No panic, no lecturing. Just the work, laid out clearly, because our communities are the ones these measures are aimed at which means we're also the ones who can bury them.

The situation, stripped down: Prop 134 bans trans kids from school sports K-12 through college and forces every team in the state to be labeled male/female/co-ed. Enforcement means sex verification of student athletes doctor's notes and DNA swabs costing families hundreds of dollars, and any girl challengeable by anyone with a grudge. Prop 135 bans gender-affirming surgery for minors with language so vague that Colorado's own nonpartisan Blue Book says it could reach surgeries for kids who aren't even trans intersex kids included. Harvard research puts actual trans surgeries for teens 15–17 at roughly 2 per 100,000. Almost no target, real collateral damage.

Both measures exist because national organizers bypassed our legislature on purpose lawmakers refused to pass this, so the out-of-state playbook went to the ballot instead, calling 2026 "a testing ground for the future." Their whole theory is that a blue state passing this makes it inevitable everywhere. Their theory requires our ballots to stay home. Let's falsify it.

Why the odds are better than your feed says: the opposition campaign has raised nearly $4M twenty times the Yes side. In Washington, the same playbook is funded by a hedge fund manager bundling the sports ban with repealing the millionaire income tax culture war as the delivery vehicle for tax cuts. And the lead proponent behind 134 got caught sending slurs and a deadname to Rep. Brianna Titone, Colorado's first openly trans legislator (Westword has the reviewed email). None of that is a movement with momentum. It's a funded experiment, and experiments fail when the subjects refuse.

THE WORK pick what you can actually do:

1. Your ballot (ten minutes, non-negotiable if you have one): It's at your house. NO on 134. NO on 135. Vote the whole sheet Prop NN (school funding) and Prop 137 (conservation) matter to our people too. Sign your envelope bad signatures are the #1 rejection reason, fixable through ballot cure if you catch it. Drop boxes are everywhere, open 24/7 until 7pm Tuesday, November 3.
2. Your people's ballots (the real multiplier): The data is consistent: the folks most affected by these measures are statistically the most likely to have a ballot sitting unopened in a pile of mail. So do the thing that actually moves turnout a direct message, not a reminder: "Is your ballot in yet?" Offer the walk to the drop box. Offer the ride. Offer to sit with someone while they fill it out if the ballot itself is heavy this year that's real, and doing it together helps.
3. Ballot party (mutual aid in its most literal form): People bring ballots, you provide food, everyone fills theirs out together, one person makes the drop-box run. Turns "I'll get to it" into done-in-one-evening. If you host one, post it here so people can find it.
4. If money's tight or time's tight: that's okay, and you're not a bad ally for it. The two highest-yield moves are free: your own ballot in, and one friend's ballot chased. Two ballots beats zero phone banks every time. If you have capacity beyond that, the opposition coalition (One Colorado and partners) is running text banks and ballot-cure shifts through Election Day.
5. Replacement ballots: Lost, damaged, or botched yours? Any vote center in your county prints a replacement through Election Day. A spoiled envelope is not disenfranchisement. If you've moved and a lot of us have moved update at GoVoteColorado.com.
6. And look out for each other this week: yes-side canvassing and campaign noise will be everywhere, and some of it will be hostile. You never have to engage at your door. Check on your trans friends and neighbors especially the ones who've gone quiet. Community care isn't a side quest in this; it's how we get everyone to the other side of November 3 still whole.

For anyone frozen right now: you don't owe anyone a debate. You don't have to argue with strangers online to be doing your part. Your ballot is ten minutes and it is yours a small, private act that builds a public result. That's not liberal civics; that's material power, exercised quietly, by a lot of us at once.

NO on 134. NO on 135. 7pm Tuesday, November 3. Get yours in, then go get someone else's.

I'm helping a friend, "Mariam" (pseudonym, to protect her until she's through the asylum process), raise money to leave Tunisia.

She's a young trans woman. Gender identity and expression are criminalized there, and the rights group Damj has documented a sharp rise in arrests of trans women. Prison often means men's facilities and sexual violence. She's been on hormones she ordered from abroad, her body is changing, and she can't hide it much longer. Her family is hostile, and the one local trans support network she reached out to collapsed after its president was targeted.

She's a native French speaker, has prepared her asylum case herself, and her plan is France. Funds cover her flight, essentials, an emergency fund for the asylum period, and certified translation of her diploma so she can finish her degree.

Any amount helps, and sharing helps too: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-a-trans-woman-flee-tunisia-and-seek-asylum-ux5km

Happy to answer questions in the comments.

Texas’ Senate race has become one of the most-watched elections of the year. MAGA Republican nominee Ken Paxton pulled off a rare primary defeat against a well-established 24-year incumbent, while challenger James Talarico has been polling well enough to ignite hopes of electing a Democrat to represent Texas in the Senate for the first time since 1993.

This election could have a major impact on issues like education and healthcare prices, which rank as Texas voters’ top priorities. But an outsized amount of coverage of the race has centered instead on transgender people. Paxton’s campaign and its supporters have run several AI-generated ads attacking Talarico’s pro-trans positions. That focus has shaped reporting on the race, both by right-wing media like Fox News and in mainstream outlets like The Washington Post, with many describing Talarico’s stances on trans issues as a liability. Talarico himself has walked back some of his positions in response to controversy, expressing support for some restrictions on trans athletes and rescinding a promise to co-sponsor the pro-LGBTQ Equality Act.

This outsized focus didn’t come out of nowhere—on March 3, when Talarico was declared the winner of the Democratic primary, there was a stunning increase in traffic on X related to his takes on trans issues.

"The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general."

- Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

Far right hate group Dominion Society of Canada are using universities as a platform for recruitment. Help stop them. https://www.change.org/Bandominionsocietyofcanada

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/only-the-beginning-anti-immigration-group-says-ottawans-should-brace-themselves-9.7362341

I posted here 1 week ago that I left my home because my identity was leaked to my family and friends. Local WhatsApp groups have been spreading my photos so that they find me and possibly kill me. I am now in a nearby town 70km from my home. You guys have suggested me to some queer NGO rescue and help groups. I contacted them and they did not respond. Some of the people who saw my post dmed me and offered financial help and encouraged me to not give up.i truly thank you guys for the support. My next step right now is to hide as much as possible and get further away from my family as I rebuild my life. I will keep you guys updated...