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Hello Hillary-supporting community! It’s great to be with you. Let’s get started!
Writing for the Ames Tribune, Austin Harrington reports that Clinton’s Iowa campaign stop was largely focused on the economy:
According to Clinton, her plan would include the largest investment in job creation since World War II.
“How are we going to do that? Well, we’re going to invest in infrastructure,” Clinton said. “These are good jobs and a lot of them are good union jobs with good pay and benefits. See, I have this old fashioned idea that the middle class of America is what makes America’s economy work.”
Clinton added that the attack from Republicans on the working class was also directly related to the attack on unions and the right to organize.
“The American labor movement helped to create the American middle class. So in addition to infrastructure that you can see, we’re going to do water systems, we’re going to do sewer systems, we are also going to build a modern electric grid to take the clean renewable energy that is produced in places like Iowa and make sure it can be distributed where it can be used,” Clinton said.
CNN Money had a rundown of Clinton;’s economic plan, calling it “Family First,” as opposed to Trump’s “America First”. They summarize key points:
1. Paid family leave, so new parents can take time off without losing their jobs.
2. Preschool for every 4-year-old in America, to boost education and lower child care costs.
3. Debt-free college. She's not saying "free." But she wants to provide an option for lower and middle class students to attend a public college without having to go into debt.
4. Expanding Social Security, to ensure widowed women and people who take time off work don't lose out too much on receiving full benefits.
5. Raising the minimum wage, nationally, to $12 to $15 an hour (it's currently $7.25 an hour).
Hillary’s campaign tweeted their support for young people’s economic woes:
Hillary published an op-ed Wednesday making a direct appeal to Mormon voters:
I’ve been fighting to defend religious freedom for years. As secretary of state, I made it a cornerstone of our foreign policy to protect the rights of religious minorities around the world — from Coptic Christians in Egypt to Buddhists in Tibet. And along with Jon Huntsman, our then-ambassador in Beijing, I stood in solidarity with Chinese Christians facing persecution from their government. We stood up for these oppressed communities because Americans know that democracy ceases to exist when a leader or ruling faction can impose a particular faith on everyone else.
Trump’s Muslim ban would undo centuries of American tradition and values. To this day, I wonder if he even understands the implications of his proposal. This policy would literally undo what made America great in the first place.
Americans don’t have to agree on everything. We never have. But when it comes to religion, we strive to be accepting of everyone around us. That’s because we need each other. And we know that it so often takes a village — or a ward — working together to build the change we hope to see.
I can’t believe we have to answer this questions, but over at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum takes it on: “Does Hillary Clinton want to take all your guns?”
Hillary Clinton would clearly prefer to regulate gun ownership more than Cooke would like. That's fair enough. And I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to the claim that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own guns. But that right—as Cooke admits—managed to thrive during the entire two-century period before the Supreme Court got around to actually saying anything about it in 2008. So why would the Second Amendment suddenly go up in smoke if we returned to pre-Heller jurisprudence? It is a mystery.
If you're in favor of an absolute, unfettered right to bear arms, that's fine. I disagree, but it's fine. However, you simply can't say that the right is all or nothing. The Supreme Court virtually never takes that approach. Two centuries of both gun ownership and Supreme Court jurisprudence suggests very strongly that if they overturn Heller, they'll do nothing more than choose a modestly different middle ground.
Writing at Blue Nation Review, Melissa McEwan is willing to call Trump’s incitement to violence for what it is:
Donald’s point about Hillary was unambiguous. What he was doing, as explained by feminist law professor and reproductive rights activist David S. Cohen, was engaging in “stochastic terrorism,” which is “an obscure and non-legal term” meaning to use “language and other forms of communication ‘to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable,'” a sort of incitement well-known among those familiar with anti-choice violence.
Writes Cohen: “Stated differently: Trump puts out the dog-whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn’t know which dog.”
His words don’t exist in a vacuum, but as part of a culture of toxic masculinity in which women are routinely threatened in precisely this way.
I live against a backdrop of these sorts of threats, many of which are sent to me publicly, so that they may be seen by someone inclined to take action. I don’t appreciate, to put it politely, being gaslighted and told that I didn’t hear what I heard.
I’m an unwilling expert.
And now for some Thursday Herstory!
In the popular history of civil rights, most of us know Brown V. Topeka. But how many are familiar with Tape V. Hurley, and 1892 case that also revolved around issues of race, segregation, and the exclusion of nonwhite students from school? Although ultimately unsuccessful, the story of the lawsuit is also the story of a woman determined to be accepted as fully American—Mary Tape.
Mary was born in Shanghair in 1857, and emigrated to the United States as a child. Without parents to aid her, she was taken in by the Ladies Protection and relief Society of San Francisco, where she was educated in English and took the name Mary McGladery. Eventually Mary met a special suitor
Mary met her husband Joseph while he was a working as a driver on a milk wagon. Joseph (Jeu Dip) had left Taishan in 1864 when he was just twelve years old. In California, he cut off his queue and found work as a domestic servant with the Sterling family. Eventually, the Sterlings hired Joseph to deliver the milk from their dairy farm. One of the stops on his milk route was Mary’s home at the Ladies’ Protection & Relief Society. As they came from different regions and spoke different Chinese dialects, Joseph courted Mary in English.
After marriage, the couple settled down in Cow Hollow, where Joseph eventually became an interpreter and worked as a broker for the Chinese-American community. Mary raised their four children and painted in her leisure time. Like many immigrants of the time, the Tapes doggedly worked to assimilate, wearing Western clothing, speaking English at home, practicing Christianity, and otherwise demonstrating a commitment to Anglo-American notions of middle class respectability. But the family lived with a rising tide of anti-Chinese prejudice. The California Constitution of 1879 had included numerous anti-Chinese provisions. Although some were later removed, there was awidespread support among white Californians for dealing harshly with Chinese Californians. A contemporary British writers detailed the anti-Chinese provisions:
It forbids all corporations to employ any Chinese, debars them from the suffrage, forbids their employment on any public works, annuls all contracts for “coolie labour,” directs the legislature to provide for the punishment of any company which shall import Chinese, to impose conditions on the residence of Chinese, and to cause their removal if they fail to observe these conditions.
And there had been another blow from the federal level, in 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act:
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first major law restricting immigration to the United States. It was enacted in response to economic fears, especially on the West Coast, where native-born Americans attributed unemployment and declining wages to Chinese workers whom they also viewed as racially inferior. The Chinese Exclusion Act, signed into law on May 6, 1882, by President Chester A. Arthur, effectively halted Chinese immigration for ten years and prohibited Chinese from becoming US citizens. Through the Geary Act of 1892, the law was extended for another ten years before becoming permanent in 1902.
Two years after the passage of the Exclusion Act, the Tapes’ eldest daughter, Mamie, was at the age to begin school But Mary was in for an unpleasant shock when she tried to enroll Mamie at the local public school: the principal, Jenny Hurley, denied the little girl admission. Not one to accept discrimination against her own child, Mary and Joseph Tape filed a lawsuit, Tape v. Hurley, seeking to have their child admitted to public schools. The Superior Court agreed with them:
In this case, if effect be given to the intention of the legislature, as indicated by the clear and unambiguous language used by them, respondent here has the same right to enter a public school that any other child has. It is not alleged that she is vicious, or filthy, or that she has a contagious or infectious disease. As the legislature has not denied to the children of any race or nationality the right to enter our public schools, the question whether it might have done so does not arise in this case.
However, the School Board appealed to the Supreme Court, and School Superintendent Andrew Jackson Moulder pressed the state legislature into enacting laws authorizing separate public schools for the children of “Mongolian or Chinese descent.” Mary Tape was incensed. In 1885, she penned a letter to the School Board which has gone down in history as a mother’s heartfelt cry against racism:
I see that you are going to make all sorts of excuses to keep my child out off the Public schools. Dear sirs, Will you please to tell me! Is it a disgrace to be Born a Chinese? Didn't God make us all!!! What right have you to bar my children out of the school because she is a chinese Decend. They is no other worldly reason that you could keep her out, except that... You have expended a lot of the Public money foolishly, all because of a one poor little Child. Her playmates is all Caucasians ever since she could toddle around. If she is good enough to play with them! Then is she not good enough to be in the same room and studie with them? You had better come and see for yourselves. See if the Tape's is not same as other Caucasians, except in features. It seems no matter how a Chinese may live and dress so long as you know they Chinese. Then they are hated as one. There is not any right or justice for them.
You have seen my husband and child. You told him it wasn't Mamie Tape you object to. If it were not Mamie Tape you object to, then why didn't you let her attend the school nearest her home! Instead of first making one pretense Then another pretense of some kind to keep her out? It seems to me Mr. Moulder has a grudge against this Eight-year-old Mamie Tape... I will let the world see sir What justice there is When it is govern by the Race prejudice men! Just because she is of the Chinese decend, not because she don't dress like you because she does. Just because she is decended of Chinese parents I guess she is more of a American then a good many of you that is going to prewent her being Educated.
In the end, Mamie Tape and her siblings did attend the newly founded Chinese Primary School in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The Tapes eventually moved to Berkeley, where they continued to pursue the American dream. Mary Tape became locally renowned for her expertise in photography; in 1892 a local journalist visited their home to look at her photographs. Whil his account is infused with the condescending racism of the day, he nevertheless wrote admiringly of this multitalented woman:
I expressed my usual surprise that she had been able to conquer the difficult art of photography, and she only laughed saying: “Oh, these are nothing to some of the work I have done. My friends usually beg everything good and leave me the rest. But here, look at these,” and she produced a pile of lantern slides, “these are some that I take pride in.” And they were fully worth it, as some of the reproductions with this article will prove [they were reproduced in the article as poorly-done woodcuts not as halftones. “I not only take my own pictures but prepare my own plates and make my own prints,” said the Chinese woman. “You will no doubt wonder, how I come to understand so much about the business, and I can tell you that everything I know has come from reading different authorities on the subjects and then studying the methods to see which was the best.
… She can send and receive as well as the best operators, and keeps in constant practice by daily use of the instruments, connected with a line running from the house to some point near her husband’s place of business. “You may think it strange,” she said, “that I should be able to use the Morse system, and to tell the truth I have never made any practical use of my knowledge. The way my husband and I learned the use of the instrument was through the kindness of a friend, who had a short line to practice on and wished to have somebody on the other end.
…Mrs. Tape had about reached the end of her accomplishments, but her husband pointed to a landscape painting on the wall over the piano and informed me that his wife was the artist, and then to finish my surprise produced an excellent still-life painting of fruit which made my mouth water; also some plates hand-painted and tinted which were works of art.
The Tapes lived a quiet but prosperous but quiet life, with Joseph Tape running a successful transport and bonding firm for many years. (You can read a great deal more about the family here Mary and Joseph died in the 1930s; they did not live long enough to see the restrictions of the Chinese Exclusion Act lifted in 1943 with the passage of the Magnuson Act, which allowed only 105 residents of China to emigrate to the United States per year. Despite other legal challenges by Asian-American parents (such as Aoki v. Dean, filed in 1907 by Japanese-American parents in California, and Lum. V. Rice, a 1927 case filed by Chinese-American parents in Mississippi), children of Asian descent continued to face officially sanctioned school segregation until the landmark ruling in Brown v. Topeka in 1955. In 1965, nearly 100 years after Mamie Tape had immigrated to California, the Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the use of national origin, race, and ancestry as a basis for restricting immigration. Today, in the 20 largest school districts in the United States, Asian American and Pacific Islander-descended students make up 9.2 percent of the public school population. While the fight for equal access to education is far from over in the United States, Mary Tape’s is a name that deserves to be known as a pioneer in that struggle.
Now here is something fun: Salon profiles the designers the Clinton campaign has hired for their buttons:
The 45 individually designed pins represent a diverse range of styles by leading American designers, including Pentagram partners Paula Scher and Michael Bierut (who designed Hillary’s campaign logo) and type designer Tobias Frere-Jones. They are available to purchase for $5 each, or supporters can buy a full set of 45 pins for $100.
Finally, looks like Christy Admiraal over at the Mary Sue may have been reading the HNV, because she comes to a conclusion that we have often discussed here: Hillary Clinton is the Hermione of Politics:
Though the Harry Potter series will always hold a special place in my heart, I’ll readily admit that I couldn’t always relate to the characters. As a teen, I had a particularly hard time with Hermione. Sure, she has her moments of vulnerability, but she sticks to her convictions no matter the cost, and typically, she’s unafraid of how others perceive her. This was a concept so unfamiliar to me that I resented this fictional girl with unruly hair and wild ambition and encyclopedic knowledge of just about everything. It’s embarrassing to think back on this, now that I understand Hermione deserves both admiration and emulation. And as I watched my Twitter timeline overflow with commentary the night Hillary Clinton gave her nomination acceptance speech, I shared in the collective excitement of all the real-life Hermiones I know and follow.
Hermione’s name is not the one on the book jacket, but she’s still a hero in her own right. Without Hermione, Harry would be mired in crisis after crisis; such as it is, Harry comes to rely on Hermione’s resourcefulness, quick thinking, and bravery to get out of at least one life-threatening situation per book. (Remember how Hermione was still the one who figured out where the basilisk was in the second book even though she was literally unconscious? That’s incredible. That’s Hermione.) And yet, people still underestimate Hermione and express shock, and sometimes disbelief, when she does something extraordinary. (I say again: sound familiar?) Proving that a woman can be extraordinary regardless of upbringing, appearance, and stature is one of the things she does best.
I’m world-weary enough to know that it’s easy for people to dismiss Clinton’s worthiness of the presidency. But I’m also optimistic enough to think that her admirable qualities shine brightly enough for her to move back into the White House next year. It’s what the Hermiones across America want. It’s what I, a self-identifying Gryffindor but more of a Weasley than a Granger, want. Here’s hoping it’s what the majority of the voting public wants.
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Crossposted at HillaryHQ, an independent, progressive blog committed to the electing Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States. If you would like to support @Scan and his work there, visit GoFundMe and make a donation.
(Top Photo by Michael Davidson for Hillary For America, used under Creative Commons License.)