and his twin brother. They forced a vasectomy on him and marked his body with tattoos. He fled into bodybuilding to cope with the situation. He was 28 as he cycled home after gym and got his first vision of Christ. In that exact moment Christ promised him to set him free the later prophet's wife and brother had an accident.

Discipline and obedience are the strong pillars of this church. Misbehaviour will be punished with shame punishments like walking naked with a chastity device only within the congregation house or wearing sweaty clothes of other church members. For some more problematic cases of misbehaviour or clear disobedience against members of the presidency corporal punishment is administred. In some very grave cases members can be sent into the hole. Each congregation house has two holes in the basement. These holes are technically on floor -2. They can be entered via the ceiling only and members sentenced to the hole are lowered down into the hole and then the ceiling is closed with a heavy metal cover. The hole is pitchblack. Food and water are provided via a shaft in the wall. Marvin was sentenced to the hole for one week after giving his spiritual house leader a headbutt as they discussed Marvin's potential within the church. Hole sentences are always signed by the prophet.

[warningsine]

Venezuelan security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets Monday at protesters challenging the reelection victory claimed by President Nicolás Maduro but disputed by the opposition and questioned abroad.

Thousands of people flooded the streets of several neighborhoods of the capital, chanting "Freedom, freedom!" and "This government is going to fall!"

Some ripped Maduro campaign posters from street posts and burned them.

AFP observed members of the national guard firing tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, some wearing motorbike helmets and bandannas tied over their faces for protection. Some responded by throwing rocks back.

Maduro, 61, attended a meeting Monday at which the National Electoral Council (CNE) certified his reelection to a third six-year term until 2031.

He dismissed international criticism and doubts about the result of Sunday's voting, claiming Venezuela was the target of an attempted "coup d'etat" of a "fascist and counter-revolutionary" nature.

But opposition leader Maria Corina Machado later told reporters that a review of voting records available so far clearly showed that the next president "will be Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia," who took her place on the ballot after she was barred by Maduro-aligned courts.

The records showed a "mathematically irreversible" lead for Gonzalez Urrutia, she said, with 6.27 million votes to only 2.75 million for Maduro.

The elections were held amid widespread fears of fraud by the government and a campaign tainted by accusations of political intimidation.

Pollsters had predicted a resounding victory for the opposition.

In the early hours of Monday, the CNE said Maduro had won 51.2 percent of votes cast compared to 44.2 percent for Gonzalez Urrutia.

The opposition cried foul, prompting Attorney General Tarek William Saab to link Machado to an alleged cyber "attack" seeking to "adulterate" the results.

'Another fraud' 

The outcome sparked concern and calls for a "transparent" process from the United Nations, United States, European Union and several countries in Latin America.

The CNE has not provided a detailed breakdown of the result.

Allies including China, Russia and Cuba congratulated Maduro.

Gonzalez Urrutia, a 74-year-old former diplomat, on Monday acknowledged the deep discontent in society with the CNE results and vowed that "we will fight for our liberty."

Machado assured Venezuelans that "the leaders of the world" are validating the results, and called families to turn out Tuesday for "popular assemblies" nationwide to show support for a peaceful transition of power.

Nine Latin American countries called in a joint statement Monday for a "complete review of the results with the presence of independent electoral observers."

The US-based Carter Center, one of a few organizations allowed to bring observers into Venezuela, urged the CNE to immediately publish detailed polling station-level results.

Brazil and Colombia also urged a review of the numbers while Chile's president said the outcome was "hard to believe."

Peru recalled its ambassador and Panama said it was suspending relations with Venezuela.

Caracas hit back Monday, saying it was withdrawing diplomatic staff from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay for "interventionist actions and statements."

'Bloodbath' warning 

Independent polls had predicted Sunday's vote would end 25 years of "Chavismo," the populist movement founded by Maduro's socialist predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chavez.

Maduro has been at the helm of the once-wealthy oil-rich country since 2013. The last decade has seen GDP drop by 80 percent, pushing more than seven million of its 30 million citizens to emigrate.

He is accused of locking up critics and harassing the opposition in a climate of rising authoritarianism.

In the run-up to the election, he had warned of a "bloodbath" if he lost.

Ballots were cast on machines that sent electronic votes directly to a centralized CNE database.

The machines printed out paper receipts that were placed in a container and counted by hand as a backup measure meant to be open to public scrutiny.

The opposition had deployed about 90,000 volunteer election monitors nationwide.

Economic misery 

Sunday's election was the product of a deal reached last year between the government and opposition.

That agreement led the United States to temporarily ease sanctions imposed after Maduro's 2018 reelection, rejected as a sham by dozens of Latin American and other countries.

Sanctions were snapped back after Maduro reneged on agreed conditions.

Venezuela boasts the world's largest oil reserves but has seen severely diminished production capacity in recent years.

Most Venezuelans live on just a few dollars a month, and endure biting shortages of electricity and fuel.

Economic misery in the South American nation has been a major source of migration pressure on the southern border of the United States, where immigration is a major presidential election issue.

(AFP)

[mattmoicetartiste]

For non french preople, here an explanation on why y'all can see so many french being angry, sad or worry or even the 3 at the same time , today :

We had european election (The European Parliament adopts laws that affect everyone: large countries and small communities, powerful companies and young start-ups, the global and the local so its really important) — There are many political party and one of them, Rassemblement National is a far right (created by ancients nazists and waffen ss 💀) who had 32% so : many places at the European Parliament AND SO , our president had announces the dissolution of the National Assembly which means we had to voted for new deputies but with the results he had just open the door to the fascists..

So, ofc we're so worried, like what do you mean people vote for a political party with nazists??? But after, I remember that Paris had authorized a neo nazists walk so..

[hadleysmis]

Türkiye:

Protest using 'Do you hear the people sing': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Mo1w4Fxjc

This protest was done during the Gezi Park protests in 2013, lasting for just over 2 months, which is still remembered today:

The goals in the Gezi Park protests were:

Protecting Gezi Park and the public places

Defending freedom of speech and right to assembly

Banning the usage of chemical gas by state forces against protesters

Resignation of Erdoğan's government

Free media

Fair elections

With the subsequent results:

Occupation of the park and adjoining Taksim square ended by force, smaller scale protests gradually die out, the park remains open to the public and plans for its destruction are cancelled

Government passed several bills to increase the government's ability to control the Internet, to expand the police's abilities and to criminalise the provision of emergency medical care during protests.

Timeline of events:

"Nov. 8, 2012: Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş announced that a shopping mall could be built in place of Gezi Park[...] planned to be rebuilt as part of the renovation project.

May 27, 2013: A group activists from Taksim Solidarity[...] gathered in Gezi Park after bulldozers came to the area to cut down the trees in the park."

For more, read below.

Violence towards protesters by the Turkish police:

Violence against protesters by the police:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/ten-years-after-turkeys-gezi-protests-some-say-vote-chance-justice-2023-05-26/

Continuing effect, article written in 2024:

"The crowd carried photos of those who lost their lives during the Gezi protests and those imprisoned in the Gezi trials[...] signs reading "Justice for Gezi,"..."

"Taksim Solidarity called for justice in its press statement and emphasized that the Gezi protests were Turkey’s most democratic, participatory, and peaceful popular movement....“left a deep and colorful mark on the country’s political, social, and cultural history, symbolizing the determination and hope of the millions who filled the squares.”"

Research paper on how Türkiye government tried to forbid peaceful protest, imploying of censorship, and what they should've done instead:

(The source above is very long.)

"Park protests clearly show what happens when poorly trained, poorly supervised police officers are instructed to use force[...] safe in the knowledge that they are unlikely ever to be identified or prosecuted for their abuses,“

Specifically in relation to Les Misérables (it's Buzzfeed though, but the article is fine):

But does that mean Türkiye was becoming more authoritarian?

Yes. How? See:

I will check and go through these things to polish up on the information. This is so far mainly from the chat.

There is also a 1967 movie, a Turkish adaptation of Les Misérables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxb-mEt5ZyQ

The subtitles should be available via auto-subtitle settings.

Please tell me of everything I have stated incorrectly so I can fix it asap. I am sorry to place a burden.

[argyrocratie]

"I remember the beginning of 15M [the 15 of May movement of 2011] in Las Palmas of the Gran Canaria. Initially we were four anarchists who erupted into a quiet camp with leaflets that cried out against the elections or the possibility that parties demobilise the movement. The poor university students who then had the leading voice did not have much of an idea of what anarchism was, and those who knew of it, did not have the most favourable views regarding it. On the first day, an assembly was held to throw us out. Today I remember it with a big smile.

That experience was enough to stir things up, people with more political experience or with more empathy towards the persecuted defended us, our adversaries would rethink their supposed pluralism and their democratic convictions and the majority would ask “what the fuck is this anarchy about?”

In the end, the results were surprising: many people stopped judging us by their preconceived ideas and began to judge us by our actions; a few days later, anarchists began to emerge from hiding, everyone was or had been an anarchist but nobody dared to say it until we started the commotion; unpoliticised people began to take an interest in our ideas, to debate and to organise; many declared themselves anarchists without being previously (a group of 4 isolated anarchists became a group of 20, not counting supporters, with the ability to call demonstrations on their own); in a public square, anarchism was spoken of, as perhaps it had not been done in the Gran Canaria since the 1930s of the last century; black flags began to be an identifiable symbol for people (to think that the majority could speak of “mourning for democracy” [this is quite true], that began to appear on posters and statements, as a call to attract libertarians); the anarchists gave workshops or were involved in the commissions and in the resolution of conflicts; there were well-attended assemblies in which, without proposing it and to my surprise, the libertarians were the majority; and so, in a few months, the FAGC [Anarchist Federation of Gran Canaria] was born.

There was another important factor: the anarchists never hid the fact that they were anarchists, and rigthly or wrongly (I still think it was correct), we decided not to interfere in the assembly decisions collectively (there were no previous agreements on any common position in the voting) so as to preserve the autonomy of the movement. Other groups, on the contrary, especially those fishing politically, tried to manipulate the assemblies quite clearly, vetoing proposals and votes, or promoting votes in series, with strategic compulsive applause. In the end people could perfectly identify if the Humanist Party, DRY [Democracia Real Ya!], or whatever, was behind a proposal. The most curious thing is that many of the members of the different collectives or political parties did not openly identify as such, they mobilised under collective slogans, but without making explicit their links or affiliations. This generated some suspicion and animosity among many of the assembled. Is that the tactic that anarchism should follow, that of parachuting and infiltrating? I’ve always thought not.

We do not have to be naive. When we declared ourselves to be anarchists, the people from political parties, those who were there to make personal gains, aspiring journalists, those who were tied to institutions or those who sought to turn 15M into a party, they never stopped attacking us and trying to block or even sabotage any initiative launched by the anarchists. People can be influenced and manipulated, but not everyone and not all of the time. If the boycott of political parties could work when demonstrations without flags were called, and when they appeared, they were booed or taken down, these same people who protested were asking us for advice on what to do in case of arrest and celebrated with us when we blocked evictions with human walls, and when we solved the internal problems of coexistence in the encampment without resorting to the police, or when we resisted with our bodies the eviction of the Plaza de San Telmo. Finally, these same people, regardless of the fear that politicians tried to instill against us, approved by majority, without any orientation other than common sense, the proposal for the organisation of 15M that was based on the libertarian principles, laid out by a libertarian.

Discovering that the anarchists could not only stir things up, but also build, propose and reason, opened the eyes of many people, regardless of the weight of violent legends and the decades of television news, which had shaped their judgments. Based on close contact with us, they stopped evaluating us by what they had heard and began to value us for our activity."

-Ruymán Rodríguez, "Anarchist Identity" (2018)

[kp777]

By Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams

Feb. 5, 2024

"Forty-seven percent of the voters are poor or low-wage," said one activist. "Getting that vote in is very important."

The Poor People's Campaign on Monday launched a 42-week nationwide mobilization of poor and low-income Americans to "wake the sleeping giant" of a voting bloc with the potential to determine the outcome of the 2024 elections.

"It is time for a resurrection and not an insurrection," Poor People's Campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. William Barber II said during a press conference in Washington, D.C. "We must engage poor and low-wealth people to change the political landscape."

"For far too long extremists have blamed poor people and low-wage people for their plight, while moderates too often have ignored poor people, appealing instead to the so-called middle class," he continued. "Meanwhile, poor and low-income people have become nearly half of this country and we are here today to make one thing clear: Poor and low-wage brothers and sisters have the power to determine and decide the 2024 elections and elections beyond."

"Economic justice and saving this democracy are deeply connected."

Poor People's Campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis stressed that "economic justice and saving this democracy are deeply connected."

"In this rich nation that has the wherewithal to end poverty tomorrow where there's the political will, we must not overlook the voices and votes of poor and low-income people," she added. "We are mobilizing and organizing, registering and educating people for a movement that votes... for healthcare and debt cancellation. Votes for living wages and strong anti-poverty programs. Votes for fair taxes and demilitarization of our communities and our world. Votes for immigrant rights and more."

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said at the press conference: "In 2024, the election is going to be about mobilization... Democrats have an enthusiasm gap today and the progressive alliance and Democrats have fissures within their constituencies that make getting out the vote even more important."

"The biggest bloc of potential voters by far is low-income, low-wage voters," Lake noted. "Where the margin of victory is projected to be less than 3% in 2024, 30-45% of the voters are low-wage voters or low-income families... The turnout among low-wage voters and low-income voters today is... 20-22% below the average turnout. This is a huge bloc of voters, and it is a bloc of voters that votes 58-60%—at minimum—progressive, no matter how conservative the state."

"You're talking about a huge number—a game-changing number—of voters," she added.

The campaign's main scheduled events are a Mass Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Moral March to State House Assemblies on March 2 and a rally and march in Washington, D.C. on June 15.

"I have been struggling to pay my bills since I've been working at 16 years old. I work full time, 64 hours a week, seven days a week," said Beth Schafer of Raise Up for $15 during a video promoting the new campaign. "I am exhausted."

Crow Roberts, an organizer with the Indiana Poor People's Campaign, said in the video that "our government finds it necessary to ban abortion to say that they are saving our children, but more children die as a result of poverty in this country."

Guadalupe de la Cruz of the Florida Poor People's Campaign asserted that "we should not be cornered and forced to choose between one necessity or another."

Speaking at the press conference, Alabama activist Linda Burns said that "for three years I worked the assembly line at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama. The work was grueling. We were expected to work like robots, moving like 1,000 pieces per hour."

"I got badly injured. My left arm," she continued. "I had two surgeries. I had to get a third surgery, but I didn't have no more insurance. Amazon, they cut my insurance off a year after. They let me go last October."

"Amazon let me go because I was helping organize the union," said Burns. "We didn't get the union in Alabama but I'm gonna do everything in my power to stand in solidarity. Organizing the union showed me just how many people were in the same situation I was. Not just in Alabama, but all over the world."

"Forty-seven percent of the voters are poor or low-wage. Getting that vote in is very important," she added. "We cannot settle for less, we've got to stand up for our rights. We are forward together—not one step back."

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Manitobans voted in a big group of rookies to the province's legislative assembly Tuesday night.

Fifteen PC MLAs who won seats in the 2019 election decided not to run for re-election, opening up those ridings to fresh faces. But a number of PC incumbents were also unseated by NDP candidates. 

Here are the first-time MLAs who will be representing Manitobans across the province, according to unofficial results as of Wednesday.

Full article (with list of first-time MLAs)

Tagging: @politicsofcanada