The Texas attorney general is cracking down on Democrats in a supposed crusade to root out “voter fraud.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s crusade against supposed voter fraud appears to be targeting the state’s Democrats.
Last week, Paxton’s office announced raids and undercover actions against organizations in Texas it accuses of illegally registering noncitizens to vote. In practice, though, the raids have taken place against members of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Latino civil rights organization in the U.S., as well as several prominent Democrats in south Texas.
According to LULAC officials, the group’s members had their cell phones and laptops confiscated by law enforcement officials carrying out search warrants.
A lot of people around here didn’t think of themselves as Jewish until the soldiers showed up.
Now there are little plaques in the street in front of the houses they were dragged out of.
As a Jew, I appreciate this. It might be presumptuous, but I assume you’re somewhere in Europe, maybe Germany? Europe endured incredible generational trauma, and it would probably be easier to ignore all of it and not put up plaques, but some countries put in serious work to try to make things right and make sure something like that doesn’t happen again. Hell, I was recently offered an application for citizenship to the European country my grandparents escaped from, as part of their reparations program. What I’m saying is, there will be trauma and long term pain, but it’s also possible to heal and grow. Since there are other genocides going on in the world right now, it’s important to remember that these atrocities continue to happen in the modern world, but that it’s possible for us to stop them and move on.
In Germany, they’re called Stolpersteine, or stumbling blocks (a metaphorical hurdle that prevents or inhibits you from reaching your goal). It feels like a warning that humanity must reckon with our susceptibility towards fascism if we want to achieve lasting peace.
They look like this:
It really makes you think seeing those.
We have them in Torino in Italy where I now live. There are a lot more than I would have expected.
Amazing. It’s such a great combination of symbolism, memory, and warning.
I spent some time in Berlin, and I was genuinely moved at how present the history is. There is no attempt to hide anything, and I respect and appreciate that immensely.
That’s our future if things don’t go just right.