Dear Seattleites, New Yorkers, and SFers applauding Georgia right now:

It's the exact same f**king state that you shit all over, call two-toothed hicks and all kinds of names when the vote doesn't go your way.

At some point you're gonna need to realize something. 1/x

At some point you gotta realize, that state not a monolith.

I's a diverse population whose community organizers have more progressive badassery in their pinky finger than you have in your whole body.

And you know what else? This'll REALLY blow your mind 2/x

That's ALSO true of ALL THE OTHER SOUTHERN STATES that you think of as "red states"

You know, the ones you shit on when they COLLECTIVELY don't do what you tell them to.

They also have well-organized, progressive populations trapped in gerrymandered political designations. 3/x

Now it's REALLY time for you to take a whole stadium full of seats, because...

Not just today, but throughout American history, activism seeded and pioneered by marginalized people IN THE SOUTH is THE reason that you HAVE a progressive haven from which to shit on them today. 4/x

So rather than conditionally bestow your approval on southern progressivism from a safe blue state where you don't actually have to be all that brave,

Why don't you get out your fat tech money pocket book and give these progressive leaders some actual SUPPORT and ALSO 5/x

Figure out how to RECOGNIZE that there is WORK happening

Work that people with blue state upbringings often don't even GRASP the EXTENT of, the STRATEGY of it, the WORK, the BRILLIANCE

Get off your high horse, learn some history, and have some respect.

You know what I'm not done.

Let's talk about some of the victories that southern progressives achieved in this election that prove the work is being done while yankees are busy paying no attention and getting high and mighty over a single color on the AP map:

1. GA ALSO elected their first openly LGBTQ state senator, Kim Jackson.

2. TN elected TWO openly gay LGBTQ legislators: Torrey Harris and Eddie Mannis.

I grew up in TN, close to Ringgold. If you heard what the MAYORS said about gay folks back then...hoo buddy. This is a change.

3. Florida ALSO elected its first two openly LGBTQ legislators, Shevrin Jones and Michele Rayner.

4. Missouri, which isn't strictly dixie but is sometimes included and which went red for the presidential election, also chose a whole SLEW of progressive measures:

1. Expanded medicaid. Did your state do that?
2. St. Louis chose ranked choice voting for primaries.

This one is a HUGE deal. Single-choice winner-take-all voting FORCES political discourse into two shitty parties that can each just barely coerce about 50% of votes, so...

Local efforts to normalize and demonstrate alternative voting methods are absolutely ESSENTIAL to building an ACTUAL representative government where we get even the VAGUEST SHOT at better legislation than we get from this barely-functioning two-party bullshit.

Also, progressive candidates in northern AND southern states won their primaries this year, not just against republicans, but also against incumbent democrats who hadn't done shit for the struggling communities they represented (but didn't live in) for, like, f**king decades.

More on that: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/08/progressive-democrats-primaries-victories-cori-bush

But the points I hope you remember are that:

1. The work is being done—not for you, certainly not BY you, but by southern progressives whose existence you only acknowledge when it succeeds at the national level, for constituents whose reps, red OR blue, have NEVER helped them.

and...

2. Local elections, ballot measures matter, voting methods, zoning rules...MATTER.

All this "boring" local stuff is our ticket out of the SUPREME boring of a presidential election between two 70 year old white men that nobody really likes.

So pay attention to it.

I'm still not done.

I phone banked in Texas on Monday. I am from Southwestern Louisiana originally, and the district I got was close to there, so I wasn't shocked by the phone conversations I had, but you know what?

I didn't talk to a bunch of Trump fanatics. I talked to...

20/30 somethings who said they weren't voting.

Why weren't they voting? I asked.

"Because none of these candidates are talking about reparations or justice for black people."

And I didn't know their district so I looked it up, and aside from ONE local judge, they were right.

Like, even state legislature representatives could not be arsed to talk about what they're gonna do for black people in Texas.

Like 20% of Texas is black!

(The census says 12.3%. I also know that there's a systematic effort in Texas to get fewer POC to respond to the census).

Southern states aren't "red" states. They're states where activists are not only fighting a gerrymandered system,

but they're also having to spend non-negligible amounts of time begging people who WANT PROGRESSIVE THINGS to vote for shitty democrats who won't help.

This is what these people mean when they say "both sides are the same."

They're not just hick dumbasses who don't read. When it comes to issues that affect THEIR lives, they are often tragically right.

Believe me, I don't believe both sides are the same.

One side has literally made xenohpobic cruelty their official platform

And the other side has a penchant for xenophobic cruelty but, like, behind the scenes. And that's a little easier to back into a corner, is all.

So back to the phone banking. I had calls like this and I thought "The organization I'm making these calls for should probably know about this."

So I looked for a way to tell them.

"Not voting" with a text box explaining why is not an option in the phone banking app.

So then I went on the Zoom and messaged the organizers.

Three times.

No reply.

The next day I got a text message asking how it went.

So I told them.

The response was "Thanks for phone banking! And please remember to tell all your friends and family to get out there and VOTE!"

There was absolutely NO WAY to get ANYONE to LISTEN.

Look, government is better at a lot of things than industry is. I've written 350 blog posts about my field (tech), and solidly 250 of them talk about what a crock it is in one way or another.

But here's one way it beats this system:

If people ain't buyin', the seller knows why, or come hell or high water, they're gonna find out.

And they're gonna do what they can to fix that reason. Maybe it's fixing the product, maybe it's just fixing the perception of the product, but they're gonna do something.

Dems aren't doing that.

And that's JUST as much a reason why the fight in southern states is an uphill one as the rabid trump militias.

And THAT's what southern progressives are succeeding in fixing, at the local level, while no one is looking.

Georgia went blue this time, but it has less to do with the state being progressive than you want to believe.

Because the truth is...Biden ain't progressive.

Georgia, and every southern state, is PLENTY progressive. When candidates speak to that, southerners vote for them.

I don't know why I'm on Twitter this morning giving a free angry political education to smug northern city-dwellers but hopefully somebody learns something

Btw, this thread does NOT endorse "marginalized people in blue states owe it to this country to move to red states and vote there"

I have a WHOLE OTHER rant on THAT idea, which I can't help but notice is peddled by, like, cis het yt men in Brooklyn

YOU move to Arkansas, Colton