Extend the TikTok Deadline! Call Your Senators!

Senator Markey of Massachusetts recently announced on the Senate floor plans to introduce the "Extend the TikTok Deadline Act" which would delay the deadline for the upcoming TikTok ban by 270 days. This legislation would delay the economic harm the ban would inflict on millions of Americans while allowing additional time for our elected officials to have substantive debate on what to do about the ban. Now is the time to act and call our senators to encourage their support of Markey's Extend the TikTok Deadline Act.

Jessica Craven, an adamant political activist and organizer, produced a script (among others) you can read when calling your senators to voice your support of the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act. Below are step-by-step instructions how to do it along with Jessica's script:

What You Can Do

1. Call Your Senators!

Find the phone number for your senators through the Senate's website and call them, or call the US Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. Add these phone numbers as contacts in your smartphone so you can call in the future, too.

Every state has two US Senators. Call both of them! If you have trouble getting through to their office in Washington, D.C., go to each senator's senate.gov page and call one of their branch offices local to your state. Those state branch offices are usually easier to get through to a real person.

2. Use The Script

Read the script below when calling each senator. This is taken directly from Jessica Craven's call script document, which has useful scripts on other issues you can call your representatives about as well. Remember: you must use your real name and the zipcode where you live when calling. Since this is an actual call to our real US Senators, we need to demonstrate we are one of their constituents and part of their voting base.

Hi my name is ______ and I’m a constituent from [zip]. I’m calling to ask the Senator to support the newly introduced “Extend the TikTok Deadline Act” from Senator Markey. This bill will delay the banning of TikTok for 270 days, giving Congress time to seek ways to address TikTok’s problems without banning it altogether. This ban will harm millions of Americans who either make their living or get vital information on TikTok. It’s an assault on free speech and got passed without ample debate. Delay it, please! Thanks.

3. Bonus Points!

Other things you can do to push your senators to vote for the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act:

Email your senator and/or send them a letter. You can email your senator through the contact form on their individual senate.gov page through the Contact link (under Message Topic/Issue select "Technology" or "Other").

I adapted Jessica's call script so you can copy/paste the script below into the Message field of your senator's contact form. You can also print it out, add your signature, and mail the letter to your senator!

Remember: replace [Name] with your actual name at the end!

Hello Senator,

I’m writing to ask for your support of the newly introduced “Extend the TikTok Deadline Act” from Senator Markey. This bill will delay the banning of TikTok for 270 days, giving Congress time to seek ways to address TikTok’s problems without banning it altogether. This ban will harm millions of Americans, including your many of your own constituents, who either make their living or get vital information on TikTok. It’s an assault on free speech and got passed without ample debate. Delay it, please!

Thank you and warm regards,

[Name]

Find the contact information for your US House of representative on the house.gov "find your representative" page and put their contact information into your smartphone. This will help when needing to contact your representative about issues in the future (and when the House needs to pass the bill on their end). You can also use third party services like 5 Calls or download the 5 Calls app for iOS or Android to quickly call your representatives in the House and Senate with call scripts about other important issues.

Call Now to Extend the TikTok Ban Deadline

Let's get to work and tell the US Senate to extend the TikTok deadline!

The Evil of Dehumanization

This statement from Ben resonates with me. I saw a disturbing clip yesterday from Tucker Carlson's recent live audience special with Rosanne Barr. Rosanne Barr goes on an unhinged rant talking about how Hollywood elites “eat people” and spreading other lies and disinformation. Here’s a short transcript of the clip I saw:

Barr: And you know they do that. You know they eat babies. That is not bullshit. It’s true.

Carlson: So it’s not just the dogs and the cats? It’s not just the pets?

Barr: It’s not just the dogs and the cats. They’re full on vampires. And everybody still thinks I’m crazy, but I’m not crazy. They’re full on vampires. They love the taste of human flesh and they drink human blood. They do, Tucker.

Notice how Rosanne uses the ominously vague “they” in her unhinged statements. Also notice how Carlson plays into this vague use of “they” to also include the racist and xenophobic accusation of with his question “it’s not just the pets?” Which is a reference to Trump’s absurd statements during the debate with Kamala Harris, where Trump said that “they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats.” The “they” in Trump’s racist and xenophobic statement refers to immigrants. Rosanne, in her mental instability, goes along with Tucker’s previous statement and becomes more unhinged by claiming all of this new “they” (read: Hollywood elites and immigrants) are “full on vampires.”

This is dehumanization.

This is blood libel.

This is xenophobia.

This is racism.

This is hatred.

This is evil.

And the radical Republican crowd in the video cheered for it. I wouldn’t want to subject anyone to the almost 2-hour live special of nonsense, hatred, and lies. If you want to subject yourself to it you can find the entire show with Tucker and Rosanne on Facebook. You will be able to find enough clips of the specific exchange I mention online just by using the snippets of the transcript I provided above to see for yourself.

This act of dehumanization is setting the stage for evil acts committed by the misguided radical right wing against anyone deemed as the “they” Rosanne and Tucker are talking about. 

We saw this with PizzaGate in 2016 when an alleged radical Republican drove 350 miles and shot up Comet Ping Pong pizzeria as a result of a wild conspiracy theory that the establishment was being used by the Clintons as an outlet for child sex trafficking.

This “they” that Tucker, Rosanne, and the crowd are thinking about is ultimately anyone who doesn’t fit the image of the radical Republican’s idea of a “true patriot” - namely anyone that isn’t a white, straight, cisgender, Christian nationalist conservative.

Once you are able to dehumanize one person, you can then dehumanize a group of people. When you dehumanize anyone, you are able to justify any immoral and unspeakable act you want against that person - torture, rape, murder, genocide, etc. - because you no longer see that person as a human being with inalienable rights and worthy of life.

Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free

“Freedom is never given voluntarily by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

I don’t know much about all the geopolitical nuances of what is happening currently in the Middle East. However, if my past years of work in research and learning through deconstruction and anti-racism have taught me anything, it was to advocate for the less fortunate, downtrodden, and oppressed. When listening to black voices, indigenous voices, and the voices of other people of color, when fellow christians call for repentance, when our Jewish siblings call for a stop to this genocide and join our Muslim siblings’ calls for an urgent ceasefire to this one-sided war with rules which the Israeli state government indicates they do not care to honor - I am compelled to take some form of action.

I heard the terrorist attack from October 7th being compared on a scale worse than September 11, 2001, and I remember that day. I remember the fear, confusion, sadness and resulting anger, rage, resentment, and advocation for the war afterward. Now being on the other side of that war and learning the motivations behind it, the havoc it caused, hatred it fed, families it displaced, people it disabled, and lives it took, I can say this type of senseless revenge in the form of erasure of an entire people is not the answer. Silence and neutrality during a time such as this only favors the oppressor. At this time, from what history I learned and voices I listened to so far, that oppressor is the Israeli state government. I beg the state government of Israel to stop this collective violent and intolerant act against the Palestinian people.

Call to Action

If you are a citizen of the United States, please call your House and Senate representatives now.

Below you will find links to tools to contact your representatives along with with scripts you may use as a guide if you do not know what to say. To use these tools, you will need to provide information such as your home address in order to determine who your representatives are. Please use the first link to the official United States government tool if you do not wish to provide that information for either of the non-profit organizations’ links provided below.

PSA Texans: Register to Vote!

Whether it’s a district, county, state, or nationwide primary or general election, they always seem to creep up on me. As a result, I also end up anxious as to whether my voter registration is current. 18 states and Washington DC have same-day voter registration on election days, while 42 states (and Washington DC) have online voter registration available - a progressive move bringing power to citizens to help them exercise their constitutional right to choose their representation in our government.

Texas unfortunately is neither of those.

The only way to register to vote within Texas requires you to send a physical registration application in a stamped envelope to your local county’s Registrar’s office. Even if you’ve registered before, your voter registration can still expire after a period of time, and the resources the Texas government provides doesn’t make it straightforward to tell whether your voter registration is current.

For example, when using Texas’s “Am I Registered?” online search tool and type in my TDL (Texas Driver’s License) and Date of Birth, I’m presented with information such as the date I originally registered (back in 2020), the date my registration is “Valid from" (whatever that means), and whether my registration is “ACTIVE” - to which the tool states my registration is of “ACTIVE” status. The tool does not provide a section stating when my voter registration may expire, which I remember reading on my last physical voter registration certificate as December 31, 2021. So now I’m left with conflicting information and I am unsure as to whether I will be turned away at the polling booth should I do nothing.

To make me question myself even more, the “Am I Registered?” tool even has a disclaimer at the bottom:

Note: 'Am I Registered?' provides a web-based search of data extracted from Texas’s statewide voter registration database. It is NOT the official record of your registration, which is retained by the voter registration office in the county of your residence.

As such I’m ultimately left with needing to send in yet another registration application. Better safe than sorry.

WHAT TO DO

I recommend (re)registering if you have any doubts on the current status of your voter registration. To do so, visit the VoteTexas.gov website. From there you’ll have three choices about registration:

1. Fill out the SOS Online Voter Registration Application and then print, sign, and mail the application to your county’s Registrar.

2. Request a printed application to have mailed to you. NOTE: this method is not advised if you’re looking to register within a week or two of the 30-day deadline.

3. Contact your Texas county’s Registrar’s office to complete the voter registration process.

The easiest option for me is the first one, and after answering a few questions I’m given a form to fill out with my necessary information to register. See example of the form web page below:

Screenshot of the Texas SOS Online Voter Registration Application form

For my case, I chose “Replacement” under Application Type because I no longer have my voter registration certificate since it was shown to have expired at the end of last year. However, if this is your first time registering you will select “New” and if you’re changing your voter registration information due to a change in home address or a name change, you would select the “Change” option and fill out the form accordingly.

After filling out all required fields and clicking “Submit” you’ll be presented with a formatted Texas Voting Registration application but you are NOT done yet. You will still need to print out this application, place the application in a stamped envelope, and address that envelope to your county’s Registrars office shown on the application. As long as it's in the mail before the 30-day deadline you should receive your new or updated voter registration certificate in the mail before the time election day or early voting begins.