🗣️THIS IS WHAT INCLUSIVE, COMPASSIONATE DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE
Minnesota Dems enacted a raft of laws to make the state a trans refuge, and ensure people receiving trans care here can’t be reached by far-right governments in places like Florida and Texas. (link)
Minnesota Dems ensured that everyone, including undocumented immigrants, can get drivers’ licenses. (link)
They made public collegefree for the majority of Minnesota families. (link)
Minnesota Dems dropped a billion dollars into a bevy of affordable housing programs, including by creating a new state housing voucher program. (link)
Minnesota Dems massively increased funding for the state’s perpetually-underfunded public defenders, which lets more public defenders be hired and existing public defenders get a salary increase. (link)
Dems raised Minnesota education spending by 10%, or about 2.3 billion. (link)
Minnesota Dems created an energy standard for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. (link)
Minnesota already has some of the strongest election infrastructure (and highest voter participation) in the country, but the legislature just made it stronger, with automatic registration, preregistration for minors, and easier access to absentee ballots. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded the publicly subsidized health insurance program to undocumented immigrants. This one’s interesting because it’s the sort of things Dems often balk at. The governor opposed it! The legislature rolled over him and passed it anyway. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded background checks and enacted red-flag laws, passing gun safety measures that the GOP has thwarted for years. (link)
Minnesota Dems gave the state AG the power to block the huge healthcare mergers that have slowly gobbled up the state’s medical system. (link)
Minnesota Dems restored voting rights to convicted felons as soon as they leave prison. (link)
Minnesota Dems made prison phone calls free. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed new wage protection rules for the construction industry, against industry resistance. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a new sales tax to fund bus and train lines, an enormous victory for the sustainability and quality of public transit. Transit be more pleasant to ride, more frequent, and have better shelters, along more lines. (link)
They passed strict new regulations on PFAS (“forever chemicals”). (link)
Minnesota Dems passed the largest bonding bill in state history! Funding improvements to parks, colleges, water infrastructure, bridges, etc. etc. etc. (link)
They’re going to build a passenger train from the Twin Cities to Duluth. (link)
I can’t even find a news story about it but there’s tens of millions in funding for new BRT lines, too. (link)
A wonky-but-important change: Minnesota Dems indexed the state gas tax to inflation, effectively increasing the gas tax. (link)
They actually indexed a bunch of stuff to inflation, including the state’s education funding formula, which helps ensure that school spending doesn’t decline over time. (link)
Minnesota Dems made hourly school workers (e.g., bus drivers and paraprofessionals) eligible for unemployment during summer break, when they’re not working or getting paid. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed a bunch of labor protections for teachers, including requiring school districts to negotiate class sizes as part of union contracts. (Yet another @SydneyJordanMN special here. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a state board to govern labor standards at nursing homes. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, which would set price caps for high-cost pharmaceuticals. (link)
Minnesota Dems created new worker protections for Amazon warehouse workers and refinery workers. (link)
Minnesota Dems passed a digital fair repair law, which requires electronics manufacturers to make tools and parts available so that consumers can repair their electronics rather than purchase new items. (link)
Minnesota Dems made Juneteenth a state holiday. (link)
They spent nearly a billion dollars on a variety of environmental programs, from heat pumps to reforestation. (link)
Minnesota Dems expanded protections for pregnant and nursing workers - already in place for larger employers - to almost everyone in the state. (link)
Minnesota Dems created a new child tax credit that will cut child poverty by about a quarter. (link)
Minnesota Democrats dropped a quick $50 million into homelessness prevention programs. (link)
And because the small stuff didn’t get lost in the big stuff, they passed a law to prevent catalytic converter thefts. (link)
Minnesota Dems increased child care assistance. (link)
Minnesota Dems banned “captive audience meetings,” where employers force employees to watch anti-union presentations. (link)
No news story yet, but Minnesota Dems forced signal priority changes to Twin Cities transit. Right now the trains have to wait at intersections for cars, which, I can say from experience, is terrible. Soon that will change.
Minnesota Dems provided the largest increase to nursing home funding in state history. (link)
They also bumped up salaries for home health workers, to help address the shortage of in-home nurses. (link)
Minnesota Dems legalized drug paraphernalia, which allows social service providers to conduct needle exchanges and address substance abuse with reduced fear of incurring legal action. (link)
Minnesota Dems banned white supremacists and extremists from police forces, capped probation at 5 years for most crimes, improved clemency, and mostly banned no-knock warrants. (link)
Minnesota Dems also laid the groundwork for a public health insurance option. (link)
I’m happy for the people of Minnesota, but as a Floridian living under Ron DeSantis & hateful Republicans, I’m also very envious tbh. We know that democracy can work, and this is a shining example of what government could be like in the hands of legislators who actually care about helping people in need, and not pursuing the GOP’s “culture wars” and suppressing the votes of BIPOC, and inflicting maximum harm on those who aren’t cis/het, white, wealthy, Christian males. BRAVO MINNESOTA. This is how you do it. 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿
@thebibliosphere y'all are in Minnesota, right, or did I remember that wrong?
Yep! It’s been staggering to watch what our Dems are pushing through at the moment. Staggering and hopeful.
Making me really considering moving to MN even with all the goddamn snow that I’d 100% hate.
Funny enough I am fairly sure that our claim office in MN is in St. Paul lol
Listen, I’m not saying there’s a house for sale near us, I’m just saying it’s within walking distance of four schools, two colleges, a new urgent care facility, and a planned walkable development within reach of a fairly decent public transport hub.
anon, this idea spoke to me when i first got this ask a few months ago, and after a lot of procrastination and a little bit of drawing, I present to you:
ideal supernatural scene is an otherwise deserted motel pool, brothers in t-shirts and boxers floating among pine needles and dead bugs and nursing lukewarm beers and sam says remember you always dunked me when we were kids that was so annoying and dean says not as annoying as the fake-drowning thing you would do after. you were such a fucking drama queen dude. and sam says oh you mean like this? :) and rolls over and sags like a corpse face-down in the water. and when he comes up for air dean flips the bird and laughs with him but right before that there was a moment of stillness where we as the audience watched dean watching sam play dead and we saw the look on his face and went oh okay so this character is extremely unwell.
weirdest side effect of the pandemic is how many people i know who get sick and say ‘but my covid tests are negative so i should be fine’ like you know other illnesses. exist. right.
Can’t believe Bram Stoker once sent a 2000-word fan letter to Walt Whitman which included his exact height, weight and how much he loved his poems and wanted to be friends with him, and that Whitman wrote back saying he liked his letter and hoped they could meet some day, how cute is that
And then he finally got to meet him and Stoker said “I found him all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him” HOW CUTE IS THAT
bram stroker just mailed walt whitman his grindr profile just like that huh
Ok, I went to look this up, and it is amazing. Bram Stoker actually wrote this long-ass stream of consciousness letter that spanned about 2000 words and which–judging by most sites–had 0 paragraph breaks and just went on and on about his Feelings. He then proceeded to keep that letter in his desk for four years because he was too shy to send it. He finally sent it, along with a slightly less rambly letter, on fuckin Valentine’s day in 1876. In it are such wonders as:
If I were before your face I would like to shake hands with you, for I feel that I would like you. I would like to call you Comrade and to talk to you as men who are not poets do not often talk. I think that at first a man would be ashamed, for a man cannot in a moment break the habit of comparative reticence that has become a second nature to him; but I know I would not long be ashamed to be natural before you. You are a true man, and I would like to be one myself, and so I would be towards you as a brother and as a pupil to his master. In this age no man becomes worthy of the name without an effort. You have shaken off the shackles and your wings are free. I have the shackles on my shoulders still—but I have no wings.
[…]
If you care to know who it is that writes this, my name is Abraham Stoker (Junior). My friends call me Bram. I live at 43 Harcourt St., Dublin. I am a clerk in the service of the Crown on a small salary. I am twenty-four years old. Have been champion at our athletic sports (Trinity College, Dublin) and have won about a dozen cups. I have also been President of the College Philosophical Society and an art and theatrical critic of a daily paper. I am six feet two inches high and twelve stone weight naked and used to be forty-one or forty-two inches round the chest. I am ugly but strong and determined and have a large bump over my eyebrows. I have a heavy jaw and a big mouth and thick lips—sensitive nostrils—a snubnose and straight hair. I am equal in temper and cool in disposition and have a large amount of self control and am naturally secretive to the world. I take a delight in letting people I don’t like—people of mean or cruel or sneaking or cowardly disposition—see the worst side of me. I have a large number of acquaintances and some five or six friends—all of which latter body care much for me.
[…]
It is vain for me to try to quote any instances of what thoughts of yours I like best—for I like them all and you must feel that you are reading the true words of one who feels with you. You see, I have called you by your name. I have been more candid with you—have said more about myself to you than I have ever said to any one before. You will not be angry with me if you have read so far. You will not laugh at me for writing this to you. It was with no small effort that I began to write and I feel reluctant to stop, but I must not tire you any more. If you ever would care to have more you can imagine, for you have a great heart, how much pleasure it would be to me to write more to you. How sweet a thing it is for a strong healthy man with a woman’s eyes and a child’s wishes to feel that he can speak so to a man who can be if he wishes father, and brother and wife to his soul.
I don’t think you will laugh, Walt Whitman, nor despise me, but at all events I thank you for all the love and sympathy you have given me in common with my kind.
Three weeks later–which, considering the speed of transatlantic mail at the time, pretty much means immediately–Walt Whitman wrote back. He had, at the time, been recovering from a paralytic stroke three years earlier that had left him, in his own words, “entirely shattered—doubtless permanently, from paralysis and other ailments,” but he still found the time to respond with a much briefer but still very affectionate letter, the opening paragraph of which read as follows:
My dear young man,
Your letters have been most welcome to me—welcome to me as Person and as Author—I don’t know which most—You did well to write me so unconventionally, so fresh, so manly, and so affectionately, too. I too hope (though it is not probable) that we shall one day meet each other. Meantime I send you my friendship and thanks.
I found him all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him: large-minded, broad-viewed, tolerant to the last degree; incarnate sympathy; understanding with an insight that seemed more than human.
Whitman, meanwhile, found Stoker “an adroit lad,” and “like a breath of good, healthy, breezy sea air.” Adorable.
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