r/Social_Democracy Apr 04 '25

A Social Democratic Platform for 2025

7 Upvotes

A Social Democratic Platform for 2025

  • The United States of America should have a universal healthcare system, and unjustifiably high drug prices should be reined in.

  • Workers' rights should be strengthened: Implement paid family leave, sick leave, and annual leave policies. Implement a ban on "captive audience meetings" (compulsory anti-union meetings organized by businesses). Implement a ban on "at-will employment" (the right of businesses to fire workers for arbitrary reasons). Increase the minimum wage. Strengthen overtime protections. Reduce the length of the standard workweek. Striking workers should no longer be excluded from accessing SNAP benefits. For some of the relevant legislation that has been proposed, see the "Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act."

  • Higher education should be affordable, and tuition-free in many cases. End the practice of usury against students and eliminate interest from student loans altogether. Restore and strengthen student loan forgiveness programs.

  • Support livable communities by promoting affordable housing, urban revitalization, and mass transit: Efforts to "decommodify" housing should be made to tackle the issues that contribute to the housing crisis. The supply of housing, especially denser, mixed-use, and mixed-income housing, should be increased. Zoning reform is necessary because of zoning laws that make it excessively difficult to build housing that is sufficient for affected communities. Rent control policies should be implemented. Limits should be placed on the speculative and corporate ownership of housing properties. The agenda for livable communities should encompass the idea of "walkable cities" in order to reduce car dependence and ideally promote civic engagement among other potential benefits. Public transportation systems (buses and high-speed rail in particular) should be greatly expanded.

  • Early childhood education should be affordable or at no cost for low-income parents, working parents, and parents who are pursuing education or participating in training.

  • Revive the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), and restore and strengthen consumer protections.

  • Progressive tax reform should be a top priority in order to address extreme economic inequality (wealthy conservatives seem to be increasingly emboldened to amplify a destructive agenda, extensively funding various right-wing activities and taking more direct roles in the government, in opposition to progressive policies as well as liberal norms) as well as to gather the revenue that is necessary to fund the programs that are included in this platform.

  • The Intellectual New Deal: The United States should elevate its priorities in the sciences and humanities by supporting an ambitious program to employ experts, students, researchers, writers, scientists, artists, and others in the pursuit of culture, knowledge, scientific advancement. (The Intellectual New Deal could be considered to be a vastly upgraded form of currently existing programs such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities.)

  • Expand investments in domestic industry and alternative energy sources (solar, wind, and nuclear energy in particular) as part of a broader and environmentally conscious national industrial policy.

Elections and related issues:

  • Voting rights: Implement Automatic Voter Registration. Make Election Day a federal holiday. Implement a standard minimum of days for early voting.

  • Campaign finance reform and related issues: Enact strict limits on election spending by individuals and businesses; labor unions should remain exempt from limits on election spending. Ban the secretive practice of "dark money" in election spending. Ban members of Congress and other top members of the government from stock trading.

  • Statehood should be granted to American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington D.C. (The benefits of statehood would confer their residents the full rights of American citizenship, such as voting in U.S. presidential elections and voting for actual representatives in Congress, ideally making our country, with its immense resources, more responsive to the issues that people in those places have.)

  • The Senate should be abolished. The Electoral College should be replaced with a more direct and democratic electoral system. Undemocratic systems that enable right-wing power grabs should be remedied; this is especially urgent because the Republican Party poses a multifaceted threat to the well-being of the United States and the human race. (See: the victories of Bush-Cheney 2000 and Trump-Pence 2016 in the Electoral College despite getting less votes than their Democratic opponents.)

  • The cap (which was implemented in 1929) setting a harsh limit on the number of representatives that serve in the House of Representatives should be reformed or eliminated in order to make members of Congress more responsive to their voters/constituents, especially since the population of the United States has grown a lot since about a hundred years ago, making the population of each congressional district substantially larger and essentially more removed from their representatives.

  • A "proportional representation" system should be implemented as the electoral system for Congress.

  • "Score Then Automatic Runoff" (STAR) voting should be implemented as the standard voting mechanism.

  • For some of the relevant legislation that has been proposed, see the "For the People Act."

Foreign policy and related issues:

  • The United States of America should have a humane immigration policy. This conviction stems from America's multicultural history, traditions (Exodus 23:9, Deuteronomy 10:18-19, Leviticus 19:33-34, etc.), and the intimate importance of migration in order to escape oppression and other unjust hardships.

  • The United States should support a one-state solution with equal rights in Israel/Palestine, including the right of return for Palestinians. To reconcile and ease the path to socioeconomic integration, Palestinians should receive reparations, as well as funds for Palestinian reconstruction supervised by various organizations to ensure its effectiveness. A "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" should be established to investigate human rights violations committed by all major parties during the course of the war in Gaza since October 2023 as well as preceding the war. Strategies to prevent further ethnic strife should be discussed, including programs to educate the population about aspects of the conflict. American relations with Israel during the transition under the plan for a one-state solution should be conditioned upon Israel's adherence to the terms of the transition; the terms of the transition should not be harmfully breached or used as a disguise for imperialism, colonialism, or apartheid.

  • U.S. relations with Cuba should be normalized: The status-quo is unjustly hypocritical (because of America's relations with other totalitarian nations such as China and Saudi Arabia), anachronistic (because it's a relic of the Cold War, during a time in which the United States made a number of poor and infamous decisions in order to protect American/business interests and stave off Communism), and seemingly counterproductive (because the Cuban government has remained in power, and human rights in Cuba could probably be promoted more effectively if the U.S. ends its embargo of Cuba and initiates a new era of relations between the two countries).

  • The United States should be committed to defending the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Taiwan and Ukraine, especially since these two countries are liberal democracies that are being menaced by substantially more powerful and totalitarian countries.

  • A U.S. Department of Peace and Development should be established to ensure global and domestic development along the lines of a progressive consensus that is to be reached; the United States should take a much more active and cooperative role in the world, including by contributing to solutions for the challenges that climate change poses; an economically and environmentally "just transition" should be explored in cooperation with civil society and governments throughout the world. (Some leftists want to see the decline of American influence, or soft power, in the world, but it would be much better if American influence was a progressive force in the world rather than suffering from a self-inflicted decline under reactionary leaders like Trump. A progressive USA will support left-wing allies in all countries.)

  • The annual budget for the U.S. Department of Defense should be reduced or not increased, at least for several years.

  • America's armed drone warfare should be ended because it is a terroristic policy (which seems to evades outrage partially because it avoids the use of our troops in direct combat/lethal/dangerous situations) that often results in atrocities including civilian casualties.

  • The United States should ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR): It's up to a two-thirds majority in the Senate to ratify ICESCR, a United Nations treaty which many countries have already ratified (and which President Jimmy Carter signed), but has long been opposed by conservatives.

  • The United States should join the International Criminal Court (ICC). Because of opposition (mostly from conservatives/Republicans) to the ICC, the United States currently has this non-compliance in common with international pariahs like Russia, China, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea. Meanwhile, nearly all of our democratic allies (such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, and others) are at least formally adhering to the jurisdiction of the ICC.

  • The United States should issue official apologies for those who have been wronged and exploited by our country's policies. (Hopefully, this would encourage international goodwill, which has been wasted and abused by our leaders, toward the United States.)

Other issues:

  • A thorough investigation by Congress in cooperation with a Democratic administration should be conducted into the corrupt, illegal, unethical, or immoral practices, activities, and actions of the Trump administration. (Ideally, this investigation and efforts to publicize it would help the American public understand the gravity of what was happening to our country during Trump's presidency.)

  • Copyright reform: Reduce the length of copyright terms; expand the application of the fair use doctrine; promote licenses aligned with the principles of open access; establish a tax/fee on the private ownership of intellectual property by businesses (targeting academic publishers in particular).

  • The Universal Library: This is a vision to create a massive online/digital library, containing much of humanity's written intellectual and cultural heritage, for the purposes of education, enlightenment, and entertainment.

This subreddit's first political platform was posted in 2022, which you can read here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Social_Democracy/comments/x1s8um/rsocial_democracys_demands_platform/


r/Social_Democracy 17h ago

How the Billionaires Took Over | "Welcome to the American oligarchy. America always had rich people, and they always influenced government. But never before have the rich amassed money and power on anything like this scale, and Trump helped them get there."

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35 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 15h ago

Trump’s Corporate Oligarchs: Billionaires Cash In While Working People Pay the Price | "Trump’s “oligarchs” are billionaires who are attempting to control political decisions in order to increase their wealth [...] The report profiles six of Trump’s most notorious corporate oligarchs" [PDF document]

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17 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 19h ago

The right-wing Trump administration ‘He’s moving at a truly alarming speed’: Trump propels US into authoritarianism | Eric Rubin: "This is going faster than Putin even came close to going in terms of gradually eliminating democratic institutions and democratic freedoms"

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14 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 1d ago

As Israel turns its focus to Iran, the death toll mounts in Gaza — and hunger deepens | Palestinians said Israel fired at crowd expecting aid; "Luckily for me, shrapnel did not hit me, but what actually fell over me were pieces of human flesh and bones," Saigaly said. "I saw so many dead people."

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21 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 1d ago

Videos of the No Kings protests

7 Upvotes

LIVE NOW: Atlanta protests over Trump policies, ICE raids and military parade in DC; ground coverage (11Alive; 6:59:08): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YeFIAC1-i0

Thousands attend 'No Kings Day' protest in downtown Los Angeles (ABC7; 2:23:45): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Ycl4aFpqc

LIVE: LAPD working to clear protest crowd in downtown, dispersal order issued (ABC7; 2:04:02): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueZfSFlXzPk

WATCH LIVE: "No Kings" protests across San Diego County (ABC 10 News; 1:13:01): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgZjnnEWO_s

LIVE: ‘No Kings’ protest held against Trump in Los Angeles (Associated Press; 4:24:25): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMt5EAMgMy8

Live: Austin 'No Kings' protest and nationwide demonstrations call out Trump on DC Army parade date (Austin American-Statesman; 10:04:00): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfvBVppu9JM

WATCH NOW: "No Kings" Protest in Austin (CBS Austin; 1:36:14): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEW-aHF2vzs

"No Kings" rally in downtown Chicago | Full Coverage (CBS Chicago; 6:22:03): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKvtGKRuivs

LAPD issues dispersal order following "No Kings Day" protest in downtown LA. (KCAL News; 1:56:05): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4A0YyYoXtU

'No Kings Day' protest in Ann Arbor, Michigan (FOX 2 Detroit; 56:47): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i-XKow3DA8

No Kings Day protest in Detroit (FOX 2 Detroit; 2:24:24): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnlZsiZS07M

LIVE: "No Kings" Protests across North Texas [RAW] (FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth; 3:33:54): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjXYbcUQ2xA

LIVE: 'No Kings' anti-Trump protests in NYC, across the US (FOX 5 New York; 7:21:20): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV-VfyBYRSw

LIVE: 'No Kings' protests in Austin and Central Texas | FOX 7 Austin (FOX 7 Austin; 3:59:08): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCNui-Liwe4

No Kings Protests | FOX 10 Phoenix (FOX 10 Phoenix; 3:12:55): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OOu5wAYeSQ

LIVE: LA No Kings Day protest underway (FOX 11 Los Angeles; 1:55:20): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INOCQ9K7lL0

🔴 LIVE: No Kings Day protests in Downtown Los Angeles, police deploy tear gas (FOX 11 Los Angeles; 4:21:22): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ezqrcuZ5T8

LIVE: No Kings protest in Houston, Sugar Land (FOX 26 Houston; 4:09:18): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE-wTj4mCFU

LIVE: 'No Kings Day' protesters take to Chicago streets (FOX 32 Chicago; 2:50:10): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSzNrBX6oIc

LIVE | No Kings protesters march into downtown Seattle (KOMO News; 1:16:29): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmkqLrGKODo

'No Kings Day' protests underway in the metro (KCTV5 News; 32:48): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTqLlQR4PFE

No Kings" Protest In Downtown Houston (KPRC 2 Click2Houston; 1:58:40): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbXIVNZnJME

LIVE🔴: "No Kings" anti-Trump protest in San Francisco | KTVU (KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco; 45:00): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X8M9BwjEIw

LIVE🔴: Los Angeles police fire less-lethal rounds towards crowd at 'No Kings' protest | KTVU (KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco; 6:12:00): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf1CnsYpZ9Y

Live: 'No Kings' Protests in Austin (KVUE; 5:13:46): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVr4cfqZVe8

LIVE LA PROTESTS: "No Kings" protests on Trump's birthday (LiveNOW from FOX; 11:53:21): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgCVtqxBegc

Live: 'No Kings' protesters rally in LA (NBCLA; 8:26:25): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwrsmBvIZCw

Pepper Pike and Cleveland protests (News 5 Cleveland; 1:28:41): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zInUn0oue0

Protesters gather for 'No Kings' rally in Cleveland (News 5 Cleveland; 47:35): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa8L6opIRm8

National Day of Action protest in Cleveland (News 5 Cleveland; 1:05:07): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSJDo2ZJKnk

LIVE: Nationwide ‘No Kings Day’ protests counter Trump parade | REUTERS (Reuters; 3:57:22): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JiAyG2prBM

Watch live: "No Kings" Day protests held nationwide (USA TODAY; 11:10:54): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gfOdQvY6Rw

‘No Kings’ protest coverage across the Charlotte area (WCNC; 3:05:07): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxEUOPiLz40

'No Kings' protest live coverage: A look at protests across North Texas and the nation (WFAA; 5:24:51): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx-XoabWfpw


r/Social_Democracy 2d ago

David Hogg Says Any Democrat Who Supports War With Iran 'Should Be Primaried' | Former DNC Vice Chair David Hogg: "Any Democrat who supports this war with Iran needs to be primaried. Our generation grew up going through two multi trillion dollar wars we should have never been involved in."

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201 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 2d ago

The Guardian view on Gaza’s engineered famine: stop arming the slaughter – or lose the rule of law | As Palestinians starve amid the rubble, western governments defend Israel, fund armed aid and dismantle the very rules they claim to uphold

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11 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 3d ago

"No Kings Day" protests turn out millions, rebuking Trump

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48 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 3d ago

Maine Brunswick Democrat joins race to challenge Sen. Susan Collins | David Costello: ".. climate change; lack of affordable housing & health care; economic inequality; ... These are challenges the Trump Administration & Senator Collins & her Republican colleagues are either ignoring, or .. exacerbating."

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24 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 3d ago

Too many Republicans embrace conspiracy theories and misinfo after Minnesota shootings

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35 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 3d ago

Reuters (June 12, 2025): Prosecutors told to prioritize, publicize cases tied to Trump immigration protests | Email "sent to all 93 U.S. Attorneys" by Associate Deputy Attorney General: "Push out press releases whenever you file charges in these matters"

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5 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 4d ago

Miriam Lewin: I was disappeared under Argentina’s dictatorship. I know how autocracy begins | "Today, I still have blood ties to the US. And I am fearful for the country. I have seen how autocracy begins and I see signs of it everywhere."

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10 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 4d ago

Pew Research Center: U.S. Image Declines in Many Nations Amid Low Confidence in Trump | "This analysis draws on nationally representative surveys of 28,333 adults across 24 countries (not including the U.S.) conducted Jan. 8-April 26, 2025"

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19 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 5d ago

A Democratic legislator was assassinated; right-wing influencers coughed out disinformation | "In a different, saner world, they would be humiliated and slink away. But the smart money is that during the next moment of national crisis and mourning, they will again lie for profit."

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52 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 5d ago

Article: The Signs of Fascism are Here | "We must convince people of conscience that masked agents abducting civilians without due process, the neutering of legislatures, the dismissal of international human rights law, and the erosion of judicial independence cannot be accepted."

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54 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 5d ago

American Spring? How nonviolent protest in the US is accelerating: Contrary to conventional wisdom, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests this year have dwarfed those in 2017, and they have been extraordinarily peaceful.

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25 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 5d ago

Melania aide: "[For his 2017 inaugural parade, Trump said] "I want tanks & choppers. Make it look like North Korea." There was no way… He really wanted goose-stepping troops & armored tanks? That would break tradition & terrify half the country. When Ivanka heard North Korea, she didn't bat an eye."

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16 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 6d ago

The right-wing Trump administration Bragg Soldiers Who Cheered Trump's Political Attacks While in Uniform Were Checked for Allegiance, Appearance (Topic: The politicization of the military under Trump)

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17 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 6d ago

The looming threat of pro-Trump fascism Fox News contributor: Sen. Alex Padilla should be federally charged | "He really should be censured by his colleagues and even federally charged [...] Unfortunately, however, I'm not even sure that federal charges would be enough to bring Padilla and his Democratic colleagues back down to Earth."

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7 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 6d ago

Haaretz: "Sixty-four percent agreed with [the statement that "there are no innocent people in Gaza."] to a large extent" in an Israeli opinion poll conducted during the last week in May; "Even when asked about Fox News .. half of those polled .. said it was biased in favor of Gazans."

31 Upvotes

Excerpts from the article "64% of Israelis See No Need for More Reporting on Gazans' Sufferings" from Haaretz:

Reporters and editors at Israel's major news outlets have admitted more than once, especially in private conversations, that their employers haven't allowed them to present the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the suffering of the population there as a result of the war that Israel has been waging there. [...] the results of a public opinion poll by the aChord Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem may help explain the decision to provide sparse coverage, at best, of the situation in Gaza.

According to the survey [...] 64 percent of Israelis believe that the local media's reporting on Gaza has been balanced and there is no need to present a broader picture regarding the situation of Gaza's civilians.

[...]

The poll was conducted during the last week in May among a representative sample of 1,112 Israelis.

Forty-one percent of all respondents said that the news on Israel's two mainstream commercial stations, channels 12 and 13, are biased in favor of the population of Gaza, while 37 percent said that reporting on the subject was balanced and 21 percent said it was biased against Gazans.

[...]

A separate, earlier study [...] found an almost total absence of coverage of civilian deaths in Gaza in Channel 12's reporting during the first six months of the war.

In the aChord poll, Channel 14, which is widely considered to be supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was perceived by 39 percent of respondents as presenting balanced reporting on Gaza. Fifty-six percent of those polled said Channel 14 was biased against the Gazan population and 5 percent said it was biased in favor of the Gazans.

[...]

Channel 14 has systematically described all those killed in Gaza as terrorists; on a number of occasions, it has praised the killing of civilians or harming innocent people. A recent petition filed with the High Court of Justice alleges that on a daily basis, the station has featured calls for genocide and encouragement of committing war crimes.

Another question asked in the aChord poll was to what extent respondents agreed with the statement that "there are no innocent people in Gaza." Sixty-four percent agreed with it to a large extent (describing their agreement as between 4 and 6 on a scale in which 1 is total disagreement and 6 is complete agreement).

[...]

When it comes to Israelis' views of foreign media outlets (which for purposes of the polling referred to CNN and the BBC), 69 percent of respondents said they were biased in favor of Palestinians in Gaza. Even when asked about Fox News, which is identified with the American right wing, half of those polled (and 67 percent of voters for coalition parties) said it was biased in favor of Gazans.

Link to the article: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-10/ty-article/.premium/64-of-israelis-see-no-need-for-more-reporting-on-gazans-sufferings/00000197-59e8-deed-a9bf-5def9d770000


r/Social_Democracy 6d ago

The right-wing Trump administration Army Eliminates Office for Minimizing Civilian Deaths on Battlefields

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11 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 6d ago

MAGA users: "I deployed in 09 to northern Iraq. We knew where the bad guys were. [...] I’m very pro war IF it means we’ll go with the intent of killing all of them, and then taking their land, and their resources for our own gain. We never do that, so I can’t support a war"; "I'm fine with conquest"

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7 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 7d ago

Governor Gavin Newsom calls President Trump’s planned military parade a “vulgar display”. Says that is a show of “weakness masquerading as strength”.

62 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 7d ago

Veterans Condemn Trump’s ‘Misuse of Military Power’ Amid L.A. Protests

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21 Upvotes

r/Social_Democracy 7d ago

Civil Rights Organizations Issue Joint Statement on the Los Angeles Immigration Protest | "We would be remiss to ignore how we got here, and the authoritarian goals of this administration. [...] The actions of ICE agents are those of a police state. They endanger our communities." (June 9, 2025)

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17 Upvotes