ex-friends: why are you mean all of a sudden :^( i think you’re overreacting when you say you don’t want to talk to me just because i support trump! you should try to understand every political view even if you don’t agree!! the only bully over here is you
The electoral college does not vote until December 19th. We have 40 days.
What does this mean?
Right now, the presidential election results are only a PROJECTION of the election outcome. They are PRELIMINARY RESULTS. A candidate still needs to earn 270 electoral votes to win. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, which means that more than 50% of the voters wanted her for president. The electoral college shouldn’t guarantee an override of the public’s opinion– and it doesn’t have to.
There are 21 states that do NOT restrict which candidate the electors vote for. Out of these 21, Hillary lost the following:
As you can see, these states are worth 166 electoral votes. As it currently stands, Hillary Clinton is projected to receive 232 votes. Trump is projected to win 306. This means that 37 votes need to be taken away from Trump to bring him down to 269. Hillary Clinton needs 38 votes ADDED to win 270. These electoral voters can also abstain, which means that they can refuse to vote for either candidate. If 37 of the voters within these states abstain then no candidate will have reached the required 270. In this case, the vote would be taken to the House.
Trump won Pennsylvania, a state that typically votes blue, by less than 100,000 votes. While it is highly unlikely to get all 20 electoral voters to cross party lines and vote democrat, it also isn’t impossible to convince a few of them to be “faithless electors.” We only need to convince 38 out of the 166. That is 23%. There are SIXTEEN states we need to focus our attention on.
A move like this would be unprecedented. However, as we all saw on November 8th, odds don’t guarantee reality. Trump had a less than 20% chance of winning, yet given the circumstances, enough people came together and made it happen. We can make this happen.
Ask yourself this: What do we have left to lose? We can stay complacent and accept that this country will be run by a racist, sexist, islamophobic, homophobic, ablest bigot, or we can at least try.
How?
SPREAD THE WORD. Trend #NotMyPresident to let people know that we do not accept being led by a man who does not care about our wellbeing. Email your professors, email the dean of your colleges. The last thing a university wants is negative press. Millennials can take a stand, but that doesn’t mean we have to be the only ones. Church-led events helped bring a lot of disillusioned voters to the polls. Spread the word in any way possible, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or even in person. Stage a peaceful protest. Hand out flyers. Let the people around you know that you don’t accept this man as your leader when he won’t even accept you as a citizen with your designated rights.
These 166 people need to face the consequences of electing this man.
Do this for the people who couldn’t vote. Do this for the people who live in the very real fear of being deported. Do this for the people who will have to face the rise in hate crimes. Do this for the people who have a very real possibility of losing their rights. Do this for the people who will no longer be able to afford necessities.
Even if you’re not planning to go anywhere anytime soon.
Passports can be lifesavers – I know they have been for me. They’re internationally recognised ID and can be your ticket out if you need to escape quickly. Most countries in the world allow visa-free travel for American citizens, so you could just drop by whenever.
It usually takes 4-5 weeks, or 2-3 weeks expedited. It may be possible to get it in 5 business days depending on need. They cost $110 (or $80 for those under 16) plus an execution fee of $25 for first-timers. There’s also the cheaper passport card that’s only valid for Canada and Mexico ($30) but if you’re able to I’d recommend getting the passport book because that’s valid in more places. There’s extra fees for expedited passports and priority mail.
Under the current policy, you can obtain a full ten-year passport with an updated gender marker if you have had clinical treatment determined by your doctor to be appropriate in your case to facilitate gender transition. No specific details are required about what type of treatment is appropriate for you.
Under the current policy, a physician certification is required if the documents you submit with your application, which may include a prior passport, driver’s license, birth certificate, or other documents, do not all reflect the correct gender. If all the documents you submit with your application reflect the correct gender, you may not need to submit a physician certification. See the application instructions below for more details.
(There’s a lot more in the link as well as the link above)
You’d want to get your passport as soon as possible before any policy changes that can affect your ability to get ID.
YOU NEED GOOD SECURITY CULTURE. The USA has one of the most powerful anti-radical police states in the world, and they WILL clamp down hard on any opposition, peaceful or otherwise.
Here’s some resources which might help:
privacytools, which should help teach you a bit about encryption and provide you with good starting points for making your communications that little bit harder to detect and read.
Download Tor, a browser which, with a little bit of extra caution will help keep a lot of what you do online secret.
Start using an encrypted messenger app on your phone. Telegram is the most popular, but its encryption is not the best. Personally I recommend using Wire (which also works as a desktop messenger app), or even WhatsApp functions acceptably.
Learn how to use and set up Proxies and a VPN
Start using an encrypted and independent email service. Many radical groups use riseup.net but they are very well known to security services and are monitored more closely than most. Their server ownership is also in question. I use Proton Mail but there are other services too.
For all the potential new activists and anti-fascists, and for the old ones who may need a refresher. Now’s the time to get organized, and learn how to keep safe while doing so.
The United States is safe for us. Checks and balances. The Bill of Rights. But what’s a Bill of Rights without an impartial judiciary to enforce it? What are due process and equal protection without a court order that people actually comply with? Nothing. Abstract principles, nice on paper, meaningless in reality. Hundreds of judges will soon be appointed by a man who said Judge Curiel couldn’t rule on his case because he’s “Mexican.” What kind of judges does that man appoint?Judges who support his agenda, not the rule of law. Judges with no particular interest in protecting people like me.
Every week, the threats roll in. They know where I live, they say. Trump wants people like me gone. Dead. They tell me how they’ll do it. It’s always with a gun. Liberal gay Jews don’t have a place in the new order, they explain. Sometimes it’s almost nonchalant. People like me, they say, just don’t have a place in Trump’s America. Faggot, kike—I’d never heard those words directed at me before this election. Now I see them all the time. They have a place in Trump’s America.
These men convinced you that they speak for you. That the power you’ve given them is used in your interests. (…) For those of you who live to see tomorrow know that you had a choice to see the truth and you let yourselves be convinced otherwise.
If there’s one thing both sides can agree on, is cable news punditry jeopardized our democracy. We don’t have journalists on cable news anymore, we have reality tv hosts and contestants.
Subscribe to your local and/or national newspapers, support local news networks, and turn off cable news, the survival of our democracy depends on it.
I’ve already tweeted about this but here’s a longer post for all naturalized citizens especially those who have been visibly marked a “other” and aren’t part of the “again” when Trump says that he’s making America great “again.”
(All of you sad white liberals can suck it up, buttercups, because some of us have some real work to do to prove that we belong here before President-elect Trump is sworn in. The stuff that applies to you is at the end.)
Trump took the support of white suburban women, those are also the types of women who want to adopt foreign children like they’re some kind of charitable, exotic vase. This does not mean they will necessarily ensure citizenship for their adopted children. For foreign adoptees who were 18 by 2000, you are not covered under the current Child Citizenship Act (2000). If you do not have proof of naturalization and even though you were raised here your entire life, you can be deported:
“Korean American Adoptee Faces Unjust Deportation” (Angry Asian Man, 10/27/2016)
“A South Korean Man Adopted By Americans Prepares for Deportation” (NYT 11/1/2016)
This brings me to the point of my post: naturalized citizens, get proof of citizenship while Obama is still president. Naturalized citizens can use two documents to prove their citizenship: a U.S. passport and a Certificate of Naturalization (N-550, N-750).
U.S. Passport info:
Routine processing for a new passport typically takes 4-5 weeks and there is an expedited processing option (2-3).
Here is a PDF of fees to apply for a new passport or renew your old one: U.S. Passport Fees
Now, onto the Certificate of Naturalization:
The Certificate of U.S. Naturalization (form N-550 or N-570) is a document issued by United States government as proof of a person having obtained U.S. citizenship through naturalization (a legal process of obtaining a new nationality). The Certificate of U.S. Naturalization has been issued since October 1, 1991 by the USCIS, and on or before September 30, 1991 by Federal Courts and particular State Courts. The United States Certificate of Naturalization is proof of an individual’s U.S. citizenship through naturalization. Only naturalized United States citizens can apply for a Certificate of U.S. Naturalization. If you are not a United States citizen, you must first apply for US citizenship.
These were apparently issued in 1991 so the yellowed certificate of my citizenship from the 1980s on yellowing, delicate paper might not cut it. I am applying for a new certificate of naturalization but not before I scan both sides of it and find a notary to sign something that says they saw it.
The fee for another copy of Certificate of Naturalization: $345
Trans* naturalized citizens, you can request a new Certificate of Naturalization due to a legal change in gender. Will this change under a Trump presidency? Who knows? Who wants to risk it?
I saw a lot of white people who were SO SHOCKED and SO SURPRISED their fellow white people voted for Trump. I saw tweets about “hurting” for their friends who were women, immigrant, minority, trans, queer – and god help us if you fall into more than one of those categories. That’s not even to mention the undocumented and those on work or school visas – immigration has a lot of fucking narratives and its time you start realizing that.
So, do you want to help? Here are two ways to start helping your immigrant friends.
First, you can help your naturalized friends by getting their paperwork and money in order: planning, finding a translator, helping with gathering paperwork and looking over their paperwork before its submitted; lending emotional support, accompanying them to immigration services and/or other appointments. Take some of that #ImWithHer sentiments that led you to donate to Hillary’s campaign and buy “nasty women” t-shirts and give your friends cold hard cash so they have proof of citizenship either in the form of a U.S. passport or Certificate of Naturalization.
Second, you can start writing your senator and pressuring them to support of bill S.2275 – Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2015 introduced by Sen. Am Klobuchar (D-MN) designed to prevent the kind of tragedy facing Adam Crapsner in the stories linked above:
This bill amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to grant automatic citizenship to all qualifying children adopted by a U.S. citizen parent, regardless of the date on which the adoption was finalized.
An individual born outside of the United States who was adopted by a U.S. citizen parent shall automatically become a U.S. citizen when the following conditions have been fulfilled:
the individual was adopted by a U.S. citizen before the individual reached age 18,
the individual was physically present in the United States in the citizen parent’s legal custody pursuant to a lawful admission before the individual reached age 18,
the individual never acquired U.S. citizenship before the enactment of this Act, and
the individual was lawfully residing in the United States on the date of enactment of this Act.
An individual who meets such criteria, except for lawfully residing in the United States on the date of enactment of this Act, shall automatically become a U.S. citizen on the date on which the individual is physically present in the United States pursuant to a lawful admission.
Meg's Mumbles 