🗣️THIS IS WHAT INCLUSIVE, COMPASSIONATE DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE
Minnesota Dems enacted a raft of laws to make the state a trans refuge, and ensure people receiving trans care here can’t be reached by far-right governments in places like Florida and Texas. (link)
Minnesota Dems ensured that everyone, including undocumented immigrants, can get drivers’ licenses. (link)
They made public collegefree for the majority of Minnesota families. (link)
Minnesota Dems dropped a billion dollars into a bevy of affordable housing programs, including by creating a new state housing voucher program. (link)
Minnesota Dems massively increased funding for the state’s perpetually-underfunded public defenders, which lets more public defenders be hired and existing public defenders get a salary increase. (link)
Dems raised Minnesota education spending by 10%, or about 2.3 billion. (link)
Minnesota Dems created an energy standard for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. (link)
Minnesota already has some of the strongest election infrastructure (and highest voter participation) in the country, but the legislature just made it stronger, with automatic registration, preregistration for minors, and easier access to absentee ballots. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded the publicly subsidized health insurance program to undocumented immigrants. This one’s interesting because it’s the sort of things Dems often balk at. The governor opposed it! The legislature rolled over him and passed it anyway. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded background checks and enacted red-flag laws, passing gun safety measures that the GOP has thwarted for years. (link)
Minnesota Dems gave the state AG the power to block the huge healthcare mergers that have slowly gobbled up the state’s medical system. (link)
Minnesota Dems restored voting rights to convicted felons as soon as they leave prison. (link)
Minnesota Dems made prison phone calls free. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed new wage protection rules for the construction industry, against industry resistance. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a new sales tax to fund bus and train lines, an enormous victory for the sustainability and quality of public transit. Transit be more pleasant to ride, more frequent, and have better shelters, along more lines. (link)
They passed strict new regulations on PFAS (“forever chemicals”). (link)
Minnesota Dems passed the largest bonding bill in state history! Funding improvements to parks, colleges, water infrastructure, bridges, etc. etc. etc. (link)
They’re going to build a passenger train from the Twin Cities to Duluth. (link)
I can’t even find a news story about it but there’s tens of millions in funding for new BRT lines, too. (link)
A wonky-but-important change: Minnesota Dems indexed the state gas tax to inflation, effectively increasing the gas tax. (link)
They actually indexed a bunch of stuff to inflation, including the state’s education funding formula, which helps ensure that school spending doesn’t decline over time. (link)
Minnesota Dems made hourly school workers (e.g., bus drivers and paraprofessionals) eligible for unemployment during summer break, when they’re not working or getting paid. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed a bunch of labor protections for teachers, including requiring school districts to negotiate class sizes as part of union contracts. (Yet another @SydneyJordanMN special here. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a state board to govern labor standards at nursing homes. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, which would set price caps for high-cost pharmaceuticals. (link)
Minnesota Dems created new worker protections for Amazon warehouse workers and refinery workers. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed a digital fair repair law, which requires electronics manufacturers to make tools and parts available so that consumers can repair their electronics rather than purchase new items. (link)
Minnesota Dems made Juneteenth a state holiday. (link)
They spent nearly a billion dollars on a variety of environmental programs, from heat pumps to reforestation. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded protections for pregnant and nursing workers - already in place for larger employers - to almost everyone in the state. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a new child tax credit that will cut child poverty by about a quarter. (link)
Minnesota Democrats dropped a quick $50 million into homelessness prevention programs. (link)
And because the small stuff didn’t get lost in the big stuff, they passed a law to prevent catalytic converter thefts. (link)
Minnesota Dems increased child care assistance. (link)
Minnesota Dems banned “captive audience meetings,” where employers force employees to watch anti-union presentations. (link)
No news story yet, but Minnesota Dems forced signal priority changes to Twin Cities transit. Right now the trains have to wait at intersections for cars, which, I can say from experience, is terrible. Soon that will change.
Minnesota Dems provided the largest increase to nursing home funding in state history. (link)
They also bumped up salaries for home health workers, to help address the shortage of in-home nurses. (link)
Minnesota Dems legalized drug paraphernalia, which allows social service providers to conduct needle exchanges and address substance abuse with reduced fear of incurring legal action. (link)
Minnesota Dems banned white supremacists and extremists from police forces, capped probation at 5 years for most crimes, improved clemency, and mostly banned no-knock warrants. (link)
Minnesota Dems also laid the groundwork for a public health insurance option. (link)
I’m happy for the people of Minnesota, but as a Floridian living under Ron DeSantis & hateful Republicans, I’m also very envious tbh. We know that democracy can work, and this is a shining example of what government could be like in the hands of legislators who actually care about helping people in need, and not pursuing the GOP’s “culture wars” and suppressing the votes of BIPOC, and inflicting maximum harm on those who aren’t cis/het, white, wealthy, Christian males. BRAVO MINNESOTA. This is how you do it! And the Minnesota Dems did it with a one seat majority, so no excuses. Forget about the next election and focus on doing as much good as you can, while you still can. 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿
I don’t want to take away from the very important and much more urgent point in that post about why Evangelical US missionaries go to countries like Brazil despite the very obvious prevalence of Christianity there (Cristo Redentor and all), that these white supremacist Evangelical missionaries are obsessed with converting Indigenous communities and Black communities that practice African or African-descent spirituality the most. Again, that’s the truly urgent part of it and so I’m saying this here and not in the post itself, BUT…
They also target Catholics. Especially people who’re Catholic and very poor or otherwise vulnerable.
In general South America is mainly Catholic as far as Christianity goes (at least the cultures that were colonized by Spain, France and Portugal are, which are the vast majority of us), and Evangelicals, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are very anti-Catholic.
I wouldn’t give a damn about it because I don’t exactly love Catholicism as either a faith or in a political sense. I think the church is a monster, the faith is misanthropic, etc etc. EXCEPT…
Like I mentioned, most of the Catholics in South America who’re targeted by these missionaries are very poor ones, often luring them in with prosperity gospel bullshit promises as well as in general entangling them with their cult-like tactics (thought-terminating clichés, love-bombing then withdrawal/threats of withdrawal of community, etc).
I see it in urban Chile all the time; you will rarely, if ever, see a Protestant church of any sort in wealthy areas, and if you see one it’ll be a “normal” one like Lutherans. However, in poor areas? Every-fucking-where.
The advancement of Evangelicalism in South America is tightly linked to the advancement of reactionary conservative politics. They’re becoming a voting block like they are in the US; nowhere near YET as big as they are in the US thank GOD, but they’re there and they’re radicalizing vulnerable people continuously and that’s something local leftists are worried about, especially because at least here we actually have a history of important communist developments FROM the Catholic church, especially with communist Catholic priests (and that is absolutely part of why local Evangelicals dislike local Catholics).
Actually, in particular IN BRAZIL a big part of Bolsonaro’s success to get to the presidency (thank fuck it’s over) was BECAUSE of the immense growth that Evangelicalism has had in Brazil in the past decade or so.
This can’t be solely accounted for by the Indigenous and African-descent communities that white supremacist Evangelicals absolutely do target with foam at the mouth with cultural genocide in mind.
I didn’t clock the body language in the first pic as aggressive on a quick scroll, I thought it was a cute noses-touching pic. The second pic came along and just burgled my bones.
And like, I was chuckling I realized that in the first pic they are right in each other’s faces MOANING FURIOUSLY in that horrible way territorial cats do, which struck me as really funny. Then I laughed harder because they’re nose to nose like the enemies-to-lovers trope. I started wheezing as I looked at the second pic some more, with the cow cat just BODY SLAMMING the ginger in the stupidest-looking way. Almost got it together when I suddenly thought “This is how ridiculous those super intense cat fights in the Warriors series would actually look like.” I didn’t start to cry until my brain reached “Bro got pushed too far and fuckin buttered that Jorts.”
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
