PROTECT OUR RIGHTS: Springfield Coalition to Unite Against Hostile Legislation
Slide from the kNOw Your Ballot presentation on June 27th. Photo by Karl Reinkemeyer.
STUN ended the month strong with a solidarity event at the library's Hatch Auditorium to kick Springfield's activist community into action. Titled "kNOw Your Ballot" and hosted by Angela Frantz of Abortion Action Missouri, the event was a collaboration between STUN, Abortion Action Missouri, Missouri Jobs with Justice, the League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri, and Springfield NAACP, focused on the legislative items up for a vote in the upcoming elections in August and November. There will be up to nine different proposals on the ballot between the two elections, and four in particular have the potential to be devastating to Missourians.
Most relevant to STUN's mission is Amendment 5, which would replace the state's income tax with taxes on any number of goods and services that lower-income Missourians would take most of the burden of. This could even include rent payments, which would make safe housing even less affordable for the people who need it. One person in attendance, who shared that she is living off of social security disability, stated bluntly, "If everything is taxed, I'm going to die." But as bad as Amendment 5 is, there are others that are even more frightening, because they strike directly at democracy itself.
Amendment 3 would reverse the Amendment 3 that was previously passed by Missouri voters to protect abortion rights. In a move that we here in Springfield recognize, the legislature decided they didn't like our decision and put the same issue back on the ballot instead of respecting it. They've even taken the extra petty steps of giving it the same name to create confusion and throwing in a nonsensical ban on gender-affirming care (which Missouri already prohibits) to draw in more votes just out of prejudice.
Proposition A would redraw the state's congressional map to gerrymander the state and allow the legislature to pick which voters they like and which ones they don't. This would make it a cakewalk for them to get whatever agenda they want pushed through without any opposition. The only way for voters to have their voices heard would be the initiative petition process... which brings me to Amendment 4, which might be the worst one of the bunch.
Amendment 4 would kneecap initiative petitions by requiring them to win in every single district in the state to be enacted. That means the people in power would only need to sabotage the vote in a single district to quash the will of the people throughout the rest of the state, and of course these rules would ONLY affect voter-led ballot initiatives, not legislative bills. Over the past 20 years, Missourians have used initiative petitions to enact campaign finance reform, guarantee paid sick leave, and raise the minimum wage three times. Without it we would lose one of our best tools for ensuring the rights of all Missourians.
All of this is designed to take power away from us, but we haven't lost that power yet. We can still stop all of this if we band together and fight back. That's why we're putting our efforts into spreading the word. We're going to be canvassing. We're going to be making calls. We don't want to walk by a person on the street without knowing they've heard what's at stake for these elections. So make a plan, decide who you're bringing along, and stay connected with us through our social media. And you should also bookmark this link and this link to learn more about the proposed amendments and send them to anyone who needs them.
It's a lot, and it's fair to feel worried, but don't give into despair. As long as we face this head on we can win. Let's show those politicians that we won't accept being pushed around!