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young voters
If Harris Wants to Win Over Young Voters in Swing States, She’ll Say No to Line 5
America’s most dangerous crude oil pipeline threatens the future of the Great Lakes. That’s why young voters want it shut down.
Nov 01, 2024
Picture this: shimmery sunlight dancing on water. Deep blue crests over seafoam green before dissipating as waves meet the shore. The Chicago skyline gazes from a distance.
Running along Lake Michigan is one of my favorite pastimes at Northwestern University. We pride ourselves on having not one, but two beaches on campus that showcase the lake. The body of water is so wide it feels more like an ocean. The sound of the waves crashing onto the sand reminds me of the beaches back home in the San Francisco Bay Area.
But in the heart of the Great Lakes—where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron—America’s most dangerous crude oil pipeline threatens 700 miles of coastline and our climate future.
By incorporating pipeline shutdowns in her climate platform, Harris can send a clear message that our future doesn’t rely on fossil fuels and that people can raise their families and thrive in the Great Lakes region.
Growing up in the Bay Area showed me that addressing the climate crisis is my generation’s mission. When I was a junior in high school in 2020, California experienced the worst wildfire in state history. Orange haze blanketed everything. With the air quality index skyrocketing, I did not dare go outside. Friends had to evacuate their homes, and a teacher of mine saw their house burn down. I knew I wanted a career focused on the environment when I realized our wildfires would grow worse every year without action.
Coming here for college, I was excited to explore a new part of the country and catch a break from the wildfire season. People tout the Midwest as a haven from the climate crisis, but environmental issues are aplenty here as well.
As the presidential election date gets closer with states in the Midwest crucial for the Harris-Walz ticket to pick up, looming threats to our Great Lakes should gain wider attention, all because of North America’s most dangerous fossil fuel pipeline. The Great Lakes hold one-fifth of the world’s available fresh water supply, but under it lurks an oil pipeline called Line 5, operated by Canadian oil corporation Enbridge, which could ruin millions of people’s drinking water, mar Lake Michigan’s beauty, and devastate our communities.
Right in the heart of the Great Lakes, the Line 5 oil pipeline is accelerating our climate crisis as we speak. Seventy-one years ago, Enbridge built Line 5 right through Michigan and Wisconsin and in some of the most sensitive areas in the Great Lakes as a shortcut to reach Ontario, Canada. A spill from Line 5 could reach the Lake Michigan shoreline where myself and hundreds of thousands of people live and walk by everyday.
Enbridge has a sordid history when it comes to pipeline infrastructure. They are responsible for one of the largest inland oil spills in United States history from another pipeline they operate in Michigan. They didn’t shut the valve for 17 hours, and remediation efforts took five years. A similar spill from Line 5 would significantly threaten the Great Lakes and the people who call this region home. When burned, the oil in Line 5 contributes more greenhouse gas emissions than the three most polluting coal-fired power plants in the country combined
With a major election this year, young voters across Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota will be a crucial voting bloc. For many of us—myself included—it’s going to be our first time voting in a presidential election. Taking action for the environment is at the forefront of my generation’s concerns, which means that delivering a tangible victory to protect our climate and Great Lakes is absolutely necessary. Enbridge’s Line 5 must be shut down and decommissioned. While a Harris-Walz administration can deliver by making this action happen, U.S. President Joe Biden can do so now by revoking this outdated pipeline’s permit.
The Great Lakes aren’t just the source of drinking water for over 40 million people. They’re our identity, creating a major reason why many of us live in the Midwest to begin with. When governments are putting more energy toward keeping fossil fuel pipelines in the Great Lakes than preserving the water we drink from, swim in, and fish from, it gives the impression that our natural resources aren’t worth saving. We cannot afford to be complacent in a time of crisis, and we must do better.
Indigenous Tribes, environmental groups, small businesses, and local residents across the Great Lakes have been fighting Enbridge’s Line 5 for over a decade because of the severe risks it poses to our air, land, water, and health. Enbridge has been operating illegally in Michigan since Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took action to stop the pipeline in 2020. And since 2012, Enbridge has been trespassing on the Bad River Band’s reservation in Wisconsin.
People are taking action against Line 5 by signing petitions, attending rallies in the U.S. and Canada, writing to their legislators, and emailing administration officials like U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for a shutdown. Volunteers have organized local businesses, faith communities, and Native Nations to attend teach-ins and community events and share information on Line 5’s dangers.
With Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket now, shutting down Line 5 should be a key issue in her policy platform. Gov. Whitmer won reelection handily after calling for a shutdown order, which shows that moving away from fossil fuels and decommissioning unsafe pipelines can be a winning electoral issue. Prioritizing a Line 5 shutdown could show that Harris can be one of the most pro-environment presidents in American history—her track record from California and her time in the Senate suggests that she prioritizes environmental policies like this. Shutting down the pipeline can set the stage for a new climate champion government.
A Line 5 shutdown is an achievable, easy win with real advantages. If climate is on the agenda for young voters in key Midwest states, Line 5 should be on the list of the vice president’s campaign priorities. By incorporating pipeline shutdowns in her climate platform, Harris can send a clear message that our future doesn’t rely on fossil fuels and that people can raise their families and thrive in the Great Lakes region. Young voters from the Midwest, like me, are firmly uniting behind one key message: Shut down Line 5.
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Can Biden Learn From 1968 Before It’s Too Late?
In order to get the necessary turnout among young people, minorities, and progressives to prevent a Republican victory in November, the Biden administration needs to change its policies, and soon.
Jun 09, 2024
The year 1968 may be repeating itself. The United States is again experiencing an incumbent Democratic administration supporting an unpopular war, disruptive protests on college campuses, police repression against nonviolent demonstrators, a Republican challenger promising to restore law and order and, to top it off, a Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
It is axiomatic in politics not to alienate your base in an election year. Yet, this is what U.S. President Joe Biden and congressional Democratic leaders are doing. While polls show that 83% of Democrats support a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the Biden administration and the Democratic leadership continue to oppose it. Only a minority of Democratic voters agree with Biden’s continuous unconditional military assistance to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. And, despite Biden’s angry denials, a full 56% of Democrats say that Israel is committing genocide with only 22% believing otherwise.
A poll published in March shows that nearly three times as many Democrats believe that “Israel has gone too far and its military actions are not justified” as those who believe that “Israel is defending its interests and its military actions are justified.” While that number has almost certainly grown in light of subsequent Israeli atrocities and condemnations by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, the Democratic administration and the vast majority of Democrats in Congress continue to say just the opposite.
Whenever there is such a huge gap between public opinion and government policy, the legitimacy of the entire political system is called into question, prompting disruptive protests.
Despite 62% of registered Democratic voters supporting a suspension of military aid to Israel, the Biden administration, along with all but three Democratic Senators and 173 out of 213 House Democrats, approved nearly $18 billion in additional unconditional military aid to Israel in recent weeks. Even though Biden suspended one shipment of particularly lethal ordnance in April, he has continued to approve additional arms transfers despite ongoing Israeli violations of U.S. and international law. This could have a real political impact, as a more recent poll shows that a majority of Democrats would prefer a presidential nominee who does not support military aid to Israel.
More significant to the outcome of the presidential race, a recent poll shows that 20% of voters in five swing states are less likely to vote for Biden because of his support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Biden’s policies are particularly damaging with core constituencies, such as Arab Americans, who compose a large enough percentage of the voting population to affect the outcomes in swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Virginia. Close to 60% of Arab Americans supported Biden in 2020 while only around one-third supported Donald Trump. This year, a recent poll of Arab American voters in those swing states shows that, as a result of the war in Gaza, Biden’s support has dropped to only 20%.
Other minorities in the Democratic coalition are becoming alienated as well, with growing evidence that support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza by Biden and congressional Democrats could negatively impact electoral support among Black and Latinx supporters.
Perhaps the most dramatic shift is among the country’s diverse base of 2.5 million Muslim voters, 86% of whom supported Biden in 2020. That support has now dropped to 36%.
But it is with young voters that support for Israel’s war could have the biggest impact for Biden and congressional Democrats. Recent elections have shown that when youth turnout is high, Democrats win. When it is low, Democrats lose. All indications suggest that the Gaza war will depress the youth turnout and lessen the enthusiasm necessary to recruit the army of young volunteers to canvas and get out the vote. Nearly three-quarters of voters under the age of 30 oppose Biden’s policy in Gaza, a higher percentage than opposed George W. Bush on Iraq, Ronald Reagan on Central America, or even Richard Nixon on Vietnam.
Whenever there is such a huge gap between public opinion and government policy, the legitimacy of the entire political system is called into question, prompting disruptive protests. There have been more than 8,000 anti-war and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the United States since October, attracting more than 1,000,000 people, with particularly high numbers of younger Americans taking part. Even College Democrats of America, the official student organization of the Democratic Party, has not only called on the President to support a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, but has endorsed the protests as well.
Despite 97% of campus protests being completely nonviolent, the crackdown against student demonstrators have been far more repressive than comparable pro-divestment protests targeting South Africa during the 1980s, with more than 3,600 arrests and hundreds of injuries from police assaults, and hundreds of student suspensions. Notably, the colleges and universities with the most arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters have been in cities led by Democratic mayors and located in states led by Democratic governors.
Such repression, along with ongoing atrocities in Gaza by U.S.-backed Israeli forces, is leading to greater anger and more militant protests, with massive demonstrations planned this August at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The New York Times and others have noted how this can play into the Republican narrative, as it did in 1968, enabling them to give the impression that, under Democratic leadership, the country is falling apart and things are getting out of control, thus requiring a strong Republican leader to restore order.
Using Nixon’s playbook, Biden has tried to depict the anti-war movement by its most extreme elements. In his nationwide address on May 2, Biden reiterated the right to peaceful protest, but implied that the majority of protesters were engaged in such practices as “threatening people, intimidating people, [and] instilling fear in people” as well as “vandalism, trespassing, [and] breaking windows”—in spite of the fact that such incidents have been extremely rare among the more than 130 encampments that sprung up in colleges and universities across the country. Biden even blamed demonstrators for “forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations” even though these were decisions made by school administrators and were not being advocated for by the protesters.
A recent poll shows that only 41% of registered Democrats approved of Biden’s response to the protests.
The Biden administration has falsely claimed that a popular slogan calling for a democratic secular state in historic Palestine and the use of an Arabic word traditionally connoting civil resistance are antisemitic hate speech. Congressional Democrats have joined Republicans in an effort to codify a definition of antisemitism so broad as to make it possible to suppress pro-Palestinian activism under civil rights statutes.
Democratic politicians have also joined Republicans in attacking anti-war and pro-divestment protesters as “pro-Hamas,” “pro-terrorist,” and “antisemitic,” citing incidents involving a tiny minority of extremists within the ranks of these protesters as somehow being representative of the entire movement and even portraying peaceful demonstrators as violent mobs who have threatened the physical safety of other students. Some Democratic officials, using language reminiscent of the 1960s, have also insisted, without evidence, that protesters were outside agitators paid by foreign authoritarian interests.
All of this will only fuel the resentment and cynicism of Democratic-leaning young voters angry at being slandered by Democratic politicians, having their anti-war organizations banned, and seeing Democrat-led city governments bring in cops to beat and pepper spray them.
As a result, for many young Americans, this election has gone well beyond Israel and Palestine. They see it as a question of democracy—showing that Democrats are not only willing to ignore the vast majority of their constituents in pursuing what they see as a fundamentally immoral policy of aiding and abetting a far-right government engaging in war crimes on a massive scale, but also attacking international legal institutions and human rights organizations seeking accountability, supporting corporate interests profiting from an illegal war and occupation, and actively suppressing dissent.
In order to get the necessary turnout among young people, minorities, and progressives to prevent a Republican victory in November, pointing out how Trump would pursue even worse policies in regard to Israel and Palestine—and how his election would threaten American democracy itself—is not enough. The Biden administration needs to change its policies, and soon.
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Sunrise Protesters Arrested at VP's House Demanding Biden Declare a Climate Emergency
"We deserve an administration who will fight for us, but instead of declaring a climate emergency, we are seeing Biden and Harris expand oil and gas production to record levels."
Apr 15, 2024
Six young activists were arrested outside Vice President Kamala Harris' Los Angeles home on Monday while calling on the White House to declare a climate emergency, according to the youth-led Sunrise Movement.
Harris and President Joe Biden–Democrats who are seeking reelection in November—campaigned as climate champions in the 2020 cycle but have had a mixed record on the topic since entering office.
"My generation is spending our teenage years organizing for climate action because people like Kamala Harris have failed us," said Adah Crandall, one of the activists arrested after blockading the street outside her California residence overnight.
"We're ready to do whatever it takes to win a climate emergency declaration—we will camp out overnight, we will get arrested, we will mobilize our peers by the thousands to win the world we deserve," the 18-year-old continued. "The Biden administration are cowards for not standing with young people."
"The Biden administration are cowards for not standing with young people."
The White House has been praised for climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act as well was a recent pause on liquefied natural gas exports. However, the president has also faced criticism for continuing fossil fuel lease sales, backing the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Willow oil project, and skipping last year's United Nations summit.
Just last week, the Biden administration approved a license for a pipeline company to build the nation's largest offshore oil terminal off of Texas' Gulf Coast—despite surging fossil fuel pollution that is pushing up global temperatures.
Sunrise last week condemned the approval as "very disappointing" and also joined with Campus Climate Network and Fridays for Future USA to announce Earth Day demonstrations intended to pressure Biden to declare a climate emergency.
Biden
claimed last year that "practically speaking," he had already declared a national climate emergency; however, as campaigners and experts have stressed, actually doing so would unlock various federal powers to tackle the fossil fuel-driven crisis.
"Our communities in California breathe toxic air from fossil fuels and face fires that destroy our homes," noted 18-year-old Ariela Lara, who was arrested at Harris' home.
"I'm on the frontlines raising my voice for my Black and Latine families and friends," Lara added, "because I know that we deserve to have affordable housing and healthcare, we deserve an administration who will fight for us, but instead of declaring a climate emergency, we are seeing Biden and Harris expand oil and gas production to record levels."
The action targeting Harris came after a February protest at Biden's campaign headquarters in Delaware that also led to arrests.
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