These days, burnout from the pace and tone of national politics is common. But being burned out on a national level isn’t excuse to not vote. So many important choices are made at the state and local level, which in turn shape federal laws, and very often, local politicians or judges grow up to become national ones. If anything, local political engagement is a great antidote for your burnout — the policies generally affect your personal day-to-day life a lot more, and it’s easier to see the impact of your efforts.
So, what kinds of things are determined at a state or local level that you can have a direct hand in by voting? Here are a few that might inspire you to get involved — or, at the very least, vote in the upcoming midterms:
Mental health services. Do you want people to have better access to mental health services? Of course you do! According to Mental Health America, state and local level policies have the biggest impact on access to mental health care through things like allocating resources and services that provide timely treatment to those in need. “States that took aggressive policy changes, such as the implementation of The Mental Health Services Act in California, resulted in significant changes in access to care,” the website says. Here’s a look at statewide mental health budgets and care from a few years ago, to get an idea of what that looks like, and here’s a more in-depth look at state-specific data.
Vaccines. Turns out, arguing with your high school friend about why they should vaccinate their child isn’t the only way. Your state decides who needs a vaccine, when they need it, and what exactly qualifies as an exemption. Check out a map of every state’s vaccination requirements and get a more in-depth look at your local laws here.
Local and city parks. If you like having green spaces near you (and you should, tbh), then you can vote for a local politician who makes it a priority. In most major cities like New York, who you vote for for city council and/or mayor will directly influence the creation and maintenance of your parks. Find out if your mayor is an advocate of parks here, and see what local zoning issues are up for a vote this year here.
Noise ordinances. Your municipal government decides when airplanes can fly overhead, how loud you can play your music, when you can mow your lawn, the works. Not only will quieter streets help you and your neighbors sleep a little better, but it also will ideally cut down on noise pollution, which endangers wildlife, among many other negative consequences.
Renewable energy. Cities in particular have the power to turn back the negative effects of urban waste.
Whether or not you can beekeep or raise your own chickens. Having fresh honey and eggs from your backyard is a great way to level up your life, but whether or not you can do this at home is often determined at the municipal level based on health and zoning laws. Find out more about pet chickens here and beekeeping here.
Recycling options and collection. While the EPA oversees things like landfill regulation and recycling goals, it’s up to individual states, municipalities, or counties to decide what can be recycled and how it should be done. Find out more about your state-wide recycling bans and policies here.
Cannabis. Legalizing it is a state issue, so voting for state senators and representatives will help a lot if you’re hoping to change your state’s law on it. Here’s a map of states that have legalized marijuana, and here’s a comprehensive list of upcoming elections that could decide the issue near you.
This is just a sampling; if there’s a cause you feel passionate about, chances are, a local politician or body makes legislation on it.
WATCH THIS: MAN SHUTS DOWN ANTISEMITIC WHITE POWER PREACHER
One of my friends in the Boston area took this video and gave me permission to post it. She writes: “ I stood there for twenty minutes, easily. Hitler Youth kept trying to preach about “the evils of the Jews” and the big guy barely let him get a word in edgewise. At one point, the big guy yelled, “I will be here ALL DAY” and the crowd cheered.”
I promise this will be the best thing you see today.
Where’s a goddamn bullhorn when you need it?
wow that preacher is probably shitting his pants low key with some big ass biker that close to his face
Caption for those who need it– the guy in the suit is saying shit like “all races must serve us as put here by God” and a lot of racist/anti Semitic drivel.
Every time he opens his mouth to speak though, the biker yells “AHHHHHHH!!!” Until the man in the suit shuts up again. When the man in the suit takes a breath and opens his mouth, the biker doesn’t even let him get started and just screams “AHHHHH”…. This happens a few times.
The guy in the suit plows ahead but the biker screams and says “No no no no!!!”
I love biker dude
Make racists afraid again.
Um, sorry, but the guy in the suit deserves to speak his opinions. How’d you like to get screamed at everything time you spoke about what you are passionate about? I’m not saying I agree with his opinion, but that doesn’t make shutting him down like this right. Freedom of Speech. Just agree to disagree and walk away.
1) Freedom of Speech means you have the right to speak your mind without being punished or censored by the government. It does not mean other people have to listen to you, and it does not mean they can’t yell over you if you’re saying something disgusting and inflammatory. The Biker Dude has just as much right to do what he’s doing as the Neo-Nazi. Nobody’s right is being infringed upon here.
2) The guy is “passionate about” hating and inciting violence against Jews. I’m passionate about information literacy, candle-making, and giving snuggles to my pet rabbit. There’s a fucking difference, there.
3) “Agree to disagree” is something you say when two people can’t come to a consensus over whether or not The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie. It’s not something you say when one person is Jewish and the other person believes Jews are a evil satanic cabal trying to enslave the white race who must be stopped at all costs. That’s not an “agree to disagree” topic. We don’t “agree to disagree” over the issue of whether or not Jews are people. We don’t “agree to disagree” over whether or not black people, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ folks, etc. are deserving of basic human rights. These things are not up for debate, and there is no middle-ground to be had with people who think otherwise.
“I can’t remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you’re saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it’s not literally illegal to express.” – Randall Munroe
@xmasterassassinx he is allowed to speak his mind! and Badass Biker Bro is allowed to scream at him until he shuts his ugly face and goes back to the sewer with the rest of the slime
it’s hilarious to me when people call historical fashions that men hated oppressive
like in BuzzFeed’s Women Wear Hoop Skirts For A Day While Being Exaggeratedly Bad At Doing Everything In Them video, one woman comments that she’s being “oppressed by the patriarchy.” if you’ve read anything Victorian man ever said about hoop skirts, you know that’s pretty much the exact opposite of the truth
thing is, hoop skirts evolved as liberating garment for women. before them, to achieve roughly conical skirt fullness, they had to wear many layers of petticoats (some stiffened with horsehair braid or other kinds of cord). the cage crinoline made their outfits instantly lighter and easier to move in
it also enabled skirts to get waaaaay bigger. and, as you see in the late 1860s, 1870s, and mid-late 1880s, to take on even less natural shapes. we jokingly call bustles fake butts, but trust me- nobody saw them that way. it was just skirts doing weird, exciting Skirt Things that women had tons of fun with
men, obviously, loathed the whole affair
(1864)
(1850s. gods, if only crinolines were huge enough to keep men from getting too close)
(no date given, but also, this is 100% impossible)
(also undated, but the ruffles make me think 1850s)
it was also something that women of all social classes- maids and society ladies, enslaved women and free women of color -all wore at one point or another. interesting bit of unexpected equalization there
and when bustles came in, guess what? men hated those, too
(1880s)
(probably also 1880s? the ladies are being compared to beetles and snails. in case that was unclear)
(1870s, I think? the bustle itself looks early 1870s but the tight fit of the actual gown looks later)
hoops and bustles weren’t tools of the patriarchy. they were items 1 and 2 on the 19th century’s “Fashion Trends Women Love That Men Hate” lists, with bonus built-in personal space enforcement
Gonna add something as someone who’s worn a lot of period stuff for theatre:
The reason you suck at doing things in a hoop skirt is because you’re not used to doing things in a hoop skirt.
The first time I got in a Colonial-aristocracy dress I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The construction didn’t actually allow me to raise my arms all the way over my head (yes, that’s period-accurate). We had one dresser to every two women, because the only things we could put on ourselves were our tights, shifts, and first crinoline. Someone else had to lace our corsets, slip on our extra crinolines, hold our arms to balance us while a second person actually put the dresses on us like we were dolls, and do up our shoes–which we could not put on ourselves because we needed to be able to balance when the dress went on. My entire costume was almost 40 pounds (I should mention here that many of the dresses were made entirely of upholstery fabric), and I actually did not have the biggest dress in the show.
We wore our costumes for two weeks of rehearsal, which is quite a lot in university theatre. The first night we were all in dress, most of the ladies went propless because we were holding up our skirts to try and get a feel for both balance and where our feet were in comparison to where it looked like they should be. I actually fell off the stage.
By opening night? We were square-dancing in the damn things. We had one scene where our leading man needed to whistle, but he didn’t know how and I was the only one in the cast loud enough to be heard whistling from under the stage, so I was also commando-crawling underneath him at full speed trying to match his stage position–while still in the dress. And petticoats. And corset. Someone took my shoes off for that scene so I could use my toes to propel myself and I laid on a sheet so I wouldn’t get the dress dirty, but that was it–I was going full Solid Snake in a space about 18″ high, wearing a dress that covered me from collarbones to floor and weighed as much as a five-year-old child. And it worked beautifully.
These women knew how to wear these clothes. It’s a lot less “restrictive” when it’s old hat.
I have worn hoop skirts a lot, especially in summer. I still wear hoop skirts if I’m going to be at an event where I will probably be under stage lights. (For example, Vampire Ball.)
I can ride public transportation while wearing them. I can take a taxi while wearing them. I can go on rides at Disneyland while wearing them. Because I’ve practiced wearing them and twisting the rigid-but-flexible skirt bones so I can sit on them and not buffet other people with my skirts.
Hoop skirts are awesome.
Hoop skirts are also air conditioning. If you ever go to reenactments in the South, particularly in summer, you’ll notice a lot of ladies gently swaying in their big 1860s skirts – because it fans all the sweaty bits. You’ll be much cooler in a polished cotton gown with full sleeves, ruffles, and hoopskirt than in a riding jacket and trousers, let me promise you! (This is part of the reason many enslaved women also enthusiastically preferred larger skirts – they had more to do than sit in the shade, but they’d get a bit of a breeze from the hoops’ movement as they were walking.)
They’re also – and I can’t emphasize enough how important this is – really easy to pee in. If you’re in split-crotch drawers (which, until at least the 1890s, you were), you can take an easy promenade a few feet away from the gents and then squat down and pee in pretty much total privacy. It gives so much freedom in travel when it’s not a problem to pee most anywhere.
People also don’t realize that corsets themselves were a HUGE HUGE IMPROVEMENT over previous support-garment styles – and if you have large breasts that don’t naturally float freely above your ribcage (which some people’s do! but it’s not that common), corsets are often an improvement over modern bras.
They hold up the breasts from underneath, taking the weight of them off your back. Most historical corset styles don’t have shoulder straps, so you’re not bearing the weight of your breast there, either, and you can raise your arms as far as your dress’s shoulder line allows (which is the actually restrictive bit – in my 1830s dress, literally all I can do is work in my lap, but in my 1890s dress I can paddle a kayak or draw a longbow with no trouble. Both in a full corset). They support your back and reduce the physical effort it takes to not slouch, helping avoid back pain. They’re rigid enough that you don’t usually have to adjust your clothing to keep it where it belongs. They’re flexible – if you’re having a bloaty PMS day you just … don’t lace it as tightly, and if your back muscles are sore you can lace it a little tighter. And you can undo a cup (or, y’know, not have breast cups) to nurse a baby without losing any of the structural integrity of the garment.
I do educational/historical dressing and people are really insistent, like, “The corset was invented by a man, wasn’t it?” “Actually, women were at the forefront of changing undergarment styles throughout the 19th century!” “But it’s true that it was invented by a man.”
Uh, well, it’s hard to say who “invented” the style but it’s very likely that women’s dressmakers mostly innovated women’s corsets and men’s tailors mostly innovated men’s corsets, honey. Because those exist too.
Also? These fashions are about taking up space. They’re about being loud and visible and saying HERE I AM. About saying “I’m so rich, I need someone to help me dress every morning.” And about saying, “I am not solely here for male consumption”–there’s a reason so many cartoons lampooning women’s fashion are about how hard those ladies are to kiss, and how impossible it’d be to have a quick fuck in them. (Which it actually isn’t, but that’s beside the point)
Historical women’s fashions aren’t 100% unproblematic and absolutely wonderful. They make stark class distinctions incredibly visible, because you simply cannot wear some of these dresses and keep them maintained without a private staff to do a ton of work for you. They upheld a standard of femininity a lot of women were excluded from. They limited women’s and girls’ participation in sports and athletics.
The tournament, held in Queens, New York, has been plagued by an unrelenting heat wave with temperatures soaring upward of 96 degrees Tuesday, with a heat index making it feel like over 100 degrees at times.
The players were given a 10-minute break to cool off and rehydrate, during which Alizé Cornet put on a fresh shirt. When she returned to the court, she realized her shirt was on backward. She quickly took off the shirt and put it back on, prompting umpire Christian Rask to hit her with a code violation.
Women’s Tennis Association rules dictate that players may only remove shirts while off-court. No such rules apply to male players, who took their shirts off frequently Tuesday, to deal with the blistering heat.
We know she’s just mad cause they have more melanin than she’s used to seeing
Lol I used to work at target and know for a fact that that’s literally one aisle sandwiched between several containing several an array of bland white dolls why would you fake a struggle like this?? It’s so flawed 😩😂
^^^^^^^
White girls are so pathetic
And…there’s absolutely no reason she couldn’t’ve bought one of those for her cousin, anyway? (I mean, no reason beyond “that cousin is probably being raised just like her and would do terrible things to the doll”)
i found this post on facebook this morning and went to My Generation to tally their dolls by skin color just to see how absolutely out of proportion the OP was blowing things.
they have 106 dolls total on target’s website. 87 of these dolls are white. 46 of those white dolls are blonde. counting all their total dolls of color, you get 19 (and that’s being generous and tallying any exceptionally tan ones). only one of these dolls resembles someone east asian.
so yeah, this lady only found 8 dolls (two of which are from seperate brands) and she’s still steamed when the brand she was looking at has 87 white dolls for her racist ass to choose from.
While Facebook has been reluctant to publicly acknowledge how well Trump used its social network to reach voters, it has celebrated the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign internally as one of the most imaginative uses of the company’s powerful advertising platform. In addition to interviews with Trump campaign staffers and former Facebook employees, BuzzFeed News obtained company presentations and memos that show the social media giant viewed Trump’s campaign as an “innovator” of a fast-moving, test-oriented approach to marketing on Facebook.
Zuckerberg is fucking disgusting and I HATE that I literally can’t stop using his platform because it’s my only access point to shit I need for work. Fuck him.
