#voting rights in Sweden

[filosofablogger]

Worth Fighting For ...

Sweden, unlike the United States and other more restrictive nations, believes that every person over the age of 18 has a right to vote for the people who will make and carry out the laws of their country.  Elections are held on Sunday (the 2nd Sunday in September), and every citizen is automatically enrolled (registered), with proof of registration material sent to the homes of every eligible…

[yurimartyr]

history is so fun because you can like to back 105 years and learn "women are now people" and then instead go back 65 years and learn "black people are now people" and then instead go back 45 years and learn "gay people are now people" and then instead go back 21 years and learn "discrimination is now illegal" and you go. damn. my country kinda sucked back then. then you instead go back only 15 years and learn "homosexuality is now legal" and then instead go back 6 years and learn "sexual assault is now illegal" and then instead go back 4 years and learn "children are now people" and you go. hm. i have been alive longer than these laws have been in place. and then you wonder what other fucked up things are legal without you knowing it until you in a few years hear it's now illegal and go "what the fuck, that was legal? during my lifetime? why the fuck was that legal for so long." and this cycle will repeat probably forever. country seems awesome but if you go back any amount of time you'll find out it was fucking awful; this'll be true even when you in the future go back to what's currently the present.

[obituarybug]

Everytime I tell someone I'm independent/no party and they immediately start spouting bullshit to me about the importance of voting and why I should vote and that "a vote for third party is a vote for x" an angel loses its wings

Like sorry I wasn't aware that only Republicans & Democrats are allowed to vote for their respective parties and independents can't and that if they see you're registered independent they fucking rip up your ballot in front of you and don't count it

I AM STILL GOING TO FUCKING VOTE SHUT YOUR BITCH ASS UP.

[emma-engels]

Does anyone know if there's some petition against juries voting in Eurovision (or at least something that suggests that their votes would weigh WAY less)? Because I'm truly tired of this bullshit.

I'm so fucking sad about Finland being robbed. I don't think that I've ever been that mad about Eurovision's results before.

[nb2000]

Really starting to regret voting for Finland over Sweden last weekend. People are being such sore losers and some comments about Loreen have crossed the line into misogyny. Shameful behaviour for a contest that's supposed to be about fostering unity.

[hearteyeslikeafooligan]

Do yyou see this? Do you SEE how huge the difference is between Democrats and Republicans currently? Do you SEE how much of a difference it makes when you don't get out to vote for Democrats to prevent shit like this?

I never want to hear conservatives go on about repressive censorship in China, North Korea, and Iran ever again

[heritageposts]

🇵🇸 From the second ESC semi-final: man waves a small Palestinian flag during Israel's performance, and is immediately escorted out by security

I've seen people try to excuse this by saying there's always been a list of approved flags for Eurovision.

And yes, while it's true that ESC has had an official flag policy for years now—with nation flags either limited to those with UN status, or to participating countries—it's also something that has only been selectively enforced in the past, and never which the kind of hostility we're seeing in Malmö right now.

The first time I remember hearing about the Eurovision flag policy was in 2016, when a Sami artist was representing Norway. The Norwegian broadcaster of ESC, NRK, reported then that the Semi flag was "technically" banned from the ESC arena, but that, according to ESC's the former head of communications, it would be up to the security at the arena whether they enforced this ban or not:

The music competition's rules state that it is only permitted to use flags from the participating countries, from countries that have previously participated, or from countries that are full members of the UN. It is therefore not allowed to wave the Sami flag when Agnete goes on stage on 14 May in Stockholm. - Technically speaking, that is correct, as the Sami flag is not part of the UN or is represented in the Eurovision Song Contest. I understand that the question can arouse emotions as Agnete has Sami roots, says Paul Jordan, communications manager for the Eurovision Song Contest to Sameradion in Sweden When asked what might happen if the public shows up with a Sami flag during the competition, the communications manager says that it will be up to the doormen to decide. - Technically, it is not allowed according to the current rules. Right now I don't know what would have happened at the entrance. Technically, it can be confiscated, but I cannot guarantee that, says Jordan to Sameradion.

I could write several paragraphs about just how revolting it is that the Sami flag was even banned to begin with (they reverted it in 2016, after months of backlash), but the point I want to drive home right now is that there is nothing "apolitical" about the EBU's flag policy, or the way it is enforced.

Reminder again to BOYCOTT EUROVISION 🇵🇸

Don't watch, don't vote.

[jorindasfate]

My university history course literature includes a book on women's history. Entirely written by two men. It has a whole chapter on "transgender history". The first person they bring up is Ulrika Eleonora Stålhammar, a swedish woman from the late 17th- early 18th century who started dressing as a man and took a male name to marry her wife Maria Lönman. After ten years or so she started presenting herself as a woman again. These men are SO confused as to why. Why would she ever stop living as a man? And if she was a lesbian, why bother living as a man in the first place, considering female homosexuality was never formally outlawed in Sweden? The entire time they refer to her as a trans man.

Why oh why could a woman in the 18th century possibly be uncomfortable living as a woman? Why oh why would a woman in the 18th century not just live openly as a lesbian? What reason could she POSSIBLY have had to pretend to be a man? Nah, no critical thinking here. She was obviously a man all along, that's the only reasonable explanation. This is what they're making university students read for history.

Stop discrediting these brave women. I know you think you're being inclusive and progressive by imagining they were Actually trans, but you're not. All you're doing is perpetuating the myth that all women are and were submissive and content in their role as second class citizens (if even that). If every female person who was gender nonconforming in the Olden Times was actually a man all along then the actual women didn't have it that bad, right? They never rebelled against their societal roles before the women's voting right movements, right??

[useless-catalanfacts]

Sweden saying they'll vote against allowing the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the European Union Parliament because "there's lots of minority languages and we can't allow them all" is so funny because CATALAN HAS MORE SPEAKERS THAN SWEDISH

Catalan is the 13th most spoken language in the EU. It has more than 10 million speakers, which means it has more speakers than other languages that are already official EU languages like Maltese (530,000), Estonian (1.2 million), Latvian (1.5 million), Irish (1.6 million), Slovene (2.5 million), Lithuanian (3 million), Slovak (5 million), Finnish (5.8 million), Danish (6 million), Swedish (10 million), and Bulgarian (10 million).

Neither Galician (3 million) nor Basque (750,000) would still be the least spoken languages to be allowed in the EU representative bodies.

But even if any of them did, so what? Why do speakers of smaller languages deserve less rights than those of bigger languages? How are we supposed to feel represented by the EU Parliament when our representatives aren't even allowed to speak our language, but the dominant groups can speak theirs?

It all comes down to the hatred of language/cultural diversity and the belief that it's an inconvenience, that only the languages of independent countries have any kind of value while the rest should be killed off. After all, isn't that what Sweden has been trying to do to the indigenous Sami people for centuries?

[holyprincenerd]

yes yes rigged this cha cha that but please let’s not ignore this right now:

https://www.aftonbladet.se/podcasts/ab/episode/355975 Swedish “eurovision expert” Tobbe Ek (for those of you who aren’t Swedish, this is the same guy who accused Måneskin of doing coke on live tv back in 2021) and his posse of minions decided that it was time to spread some absolutely hateful rhetoric against the people of Finland by calling them shitty, idiotic, telling them they should be ashamed of not voting for Sweden (??? literally what???) etc etc, while also dragging in other contestants like Lord of the Lost and insulting them as a means of questioning why the Finnish public voted for them but not for Sweden. (You know. Because it totally doesn’t make any sense at all that a country known for having the most metal bands per capita in the world would vote for Lord of the Lost. Not at all.) 

As the cherry on top of this xenophobic shit cake, they started to go on about how “There’s no way there were ten contestants who were better than Sweden this year.” (Again. Not only disrespecting the other contestants, but them pretending not to grasp the concept of a country known for preferring heavier music choosing to vote mostly for bands this year... Yeah... Couldn’t be their preferences...)

Again, this man is considered a Eurovision expert here in Sweden, yet this is the type of behaviour he and his coworkers display over a nonissue like the Finnish public not voting for Sweden this year. If there’s something shameful here, it’s this.

To reiterate: These are three grown-ass well past 40-year old people having a genuine meltdown over one (1) singular country not voting for them.

Why are we giving Tobbe Ek (and his irrelevant coworkers) a platform, again?

EDIT:

Hoo boy, there’s more. Because of course there is.

ALRIGHT here’s an article from one of our tabloids using quite suspiciously colonialistic sounding rhetoric about Finland being “the kingdom’s previous eastern half”.

https://www.expressen.se/noje/finska-sveket-mot-sverige-gav-noll-poang-efter-uppmaningen-rosta-taktiskt/

The specific quote in Swedish: “Tv-tittarna i tidigare östra rikshalvan gav nämligen Sverige noll(!) poäng under Eurovisionfinalen på lördagen.”

Translation: “TV viewers in [our] kingdom’s previous eastern half gave namely zero(!) points to Sweden during the Eurovision finale on Saturday.”

Yeah, Johan Bratell (the writer of the article) is technically not wrong about Finland having been a part of Sweden. But why bring this up now? This was so clearly meant as a condescending insult.

The article also talks about a throwaway comment that the Finnish commentator Mikko Silvennoinen made about tactical voting (or more specifically, an anonymous comment he read out loud about tactical voting). From my understanding this was a joke reference to the previous elections which took place recently in Finland and forced a portion of the Finnish public to vote tactically as an attempt to block a far-right party from getting into the parliament. It’s embarrassing how much these people are reaching.

And even if they were voting tactically, so what? Sweden won. Why are we so focused on the public vote of one (1) country, Jesus Christ this is embarrassing.

EDIT 2: WHY THIS MATTERS. A LOT.

For those of you who are not in the know about Swedish politics, these statements are reflecting some far-right political views that have their roots all the way back in the times when Sweden ruled over Finland. In recent memory, our far-right political party Sverigedemokraterna claimed that the Swedish minority group Tornedalians are not Swedish, because they may speak local dialects that blend Finnish into Swedish, or speak the minority language Meänkieli. Coincidentally, Meänkieli just so happens to be a minority language that blends Finnish and Swedish, as it is mostly spoken by people who live by the Torneå river, i.e. the Finnish-Swedish border. Here’s an article about this controversy (however you may not be able to read it unless you’re subscribed to said newspaper): https://www.dn.se/asikt/orimligt-att-tornedalingar-inte-skulle-vara-svenskar/?fbclid=IwAR33K_UVRhXlJhyPd3gY7GDXN_lotUdrtM1AeL-nRzWE26Tmq5BFE0lIUzw

Sverigedemokraterna also believe that the Swedish minority group of Sweden Finns should essentially cut their ties to their Finnish roots and that they should not be able to be citizens of both Finland and Sweden. https://aip.nu/sverigedemokraterna-och-de-dubbla-medborgarskapen/

This sort of rhetoric is ridiculously common here, and in situations like the ones that have occurred in light of the ESC, they almost never get called out. Because it’s common. Because it’s okay to call Finnish people names and to use colonial rhetoric against all Finns, both those who live in Finland and those who live in Sweden. Because this is “friendly banter.” Mind you, as someone who technically belongs to both of the aforementioned minority groups I’m completely fine with the actually friendly banter and piss taking that we usually partake in, because it is just that. Friendly. But this is not it. This is actually harmful. I have never seen so many Swedish people attacking Finns on social media as I’ve seen these past few days. The usual colonialistic and fennophobic insults have started to rear their ugly heads: People have started to insult the Finnish language (a fennophobic sentiment that goes way back to the days when Finland was under Swedish rule and the Swedish tried to get rid of the language), they have started to insult the way Finns look (goes back to fennophobic rhetoric of Finns essentially not being “white enough”), etcetera. For more information on how the Swedish government treated the Sweden Finns and Tornedalians (the fact that they tried to abolish both the Meänkieli language and the Finnish language from Sweden and have even done skull measurements as an attempt to prove that these minority groups are not equal to Swedes), here’s another article: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/norrbotten/regeringen-tillsatter-sanningskommission

For those of you who speak Finnish and are interested in the topic, the book Kansankodin pimeämpi puoli by Tapio Tamminen goes into both issues, with photographic evidence of skull measurement incidents among other things. Meanwhile, the Finnish media is mostly just reporting on the tomfoolery of these “journalists.” Sure, there are a lot of Finns who are acting out as well and spreading hateful rhetoric against Swedes, but the difference here is that one group is punching up, while the other is punching down.

Whether Tobbe Ek, Jenny Ågren, Markus Larsson and Johan Bratell meant to cause this does not matter. They’ve still done it, in the case of the former group, they’ve even dragged other Europeans (and Australians!) into this mess.

They’ve gone ahead and spread fennophobic rhetoric on huge platforms: Sweden’s biggest national tabloids. They should be held accountable for this.

To reiterate: ALL THIS OVER THE FINNISH PUBLIC “NOT VOTING FOR SWEDEN” DURING THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST OF 2023.

Edit 3: Just in case we need a bit of clarification:

I know this whole post may come across quite negatively. So let me make this clear: There is an issue with the Swedish culture and its normalisation of fennophobia, however, that doesn’t mean every Swede is maliciously fennophobic. It’s literally just so normalised here, that sometimes people don’t even notice when they’re partaking in it, and because of said normalisation, for many these fennophobic and colonialist insults have become a sort of knee jerk reaction to when there’s “actual beef” with Finland. (Which, obviously, is a fucking problem, because look who has to bear the brunt of that.) 

Moreover, many Swedes aren’t even familiar with their shared history with Finland, and the discrimination Finland was put through during the Swedish rule (not to mention the discrimination the Sweden Finns and Tornedalians have had to face and still face). That part of our shared history simply isn’t taught in schools here, so a regular person would have to know to go out and look for the information. Heck, the only reason I’m aware of this is because at the end of the day, despite having been born and raised in Sweden, I am ethnically Finnish, and grew up by the border with very strong ties to the Finnish culture because of it. But less about me, and more about this issue. Most Swedes (and Swedish journalists who have any sort of sense in them and who work for respectable publications) have expressed their dissatisfaction with this years results as well. There’s a reason Cha Cha Cha is charting so well on Swedish Spotify. There’s a reason for why the Swedish jury and the public gave Finland 12 points.

So, Tl;dr:

1. Swedish tabloids are trash.

2. We have an undeniable problem with how normalised fennophobia is here, and it’s absolutely bizarre that this is how it’s getting exposed.

3. Most regular Swedes aren’t happy with this either, and are in fact not Finland’s and the Finnish people’s greatest haters in the world.

4. Tobbe Ek should get fired. At the bare minimun, he and his coworkers should probably issue some sort of apology for spreading this, seeing how it is actually hurting a lot of people.

Anyway, please don’t hate on the Swedes because of this lol, think about what Jere from Vantaa would think about that. 💚

[sflow-er]

Friendly reminder to vote against the far right in the European elections

If you are an EU citizen, you have probably noticed that the European elections will be held in the new week, 6 to 9 June depending on where you are. In some countries, early voting is already underway.

The polls are predicting a landslide for the far and extreme right, reflecting the current political trend across Europe. They may even outnumber the conservatives' EPP.

The good news is that they are currently splintered into a few different parliament groups and unaffiliated/non-inscrit parties. The bad news is that the EPP is now willing to work with some of them instead of reaching out to the centre or left. This cooperation between the conservative and far right will significantly impact the legislation that can be passed by the new Parliament, as well as the agenda of the new Commission (similar to a national government; the presumptive head of the Commission will negotiate with the groups after the election to gain their support).

If that sounds concerning to you, find out how to vote here.

If you don't know who to vote for, here are my three tips:

1 - Each party in your country probably has a platform/agenda listing their main objectives/focus areas for the EU elections on their website. Compare the parties that might appeal to you. Due to how the votes are counted (more info here), the choice of party is more important than the choice of candidate!

2 - Look to NGOs for guidance. They often list focus areas for each election, publish research on how individual MEPs voted in the previous term, and draft pledges that candidates can sign. For example, check out which candidates from your country have signed the ILGA Europe pledge for LGBTQIA+ rights and if others in their party signed it too. Or browse the EU Parliament Scoreboard ranking parliament groups and national parties on climate, nature and pollution legislation in the 2019-2024 election cycle.

3 - In some countries, there are also "Find your candidate" type quizzes that compare your answers to the candidates' answers. E.g. Wahl-O-Mat in Germany, Candidator in France, WhichCandidate in Ireland, valkompasser in Sweden / vaalikoneet in Finland (too many to link). If you know of any others, please put them in the reblogs! Remember to check if the quiz or its provider has a political affiliation (the ones linked above seemed impartial, but it's good to double check). I also recommend taking a look at the best-matched candidates' websites/social media to confirm your choice.

--

Reblogs for wider reach are much appreciated! Every vote counts, especially in an election with low turnout.

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Cliff Edwards - When You Wish Upon a Star 1940

"When You Wish Upon a Star" is a song written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington for the 1940 Disney animated film Pinocchio. It was sung by Cliff Edwards in the character of Jiminy Cricket, and is heard over the opening credits and in the final scene of the film. It won the 1940 Academy Award for Best Original Song, and was therefore the first Disney song to win an Oscar. "When You Wish Upon a Star" is widely considered as the signature song of The Walt Disney Company and is often used as such in the production logos at the beginning of many Disney films since the 1980s.

Harline and Washington delivered "When You Wish Upon a Star" to the Pinocchio story crew in early autumn 1938, and they recognized it right away as a spotlight song that should be given prominence in the film. Disney decided that the song should play over the opening credits, and used as a musical theme throughout the film. The Library of Congress deemed Edwards's recording of the song "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and inducted it into the National Recording Registry in 2009. The American Film Institute ranked "When You Wish Upon a Star" seventh in their 100 Greatest Songs in Film History, the highest ranked of only four Disney animated film songs to appear on the list.

In Japan, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark, the song has become a Christmas song. The song features in Disney's one-hour Christmas special From All of Us to All of You, originally broadcast in 1958 in the US, but now considered a Christmas tradition in the Nordic countries, where it is broadcast on Christmas Eve every year since 1959. 🎄⭐

"When You Wish Upon a Star" recieved a total of 65,8% yes votes!

[tampon-on-the-sidewalk]

There's still so much time left but I want y'all to know that I ran this same poll in a Eurovision facebook group and the result is almost the exact opposite of what it is now which I just find bonkers.

To clarify- if someone kidnapped you and the only way to be free was to sing one of these songs perfectly from memory, no matter how much you loved or hated these songs, which one would you sing?

[niuniente]

Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper Eurovision specialists Markus Larsson and Tobbe Ek  are letting out unbelievable butt hurt shit towards Finland because Finland didn’t give any televote points to Sweden. They spoke in Aftonbladet’s Schlagerkoll’s podcast titled Sorry, not sorry, Finland and this is what they said:

Finnish people didn’t vote for Loreen because we’re jealous of Sweden and everything they’ve got

Finnish people thought that 10 other songs were better than Loreen, like Lord of The Lost’s song, and this is a crime against Sweden!

-Since we didn’t give any points to Sweden it is just right that we lost because we’ve got a bad attitude (aka  Finnish people can’t decide what they like or don’t like but they must always like all Sweden’s entries no matter what.)

Europe wanted Käärijä to win but you know what? Audience isn’t always right. The jury must stay there to show what the audience needs because they can’t decide themselves.

How Finnish people voted is a proof that jury points can’t be taken away from Eurovision, because again, the audience doesn’t know the best what it wants.

If jury is taken away from Eurovision, it would force Sweden to plan again what kind of songs they can send to Eurovision to maximize their chances for winning (because Europeans are fickle and the audience doesn’t know the best)

-Käärijä is nothing but a partying salad bowl and you know what Finland; Fuck them (a literal quote!)

Also, in other newspaper, Swedish media called Finland as “kingdom’s old Eastern parts”. That’s equal for England calling India as their old South-Asian parts or any other colonialist country calling their prior parts and now independent countries as their own. Very racists and colonialist. I’m horrified to see such remarks just casually thrown out in Swedish media! Come on, Sweden! You’re better than than a racist country! At least you should be! D:

All this and only because people have been genuinely upset and angry that Käärijä didn’t win and televoting meant nothing, but the Swedish media and Eurovision staff is taking it on Finland and blaming it is just us who are upset.

Tell me again how this is just a song contest and I shouldn’t be upset :)))

This year’s Eurovision has been an absolute disaster...

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 2, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 03, 2024

Today is the one-hundredth anniversary of the Indian Citizenship Act, which declared that “all non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided, That the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property.”

That declaration had been a long time coming. The Constitution, ratified in 1789, excluded “Indians not taxed” from the population on which officials would calculate representation in the House of Representatives. In the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, the Supreme Court reiterated that Indigenous tribes were independent nations. It called Indigenous peoples equivalent to “the subjects of any other foreign Government.” They could be naturalized, thereby becoming citizens of a state and of the United States. And at that point, they “would be entitled to all the rights and privileges which would belong to an emigrant from any other foreign people.”

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, established that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But it continued to exclude “Indians not taxed” from the population used to calculate representation in the House of Representatives.

In 1880, John Elk, a member of the Winnebago tribe, tried to register to vote, saying he had been living off the reservation and had renounced the tribal affiliation under which he was born. In 1884, in Elk v. Wilkins, the Supreme Court affirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution did not cover Indigenous Americans who were living under the jurisdiction of a tribe when they were born. In 1887 the Dawes Act provided that any Indigenous American who accepted an individual land grant could become a citizen, but those who did not remained noncitizens. 

As Interior Secretary Deb Haaland pointed out today in an article in Native News Online, Elk v. Wilkins meant that when Olympians Louis Tewanima and Jim Thorpe represented the United States in the 1912 Olympic games in Stockholm, Sweden, they were not legally American citizens. A member of the Hopi Tribe, Tewanima won the silver medal for the 10,000 meter run. 

Thorpe was a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, and in 1912 he won two Olympic gold medals, in Classic pentathlon—sprint hurdles, long jump, high jump, shot put, and middle distance run—and in decathlon, which added five more track and field events to the Classic pentathlon. The Associated Press later voted Thorpe “The Greatest Athlete of the First Half of the Century” as he played both professional football and professional baseball, but it was his wins at the 1912 Olympics that made him a legend. Congratulating him on his win, Sweden’s King Gustav V allegedly said, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”  

Still, it was World War I that forced lawmakers to confront the contradiction of noncitizen Indigenous Americans. According to the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, more than 11,000 American Indians served in World War I: nearly 5,000 enlisted and about 6,500 were drafted, making up a total of about 25% of Indigenous men despite the fact that most Indigenous men were not citizens. 

It was during World War I that members of the Choctaw and Cherokee Nations began to transmit messages for the American forces in a code based in their own languages, the inspiration for the Code Talkers of World War II. In 1919, in recognition of “the American Indian as a soldier of our army, fighting on foreign fields for liberty and justice,” as General John Pershing put it, Congress passed a law to grant citizenship to Indigenous American veterans of World War I. 

That citizenship law raised the question of citizenship for those Indigenous Americans who had neither assimilated nor served in the military. The non-Native community was divided on the question; so was the Native community. Some thought citizenship would protect their rights, while others worried that it would strip them of the rights they held under treaties negotiated with them as separate and sovereign nations and was a way to force them to assimilate. 

On June 2, 1924, Congress passed the measure, its supporters largely hoping that Indigenous citizenship would help to clean up the corruption in the Department of Indian Affairs. The new law applied to about 125,000 people out of an Indigenous population of about 300,000.

But in that era, citizenship did not confer civil rights. In 1941, shortly after Elizabeth Peratrovich and her husband, Roy, both members of the Tlingit Nation, moved from Klawok, Alaska, to the city of Juneau, they found a sign on a nearby inn saying, “No Natives Allowed.” This, they felt, contrasted dramatically with the American uniforms Indigenous Americans were wearing overseas, and they said as much in a letter to Alaska’s governor, Ernest H. Gruening. The sign was “an outrage,” they wrote. “The proprietor of Douglas Inn does not seem to realize that our Native boys are just as willing as the white boys to lay down their lives to protect the freedom that he enjoys." 

With the support of the governor, Elizabeth started a campaign to get an antidiscrimination bill through the legislature. It failed in 1943, but passed the House in 1945 as a packed gallery looked on. The measure had the votes to pass in the Senate, but one opponent demanded: "Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?"

Elizabeth Peratrovich had been quietly knitting in the gallery, but during the public comment period, she said she would like to be heard. She crossed the chamber to stand by the Senate president. “I would not have expected,” she said, “that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with five thousand years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights.” She detailed the ways in which discrimination daily hampered the lives of herself, her husband, and her children. She finished to wild applause, and the Senate passed the nation’s first antidiscrimination act by a vote of 11 to 5. 

Indigenous veterans came home from World War II to discover they still could not vote. In Arizona, Maricopa county recorder Roger G. Laveen refused to register returning veterans of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, including Frank Harrison, to vote. He cited an earlier court decision saying Indigenous Americans were “persons under guardianship.” They sued, and the Arizona Supreme Court agreed that the phrase only applied to judicial guardianship.  

In New Mexico, Miguel Trujillo, a schoolteacher from Isleta Pueblo who had served as a Marine in World War II, sued the county registrar who refused to enroll him as a voter. In 1948, in Trujillo v. Garley, a state court agreed that the clause in the New Mexico constitution prohibiting “Indians not taxed” from voting violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments by placing a unique requirement on Indigenous Americans. It was not until 1957 that Utah removed its restrictions on Indigenous voting, the last of the states to do so.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act protected Native American voting rights along with the voting rights of all Americans, and they, like all Americans, are affected by the Supreme Court’s hollowing out of the law and the wave of voter suppression laws state legislators who have bought into Trump’s Big Lie have passed since 2021. Voter ID laws that require street addresses cut out many people who live on reservations, and lack of access to polling places cuts out others. 

Katie Friel and Emil Mella Pablo of the Brennan Center noted in 2022 that, for example, people who live on Nevada’s Duckwater reservation have to travel 140 miles each way to get to the closest elections office. “As the first and original peoples of this land, we have had only a century of recognized citizenship, and we continue to face systematic barriers when exercising the fundamental and hard-fought-for right to vote,” Democratic National Committee Native Caucus chair Clara Pratte said in a press release from the Democratic Party.

As part of the commemoration of the Indian Citizenship Act, the Democratic National Committee is distributing voter engagement and protection information in Apache, Ho-Chunk, Hopi, Navajo, Paiute, Shoshone, and Zuni.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[justinspoliticalcorner]

WaPo: How car bans and heat pump rules drive voters to the far right

Shannon Osaka at WaPo:

More than a decade ago, the Netherlands embarked on a straightforward plan to cut carbon emissions. Its legislature raised taxes on natural gas, using the money earned to help Dutch households install solar panels. By most measures, the program worked: By 2022, 20 percent of homes in the Netherlands had solar panels, up from about 2 percent in 2013. Natural gas prices, meanwhile, rose by almost 50 percent. But something else happened, according to a new study. The Dutch families who were most vulnerable to the increase in gas prices — renters who paid their own utility bills — drifted to the right. Families facing increased home energy costs became 5 to 6 percent more likely to vote for one of the Netherlands’ far-right parties. A similar backlash is happening all over Europe, as far-right parties position themselves in opposition to green policies. In Germany, a law that would have required homeowners to install heat pumps galvanized the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, giving it a boost. Farmers have rolled tractors into Paris to protest E.U. agricultural rules, and drivers in Italy and Britain have protested attempts to ban gas-guzzling cars from city centers.

That resurgence of the right could slow down the green transition in Europe, which has been less polarized on global warming, and serves as a warning to the United States, where policies around electric vehicles and gas stoves have already sparked a backlash. The shift also shows how, as climate policies increasingly touch citizens’ lives, even countries whose voters are staunchly supportive of clean energy may hit roadblocks. “This has really expanded the coalition of the far right,” said Erik Voeten, a professor of geopolitics at Georgetown University and the author of the new study on the Netherlands.

Other studies have found similar results. In one study in Milan, researchers at Bocconi University studied the voting patterns of drivers whose cars were banned from the city center for being too polluting. These drivers, who on average lost the equivalent of $4,000 because of the ban, were significantly more likely to vote for the right-wing Lega party in subsequent elections. In Sweden, researchers found that low-income families facing high electricity prices were also more likely to turn toward the far right. Far-right parties in Europe have started to position themselves against climate action, expanding their platforms from anti-immigration and anti-globalization. A decade ago, the Dutch right-wing Party for Freedom emphasized that it wasn’t against renewable energy — just increasing energy prices. But by 2021, the party’s manifesto had moved to more extreme language. “Energy is a basic need, but climate madness has turned it into a very expensive luxury item,” the manifesto said. “The far right has increasingly started to campaign on opposition to environmental policies and climate change,” Voeten said.

The pushback also reflects, in part, how much Europe has decarbonized. More than 60 percent of the continent’s electricity already comes from renewable sources or nuclear power; so meeting the European Union’s climate goals means tacklingother sectors — transportation, buildings, agriculture.

[...] Some of these voting patterns have also played out in the United States. According to a study by the Princeton political scientist Alexander Gazmararian, historically-Democratic coal communities that lost jobs in the shift to natural gas increased their support for Republican candidates by 5 percent. The shift was larger in areas located farther from new gas power plants — that is, areas where voters couldn’t see that it was natural gas, not environmental regulations, that undercut coal.

Gazmararian says that while climate denial and fossil fuel misinformation have definitely played a role, many voters are motivated simply by their own financial pressures. “They’re in an economic circumstance where they don’t have many options,” he said. The solution, experts say, is todesign policies that avoid putting too much financial burden on individual consumers. In Germany, where the law to install heat pumps would have cost homeowners $7,500 to $8,500 more than installing gas boilers, policymakers quickly retreated. But by that point, far-right party membership had already surged.

The Washington Post explains what may be at least partially causing the rise of far-right extremist parties in Europe, Conservatives in Canada, and the Republicans in some parts of the US: rising energy costs that low-income people are bearing the brunt of.

In the US, right-wing hysteria about gas stove bans and electric vehicles are also playing a role.