Alright it's been a few years since I've updated this blog but I'm back with more opinions than ever for all my fans and dissenters.

It's been an interesting time to transition into college. The last two years have been particularly difficult, as I've found myself struggling to find hope and agency while governed by an administration that would have voices like mine silenced by hook or by crook. However, I have the privilege of citizenship, and I have a voice. With the midterm elections just around the corner, I've vowed to use my voice on behalf of those who do not have a say in the elections but nonetheless have very high stakes in the outcomes. 

For everyone else struggling with me to assert their agency and use their voices, I've done the legwork to assemble a handbook with as many helpful links and instructions as I could compile. This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything you can do as a citizen, but this is a starting point and running list (I will be constantly updating this post over the next few months) for anyone who would like to engage more deeply with our political climate. I've tried to organize this by political issues so that you can make the greatest impact where you feel most strongly. Thank you for taking initiative this year and taking change into your own hands. 

First off, are you registered to vote??? Check here. VOTE VOTE VOTEEEEEEE.

Actions to take for Midterm Elections:

Special thanks to Sheela Lal for some simple steps to get started:

• Knock for candidates or issues
• Go to forums and ask questions

To this I'd like to add this helpful link to find the next town hall event near you: speak out on the issues you care about.

• Send postcards to voters 
• Learn about issues and talk to your neighbors, co-workers, and strangers to build community
• Volunteer to drive folks to vote

Which means you also need to figure out where your polling stations are!
Or get your absentee ballot!

Some other great resources:
​
 5 Calls - pick the issues you care about, read the scripts, start talking to your reps! I can't recommend 5 Calls enough, it's truly as simple as that to get started!
Alternatively, call your Congressional representatives on your own:
​Find your Senators here.
Find your Representative here.
CALLS MATTER. Every single day, your senators and representative and their senior staff get a report of the three most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices, and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics. They're also sorted by ZIP code and area code. 
Amnesty International's call for urgent action - letters you can write and calls you can make that impact lives and well-being almost immediately.

Now for a few specific topics and actions you can take immediately.

​Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
What's happening: 
The acting Assistant Secretary for the HHS's Administration for Children and Families, Steven Wagner, admitted under pressure in a congressional testimony that the HHS does not keep track of unaccompanied minors who do not show up at their immigration court hearings. 1,475 children, largely "unaccompanied minor" (separated from their parents when apprehended crossing the border) immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, are unaccounted for. Some may have been adopted and their new families may be keeping them under the radar due to their immigration status, but others, there is abundant evidence to believe, may be at risk for trafficking and abuse. 

Between October 1, 2017 and May 31, 2018, at least 2,700 children have been split from their parents. The Trump administration has adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward anyone caught crossing into the US by Border Patrol. All border crossers are to be referred to the Department of Justice, and everyone referred would be prosecuted for the misdemeanor of illegal entry. And when parents are transferred to criminal custody, their children get treated as “unaccompanied minors,” by border patrol. In a report released in May, the ACLU detailed 116 incidents that took place between 2009 and 2014 where officers were alleged to have physically, sexually, or psychologically abused children between the ages of five and 17.

After "unaccompanied minors" arrive in the United States, often to reunite with family members or to flee violence or poverty in their home countries, they are typically transferred from border patrol or customs officers to the custody of HHS, which often reunites the minors with a relative or another sponsor. The department is supposed to place check-in phone calls 30 days after a minor’s placement, but between October and December 2017, he said, the agency was unable to locate almost 1,475 out of the 7,635  minors that it attempted to reach — or about 19 percent. Over two dozen had run away, according to Wagner, who said the agency did not have the capacity to track them down.

What you can do:

• Contact your U.S. Senators and Representatives to find out what they are doing to hold the DHS accountable. Simply say, “I am outraged by how our government is treating children at the border. What is my Senator/Rep doing about this?” Or use 5 Calls!
• The ACLU is gathering signatures to petition Kevin K. McAleenan, Commissioner of United States Customs and Border Protection to stop the government from abusing immigrant children.
• You can contact ICE directly at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE.
• You can contact the UN Office for Human Rights here and tell them that the actions the Department of Homeland Security is taking do not comply with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' recommended guidelines for human rights at international borders.

Kavanaugh's Supreme Court Nomination 
First off I am of the opinion that anyone wanting to know anything about the Supreme Court should start with the epic RBG documentary. It's still in theaters!! That should be at the top of your civic engagement list. Just kidding. Not really.
What's Happening: 
Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh is an attorney, judge, Republican political appointee and the author of numerous legal opinions, lectures, transcripts, emails and policies. The record contains everything from his testimony about Bush era torture policies to his various stances on whether a president can be compelled to testify before a special counsel. He has written that a sitting President should not be able to be indicted, and can fire whoever is investigating him whenever he pleases. Moreover, Kavanaugh gave a speech last year praising the dissent in Roe v. Wade, proving that he may be a significant threat to women's healthcare rights. He also criticized the rationale for upholding the Affordable Care Act and didn't rule in favor of the law in 2011. If Kavanaugh votes to overturn ACA, insurance companies could charge more or refuse coverage for the 130 million people in America with "pre-existing conditions", specifically transgender Americans and those living with HIV and AIDS. 
Several activist groups have demanded a thorough investigation of Kavanaugh's full body of works and a release of these documents to the American public before he is granted a confirmation vote on the Senate floor. However, on July 18th, Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley made clear he has little intention of doing so, saying he intends to only probe "relevant" documents. It appears that Grassley is choosing to push this nominee through in secrecy, attempting to ignore large portions of Kavanaugh’s record. This decision seems to indicate Crassley would rather avoid the emergence of any controversial issue in Kavanaugh's record and have him confirmed well before midterm election results could reduce the Republican party's ability to force the acceptance of a nominee.

What you can do:

• Call these six key senators that the vote to confirm Kavanaugh hinges on, even if they're not your senators. Tell them to vote "no" on this Supreme Court nomination:

Joe Manchin (WV)
(202) 224-3954

Joe Donnely (IN)
(202) 224-4814

Heidi Heitkamp (ND)
(202) 224-2043

Lisa Murkowski (AK)
(202) 224-6665

Susan Collins (ME)
(202) 224-2523

Doug Jones (AL)
(202) 224-4124

• Moreover, you can call the Senate Judiciary Committee at (202) 224-5225 to ask that the committee commit to a thorough review of Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s extensive body of work before referring his nomination to the full Senate. 

Gun Control and 3D Printed Gun Blueprints
What's Happening:
Americans are 25 times more likely to die from gun homicide than people in other wealthy countries. The United States has more guns per capita than any other peer nation; Americans constitute about 4% of the world's population but own 42% of all civilian firearms. On average, there is a mass shooting almost every day of the year in the United States. We have far higher rates of gun homicides than any other developed nation, and suicides comprise the majority of our gun-related deaths. Thanks to continued lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA), Congress has repeatedly failed to take meaningful action and curb gun violence.

Abused women are 5 times more likely to be killed by their abuser if the abuser has access to a gun. Although keeping guns out of abusers' hands reduces gun violence, major loopholes in federal gun safety laws allow abusers to readily access firearms. For example, federal law does not consider an assault domestic violence if the abuser and victim were in a dating relationship without living together or having a child together. This "boyfriend loophole" leaves thousands of abusers able to legally purchase guns to use against their victims.

Also, although it is well known that stalking is a reliable predictor of future violent behavior (76% of women murdered and 85% who survived a murder attempt by a current or former intimate partner experienced stalking according to one study), federal law does not consider misdemeanor stalking as a serious enough crime to limit an abuser’s access to guns.

Furthermore, federal law does nothing to restrict an abuser’s access to guns during the most dangerous time for victims of domestic violence, the period when a victim has left their abuser and filed for a Temporary Restraining Order. Until the restraining order is permanent, violent abusers can easily buy and use a firearm.

 In 2013, a self-proclaimed anarchist organization, Defense Distributed, began providing online blueprints for 3D printing plastic firearms. The federal government quickly blocked the distribution of these blueprints, citing international export laws. However, the Trump administration’s State Department has reversed this decision by settling a lawsuit with Defense Distributed. As of August 1st, Defense Distributed and other organizations and individuals will be able to share free, 3D-printable plastic gun blueprints online. Online blueprints will be available for a wide variety of guns, including the AR-15 which have been commonly used in mass shootings. Defense Distributed has hailed this development as “the death of gun control,” and gun control advocates agree. With these blueprints available online anyone with a 3D printer—including children, convicted domestic abusers, and others who would have no way to buy guns legally—will be able to build their own untraceable, deadly weapon.

To address this new threat, Democrats have introduced the Undetectable Firearms Modernization Act (H.R. 2033 and S. 533) to both chambers of Congress. The bill strengthens existing restrictions on untraceable guns to cover 3D-printed plastic firearms.

What You Can Do:

• Call your House representative. Urge them to take action to reduce the epidemic of gun violence by:

                   1. Closing the loophole that lets people buy guns at shows and through private sellers without background checks
                   2. Instituting universal background checks for ammo and gun buyers, a measure 80% of gun owners support
                   3. Funding evidence-based community anti-violence programs, like Ceasefire, which have been shown to reduce shootings
                   4. Reinstating a federal ban on the purchase of high-capacity magazines and military-style assault weapons, which is supported by at least 65% of Americans.
           Choose a few (1-3) of the above policies then thank them for their effort in answering all the phone calls.

• Call your House representative to ask them to support HR 2670 the Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act, and HR 3207 the Zero Tolerance for Domestic Abusers Act. Congress must act now to close dangerous loopholes in gun laws that allow perpetrators of domestic abuse access to deadly firearms.
• Call your Senator to ask them to  support S 1539, the Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act. Congress must act now to close dangerous loopholes in gun laws that allow perpetrators of domestic abuse access to deadly firearms.

Climate Change
What's Happening: 
​To date, the Trump administration has sought to reverse more than 70 environmental rules, according to a New York Times analysis - read up on what has been changed, why it matters, and what is next on its way out here.  The environmental rollbacks could lead to at least 80,000 extra deaths per decade and cause respiratory problems for more than one million people, according to a recent analysis conducted by researchers from Harvard University. That number, however, is likely to be “a major underestimate of the global public health impact," according to Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Most recently, the Trump administration has announced it intends to revoke California's ability under the Clean Air Act to regulate cars' greenhouse gas emissions and plans to set less stringent federal standards for fuel efficiency. The administration is significantly undermining California's attempts to regulate car emissions and slow climate change.

The EPA is expected to announce significantly less stringent standards for greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy for cars. They are likely to frame this as a reduced burden on manufactures and dealerships, but this is an extremely high cost proposition. While the original regulations set in motion by the Obama administration aimed to increase vehicle efficiency to an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by the end of 2025, the EPA is expected to revisit these standards and release new, significantly relaxed regulations next week. 

Moreover, the Trump administration has made several proposed and effective changes to the environmental policy. This is a fantastic resource from the National Geographic that keeps track of all the ways the environment is in danger under the current administration if this is something you want to keep tabs on. I've included some of the recent highlights below.

The Trump administration unveiled a proposal two weeks ago that would make several key changes to the Endangered Species Act—the 1973 law that has served as a bulwark against the bald eagle's extinction, among thousands of other species.

Furthermore, the Trump administration has ended NASA's Carbon Monitoring System, a $10-million-per-year effort to fund pilot programs intended to improve the monitoring of global carbon emissions. The CMS was particularly relevant to the global Paris Agreement, especially for verifying whether the nations of the world are actually meeting their pledges to reduce carbon emissions.

What you can do: 

• Call your local House representative to ensure that current greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy standards for automobiles are kept in place, as environmental protection is more important than cost-cutting for manufacturers. Congress has the power to set federal regulation of air quality standards.
• Also, share your opinion with lawmakers directly on https://www.regulations.gov where several proposed changes are posted and await public comment for 60 days before they are voted on or go into effect. 

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading, and thank you for your desire to evoke change. It is often hard to keep sight of the impact you can make amidst this barrage of overwhelming, often hopeless news, but just know that you are not alone. People like you are why there is still hope :)

Lots of love, and get out the vote!!

Zoha

P.S Here is a google doc of alllll the sources.

For those of you who don’t know what happened in Charleston, let me give you a brief overview. Dylan Roof, a 21 year old white male, walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church and watched the churchgoers pray for an hour before yelling “I have to do it. You’re raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go” and opening fire, going on to gun down 6 African-American women and 3 African-American men. Before I proceed any further, I’m going to list the victims and convey my immense sorrow and condolences to their families; I pray they stay strong throughout this horrible tragedy.

Rev. Clementa Pinckney

Rev. Sharonda Singleton

Myra Thompson

Tywanza Sanders

Ethel Lee Lance

Cynthia Hurd

Rev. Daniel L. Simmons Sr.

Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor

Susie Jackson

May their souls, along with the souls of all victims of hate crimes based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or any other basis for discrimination, rest in peace.

Now for a short history lesson.

The Emanuel AME church is a historically significant, predominantly African-American church that was established in 1787. It was closed down by the white community in South Carolina after they caught wind that one of the members of the church, the blacksmith Denmark Vesey, was planning a slave insurrection. The church reopened after the end of the civil war. It’s symbolism for the fight against slavery and inequality did not stop there; Martin Luther King Jr. also led marches from its steps, thereby continuing the historic fight for justice. To quote Rev. Carey Grady, the pastor of Reid AME Church in Columbia, South Carolina, “Emanuel represents that history of a church fighting to overcome the shackles of oppression.”

Let’s fast-forward 50 years from the day MLK Jr. was assassinated. Today, we don’t have doctrines like "separate but equal" that basically made racial discrimination legal, but does that mean it doesn’t exist? If you’re going to pretend that racial discrimination is a thing of the past, you live under a rock.

First of all, what constitutes the racial discrimination that I’m referring to? According to humanrights.gov.au, racial discrimination is when a person is treated less favorably than another person in a similar situation because of their race, color, national or ethnic origin or immigrant status.

This means that racial discrimination does not always come in the form of overt racial slurs (if you want to know what qualifies as a racial slur click here) or outright violence or right-wing extremism in pointy white hoods. Racial discrimination is the system through which society has kept people of color in a permanent state of inferiority to people of white skin even after we’ve achieved so-called “equality”. Let’s take a look.

1. Between 1934 and 1968, the Federal Housing Administration introduced the policy of “redlining”. This process allowed homeownership loans to whites (in fact, around $120 million worth of loans), but explicitly denied loans to blacks, destroying the possibility of investments wherever colored people lived and thus forcing them into the “ghettos” considerably poorer than the neighborhoods whites occupied ($120 million in loans does wonders). The subsequent effect was segregation that lasts to this very day. Although the process of redlining has been outlawed, a more psychological kind of racial discrimination persists to this day in the housing market. According to a report put out on an experiment done by the US Department of Housing and Development in 2012, minorities in nearly all cases were told about and shown fewer properties than white people. Blacks were told about and shown about 17% fewer homes than whites, while Asians were told about 15.5% fewer homes and shown nearly 19% fewer properties.

2. The chain of discrimination doesn't stop with the real estate market. Property taxes fund schools, meaning children with families that live in nicer, more expensive houses receive better education opportunities. Better education opportunities means access to better jobs, resources, and connections, all eventually leading to more wealth. Ironic? In addition, according to the U.S Education Department's 2011-2012 Civil Rights Data Collection, minority students receive more punishment and have less access to experienced (and often even QUALIFIED) teachers. 7% of black students attend schools where as many as 20% of teachers are unlicensed or uncertified. 25% of school districts pay teachers in "white" high schools around $5000 more than teachers in high schools with higher minority enrollment. This takes away incentive for experienced teachers to instruct at schools with more colored students. The culmination of this inequality, in addition to being a clear violation of almost every legal act to ensure equal rights to education, is a lower academic performance for minority students and a far greater risk of their dropping out of school. And even if they don' t drop out of school on their own, minority students are 3-4 times more likely to be suspended than white children. Black children make up 40% of all school expulsions and are 18 times more likely to be sentenced as adults in the court system than white children.

​3. As if its presence in the education system and the housing market were not bad enough already, racial discrimination has seeped through to the workplace as well. Many of you may have heard the infamous statistic that when identical resumes, two with  “white-sounding names” (Greg and Emily), and two with “african-american sounding names” (Lakisha and Jamal), were sent out to 1300 job ads, the job-seekers with “white-sounding names” were, on average, 50% more likely to receive a call-back as compared to job-seekers with “black-sounding names”. That shows clear discrimination when it comes to hiring individuals, but maybe that racial discrimination abates when the individuals officially become employees! LOL nope. The wage gap between black and white employees in particular is at upwards 30% according to Kellogg.com. People continue to blame blacks and all other people of color for their situation, despite the fact that it is the social construct of society that has existed for hundreds of years that has made it almost impossible for equality to prevail. Racial discrimination takes place in so many forms. It takes place when violence is committed against specific groups of people based on their race, as shown in the case of the shooting at Mother Emanuel church. It takes place in the YouTube comment sections, when fanatics blame people of color for claiming “fake victim status” and praise racist bigots as being “national heroes”. The worst part is that racial discrimination takes so many forms in our everyday lives that we are almost desensitized to it when we see it occur around us, like when a coworker makes fun of an immigrant worker for his or her accent, when an enraged driver yells “Go back to your country!” to someone who has lived in the US for all their life, or when a movie-goer chooses not to sit in the same row as a person of another race due to an ingrained prejudice he or she might not even be aware of, or when a person belonging to one ethnic race claims a person of another race got into a college or university because they played the race card. In the words of my friend Steffi Cao “it’s not a contest of ‘who has it worse’ between minorities", because the fact that discrimination exists at all on the basis of appearance is a scar on the face of our society.

When we are born, we don't know the difference between white people or black people or brown people, but instead we see them for who they are. We see them for when they share their toys with us or when they take our toys without asking. We judge people based on their actions and intentions, not by the colors of their skin. So what happens during the course of life that causes such a drastic change in the way we see other human beings? Why does it become permissible to judge people based on their appearance or their backgrounds rather than based on their personalities or their actions? And of ALL the ways to judge people based on unfounded or preconceived notions about their appearance, why on EARTH do we judge by the amount of pigment (or lack thereof) in an individual’s skin?!

I have one more thing I want to address in this blog post before I sign out which is the confederate flag controversy.

To those people who think the confederate flag represents southern pride, fried chicken and sweet tea, please stop kidding yourself. According to the man himself, William Tappan Thompson, the creator of the second confederate flag, the flag represents the people "fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored man." There are hundreds of other ways to show your southern pride if it's that close to your heart, and that's coming from someone who's lived in Louisiana for three years. However, using southern pride as an excuse to fly a confederate flag is an outright offence to anyone who did not stand for the same values as those who believed in the "supremacy of the white man", and especially to anyone whose families had been persecuted because of it. Now, knowing this, if you still want to fly your flag, be my guest, but don't come tell me it's okay for a government building to claim to serve all people of the United States of America equally yet fly a flag that symbolizes inequality and injustice.

Alright I know my thoughts are getting rather jumbled now and this probably isn't the most well-organized blog post you've ever read so I'm going to clarify the point I'm trying to make. Racial discrimination is alive and kicking, and chances are we're all guilty of it in some shape or form. However, by papering over this gaping wound in American history and pretending everything is okay, we not only make it acceptable for others to pretend it doesn't exist, but we also forget the plight of the people who have suffered most from that wound. On the other hand, by acknowledging it and by being aware of its presence in our lives, we show our support and solidarity with those people. We acknowledge the mistakes of the past and we show our willingness to see them corrected. So in short, don’t be afraid to talk about this. No change in our culture will ever come about if we don’t realize there’s a need for change.