Dear friends,
I got a request from a reader to examine the similarities between the 19th century Know Nothings — a political party that was formally known as the American Party — and the MAGA Republicans.
It’s an odd place to start a good news post, however the influence of the Know Nothings peaked in the 1850s and was relatively short-lived.
[Their] movement was a reaction to the influx of German and Irish immigrants to the United States. Proponents saw these newcomers as a “foreign invasion” that threatened to influence politics and religion. They advocated to curb immigration and naturalization and played on white native-born fears about outsiders.
If you change the nationalities of the immigrants, this sounds awfully familiar. Today’s anti-immigrant screeds include “salacious and often racist” claims — without evidence — that Haitian immigrants in an Ohio city are stealing and eating pets.
MAGA Republicans are spreading fear about the danger that noncitizens are voting. The bold below is mine:
There is no indication that noncitizens are voting in large numbers. And yet the notion that they will flood the polls — and vote overwhelmingly for Democrats — is animating a sprawling network of Republicans who mobilized around former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a rigged election in 2020 and are now preparing for the next one.
Like MAGA Republicans, the Know Nothings supported mass deportation and mandatory Bible reading in schools. One of the founders, Thomas R. Whitney, criticized the notion of human equality and argued that
all people “are entitled to such privileges, social and political, as they are capable of employing and enjoying rationally.”
The Know Nothing’s assessment of who was capable of rationally employing what we would call political rights is unsurprising. They took a dim view of women as voters.
Again, this is familiar. MAGA Republicans have portrayed the League of Women Voters “as a collection of angry leftists.” The group’s core mission has made it a target of MAGA hostility:
Supporting voting rights can be seen as an attack on the Republican Party, which has pushed for laws that make it more difficult to register and to vote.
The Democratic Party’s embrace of an inclusive, multi-racial democracy and “non-toxic masculinity” is a clear contrast to the MAGA outlook.
According to the lawsuit filed in June, the board implemented the rule in response to an “about-face” by Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston (R), who had initially advised Get Loud Arkansas that its new online electronic voter registration tool was lawful.
But after hearing about the success of the new tool in registering young and minority voters, Thurston abruptly changed course and urged the board to issue an emergency rule that would require the rejection of electronically signed online registration applications, the complaint explained.
I am hoping that the MAGA Republicans saw their peak in mid-July.
Write postcards to get out the mom vote with Moms Rising!
Jessica Valenti turned a recent Abortion Every Day post over to Sasha Ahuja, the Campaign Director for New Yorkers for Equal Rights.
Ahuja makes the case for supporting Prop 1 and its potential to provide permanent protections for reproductive rights:
New Yorkers support abortion. But as we’ve seen elsewhere, voter support for reproductive rights doesn’t always translate into being allowed to keep them—not without constitutional protections. Prop 1 puts the power to safeguard our most fundamental freedoms in voters’ hands. New Yorkers now have the opportunity to proactively stand up for and secure our reproductive rights.
When Ohio recently added a constitutional abortion protection, it created “sweeping protections ensuring reproductive autonomy,” according to the judge who blocked both
a ban on telemedicine for abortion medication and a law that prohibit[ed] non-doctors (like midwives and physician assistants) from prescribing abortion medication.
Join folks from BKForge and Planned Parenthood to phone bank to move Prop 1 forward towards victory in November!
In addition to protections for reproductive health care, the Equal Rights Amendment (aka Prop 1) specifies protections against discrimination based on age, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, and gender identity
The MAGA right is attacking Prop 1 because of the breadth of anti-discrimination protections. Find common ground with your neighbors and speak up for inclusive protections.
Let’s not go back. One way to unravel MAGA is to take back Congress.
How sweet would it be to retake the House and see the back of Congresswoman Lauren Boebert?
Boebert has proved again and again to be uninformed and unserious. She declined the challenge to debate again after
Trisha Calvarese mopped the floor with Boebert during their first (and only) debate.
Calvarese called on Boebert to defend her record, which Boebert was unable to do. Boebert opposed price caps on prescription drugs and voted against the PACT Act, the important veterans’ health legislation passed in 2022.
Boebert, who currently holds the seat for Colorado’s 3rd district in Congress, is seeking election to Colorado 4, where she has received a less-than-warm embrace from voters.
In early August, Calvarese outpolled the better-known Boebert (47 - 38), after voters were read a handful of statements about the two candidates. Thirteen percent of voters were undecided. And that was before the debate.
This race seems winnable. Calvarese is from the rural district and talks credibly about democracy, voting rights, and worker protections.
Calvarese is solidly pro-choice and favors investments in renewable energy. Although she does not support a ban on semiautomatic weapons, she does favor an end to the gun industry’s liability protections as well as legislation to require safe storage of firearms.
Generally, I like to support groups on the ground rather than specific candidates, but I’m making an exception.
Read the interview with Trisha Calvarese and support her campaign.
Do you have friends and family in swing states? Here’s a very personal GOTV activity: the Working Families Party is making it easy to mail personal reminders to vote that your family members will hang on their fridge.
At this quick online training, we'll show you how to use the Reach app to securely share your photo and a friends and family contact list. We'll take it from there to print, stamp and mail your Get Out The Vote card to arrive before Election Day!
Make selfie postcards with the Working Families Party!
New York City had the smallest number of reported murders in August in more than three decades. There are still a few communities disproportionately plagued by violence; still more than twice as many people were murdered in the city in August 2023
“Shootings and homicides are going down. That's in the city as well as nationwide,” said Christopher Herrmann, a professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice who specializes in crime data and mapping. “It’s a reverse of the COVID problems that we had, right? So, it's better employment, better income, less food insecurity, less housing insecurity.”
We know that solving problems with good policy is far more productive than scapegoating people for troubles they didn’t cause. We’re not going back.
with love,
L