Brandon Dothager, Justice Democrat

Erin is a special talent poised to lead our generation in government for decades to come! This 33 year old councilwoman enters office with a list of legislative priorities ranging from worker’s rights & wages to environmental protections… and if you’ve ever met her, you know she has the energy to do all of it.

Erin is the real deal and that energy is sure to be converted into action for the Town of Chesterton. A true people’s leader. If you know anything about politics, it is really hard to get those types of leaders elected to office. I am so excited for the Town of Chesterton’s next 4 years!

Israel & the West have repeatedly lied to the public in the advancement of their genocide against the Palestinian people .

While we are merry, others suffer.

Imagine if our tax money was used to build rather than to destroy.

Another day, another war crime funded by US.

Our politicians care more about funding a genocidal settler ethnostate than they do your health & well-being.

So it goes.

Journalist who broke story on decomposing babies in Gaza is shot, injured Mohammed Balousha described being shot near his home and struggling for help. He was hit a day after Al Jazeera’s Samer Abu Daqqa was killed in a drone strike.

Support the Right to Repair!

What have we done?

How can anyone still defend this system?

Millennia of evolution destroyed by 200 years of industrialization & capitalist free enterprise has produced the destruction of our Home planet.

Political leaders still tout this system; how?

Please join us at tomorrow’s Town Council meeting in solidarity with Councilwoman Toya Smith.

Please join us tomorrow in solidarity with Councilwoman Toya Smith.

Rest in Power Fernando Villavicencio

“You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation.” -Fred Hampton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Villavicencio

Fernando Villavicencio - Wikipedia Fernando Alcibiades Villavicencio Valencia (11 October 1963 – 9 August 2023) was an Ecuadorian politician, activist and journalist who was one of the leading candidates for President of Ecuador in the 2023 general election at the time of his assassination. He served as a member of the National Ass...

*VOTE EARLY THIS WEEK*

MUNSTER TOWN HALL
&
WICKER PARK

9a - 3p Monday through Saturday & again Nov 7th
extended to 7 PM on Thursday, November 3rd!

Brandon's Ballot

US Senate: McDermott for Indiana
Congressman Frank J. Mrvan
Secretary of State: Destiny Wells
Treasurer: Jessica McClellan
ZeNai Brooks for Indiana State Auditor
State Senator Michael Griffin
State Rep: Mike Andrade
Assessor: LaTonya Harris-Spearman
County Council (5th): Christine Cid
Oscar Martinez Jr. for Lake County Sheriff

Lisa Salinas-Matonovich for North Township Board
Richard J. Novak for North Township Board
Peter Katic

Erica Smith-Gomez for Highland School Board
Victor Garcia
Robert Kuva

Retain both judges, Mathias & Vaidik!

Movimiento Cosecha

Summarized from POLITICO

War On Drugs Continues to Crumble
👍 Detroit decriminalized possession of psychedelics, 61%-39%
👍 Victorious Prosecutors in Manhattan, Philly, and Norfolk ran against the War on Drugs.
👍 local decriminalization measures pass in Ohio, statewide legalization is anticipated

Tucson Raises Minimum Wage
👍 By a 65 to 35 percent vote, they approved an initiative to increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2025.

Office of Participatory Budgeting
👍 Boston broke ground by creating the Office of Participatory Budgeting, where citizens will control a potion of the budget.

Local Courts: A New Frontier in CJ Reform
👍All 5 progressive candidates for Allegheny PA County Court of Common Pleas, which handles criminal matters, were victorious
They vowed to use their discretion to shorten prison sentences and reduce pretrial detention.
👍 Similar results in Missoula MT.
-GOP gained control of PA Superior Court, and added a state Supreme seat as well.
👍 Sheriff races in New Orleans & Buffalo scrutinized squalid jail conditions

Miscellany
-Former Chris Christie bridgegate aide lost.
-Trumpcult Sheriff lost big in Albuquerque Mayoral Election
-Critical Race Theory fearmongering ravaged Wisconsin school boards.
-Texas officials can’t limit size of religious gatherings for any reason (Covid)
👍 St Paul becomes first city in Midwest with rent control. Annual rent increases capped at 3% per year and is unique in applying to all rental properties across the city, regardless of size or age of the building.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/11/05/important-local-election-results-you-missed-519669

The Most Important Election Results You Missed A series of under-the-radar local races signal where the country is really headed.

Today, I called Congressman Frank J. Mrvan to advocate for the American defunding of Israel’s defense. Human Rights Watch’s investigation found Israel committed the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.

I encourage you to do the same.
Merrillville: (219)795-1844
DC: (202) 225-2461

—

About 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians live today between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, an area encompassing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the latter made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Throughout most of this area, Israel is the sole governing power; in the remainder, it exercises primary authority alongside limited Palestinian self-rule. Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.

Several widely held assumptions, including that the occupation is temporary, that the “peace process” will soon bring an end to Israeli abuses, that Palestinians have meaningful control over their lives in the West Bank and Gaza, and that Israel is an egalitarian democracy inside its borders, have obscured the reality of Israel’s entrenched discriminatory rule over Palestinians. Israel has maintained military rule over some portion of the Palestinian population for all but six months of its 73-year history. It did so over the vast majority of Palestinians inside Israel from 1948 and until 1966. From 1967 until the present, it has militarily ruled over Palestinians in the OPT, excluding East Jerusalem. By contrast, it has since its founding governed all Jewish Israelis, including settlers in the OPT since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, under its more rights-respecting civil law.

For the past 54 years, Israeli authorities have facilitated the transfer of Jewish Israelis to the OPT and granted them a superior status under the law as compared to Palestinians living in the same territory when it comes to civil rights, access to land, and freedom to move, build, and confer residency rights to close relatives. While Palestinians have a limited degree of self-rule in parts of the OPT, Israel retains primary control over borders, airspace, the movement of people and goods, security, and the registry of the entire population, which in turn dictates such matters as legal status and eligibility to receive identity cards.

A number of Israeli officials have stated clearly their intent to maintain this control in perpetuity and backed it up through their actions, including continued settlement expansion over the course of the decades-long “peace process.” Unilateral annexation of additional parts of the West Bank, which the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to carry out, would formalize the reality of systematic Israeli domination and oppression that has long prevailed without changing the reality that the entire West Bank is occupied territory under the international law of occupation, including East Jerusalem, which Israel unilaterally annexed in 1967.

International criminal law has developed two crimes against humanity for situations of systematic discrimination and repression: apartheid and persecution. Crimes against humanity stand among the most odious crimes in international law.

The international community has over the years detached the term apartheid from its original South African context, developed a universal legal prohibition against its practice, and recognized it as a crime against humanity with definitions provided in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (“Apartheid Convention”) and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The crime against humanity of persecution, also set out in the Rome Statute, the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights on racial, ethnic, and other grounds, grew out of the post-World War II trials and constitutes one of the most serious international crimes, of the same gravity as apartheid.

The State of Palestine is a state party to both the Rome Statute and the Apartheid Convention. In February 2021, the ICC ruled that it has jurisdiction over serious international crimes committed in the entirety of the OPT, including East Jerusalem, which would include the crimes against humanity of apartheid or persecution committed in that territory. In March 2021, the ICC Office of Prosecutor announced the opening of a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine.

The term apartheid has increasingly been used in relation to Israel and the OPT, but usually in a descriptive or comparative, non-legal sense, and often to warn that the situation is heading in the wrong direction. In particular, Israeli, Palestinian, US, and European officials, prominent media commentators, and others have asserted that, if Israel’s policies and practices towards Palestinians continued along the same trajectory, the situation, at least in the West Bank, would become tantamount to apartheid.[1] Some have claimed that the current reality amounts to apartheid.[2] Few, however, have conducted a detailed legal analysis based on the international crimes of apartheid or persecution.[3]

In this report, Human Rights Watch examines the extent to which that threshold has already been crossed in certain of the areas where Israeli authorities exercise control.

A Threshold Crossed Summary About 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians live today between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, an area encompassing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the latter made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Throughout mo...

Please vote!

Here, you can click through my ballot (I’ve already voted) and see my reasoning for each selection.

If you live in Munster, Please vote for Ginny Dickman-Lopez for Munster School Board and Cameron Martin for Munster School Board! (They’re not on here because I’m a Highland resident, Allencia Ballard is my choice here.)

Have you voted yet?

Here you can take a peak at my full ballot, including explanations, and research on judicial retention.

Feel free to ask me questions about any of the options on your ballot!

https://www.ballotready.org/sb/Tf2wpij3?fbclid=IwAR36f4P38hA4lM-NCv7Ssn8JV5VzZr8HRda9ig8bo-Qho5m5STd8JmihYG4

Your ballot explained See your ballot, research candidates and referendums, and vote informed

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We spend $700,000,000,000 annually on the military budget, and what do we have to show for it?

Blood on our hands. Approximately 250,000 *civilians* killed in the Middle East since 9/11.
🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 🩸🩸
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2018/Human%20Costs%2C%20Nov%208%202018%20CoW.pdf

watson.brown.edu

I have conceded the race to my opponent, Mike Andrade for Indiana State Representative - District 12.

Now, all of our fingers are crossed for Frank Mrvan!

I will have more to say later but I didn’t want to leave people waiting in anticipation. I have to pick up my signs now.

HEAR YE, HEAR YE,
THE POLLS ARE NOW CLOSED!

Thank you! Thank you so much to everyone for their support during this campaign. I never imagined when I put my name on the ballot that I would have to campaign through a pandemic but we adapted the best we could! Win or lose tonight, I can tell you one thing for certain: I'm glad this primary cycle is finally over!

This campaign was an experience I will cherish forever. I have never felt so supported in my entire life. I am proud to have run a campaign the way campaigns should be ran. We were 100% honest through the duration of the campaign. We did make one honest mistake, and we owned up to it.
We pushed the issues! This is one of the things I really want to highlight about how competitive primaries are part of a healthy democracy. By holding our opponent accountable to the ticket he ran on, we were able to push him to adopt our platform on workers' rights! I am not upset it was copied, in fact, I'm overjoyed. Let's fight for that Prevailing Wage Law so the building trades can get the hard-earned compensation they deserve!
We found folks to organize into the fold for justice!
We did not accept a single dime of PAC money or corporate contributions!
We gave people a reason to believe politics can be done differently than the way its always been done!
We raised over $1k for the Food Bank of Northwest Indiana!
We gave the people a campaign they could be proud to vote for!

As a candidate, I stayed true to myself - we did not risk the public health just so we could win an election. I delivered food to people in need because they needed, not because I needed a photo op.
We delivered the voters nothing but the truth, and let them decide, as our democracy is meant to be.

There are countless people to thank and I'm rushed as I write this post because I have some post-election stuff to do, so I'm not going to attempt to name them all here or else I'll forget someone. That post will be on the way tomorrow.

But for now, I do have someone to thank: The voters who came out today or mailed in their ballot to support social, economic, and environmental justice.

Don't ever stop fighting for what's right!

"The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice." -MLK

ONE HOUR
LEFT TO VOTE!

2 Hours Left!

Vote for Democratic votes in Indianapolis!
Vote for workers’ rights!
Vote to save our environment!
Vote for our teachers!
Vote for reproductive rights!

Vote for Brandon Dothager for State Rep!

3 Hours Left!
Go VOTE!

While my opponent copied my exact platform point on workers’ rights, keep in mind that he voted for the people who repealed the Prevailing Wage Law in 2015 which he now claims he wants to reinstate.

Can you trust him to cast Democratic votes in Indianapolis? His record says no. My record says yes!

Our campaign is hard at work on the phones today, not at the polls, due to the pandemic. While having no presence at the poll may cost us votes, and maybe even the election itself, it was the right thing to do during a public health crisis.

When other campaigns hand you literature, they’re telling you they care more about your vote than your health.

Vote for the people’s candidate,
Brandon Dothager!

In case you needed any more motivation to go out and vote today. This is how my opponent hides the fact that 2/3 of his campaign fundraising is from corporations, LLCs, and PACs.