Local democracy alive and kicking in Pittsburgh this morning 🇺🇸❤️
Local press also alive and kicking in Pittsburgh! @CPotterPgh & co on the case
I appreciated this voter’s true deep cut in campaign swag
Coda: You always meet the coolest people working the polls. Today: awesome women from @SEIU32BJ_Pgh, a fantastic advocate from @OnePennsylvania, & (classic Pgh) three separate people handing out lit for candidates they had known "since s/he was in diapers"
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The underlying piece here imho is a shift of political weight away from the unions that represent people who build hospitals, towards the unions that (seek to) represent people who labor in them
Health/service sector unions, w/their diverse member base & breadth of priorities that follow, are far better positioned to lead & benefit from coalitions w/the range of groups & actors newly mobilizing around racial disparities, police accountability, & more.
Also: this👇
The developers-trades-professional/managerial class alliance that's been the modal version of Democratc urban power sharing for ~30 ys had few incentives to support political *or* workplace organizing that would empower low-wage workers. That's been costly
Ok I know I tweet so much that, like monkeys w/typewriters, I'm bound to be prescient occasionally but: I will say this thread holds up pretty well 3 ys later
I haven't seen this previously: Greene County GOP is urging No vote on PA Ballot Question 3, claiming (inaccurately) that it seeks to give new rights to "illegal aliens". Is this framing being heard elsewhere in the state? facebook.com/GreeneCoGOP/
For more info on this ballot question see 👇 from @SpotlightPA . @sarahanne_news you wrote that you could not identify any opponents to adding anti-discrimination protections to the PA constitution... I think we just found some opponents for you?
Re-posting bc I just read yet another piece in whch a green-circle insider assures green-circle readers that the reason former Dems in purple circle don't vote for green-circle leaders is those pesky kids in the pink going on about trans rights & truly my head is going to explode
Like the twin decline of the Dem Party+labor movmnt as organizational presences in rural+rustbelt America; the Dem-side failure to compete as RW model honed in talk radio moved into natl then local news: these happened on someone's watch right? & those someones are older than 25?
The lack of meaningful bridges between green & purple—channels that would cultivate & amplify voices of party members from beyond cosmopolitan metros, & give Dems trusted interlocutors to do last-mile comms into a wider breadth of communities—is real & damaging.
Own that.
The Big Lie is still in place because the trusted communication infrastructure that supported & cemented the Big Lie is still in place. If your plans/advice to Dems re future elections aren't grappling w/this ongoing reality, *you're* the one living in a fantasy version of the US
As a Cardcarrying Historian™ I've been thinking a lot about what sources future historians will have to work with in reconstructing this moment: & am struck by how radically different your understanding of just what happened in 2020—& what people thought about—will be, depending
Today I learned that a new anti-racist civic group in an upscale suburb near me, that grew out of a local #BlackLivesMatter protest on June 11, 2020, at the height of George Floyd vigils & solidarity protests nationwide...
... & then carried energy into a campaign to change a derogatory park name over the summer... triblive.com/local/valley-n…
... not only continues to exist but is now hosted events like zoom forums, for community to meet & question local candidates in the upcoming primary. Huh!
I don't think anyone has a clear sense of how widespread this kind of civic consequence of the last spring's protest wave is