In honor of today’s national holiday, The Fulcrum shares this video on the origins of Veterans Day.
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Migrants from Guatemala prepare to cross the Rio Grande, to enter the United States in February. The best way to address immigration is fix problems caused by past interventions in foreign countries.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
Immigration isn't a border issue – it's caused by U.S. interventions
Oct 30, 2024
Yates-Doerr is an associate professor anthropology at Oregon State University and the author of “Mal-Nutrition: Maternal Health Science and the Reproduction of Harm.” She is also a fellow with The OpEd Project.
Immigration is a hot-button topic in the presidential election, with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump both promising to crack down hard at the border. But neither candidate is talking about a root cause of immigration: the long history of U.S. meddling, which has directly resulted in displacement. If our politicians really wanted to address immigration, they would look not at the border but at past actions of the U.S. government, which have directly produced so much of the immigration we see today.
Consider the case of Guatemala, the origin point of 11 percent of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Over the past 20 years, I have worked as an anthropologist in a region with one of Guatemala’s highest rates of exodus to the United States. Twenty years ago, it was mostly men who would migrate. Now women and children migrate regularly too. They are leaving conditions of extreme poverty and oppression for low-paid farm and factory labor. Though political discourse focuses on the “deterrence” of migrants at the border, this ignores the open secret that the U.S. economy relies on the labor force that migrants provide.
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To secure this labor force, the U.S. government has destabilized Guatemala for decades. People familiar with U.S. history will know that in the 1950s, the government helped to topple Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, who was implementing modest land reform. Powerful American politicians had financial ties to the United Fruit Company, which ran banana plantations throughout the country. Because Árbenz’s support of farmworkers interfered with company profit, the U.S. government worked to violently depose him.
What started as a terror campaign and coup in the 1950s became an outright strategy of Indigenous massacre by the 1980s. Military and paramilitary forces with U.S. training targeted Indigenous leaders, including mothers and midwives because they were skilled at caring for and nourishing their communities. Mercenary armies, operating a scorched earth campaign, razed and deforested communities with the goal of depopulating entire regions. The U.S. and Guatemalan governments worked together so that Guatemalans would starve.
A less familiar history is that the U.S. government's destabilization of Guatemala also took a form more covert than military violence, and that these activities continue to the present day. As the United Fruit Company was withdrawing from Guatemala in the second half of the 20th century, the U.S. Agency for International Development set up a headquarters in Guatemala’s capital. Under the pretense of encouraging development, USAID promoted monoculture farming. Many of the genetically hybridized seeds the agency distributed were ill adapted to Guatemalan climates and required industrial fertilizers and pesticides — several of which were banned as too dangerous for use in the United States. Meanwhile, cancer rates, miscarriage and neurological problems all began to spread.
In parallel to USAID’s development interventions, in the 1970 and ‘80s the U.S. government helped fund scientists to develop a synthetic protein powder, ostensibly meant to solve malnutrition. The powder was licensed to Guatemala’s largest beer corporation to mass-produce at scale and branded as a healthy alternative to traditional staples of corn, beans and squash. Guatemala has since seen decades of U.S.-backed nutrition interventions reliant on cheap, mass-produced powders. These can be found all across the country, and still Guatemala has one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world. Health workers frequently blame so-called uneducated mothers for being inept at feeding their families, pushing more packaged nutrients as the solution to their problems. If mothers object, they risk losing access to care.
But the challenges Guatemalans are experiencing are the result of cruel policies — not women’s ignorance. The forced reliance on agrochemicals has damaged soils and landscapes; the forced replacement of protein powders for traditional foods has damaged entire ways of life. Many Guatemalans who migrate today are looking for modest wages to care for family members sick with cancer, kidney failure or other diseases associated with living in a poisoned environment. Guatemalan soils used to be among the richest in the world; today crop failures are common and deforested hillsides are susceptible to deadly landslides. People are desperate. They are willing to work for pennies and they are willing to risk dying — which has been the point.
The narrative that immigrants are stealing jobs from people in the United States has the story backwards: The U.S. government has been complicit in destabilizing the livelihood and labor of Guatemalans for decades. Until this is addressed, people living in poverty and oppression will continue to migrate, no matter the obstacles put before them. If politicians were serious about addressing migration, they would stop talking about policing the border and instead work to reverse the harm that U.S. interventions have caused.
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A sign guides people to an early voting location in Raleigh, N,C., on Oct. 24.
Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images
It’s Vote Early Day!
Oct 29, 2024
Bennett is executive director of Vote Early Day, a nonpartisan effort promoting a civic holiday dedicated to empowering Americans to vote early.
It’s Vote Early Day! Today, thousands of nonprofits, businesses, campus groups, election leaders and other voting enthusiasts are hosting celebrations encouraging Americans to vote early in every corner of the country.
But why vote early?
When you vote early by mail or in person, nothing can stop you from having your say. When people vote ahead of Election Day, they have the convenience of finding a date and time that works for their schedule. The lines may be substantially shorter, so you can get in, get out and get on with your day. And if you run into an issue like not having the proper ID or showing up to the wrong polling place, you have plenty of time to correct the problem and cast your ballot. In the final hours of voting, Americans can face unanticipated barriers that may keep them from casting their ballot. We’ve seen even the best-laid plans fall apart when problems arise.
Vote Early Day is a nonpartisan holiday dedicated to ensuring all Americans have the tools and information they need to vote early. Built in the same model as other civic holidays like National Voter Registration Day, it culminates in a tentpole moment: a shared day to celebrate our democracy by helping others participate in it.
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The success of this holiday is built on the idea that empowering voters is a task no single group can or should do alone. Through a broad, diverse set of partners, Vote Early Day can meet people where they are with the information they need to vote in advance of Election Day. Every business, local government office, educator, nonprofit, faith community, student group, media company, athlete, celebrity and more plays a critical role. Each group has the unique ability to build a celebration that meets the needs of their communities, customers or constituents.
With politics seen as hostile and toxically partisan, Vote Early Day events mark a fun and joyful opportunity to lower the barrier to entry into our democracy. Through the work of organizations celebrating the holiday, partners amplify the benefits of voting early and empower people to take advantage of their options to make their voices heard.
With most states changing their voting laws in the last two years, Vote Early Day provides an important opportunity to share nonpartisan, up-to-date voter information that stops political disinformation in its tracks.
On Vote Early Day 2022, we saw over 3 million votes cast — the highest number of early ballots cast in October, according to the U.S. Elections Project. This year, we expect the trend of people voting early to continue to grow, with more Americans taking advantage of opportunities to cast their ballot by mail or early in person.
This year, we will not only decide our next president and vice president, but a new House of Representatives, new Senators and several crucial down-ballot races in every state. Whether a community is big or small, blue or red, young or old, you can count on Vote Early Day partners to celebrate in your community, ensuring every voice is heard and every vote is counted.
Through the impactful celebrations organized by partners, Vote Early Day aims to continue to empower voters and make Election Day the last day to vote.
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An Arizona vote-by-mail ballot from the 2020 election
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
Republicans target fine print of voting by mail in key states
Oct 29, 2024
Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
In the first installment of this two-part series, I focused on the many efforts that failed to roll back the popular vote-by-mail options to pre-pandemic levels and the GOP effort to disqualify more ballots. Today we focus on the states in the crosshairs.
The litigation targeting mailed-out ballots has evolved since the 2020 and 2022 general elections, when Trump-supporting Republicans lost many federal and statewide contests, and their allies took broad swipes at vote-by-mail programs. Take Arizona, for example, whose current mail voting regime has been in place since 1991, and where 80 percent of its statewide electorate cast mail ballots in 2020’s presidential election.
In mid-2023, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a state Republican Party lawsuit seeking to ban the option. A suit filed by right-wing activists to ban ballot drop boxes was rejected in April 2024. As a result of decisions like these, more recent litigation has turned to contesting technicalities. But that, too, is not succeeding — at least not in Arizona.
A suit from activists challenging Arizona’s signature matching rules (to verify a voter’s identity based on how they sign the return envelope) was dismissed in April, but has been appealed. Another suit seeking to match signatures on the envelopes with voters’ registration forms — not the most recent election records — was dismissed in June. As a result, voting by mail in Arizona is largely unchanged.
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But states where voting by mail was dramatically expanded in the pandemic — especially other presidential battleground states — have seen even more fractious lawfare.
Wisconsin
After 2020’s election, Wisconsin Republicans sued over ballot drop boxes, and the state’s conservative-majority Supreme Court banned them. But after liberals gained a majority on the court in August 2023, liberal advocates sued and won a suit to reinstate their use. Then, as was the case in Arizona, Wisconsin’s Republicans turned to the process’s fine print.
In Wisconsin, voters casting mail ballots must have a witness sign their return envelope. Liberals hoped to overturn that requirement but lost a federal suit to do so. At the same time a suit filed by right wing activists in state court challenged a directive that allowed election officials to fill in missing identifying information for witnesses. That suit evolved into a lengthy court fight over what address information could be used by officials to verify a witness’s identity. In September, a court ruled local officials could use the information in their voter registration database.
Pennsylvania
But no state has seen as much litigation targeting the process’s fine print and minutiae — from both parties and their allies — as Pennsylvania.
This fall, one swing county – Luzerne, in the state’s northeast — was not planning to deploy drop boxes. Voting rights advocates sued on Oct. 1 to force their use and county officials backed down for this fall. Liberals also sued in state court in September to reverse past rulings disqualifying ballots in wrongly dated or undated return envelopes. On Oct. 5, the state Supreme Court denied their petition on procedural grounds, not merits — which was a setback for more inclusive voting. Another suit was filed in April to push counties to offer voters an alternative way to vote if their ballot wasn’t placed inside a special sleeve inside the return envelope (which, under other state law, would disqualify the ballot). That suit is now before the state’s Supreme Court.
As dizzying as this sounds, it is not all of the Pennsylvania litigation. Republican lawmakers lost a suit to ban voters from returning mail ballots to county election offices. (They wanted to limit voters to voting sites.) The Republican Party sued in September to bar counties from using different protocols to help voters “cure” mistakes on their return envelopes. The state’s Supreme Court rejected that suit in October, citing a “lack of due diligence” to file earlier. However, the court has agreed to take up a suit by liberals to ensure that voters be given a chance to cure errors.
This blur of litigation is due to several factors. In 2019, Pennsylvania passed sweeping election reforms, including universal mail-in voting. That was before the pandemic, where the state expanded that option to protect public health. Then, in 2020, and again in 2024, Pennsylvania was among the nation’s presidential battleground states. The National Vote at Home Institute’s Smith Wagner and other experts also said that Pennsylvania’s courts have issued a lot of conflicting rulings on the details of voting by mail.
“Whenever new legislation is enacted, there’s always a period of litigation to work out wrinkles that may be ambiguous in the text, things like that,” said Emma Shoucair, a voting rights attorney with RepresentUs, a nonpartisan anti-corruption group. “However, some of the conflict has been due to the fact that the intermediate court that has jurisdiction over a lot of election matters (the Commonwealth Court) has been majority Republican, while the Supreme Court has been majority Democrat (although the Commonwealth Court has begun to shift very recently). You’re also seeing some differences of opinion, especially on the provision of Act 77 requiring the voter to date the ballot, between various panels of the Third Circuit (the federal appeals court). So, there is a lot going on.”
Most of this litigation will not affect voters who cast mailed-out ballots, she said. But Shoucair was watching whether voters who made a mistake on their ballot envelopes could vote with a provisional ballot — which undergoes additional verification before being counted.
She and other experts, including former Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, who oversaw the state’s 2020 election, urged voters to ignore the legal noise and vote early.
“With all the confusing noise of the back-and-forth litigation on mail ballots, the most important message for PA voters is actually very simple — ignore the noise!” she said. “Just remember three things that you must do to have your vote counted: 1) put your marked ballot inside the inner yellow secrecy envelope and insert the secrecy envelope into the outer addressed envelope; 2) sign your name and put TODAY'S DATE on the outer envelope — not your birth date; and 3) don't wait! If you want to vote by mail, submit your application immediately, complete your ballot as described, and mail it or drop off at one of your county voting locations immediately.”
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Voting and CrossFit have a lot in common.
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CrossFit and voting: How to finally reach low-propensity voters
Oct 29, 2024
Spenser is a poll worker, elections nerd, civics consultant and CrossFit coach.
So it begins. Early voting in some format has begun in nearly every state, and both parties, along with an army of political action committees, nonprofits and boards of election, are now chasing the same white whale: how to turn out voters, especially low propensity ones.
However, there’s an irony here: The masterminds behind these organizations are especially ineffective at reaching the 100 million Americans who are eligible to vote but choose not to.
I would know because I’m a hardcore election nerd. I’ve been a poll worker in New York City since 2012, I worked the census in 2021, I covered voting rights as a journalist for eight years and I’m now a consultant for civics organizations. Like you, I’m the kind of person who reads (and annotates!) my voter guide, casts a ballot the first day possible and treasures my "I Voted" stickers.
For fanatics like us, it’s particularly challenging to relate to those who have no interest in voting. (What do you mean you don’t know who the Times endorsed for comptroller?!). But I’m also a CrossFit coach, and instead of thinking about voting as a sacred rite (which it is!), I challenge you to think of it how a fitness newbie imagines one of my classes:
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- You expect it to be difficult, and you'll be embarrassed if you make a mistake.
- The people who are into it are waayyyyyyy too into it.
- You know you "should" do it but don't really want to.
It doesn't matter how much I tell you I love CrossFit (in fact, it probably freaks you out even more), or how much I lecture about the lifelong benefits of metabolic conditioning. You're turned off.
But what I love most about this metaphor is this: It emphasizes that voting, like working out, is a muscle that you build (*cue the groans*). In fact, one study found that voters who were contacted by face-to-face canvassers weren’t just more likely to vote in the upcoming general election, but were also more likely to vote in the local elections the following year. “The influence of past voting exceeds the effects of age and education reported in previous studies,” the authors reported.
That's all voting has to be: an exercise class. Maybe you're tired that day, and maybe it's raining, and maybe you don't love the workout, but you go anyway because that's just what you do.
So as you talk to friends, family, neighbors, coworkers and other citizens apathetic about going to the polls, avoid making your pitch grandiose and idealistic. Not only does that strategy typically backfire (“CrossFit saved my life!”), but it also opens the door to endless, pointless philosophical debates, like the utility of a single person's vote and the oppression of a duopolistic political system.
Instead, give voters practical information: when, where, how. Demystify the process with (short) explainers about how to fill out a ballot and then mail it back to the elections office or insert it into the vote-counting machine. Reassure them that it's okay to make mistakes and that you’re happy to walk with them to the polls.
But more than anything, relate to them.
Yeah, voting is kind of inconvenient and annoying (blasphemy, I know!), but do it because, for the vast majority of Americans, it's pretty easy. Or do it because you're already getting an absentee ballot mailed to your house anyway. Or my personal favorite: Do it because whether you’ve voted is publicly available information, and once you’ve cast a ballot, the political parties will finally stop texting and calling you.
Our democracy is representative only if we vote. For some of us, the motivation to get to the polls is a fierce ideological commitment. For others, it may be a bit more quotidian. And if we want low-propensity voters to begin building the habit, we have to speak to them in a way that’s genuine, empathetic and not too full-on. And once they cast their ballot, come to one of my CrossFit classes. Research proves that consistent metabolic conditioning … oh, nevermind.
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