#and are just totally apathetic to politics. stands over me like a shadow

[bigbroemen]

old furryism (1960s and previous, very different from todays furry) cartoon zines to: comics (which grew throughout the 1940s-1990s. interest in an art medium that is home to cartoon art and design) to: nerdism to: internet (starting from the 1970s) to: computer enthusiasts who are most likely in the technology field to: new furryism is home to like a LOT of people that are in or very often even instrumental to STEM (particularly technology) fields (computer science, engineering, robotics, etc) & theres a fair population of furries who make a SHITTON of money (because a career in STEM can make a lot of money and technology fields especially make a shitton of money)

[the-problem-of-leisure]

Fear of the Water - ch 1

Fear of the Water - Annie & Finnick Origin Story

(ANNIE)

“Annie,” a voice says. There’s something pressing on my shoulder. “Annie, wake up.”

I try to hide my face behind my hair. “Nooooo,” I moan, drawing out the word.

“Come on. It’s reaping day.”

I crack my eyes open. My twin brother Bosun is standing over me. He’s bathed and dressed already. Must have been awake for hours. His strawberry hair is combed for once, but bags and purple shadows hang under his blue-green eyes. I wonder if he slept at all.

He forces a smile. “I don’t know how you sleep so late. I can never sleep at all before the Reaping.”

The only reason I’m able to is because I stole a sleeping draught from our aunt’s medicine cabinet.  She doesn’t know, of course – she’d have one of her episodes. Probably threaten to send Bosun and me back to the community home. But we’re seventeen now, and we can work full time now that we’ve finished school, and I doubt she’d be willing to part with our salaries. But it also means we can live on our own. Bosun and I constantly promise ourselves that day will come soon, but people usually only move out of their family homes when they get married.

My cousins and I help each other into our dresses and comb one another’s hair. One must look their absolute best on Reaping Day in case one gets called up. Don’t want the sponsors’ first impression of you to be in swimming clothes.

Adrie ties my hair up in a ribbon as I braid Coraline’s hair from behind. Coraline is nearly eighteen; Adrie is fifteen. We all qualify for the reaping, and even though a girl named Coastia Is set to volunteer, we’re still nervous wrecks. Everybody is.

My aunt Chelsea looks us all over one more time to be sure we’re presentable.

We don’t bother with breakfast since none of us will be able to eat anything anyway. We walk toward the pavilion where the reaping is held in relative silence. I give Bosun’s hand a quick squeeze before he joins his friends on the boys’ side of the crowd.

“Dodge got his hands on a bottle of rum,” Bosun says to me. “When all this is over, we’ll get drunk and go for a swim. Okay?”

I lower my voice and try not to move my lips too much as I speak. “Do we have to bring the cousins?”

“God, no. They’d ruin it.” Bosun gives me a quick squeeze. “It’ll be you, me, Dodge, and Ondine. And Gill, I think. And maybe a couple of Dodge’s cousins, but they’ll bring their own liquor.”

“I hate most of Dodge’s cousins.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’ll be drunk.” He goes off toward the boys’ side and I look around for Ondine. She’ll need somebody to hold her hand through all this, the awful memories it will drag up.

Ondine, who’s been with Bosun for as long as anybody can remember, is my best friend. Maybe my only proper friend – except for Dodge, I guess. Bosun’s the social one; as his twin, I can just insert myself into whatever relationships he has without putting in the work of getting to know someone and then his friends become mine.

Ondine’s sister Liffey was my proper best friend until she died of an infected cut on her arm in the arena last year. Ondine, already an orphan, is now totally alone except for Bosun, who she’ll probably marry in a few years.

“Annie!”

I turn at the sound of my name. “Ondine.”

Lithe, lovely Ondine rushes toward me and grabs my hands so hard that my knuckles crack. “Oh, I’m so glad I found you. I couldn’t stand to be alone for this.”

“Me neither.”

She talks when she’s anxious, so I’m prepared when she starts speaking a mile a minute. “We just have to remember that we’re nearly done. This is my last reaping, and you and Bosun will be done next year. And then we’ll all be safe.” Her throat bounces as she swallows back tears. “Right?”

I smile. “Right.”

She catches sight of a few of her friends and drags me over to them.

(FINNICK)

I sit with the other victors on the platform in the shade. Everybody else stands on the ground facing the stage, the sun shining directly into their eyes. They’ve probably all ruined their clothes with sweat by now.

An attendant comes around to us and offers to powder our faces so we don’t look “too damp.” Mags is the only one polite enough to say no; the rest of us just ignore the attendant altogether. I let her give me a light dusting.

Eefa is half-asleep, Mags has her hands folded in her lap, and Broadsea keeps itching his beard and occasionally baring his teeth at people who stare too long. Proteus hasn’t taken his seat yet; he’s chatting with the mayor and the harbormaster about spatchcocking, which I guess is a cooking thing since that’s his passion. Maybe ‘passion’ is too strong a word; Proteus is too apathetic to experience any strong urge or emotion. His hobby, perhaps, is a better description.

We sit in order of victory, which means that as the most recent victor, I’m at the end of the line.  I’m stuck next to damn Broadsea, and, since I sit on his left, I’m stuck looking at the mangled side of his face from the corner of my eye.

Mags is the only one I get along with. She’s the only one I like and she’s one of the only people in the world who genuinely likes me. As our district’s first victor, she’s seated at the other end of the line.

The microphone at the front of the stage shrieks as our Capitol escort adjusts it. She’s gotten even more surgery done to disguise her age since last summer, but instead of looking younger she just looks strange. She gives the introductory speech reminding us why the Hunger Games exist and what an honor it is to be chosen.

Piers Brewre volunteers for the boys.

The Career is about average height, maybe a little taller, and well-built. His muscles don’t bulge out of his body the way other Careers’ sometimes do, but they’re just big enough to see that they’re there.

Most of our tributes are Careers; regular kids get called up about a third of the time. We don’t have as many Careers as 1 and 2, but it’s practical to have a few. Careers have a real shot at winning and they save someone else’s life by volunteering to compete. I’ve always wondered why other districts don’t have this practice. It would save them a lot of heartache.

Piers takes his spot on the stage and crosses his arms over his chest as he waits for his partner to be called.

Brae clears her throat. “Now for the girls!”

There’s confusion in the crowd. An eighteen-year-old girl named Coastia was set to volunteer this year. Most people don’t change their minds about volunteering, and those who do aren’t usually allowed to withdraw. Coastia must’ve bribed somebody to get out of it.

Someone angrily shouts “Coastia! What did you do?” and a girl of about eighteen that must be her shrinks to the back of the crowd. The other girls begin to cluster into little pockets, all holding hands and whispering to each other. Other people start to scream out all sorts of horrible things, and most of the girls begin to panic. They thought, at least this year, they were safe. Now the odds are their only protection.

Brae, our escort, prances over to the other bowl and reaches in. She accidentally grabs two, and takes her sweet time choosing which to keep and which to toss back with the others. She opens the slip of paper and clears her throat before reading, “Annie Cresta!”

After a few seconds, a girl emerges from the crowd. Flowing hair. Wide eyes. Maybe sixteen or seventeen. Visibly trembling. She stumbles a few times as she climbs the steps to the stage, anxiously wiping her sweaty palms on her blue dress. Her chin quivers from the strain of holding back tears. She’s going to lose the battle.

There’s a commotion near the front of the boys’ group. A boy says something and surges forward, but another boy, who I know to be the grandson of one of our other victors, catches him by the arm and pulls him back.

Brae smiles brightly. “Ladies and gentlemen of District Four, I present to you – your tributes!”

There’s plenty of mandatory clapping, then the tributes are led into the Justice Building. The Head Peacekeeper steps to the front of the stage and starts barking instructions. “Those of you wishing to bid farewell to the tributes, line up here in order of closest relation.”

Broadsea pulls a large bottle of liquor from a hidden pocket in his coat and takes a large drink. He wakes Eefa up to offer her some.

It’s the same every year. Eefa will stay in her rooms and avoid other people at all costs, Broadsea will be drunk or high or both, Proteus will be charming and ass-kissing Capitol citizens whenever possible, and Mags and I will try to keep a pair of children alive for as long as possible.

But I've already watched eight children die in pain and fear. Why should this year be any different?

[ravenclawelitist239]

Throne of Glass

Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1) by

Sarah J. Maas

Series:

Throne of Glass #1

Published by

Bloomsbury USA Children’s

on August 7th 2012Genres:

Fantasy

Pages: 404

Stars: 4.5

Foreword

Now, when I say this book is a mess, I dont mean that I didn’t like it or that it was a bad book, believe me, it wasn’t. I had to wait 3 months to read this book because of everyone in my area wanting to read. I had to fight someones grandma to finally get my paws on this book, and let me tell you, it was worth it! When I tell you this book was good, my hands were calloused from turning the pages nonstop. I finished the whole book in one day! After reading several “decent” books in a row, this was just what I needed to restore my faith in books.SynopsisCelaena Sardothien is the best assassin in the land (so we are told) with a tricky past. Sentenced to a year of labor in a literal death camp where she is beaten and whipped, she has given up hope of escape after nearly being killed attempting to do so. Just when all hope seems lost, the Crown Prince and Captain of the Guards arrive to shackle her and drag her to the royal castle, where she thinks she is sentenced to death. On the way there, instead of worrying about her future, she is to busy considering how she can kill everyone around her because you know, she’s such a deadly assassin. (or so we are told)Turns out she isn’t going to die. Well, she wont if she becomes the King’s champion. In order for that to happen, she must compete in a hunger-games like tournament where participants engage in months worth of training and killing in a final fight to the death where one will stand to become the King’s personal champion/lapdog.This all sound pretty sweet to Celeana because she is a deadly assassin who wont have any problem defeating like 23 other people in a death match. The only thing that bothers her is that she has to operate under a secret alias so that no one knows who she is because if they find out who she is, they will all go running home in fear. She considers this a major blow to her pride.Everything is going well, Celeana is excelling at everything, but some maniac has decided to start killing the competitors mid-way through the competition and everyone is freaking out trying to find the culprit. In the middle of it all, Celeana must navigate through supernatural forces, betrayals and politics, and love interest(s).

My Thoughts on the Characters, Plot, World Building

“My name is Celaena Sardothien. But it makes no difference if my name’s Celaena or Lillian or Bitch, because I’d still beat you, no matter what you call me.”

This book was totally blowing up in my feed. EVERYONE and their mom seemed to have read this book before me and loved it, so me being the ardent bookworm that I am, went to my local library and put it on hold. I waited 3 months, but when I got it, I was so in love with the cover. It was so shiny and pretty that I threw aside the book I was just reading [Shadow and Bone] to read this book. I read the first 10 pages, and kinda wasn’t really feeling it so I went to the park and sat down under my favorite tree and spent the whole day reading the book and it was soooo good. Like, I just loved the book so much and was smirking at every bit of dialogue because it was just so goood.Celeana. She is really just one of those characters that that you slowly love more and more as the book goes on. Honestly, at the beginning, I didn’t like her. She just has that effect on me for like the first hundred 100 pages. One, because she seemed so vain and arrogant. She has just been released to live in a freaking death camp ad has to compete in a gosh darn death match and the only thing she seemed to care about was how pretty she was and how handsome the prince was. However, her backstory was just so sad and depressing, especially when you consider the fact that she is only like 17. If I had went through what she did at 17, I would’ve been driven crazy. Like, I go crazy when I stub my toe or accidentally cut my finger washing the dishes. She was whipped and beaten and watched her friends and family die. At freaking 17. Everyone I knew was giving the book like 2 stars because they didn’t think Celeana should’ve been as girly and arrogant as she was just because she was a deadly assassin. I get where people are coming from, but there isn’t an assassin rule book that says all assassins should be sulky, depressed monsters who wear black and carry knives in their shoes. I loved how Sarah J Maas purposely set her apart from what she thought people felt as though Celeana should’ve been. Most authors make their heroines weak, insecure, and dependent on a man. Celeana was beautiful, strong, and clever and she knew it. While she does have love interest(s), that isn’t the whole focus of the story and she conquers her battles pretty much by herself and takes the initiative.

The fact that she could still smile after being sent to a death camp makes me respect her so much. Also, she has to fight for the man that destroyed everything she loved.

I wont go into all the characters, but I will talk about Dorian and Chaol [Kale? Kol?]. Ok, the love triangle was really predictable and everything and I am not mad at Celeana for it, because its not like they are terrible men. They are both intelligent and arent desperate for her attention. They do their own thing and are even best friends. While I do think Dorian is a little boring and cliche’, I do respect him as a character, because I know how it feels to have apathetic and cruel parents. Not to much is revealed about Chaol, but I really loved him as a character. He actually challenged Celeana and wanted the best for her.Let me take the time out to mention my favorite character, Nehemia. She was so amazing, and strong. She wants the best for herself and her country and she is the perfect friend for Celeana because she isn’t afraid to put her in her place. I cant wait to see what Maas does with her in the future.The world building is so amazing. The map in the front of the book is beautiful, and the world seems like a lot of thought was put into it. The plot however really wasn’t. The contest is laughably set up. The trials and tests seems like they were thought up out of a stereotypical like gladiator movie or something. Like seriously, she had to climb a wall [one person died], shoot a bow, test some poisons [dont worry, no one died because they had antidotes] and to Celeana, it was never any issue. The night before every test, she didn’t spend practicing or thinking about it, she would just be thinking about Dorian or Chaol. And the tests only took up like 5 pages each at a maximum and some were even talked about in like one sentence. Especially toward the end. Celeana would be like, “Oh yeah, there was a test today, but Dorian looked so cute and I wonder how I can make Chaol laugh tomorrow.” The king seemed very cartoon villainy and gets like 5 mentions total and 2 instances where we meet him and the minor characters are laughable. Especially, the lame girl that kept trying to get with Dorian.My issue with Celeana

While, I did love Celeana, I also had several issues with her. For one, the author is a master of tell and not show. She tells us how amazing Celeana is at pretty much everything from pianos to swordsmanship to man snatching. We even get a small display of how amazing her fighting is when she took out a full grown man with little to no effort. We never get shown much of anything else. We get told how amazingly stunning she is and every time her powers come into play, everyone revers and fears her and talks about how dangerous she is. However, its hard to believe that a 17 year old is feared by men like 3 times her age. She was ridiculously over hyped in every aspect. Also, the other biggest aspect I never liked about her was how much of a blatant Mary Sue she was. She was just good at everything and no harm ever really came her way except the final scene where she is drugged and assaulted. She loves books, plays the piano amazingly, is just so beautiful, and is dangerous. Her only fault is her arrogance and pride, but the way its presented in the book, its more a negative personality trait and not a fatal flaw. I need to see that she has a flaw or else she’s just gonna seem unlikable. I’m not saying a person cant be beautiful and really good at something. I know a lot of people in real life who are smart, beautiful, and seemingly good at everything, but they always have a flaw.Overall, I loved the book and the way everything was set up and look forward to buying it on Amazon and reading the rest of the series. If you liked this review, comment, and stay tuned for my review on Crown of Midnight.

[surveysonfleek]

377.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 9

801. How often do you change your mood in a day? not too often unless something happens. 802. When you ask people how they are doing you actually care about their answer or is it just polite? i usually mean it, only because i don’t ask that too often haha. 803. Would you consider yourself to be very polite? polite, but not ‘very’. 804. Do you like movies and books that involve nuclear holocaust? not particularly, but some of them are well done. 805. Have you ever had a lucid dream (a dream in which you knew you were dreaming and had complete control over what happened in the dream)? nope.

806. Have you ever had a flying dream? not that i can remember. 807. Have you ever had a lucid flying dream? no. 808. What's the oddest law you ever heard of? man there’s plenty, i just can’t remember. 809. What is the ultimate way to connect with another person? honestly just the process of getting to know each other. that’s when you know if you have a connection or not. 810. Can you be intimate with someone without touching him or her? yes. there’s always facetime haha. 811. Can men and women ever really be 'just friends' with no interest in anything more? yes, 100%. i have plenty of guy friends i could never feel anything for. 813. Are you addicted to this survey like drugs? no. 814. If your significant other wanted to wait for marriage could you hold out or would you leave them (or would you cheat)? i’m not sure... depends at what stage we are in the relationship when they tell me. 815. What's the longest sentence you can make using only words that start with the same letter as your first name? no thanks. 816. If you had a theme song what would it be? no idea. i’d get it made. 817. Are you cranky? no. 818. Which group generally annoys you more, people older than you, or people younger than you? younger than me. 819. Do you refer to older people as old farts? no. 820. Do you refer to younger people as the kids? sometimes. 821. Which is better: Poems that everyone can relate to or poems that are intensely personal to the author? either or. depends on the reader. i personally don’t bother with poems. 822. Is it worse to be too hot or too cold? too hot. 823. Are you so flexible that you can put your feet behind your head? no. 824. Would you enjoy reading fairy tales written about robots? um, no. 825. Is smoking a turn on or gross? def not a turn on lol. 826. What is the one way you wouldn't want to die? being burned to death. 827. Which would look sillier on you: A cowboy hat or a Rasta hat? rasta hat for sure. 828. Would you rather have a job doing something indoors or outdoors? indoors. 829. Would you rather learn more about human nutrition or meteorology? human nutrition. 830. Have you ever taken honors courses? nope. 831. What do you think of crop circles? interesting... 832. Where do they come from? no idea. 833. When was the last time you screwed up big time? idk. 834. You have a choice. What do you eat: A veggie burger A turkey dog <---- this A cheese sandwich 835. Do you get a lot of random instant messages? not random. 836. Do you have a paper journal also? nope. 837. VHS or DVD? neither. streaming ftw. 838. Vinyl, cassette tape, or CD? none, streaming again lol. 839. Have you ever seen the video/heard the song Days Go By, performed by Dirty Vegas? nope. 840. MTV: should it play more videos or more shows? more videos. 841. Name a band: destiny’s child. Do fans of that band tend to share any characteristics with each other? ummm, not really. 842. What does the expression 'touch and go' mean? something you can do quickly? 843. Caffeine or alcohol? alcohol. 844. Betty or Veronica? veronica. Archie or Reggie or Jughead? archie. 845. What book are you reading right now? sometimes i lie. 846. Is the news too depressing? yeah, sometimes. 847. Would you rather have a stuffed lion, elephant, pig or duck? duck. 848. Are you late for a very important date? nope. 849. Ever use star 69? no. 850. Is everyone as smart as you? haha who knows. 851. Have you ever seen the musical Annie? only the movie. 852. Sheets: silk or satin? i’d love silk sheets. 853. Bath: soap or bubbles? bubbles. 854. Your best color: blue or red? blue. 855. What's your favorite candy? chocolate. 856. Can you sing? not well. 857. It's the end of the world, as we know it. How do you feel? pretty sad. 858. You take your little sister (she's 12) shopping for school clothes. Mom gave you the money to hold. She picks out a skimpy top emblazoned "Hottie" and hip-hugging pants that leave at least two inches of skin north and south of her navel exposed to the wind. She insists: If she doesn't have these clothes, she'll look awful, the other kids will tease her, and she’ll feel like a nerd. Do you think she should or should not wear these clothes? definitely not. she’s 12. Do you buy them for her? hell no. 859. What do you think is the most annoying cliché? happy endings. 860. What band is underground right now but will one day get really popular? idk. 861. Of the following which word best describes you: versatile (flexible): this i guess. wonderful: x-tra special: your own best friend: zany: 862. What does BYOB stand for? bring your own booze? 863. Who is sexiest: Marilyn Monroe <---- definitely marilyn James Dean Elvis Jim Morrison Madonna Cyndi Lauper 864. Do you always do what's expected of you? most of the time. 865. Do you believe everything you hear on the news? most of the time. i probably shouldn’t. 866. Would you prefer a $100.00 gift certificate to Hot Topic or Abercrombie & Fitch (assuming neither store gives change, so you'll have to spend the whole thing)? omg like neither. i’d take any then just buy gifts. 867. Have you ever won a competition? yes. 868. Who looks sloppier when they are over weight, guys or girls? it actually doesn’t matter, it depends more on how they dress and carry themselves. 869. At what age do you become all grown up? sometimes in your 20s. 870. Have you ever written graffiti on anything? no. 871. Can you remember what you wrote? - 872. Are you a force of nature? somewhat. 873. What do you think of blue eye shadow? How about gold eye shadow? they can both work, depends on how you apply it. 874. Would you ever wear any of the following Halloween costumes: Flapper? Hippie? Disco dancer? i’d wear all of them. 875. Should birth control be taught in high school? How about in jr. high or elementary school? definitely jr high and high school. 876. Would you consider yourself a genius? no. 877. What did you think of the movie Solaris? never heard of it. 878. Which is usually better movies or books? it depends solely on the book/movie. 879. Do you think The Hobbit will be made into a movie? haaa, it already did. 880. Do you research which brands use sweatshops to make their clothing before you shop? sadly no. 881. What gives you a magical feeling? adrenaline. 882. Have you ever pulled apart a Christmas cracker? yes. 883. Would you rather watch basketball or play basketball? watch. 884. Do you think that everyone makes his or her own problems? not always. 885. Do you often consider how your actions will affect other people? not often, no. 886. Are J-Lo and Ben Afleck interesting to you at all? i love j-lo, don’t follow ben affleck at all. 887. Do you use bad grammar or hate bad grammar? i hate it. 888. Make up a tabloid headline: no. 889. Do you like to learn new things? yes. 890. What's more important, fame or personal accomplishment? personal accomplishment. 891. Sweet dreams are made of this....What are they made of? idk. 892. Two trailer park girls go round the outside...Round the outside of what? the trailer? 893. Are you wearing a piece of jewelry that means a lot to you right now? yes. 894. If someone was going to inscribe a message on a ring and give it to you what would you want it to say? something personal i guess. 895. Guys who are losing their hair: Should they shave their heads? Get implants? Or let it go? it’s totally up to them. 896. Do rock stars work hard or lead the easy life? they would have to work hard to a certain extent. 897. How much water do you drink every day? maybe 6 glasses a day. 898. Are you driven or kinda apathetic? apathetic right now. 899. Who do you turn to when you are down? my boyfriend. 900. Would you ever wear seran-wrap? no.

[antoine-roquentin]

Andrew Cockburn’s new article discusses why Harris County in Texas elected a clean slate of Democratic officials for the first time ever, despite a Republican victory in the overall election. They did it by running Democrats who fit the social democratic mold, who promised material benefits to voters and have track records of delivering. The article in particular focuses on the Texas Organizing Project, an organization created by a bunch of Stanford graduates that ran a very typical Social Democratic-style get out the vote operation on a shoestring budget:

Digging deep into voter files and other databases, Zermeno confirmed that Texas contained a “wealth of non-voting people of color.” Most of them were registered, but seldom (if ever) turned up at the polls. The problem, she noted, was especially acute with Latinos, only 15 percent of whom were regular voters. In her detailed report, she calculated precisely how many extra voters needed to turn out to elect someone who would represent the interests of all Texans: a minimum of 1.1 million. Fortuitously, these reluctant voters were concentrated in just nine big urban counties, led by Harris.

Ever since the era of Ann Richards, Democrats had been focusing their efforts (without success) on winning back white swing voters outside the big cities. But Zermeno realized that there was no reason “to beat our heads against the wall for that group of people anymore, not when we’ve got a million-voter gap and as many as four million non-voting people of color in the big cities, who are likely Democrats.” By relentlessly appealing to that shadow electorate, and gradually turning them into habitual voters, TOP could whittle down and eliminate the Republican advantage in elections for statewide offices such as governor and lieutenant governor, not to mention the state’s thirty-eight votes in the presidential Electoral College. In other words, since the existing Texas electorate was never going to generate a satisfactory result, TOP was going to have to grow a new one.

There was, however, still another question to answer. Why were those 4 million people declining to vote? TOP embarked on a series of intensive focus groups, which were largely financed by Amber and Steve Mostyn, a pair of progressive Houston claims attorneys. (Their string of lucrative settlements included some with insurance companies who had balked at paying claims for Ike-related house damage.) Year after year, the Mostyns had loyally stumped up hefty donations to middle-of-the-road Democrats who doggedly pursued existing voters while ignoring the multitude who sat out elections all or most of the time. When TOP asked these reluctant voters about their abstention, the answer was almost always the same: “When I have voted for Democrats in the past, nothing has changed, so it’s not worth my time.” There was one telling exception: in San Antonio, voters said that the only Texas Democrat they trusted was Julián Castro, who ran for mayor in 2009 on a platform of bringing universal pre-K to the city, and delivered on his promise when he won.

“There’s this misunderstanding that people don’t care, that people are apathetic,” Goldman told me. “It’s so not true. People are mad and they want to do something about it. People want fighters that will deliver real change for them. That’s why year-round community organizing is so critical. People see that you can deliver real impact, and that you need the right candidates in office to do it, and connect it back to the importance of voting. It’s the ongoing cycle. We see winning the election as only the first step toward the real win, which is changing the policies that are going to make people’s lives better.”

Beginning with the 2012 election, TOP canvassers — volunteers and paid employees working their own neighborhoods — were trained to open a doorstep interview not with statements about a candidate but with a question: “What issue do you care about?” The answer, whether it was the minimum wage or schools or potholes, shaped the conversation as the canvasser explained that TOP had endorsed a particular candidate (after an intensive screening) because of his or her position on those very issues. These were not hit-and-run encounters. Potential voters were talked to “pretty much nonstop for about eight to ten weeks leading to the election,” according to Goldman. “They got their doors knocked three to five times. They got called five to seven times. They signed a postcard saying, ‘I pledge to vote.’ They circled which day they were going to vote on a little calendar on the postcard, and we mailed those postcards back to them. We offered them free rides to the polls. We answered all of their questions, gave them all the information they needed, until they cast a ballot. And what we saw was that the Latino vote grew by five percentage points in Harris County in 2012.”

Two years later, Texas Democrats nominated Wendy Davis, a state senator, as their candidate for governor following her filibuster against further restrictions on abortion rights. Her stand brought her national attention, a flood of campaign money, and the arrival of out-of-state Obama operatives who vowed to boost minority registration. Yet she lost by 20 percent to Greg Abbott and scored comparatively poorly with Latinos. Meanwhile, in the same election cycle, TOP and its allies blocked a bid by business interests to privatize the public-school system in Dallas. A year later, the organization helped to elect Sylvester Turner, a black Democrat, as mayor of Houston.

Goldman, Zermeno, and Tremillo (who took over as executive director of TOP in 2016), came to their progressive politics by observing the world around them. Others active in the organization learned about society’s injustices through direct, personal, brutal experience. In 2003, Tarsha Jackson, an African-American single mother living in the dilapidated Greenspoint neighborhood, discovered that her twelve-year-old son, Marquieth, had been sentenced by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department to nine months in prison. His crime: breaking a fifty-dollar window at a neighborhood swimming pool. The boy had already spent time behind bars for various misdemeanors, such as kicking a teacher while being restrained in a special-education class. These Dickensian punishments had been sanctioned by a 1995 overhaul of Texas school discipline, which prescribed zero tolerance and immediate recourse to law enforcement for unruly children.

“My son served three and a half years for a misdemeanor as a child,” Jackson told me over lunch at Gloria’s Latin Cuisine, one of a thriving chain of Salvadoran eateries across Texas. “They kept moving him to different jails far away.” In total, Marquieth Jackson served five years as a juvenile. Appeals to the A.C.L.U. went nowhere. “They weren’t interested. So I started organizing for myself.” Founding Texas Families of Incarcerated Youth with two other mothers in similar straits, Jackson mounted an intense campaign, complete with demonstrations, media appearances, and tireless lobbying. In 2007, she succeeded in getting Texas Senate Bill 103 passed, which banned the jailing of children for minor misdemeanors, although, as she points out, “it took a white boy getting raped in jail for them to finally do it.”

By the time TOP was preparing for the 2016 election, in which numerous local offices were in play, Jackson had joined the organization as the director for Harris County. The membership, expected but not obliged to pay five dollars in monthly dues, had grown steadily since 2009. Petra Vargas, the hotel employee, recounted to me over barbecue how she had eavesdropped on a TOP conference while at work, joined on the spot, and attended her first demonstration the next day. Regular actions, such as the protest that led to a partial cleanup at the toxic CES plant, helped mobilize others. Feedback from the membership showed that there was a host of urgent issues on voters’ minds, such as low wages and poor schools. It was the death of Sandra Bland, however, that propelled criminal justice to the top of the list.

Bland, a twenty-eight-year-old African-American activist, was arrested in July 2015 in Waller County, just an hour’s drive from Houston. A state trooper pulled her over for changing lanes without a turn signal. Three days later, she was found dead in her jail cell, an alleged suicide. Bland’s arbitrary arrest and suspicious death aroused a national furor. But the reason she was still in jail after three days was all too familiar to hundreds of thousands of poor people, especially African Americans, in Houston and elsewhere across Texas: bail for this very minor traffic offense had been set at $5,000, and neither she nor her family could raise the $500 down payment demanded by the bail bondsman.

Tarsha Jackson herself had gone to jail in the 1990s thanks to traffic tickets. (“No inspection, no insurance, no child seat, I couldn’t afford it.”) Now, while launching a petition demanding an investigation into Bland’s death, she and her colleagues in the Houston TOP office sat down and built an agenda around criminal-justice reform. As she explained to me, many of TOP’s latent voters had experienced similarly punitive brushes with the legal system, which they were often reluctant to discuss. “They felt ashamed,” she told me. “Our canvassers on the doorsteps were telling them: ‘It’s okay to talk about this.’ It sucks!”

Rosie McCutcheon could cite her own experiences when discussing law enforcement with potential voters. Like Jackson, she had been picked up for driving without insurance or registration, back in 2003. She was fined $795 and consigned to the county jail, gaining release when she agreed to perform community service at an assisted-living facility. But the county lost the records of her service, and in 2008 she was arrested again — on her own porch, in front of her grandchildren.

By that time, her initial fine had ballooned to $2,100. That was largely due to the Driver Responsibility Program, introduced by the state in 2003, which had little to do with inducing responsibility and a lot to do with closing a $10 billion budget gap by adding supplements to preexisting fines. Hence McCutcheon’s spiraling debt, augmented by a payday loan at 100 percent interest to raise her original bail.

True to its threefold mission — canvassing, policy research, direct political action — TOP has taken on the bail system, whose vicious nature was most vividly revealed in a series of videos that the organization unearthed last year. One after another, inmates at the county jail file in front of a monitor showing the “TV judge”: a magistrate sitting in an office across town. In one video, the judge confronts Anthony Goffney, an elderly homeless man with dementia who had been arrested four days earlier for trespassing, and who clearly has no idea what is going on. “Bond is set at five thousand dollars!” snaps a hearing officer. (When the same officer asks Goffney whether he’s requesting a court-appointed lawyer, his answer is, “Who, me?”) In another video, the magistrate doubles a woman’s bail to $2,000 simply because she answers “Yeah” to a question instead of “Yes.”...

Harris County is by no means the only arena in which TOP and its allies scored convincingly in 2016. East Dallas County, a band of suburbs to the east and south of Dallas, comprises House District 107 in the state legislature. Despite a Latino and African-American majority, Republicans have been carrying the district for years, albeit with narrow margins. This time, however, thanks to an intense registration and organizing drive by TOP and other groups, including labor unions, Victoria Neave, the Democratic candidate, ousted her Republican opponent by 836 votes.

“The interesting thing about that race,” Amber Mostyn told me, “is that the Republicans spent around a million dollars. There was no more than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars spent on our side, and no television — the Republicans probably spent half a million dollars on TV. Our campaign was focused on getting folks to turn out, and we knew that a lot of them don’t have time to watch a bunch of TV. They’re working two jobs, they’re not engaged in the political process anyway, so if they see a commercial, it means nothing to them. But Victoria Neave was out talking to people, TOP was out talking to people, labor was out talking to people — it’s the one-on-one engagement that makes the difference.”

Cockburn has previously discussed how Bernie Sanders’ campaign used similar tactics and got farther than anybody had thought possible in the Democratic primaries. Likewise, for anybody who’s read Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, the themes should be very familiar. Frank discusses Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, a pro-gun control, pro-abortion, anti-death penalty Democrat who won re-election by an even bigger margin than her first win. Her campaign likewise was a very typical Social Democratic one, eschewing cultural issues to focus on increased funding for education and a drug importation program that would bring direct, immediate, and universal benefits to people across the state. What happened to her? The Obama regime offered her a job as Secretary of Health and Human Services, which she quit her governorship to become. Democrats lost the next Kansas election to Sam Brownback, possibly the most right wing governor in the entire country, after running an uninspiring tech sector CEO against him. The lesson here clearly isn’t new. So why haven’t Democrats learned it? Why do they enjoy losing so much?

Because losing is profitable. In the world of late capitalism, the traditions of our system are breaking down. No longer are the world’s richest companies the ones that own, produce, or deliver the products they sell. Uber owns no cars. Google, Amazon, and Valve offer to sell you other people’s things and take a cut of the profits. Aetna and Kaiser sell you health insurance, then throw you off their plans when you actually need to use them by employing a vast legal department to ensure they don’t actually have to deliver. The Democratic Party is a little behind the Republicans in coming to this truth, but they’ve reached it nonetheless. When your candidate loses, your voters are outraged and terrified. They flood your pockets with donations. Hillary Clinton’s $1.2 billion campaign operation enriched an entire coterie of consultants and PR men for 2 years, despite none of them actually being able to do what they promised. Winning, on the other hand, means you have to pay the piper, so to speak, and betray at least one of the competing interest groups that donated to you and dooming you from being re-elected. Really, the choice is clear. The Republican campaign apparatus has been in disarray from the moment things became clear on election night, realizing that they’re the ones who now have to govern and trying to come up with random pieces of red meat they can throw to people to make them happy. They’re going to pieces over figuring out what exactly they’re going to do with the health care law they spent the last 4 elections running against. Democrats realize that if they got into power, they’d have the same dilemma balancing the bankers and the tech sector with the unions and the poor people. Much easier to just take money from all of them and not even bother with the whole election thing, until somebody fucks up and they win again.