Notices by Kit Malone (thekitmalone@hoosier.social), page 5

@dalias that's a good rundown of why such restrictions are often unworkable. It's incredibly difficult to craft laws that can't be wormed around without applying a blunt instrument to free speech or else becoming so vague that they are unenforceable.

Do that in the US and watch how fast it gets used to shut down leftist dissent, minority protests, and anyone else corporate America's bought judicial system decides is "hateful."

@amyedge I haven't! But I led campaigns against a number of Indiana's worst anti-trans bills, abortion restrictions, and anti immigration bills. The leaders behind them are all the literal same people, backed by all the same big nationals like the ADF. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to start noticing the playbook.

I'll def look it up, it sounds like a good read.

@amyedge It's worse (and so was that). Both were tied to fairly wealthy political interests interested in manipulating religious social conservatives to build their donor base, mobilize voters for sympathetic candidates who will then go on to do whatever it is those interests actually want (usually keep taxes low for the wealthy/corporations).

Religious conservatives are just useful idiots to them.

@amyedge I don't think we're more easily manipulated as a whole than other cultural groups. But our political landscape and loose controls on private funding encourages the growth of "advocacy" groups with just massive funding behind them to launch and maintain literal misinformation campaigns.

Citizens United poured gasoline on this stuff. The war chests these people can accumulate are unreal.

They'll keep doing this. They'll keep moving down the line to whatever group is viewed with some amount of suspicion and they'll use it to campaign on, build power, get folks elected and ultimately do whatever it is they already planned to do to enrich themselves.

... most of which has nothing to do with trans people, gay people, immigrants, black people, or whatever other group they've decided the polling data will allow them to gin up a moral panic about.

/?

They attempted this strategy around gay marriage - that's why you started seeing marriage bans crop up in states that had never even had legal gay marriage or even a public debate about it.

Marriage backfired on them, but polling data in like 2015 found that trans people where widely viewed with suspicion so out came the bathroom bans and that had some legs and gave them a start.

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It's important to understand that the widespread anti-trans hatred you see today isn't organic.

It's the result of a calculated, well-funded campaign that capitalizes on biases to galvanize political supporters to build power and wealth.

People made jokes about us in the 70s, but they didn't run campaigns. That's new. And it's a political strategy.

Every anti-trans talking point you've ever heard - including the sports shit - was dreamt up by messaging experts in a board room somewhere.

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After a weeks of writing, button-punching and mousy-clicking I'm proud to announce the launch of my monthly email newsletter: MUSE

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#HoosierMast

@bhawthorne @Hannah

I don't agree that a prosecuter, DA or AG is "not a cop." To an abolitionist like me, she's a cop.

But this entire debate is stupid. She's pretty good - better than we deserve. She's not materially different from her predecessors on the law enforcement issue.

But you aren't going to win over committed prison abolitionists who are skeptical of those strong law enforcement credentials by going to Websters about her job titles.

@albnelson @clacke I 100% agree with that. But critique is not what I'm seeing from some folk. I doubt I'll ever see a candidate that I don't have serious critique for and I'll never be on the side of "just fall in line."

@clacke @albnelson

Which doesn't distinguish her from most presidents and presidential candidates. She was also an actual prosecutor which is, to my mind, basically a cop.

My point is that *some* on the left are subjecting her to a test that we have subjected literally zero other mainstream candidates to and that is unfair, shortsighted, and in a few cases that I've seen, actively racist.

ACAB for sure but being cop adjacent has never disqualified a presidential candidate before and I think it's a bit rich that it only became an issue of public debate when that candidate is a black woman.

At this point anyone freaking out online about her background as a prosecutor is either hopelessly ideologically blinkered or an active disinfo actor.

The world expects black women to play the game perfectly to thrive, and the left requires them to simultaneously be our ideologically perfect
saviors episode 468543378

Basically anyone in the media at this moment who is like "Obama/Pelosi/Whoever didn't immediately post a selfie with Harris and that is evidence they aren't getting behind her" is super sus, and possibly has bad intentions.

It is not inflammatory to point out that the RNC agenda *is* political violence.

My husband and I are trans. My family is full of queer people.

Trump has explicitly and repeatedly promised to use the apparatus of the federal government to go after families like ours.

He'll be aided by a state government in #Indiana that has shown that it has the appetite to help.

My family is so terrified right now. We're making plans in case we have to flee to someplace safer.

A very close and very wise friend texted during the debate and said:

"...every single question, they answer about the past. They talk about the past. We are trapped cannibalizing our polarized perceptions of the recent past and we can't even imagine a future. That's Trump. This will never be over while we are stuck here with him."

And I'm thinking about that a lot today.

The fact is that most of the people you are yelling at on Masto probably were going to vote blue no matter what they tooted out today or any other day and the only thing you are accomplishing by wagging your finger at them is to drive away a whole host of frightened, vulnerable, poor and not terribly plugged-in people who see that kinda stuff and just have their suspicion confirmed that they aren't welcome and that your movement isn't meant for them.

THREAD.

Ok. I've unfollowed a few people. Let me be explicit.

I'm a blue voter. I actually work as a policy expert for a voter rights/democracy org and I'm heavily engaged in GOTV work. I personally devise and advocate for pro-democracy policy in our state legislature. I sit on the largest democracy defense coalition in the state.

I'm also trans, and I am very clear about what it would mean for me and my family if the U.S. falls into the grip of an authoritarian ruler like Trump.

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There aren't many people that you could meet in your personal life with a clearer practical understanding of the stakes.

I watched the debate. And it really was bad. And I'm worried. And I'm going to express that. I think it is *super* *condescending* to tell people that they are stupid and hysterical to be afraid after that performance.

Or that they are part of the problem for expressing why they are afraid.

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