Mass. Politics: Another reason to vote for Patalano

I just wrote this, in response to siderea asking for people's advice on who to vote for, and why:

Patalano: she promises to reduce cash bail and work against mass incarceration and the racism that permeates decisions about who is indicted and for what.

I am also to some extent voting against Ryan [the incumbent], for her/her office's behavior and foot-dragging over setting aside the tainted drug lab convictions. (I was one of I don't know how many people calling to say "these are all based on fraudulent drug "testing" results, set them aside and release the victims now," and what I got was staffers who clearly had no idea of what to do with calls from the public. The relevant part of their voice mail system wanted to give me instructions on how to appeal any specific one of those cases, or get information on the status of a single case, when the point was that she shouldn't be waiting for phone calls and paperwork for "release this person, he's in prison on entirely bogus charges" in each case. I want a DA whose reaction to a widely publicized and clear set of injustices won't be "here's how to fill out paperwork to set aside 1% of it."

Feeling productive

In the last few days, I have finished and sent back the book edit I was working on, and fitted in two chapters of proofreading for a different client.

I have also dealt with the broken elevator—including both calling Saturday to report it, and buzzing the technician in this morning; I assume he came straight here rather than stopping at the management office for a key. With the elevator working again, I took some trash out, and stopped across the street to vote, before heading over to Davis to pick up an on-hold library book, have lunch, and get boring basics like milk, yogurt, and bananas.

And I'm keeping up with my exercise routine. I think I'd better take it easy for the next few hours, before going out to talk to strangers about Yes on 3/transgender rights.

a little activism

I went out this evening, and selected a spot a couple of hundred feet from my polling place (the legal minimum is 150) where I could see people coming down the side walk and ask them to fill out pledge cards to vote YES on proposition 3 in the November election. (YES=keep the existing law that prohibits discrimination against transgender people.)

In half an hour, before the heat got to me, I got four signed pledge cards, one person who said she'd already sent one in, and several people who gave a quick yes to the opening "Hi, do you support transgender rights?" but kept going, or said they didn't want to sign anything, and one "I support it, but I'm not a Massachusetts voter." If anyone I talked to opposes transgender rights, they didn't say so; I suspect this is a combination of "it's Somerville" and that people didn't want to get into an argument.

In the end, having spent a bunch of time over the last couple of days working on memorizing (most of) the script we were given, I used almost none of the phrasing after the introductory "Hi. Do you support transgender rights?" I was also less aggressive than the organizers asked us to be during the training webinar. If someone had "leave me alone" body language as they walked past, I didn't intrude: I've been on the other side of too many similar interactions.