We’ve all heard toxic, disempowering, dream-stomping clichés like
“You can’t fight City Hall”
“We’ve always done it this other way”
“That’s impossible”
“You’ll always be a failure”
“We call B.S.!”
That’s the appropriate response, made famous by X Gonzales, at the time an 18-year-old survivor of the mass murder at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida just three days earlier. That same year, they co-organized (and spoke at) a huge national march on Washington and helped to shepherd through the first meaningful gun safety law in gun-loving Florida in this century.
And we all have to “call B.S.” when anyone tries to destroy our self-esteem, our calling, and our power.
18-year-old X Gonzales (center) gives the “Call B.S.” speech in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, February 17, 2018. Photo by Barry Stock, via Wikipedia.
Like Gonzales, we must embrace our ability to make change and join with others, nonviolently, to achieve that change.
For some, including me, becoming an activist is a way to do that. For others, the path takes different forms, such as being a parent or teacher or health care professional—or, for that matter, an accountant, manufacturer, or prison administrator—and carrying out those duties in ways that build up others, help them achieve those dreams, and help THEM build up others—to build a community, and a planet, based on the worth of every individual. Because to focus only on building yourself up is narcissism, even sociopathic.
This post was inspired by a private note admiring my activism but saying the writer got too depressed to do this kind of work. Here’s s my response, exactly as I wrote it, except I broke it up into more paragraphs and added more specific locations:
I’m sure you make the world better in other ways. Not everyone is cut out to be an activist–it’s a path where 90 percent or more of your efforts seem to be for naught (though often, change IS happening but not visible in the moment).
Because I focus on the positive, I’m able to find the strength to continue. I keep in mind that when I was born in December, 1956, half of the US was still officially segregated and racism still ruled most of the rest. Women and people of color had very few career opportunities. White women were mostly teachers and nurses while people of color were channeled into laborer, domestic, sanitation worker.
Male-on-female domestic violence and casual sexual harassment were considered normal and acceptable. People were still getting fired or even imprisoned for being in a same-sex or interracial relationship. There was close to zero awareness of pollution, climate change and making our ecosystems more resilient. Decent food was very difficult to find. And the last well-known nonviolent revolution had been in India almost a decade earlier.
Except that OFFICIAL segregation had ended, most of that was still true on October 15, 1969, when one casual comment within a speech at the first Vietnam peace demonstration I ever attended set me on a lifetime path of activism. Yet, in 53 years–a nanosecond in geologic time or even in human history–all of that has shifted. So things ARE getting better because of activism.
The other thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that MY OWN ACTIONS have made a difference several times.
Here are my top three: 1) I founded Save the Mountain, the group that kept a particularly offensive luxury housing development off the Mount Holyoke Range [Hadley and South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA] a mile and a half from my house. Even experts within the environmental movement locally had given up hope. I went in with the attitude that we would win–but even I thought it would take us five years. We did it in just 13 months–because all of us worked on different pieces where we had expertise, and because we had mass support from area residents.
2) I was one of the 1414 people arrested on the construction site of the Seabrook [New Hampshire, USA] nuclear power plant in 1977. By the time the last of us was released two weeks later, a national safe energy movement had been born, most of it adopting the nonviolent resistance techniques and consensus decision making that we used in Clamshell Alliance here in New England. Here’s a link to an article I wrote about the lasting shifts in the culture that movement created: https://greenandprofitable.com/40-years-ago-today-we-changed-the-world-part-4-shifts-in-the-culture/. And while we ultimately lost the battle to keep Seabrook from being built, we basically put a halt to the development of new nukes (unfortunately, we have to fight that battle again–but keeping these unsafe and unnecessary monsters off the drawing boards and out of the power grids for nearly 40 years is a pretty good outcome. And this time, I have great confidence that we will win.)
3) My work in local electoral politics [Hampshire County, Massachusetts] has helped to bring about a lasting progressive majority and a series of four progressive mayors in a row in Northampton, and this April took back the Hadley Select Board again after losing to a Trumpian majority in 2021 when we couldn’t find anyone willing to run. I think we’ve taken control of the board three times. Two for sure.
Again, I recognize that my path of activism isn’t for everyone. Neither is my parallel path of working within the business community to spread the message that solving our biggest problems, like hunger, poverty, racism, othering, and even catastrophic climate change and war, can be a profit path for business.
But each and every one of us can find our personal way to make a difference, to brighten the light for all of us, and to help bring into being the planet we want to pass on to subsequent generations.
If this post inspires you, please post a comment about what you’re already doing, or what you will start doing.
I just came across a query letter I wrote in 2020. It raises a lot of questions that are still very much worth asking—and attempting to answer.
How some people view the world—Opportunity for businesses that genuinely care
In many ways, these questions were easier to answer back then. Unfortunately, as a society, we missed the window to create those kinds of sweeping changes when the active threat of Covid made them easier—but we can still make the effort. We can still transform society, our relationship with other beings, and the planet in our own lifetime. It’ll just take more effort.
Here’s the relevant section of what I wrote back then (I’ve removed a long paragraph with my credentials, as well as my closing.)—and I’d love to get your comments:
Hi, there,
As an experienced journalist and award-winning, best-selling ten-book author with several books on social enterprise as a profit center, I propose an article, Leveraging the Great Pivot: How COVID-19 Creates Long-Term Post-Pandemic Opportunities for Racial Justice, Economic Advancement, and Environmental Healing. Probably in the 1500-2500 word range.
The premise: For decades, activists have been told we can’t fix the crushing problems of our time, like hunger, poverty, racism, war, catastrophic climate change, etc. Yet, starting in early 2020, the entire world pivoted and everything changed. As education, many types of business, and even cultural events shifted online or reinvented themselves, we learned how resilient, adaptable, and creative we are. And that process created opportunities that could never have happened in the pre-pandemic world.
These massive global, national, regional, and local shifts prove we can reinvent the world as the place we really want to live in–and we can replicate the shift in other areas. As a society, we have to do this pivot strategically, and it has to involve many sectors: government, nonprofits, activists, community organizations, academia—and the business community.
Just look at how the massive expansion of the racial justice movement since May has changed perceptions around the US and around the world. And that’s one small piece of a big multi-issue cauldron of solution-driven thinking and activism; a lot of good work is going into solving those big crises, as well as protecting our fragile democracy. The question is: pivot to what?
Could health care coverage be shifted away from employers so the next time an emergency shuts hundreds of thousands of businesses, their laid-off employees don’t lose their safety net? Could this be the US’s chance to adopt the single-payer model most of the rest of the world uses? And to shift from treating the sick’s symptoms to maintaining wellness across the population so fewer people get sick in the first place? Can this be the moment to finally get away from fossil and nuclear, to combine clean renewable energy with massive systemic conservation so we’re no longer squandering our children’s heritage polluting and carbonizing our planet while depleting scarce resources? Is it time for decent affordable housing to be seen as a right? What are the best ways to create more housing that also protect the environment, create pleasant yet affordable neighborhoods, and avoid negative consequences like urban sprawl?
We can ask similar questions in every sector: criminal justice, job creation, transportation and shipping (moving both people and things), replacing armed conflict with peaceful conflict resolution, ensuring a pluralistic society that honors both its majorities and minorities, etc.
After four years of Trump and a year of COVID, it won’t be enough to go back to the “normal” of 2019, or even of 2015. But with the pandemic comes the luxury and responsibility of critically examining every aspect of society. We need to figure out what the goal of every institution is–and how to achieve or surpass that goal as we rebuild. Just as many developing countries skipped landlines and clunky desktop computers and went straight to smartphones, we need to ask questions like:
What are we *really* trying to accomplish?
Is this the best way to meet that goal?
How could we improve it?
How could we make it more inclusive?
Then we brainstorm with these ends in mind, using a seven-step process that opens up new thinking and lets us implement new solutions. To make this concrete, think about spending millions of R&D dollars to create a pen that can write in zero-gravity. But the real goal isn’t to have a pen that can write in space—that’s a means to an end. The real goal is to be able to write in space. And suddenly, with that framing, the solution is obvious: use pencils—or computers! Maybe you create a pencil lead that can make a darker, easier to read impression, create a Velcro mount for your device so it doesn’t go flying across the cabin, or make other little tweaks—but you’ve accomplished the basic goal, with resources you already have. Business has a vested interest in reinventing itself, as dozens of industries were rendered obsolete, as supply chain issues showed up unexpectedly, and as those sectors that strengthened and grew had to adapt. Small businesses can survive and even thrive, but not as it was in 2019. Whether a manufacturer switches from making luxury goods to PPE or a retailer learns how to blend online and (protected) in-person approaches, pretty much everyone has to pivot. Why not seize the opportunity to have that reinvention foster racial, gender, and class equity…green the planet while creating jobs…match product introduction and production not to advertising-created materialism but to solving real needs and getting paid for it? In the activist world, meetings that might have had 10 local people in a room can now draw 500 from around the world—and provide digital tools to mobilize action, such as Spoke, a texting platform that can allow volunteers to send 1000 or more text messages an hour and respond individually and personally when someone replies. In my own professional development this year, from the comfort of my own home, I’ve attended dozens of far-away events. Some had hundreds or thousands of attendees from dozens of countries (among them a worldwide UN conference, multiple 50th-anniversary celebrations of Earth Day, and gatherings on more niched topics such as the special situation of Jews of color). I could not have afforded the time and money to go to so many conferences, and several times, they’ve overlapped. But I was able to participate in more than one at a time, or listen to what I’d missed on replay. I’ve also participated in some thinking and brainstorming calls from widely scattered groups of thinkers and researchers working on global solutions to these and other problems. As somewhat more exciting examples, local cultural performers with no previous broader following are finding global audiences—and the sound technicians who can replace awful-sounding Zoom calls with concert-quality production are keeping busy.
Even on the personal side, some of the restrictions can be reframed as empowerment—just as we can think of a wheelchair user not as “confined to a wheelchair,” but “liberated with a wheelchair,” because it allows that user to go places that would otherwise be off-limits. My wife and I hosted a Passover Seder with family and friends from three generations and 9 different states from Massachusetts to California–most of whom would never have come in person.
Purity illustration: Jesus Baptism by Waiting for the World. Licensed through Creative Commons.
When I was a kid, Proctor and Gamble was still running TV ads claiming Ivory Soap was “99 and 44/00 percent pure.” (Digression: Here’s a link to a quick, fun article on the origins of this marketing slogan, which dates back to 1881.) Even back then, I found this absurd–because I already understood that even just over half a percentage point of impurity meant it wasn’t pure at all. It was actually pretty contaminated. After all, sewage is 99 percent water–and I don’t know anyone who would want a glass of that.
In daily living, 100% purity is a rare thing indeed. In science and in business, we’re often very appropriately guided by the slogan, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
A typical process would be:
Design.
Test.
Debug.
Redesign.
Ship.
Receive user feedback and debug, then iterate again.
That process works far better than holding out for an illusory perfection that can’t even exist until real-world conditions show us the flaw. So why do we demand it in our politics? I read a New York Times article this morning about a controversy over naming one of its telescopes for 50s-60s-era NASA headJames Webb because he may or may not have been homophobic. The article makes it abundantly clear that whether he was or not is a matter of debate–but he was clearly antiracist at a time when that was far from popular, and provided many career opportunities for people of color. It also reminds us that homophobia was the official policy of the US government at that time.
We humans are an evolving species. The LGBT movement as it existed in that era was mostly quiet, clandestine, and not in the mainstream consciousness. The Stonewall Riots, considered the birth of the modern LGBT movement, didn’t take place until 1969. I was very active in that movement from 1973 through 1986 and remain supportive of its goals. But I dont think we should fault Mr. Webb for not being an out-front visionary advocate of LGBT liberation at a time when gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people were ridiculed or assaulted if they entered the mainstream consciousness at all. Rather we should take pride that as a society, we’ve grown to accept that LGBT folks are entitled to civil rights, to choose their families, and even to marry. When I attended my first same-sex weddings in the late 1970s, I never imagined that legal same-sex marriage would be achieved in my lifetime, let alone in less than 40 years–less than 30 in my own state of Massachusetts.
And for the most part I don’t fault our politicians when they compromise on other issues to get some good things passed into law, as long as they come away with significant progress. (I do get tired of the Democrats’ frequent and problematic tendency to negotiate away far more than they have to to try to get bipartisan support that is usually not forthcoming–but once that fails, they don’t go back to the original stronger versions. This is what Obama did with the ACA, and whatBiden has done on issues like immigration and climate.)
When we pass a week or insufficient law, we have to recognize that we will have the next iteration and the one after that–and we can work to strengthen our hand. Change is more often gradual than sweeping. Even the loathsome Bill Clinton-era “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about gays in the military was a huge improvement over the dishonorable discharges and possible prison terms that were official policy before that change–though I’m very glad to see it go away, and to see the Respect for Marriage Act become law just six days ago. (Another digression: here’s an academic essay from the quite recent past–2021–arguing that don’t ask, don’t tell” should be overturned. Warning: it looks like it might be a term paper mill site.)
A popular music festival in Atlanta, founded back in 1996, will not be taking place in Piedmont Park (or anywhere else) this September as scheduled. The organizers cancelled it, apparently because of Georgia’s ever-more-skewed laws that give gun owners the right to carry weapons at massive public events. Apparently, this right is stronger in Georgia (and elsewhere) than the rights of people who might not care to be shot at while enjoying a concert. The event was actively targeted by gun worshippers who informed the festival organizers that they’d be sued if they tried to block access to ticket holders bearing firearms, even though contracts with artists mandated a no-gun policy.
Which is really a shame. I hope the organizers find the courage to say, “Georgia legislators, YOU and your guns-without-limits laws are the reason we had to cancel. You’ve cost Atlanta hospitality business owners (restaurants, hotels, etc.) millions in lost revenue because you do not allow us a way to keep our artists and patrons safe.”
Because THAT kind of messaging is how we will eventually, finally, turn back the culture of gun-rights-matter-more-than-human-rights. All the deaths of little kids and innocent bystanders haven’t mattered despite Sandy Hook, Columbine, Tree of Life, Las Vegas, Texas, and all the other horrific mass shootings.
And if businesses, conference organizers and others start boycotting states with obscenely pro-gun policies, the change will come faster.
I’ve had a blog post percolating for several weeks about the Supreme Court and what we can do to rein them in. I had not started writing it and then I came across this from YES magazine, which says most of what I would have said. So I will let Chris Winters say it for me. As he notes, nonviolent resistance including general strikes is a powerful force for change. It has brought down some pretty repressive governments (examples: Arab Spring, the overthrow of South African apartheid and , the collapse of the Soviet Union) and forced others–even Nazi Germany–to soften their stance.
Robert Hubbell’s Today’s Edition politics newsletter (which I read daily) quoted a reader who suggested that Democrats label the Republican platform for 2022 as “The Big Steal.” Here is his suggestion, with edits and additions by me:
Vote Republican, and you vote for the “Big Steal”:
Your Social Security will be stolen.
Your Medicare will be stolen.
Your prescription drugs will be stolen.
Your affordable health care will be stolen.
Your right to privacy will be stolen.
Your control over reproductive choices will be stolen.
Your voting rights will be stolen.
Your right to elect leaders will be stolen.
Our democracy will be stolen.
It’s not perfect, but you get the idea. Iterations are endless. Republicans want to take things away (The Big Steal), including personal liberties and equal protection under law. Democrats want to provide Americans the things they need to lead safe, healthy, productive lives—including personal liberties and equal protection under the law. Somewhere in there is a winning message.
Republicans doing The Big Steal is half of the messaging. Yes, absolutely, we need to show that corrupt and greedy party for what it is. But we also need another half, maybe call it The Big Payoff. And the second part will subdivide into two as well.
The first part will be what the Democrats have actively accomplished. They have created jobs in a terrible economy. They have restored us leadership in the world sphere. They have taken some action to mitigate climate change. They have stood up for integrity of the political process and showed that insurrections and coup attempts will not be tolerated here. They have supported Ukraine against Putin’s barbaric war. And they have restored dignity and mission to a corrupt and twisted executive branch.
The second part is the wish list: things Biden and the Democrats tried to do but were blocked by filibusters, judicial opinions, or just plain refusal to cooperate from the Republican side. This would include Build Back Better, protecting the right to vote, protecting women’s right to control their own bodies, meaningful progress on the biggest issues like climate change and immigration reform, and of course, the right of regulatory bodies to regulate. Not only have Republican judges forced the CDC–which stands for, let us remind them, Centers for Disease Control–to give up protecting the public in transit facilities, but other decisions will threaten such rights as environmental protection and labor protection, using that very bad precedent to attack EPA and OSHA. Let’s also talk about the right not to be sitting next to someone who is carrying a concealed weapon. The right to love and marry whom you choose as long as they are above the age of consent. Etc, etc, etc
Our rights are under attack! Photo by Wojciech Ner.
Ever since the upcoming decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked, I’ve been stewing on it. Tomorrow, I am going to my second rally to uphold women’s reproductive rights. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it is. If we can prevent Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale from moving from a dystopian novel to a description of life in 2020s America, it’s our obligation to do so. I don’t know about you, but I do not want to live in anyplace resembling the theocratic dictatorship of Gilead that she describes.
I will not address the valid question of when does a fetus’s life take precedence over the mother’s because I don’t have the medical qualifications to give an answer that is based on fact. But let me raise a personal liberty argument: I will bring up the extension of the upcoming court decision to other areas, because we know that is coming–and because it personally affects my family. One former National Review editor actually posted on social media, “Next stop Brown vs. Board!” That was the decision that outlawed segregation in 1954. Here’s a screenshot of that post (NOTE: the blog that shows the post is a foul-mouthed screed–but you can see a picture of the post and learn some useful information about the person who wrote that post).
Alito has a long history of speaking out against same-sex marriage and cannot be trusted not to use the same twisted reasoning to go after it. He also authored the Hobby Lobby case, which could be seen as a wedge decision that could eventually be used to eliminate legal contraception. In both of these probable attacks on our rights, it gets personal for me.
My younger child identifies as nonbinary, uses they-them pronouns, and is five years into a beautiful relationship with someone who has the same types of body parts and chromosomes but a very different cultural and religious upbringing. I fully support them, their choice of identity, and their wonderful life-partner.
My older one married another lovely guy from a different cultural and religious upbringing–who is the product of a White father and a Latina mom who clearly has indigenous ancestry. He is an excellent life partner for my daughter. My wife and I love both of our kids’ partners.
My mother, raised in a super-observant Orthodox Jewish family, divorced my father and married a Japanese man who was raised Buddhist. She also did some pretty intense civil rights work, including serving as a tester for the Urban League to determine if those apartments declined to Black families were really “already rented.”
I identify as bi and have had relationships before my marriage with both men and women. And I have slept with people who were not the same color as me. If I were my kids’ age, I might well have chosen to identify as nonbinary. While I am now very comfortable in my maleness, I was very UNcomfortable with it in my teens and 20s.
I am a survivor of rape by a grown male stranger who literally grabbed me off the street when I was 10 or 11. Fortunately, becoming pregnant was not an issue–but what if I’d been a 15-year-old girl, and had been forced to bear a child whose every moment would remind me of the violence done to me–a violence that was extremely traumatic even without a pregnancy?
Let’s also put this into a wider context: this is the same Supreme Court that recently decided that the Centers for Disease Control does not have the right to control disease by mandating masks in public conveyances–so you could be sitting next to a superspreader on a six-hour flight with no protection other than your own voluntary mask, and a coughing fit on a rush-hour subway car could expose dozens.
In fact, two people I’m very close to, who bought plane tickets before the mask mandate was overturned but flew later, have come down with COVID. I am flying next month, and I’m not happy about it. But my 91-year-old dad no longer travels and it’s important to see him when we can.
Even before that inane ruling, it was necessary to fight for my right to protect myself and the people I pod with. I refused to sit next to someone on a plane who would not mask (while that ruling was still in effect), and he was eventually taken off the plane. And at our official Town Meeting last week, I had to call a Point of Order to demand that the inadequate separation of masked and unmasked on opposite sides of an aisle be enforced, after asking someone to either put on a mask or go sit in the no-mask section. You would think the anti-vax crowd would actually be in favor of masks in public indoor spaces, since they would have lower risk of getting a bad case of COVID–but no. I still don’t understand the way these basic public health measures have been weaponized, even after many prominent mask critics contracted fatal cases. After all, we have seat belt laws, motorcycle helmet laws, and requirements that school children receive various other vaccines.
The man who lived in The White House from January 2017 to January 2021 took the US from respected world leader to banana republic serving the whims of an incompetent would-be dictator in an alarmingly short time. We are fortunate to have a new leader who is doing his best—though not enough—to undo the damage, and who steadies our foreign and domestic policy at a time when the need for leadership is clear.
But even though DT is out of power despite every crazy attempt to maintain it, his numerous judicial appointments gave the crazies a scary degree of control that persists today.
Which seems to mean that reproductive rights, environmental protections, the right to be protected from contagious lethal diseases, and the right to vote have had big portions chiseled away, while the rights to carry and use firearms, to infiltrate others’ airspace, and the right of corporations to fund candidates and dictate favorable terms have been enshrined.
While DT’s government made up new and undid longstanding laws and regulations with no regard for precedent or separation of powers, Biden’s attempts to return to normalcy, curtail the pandemic, and govern effectively keep getting shot down by—you guessed it—the appointees of his predecessor.
These judges and Justices invent new legal doctrine out of whole cloth, undermining more than two centuries of settled law, and using truly bizarre reasoning to uphold a “new normal” where skin color, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, and religion are once again grounds to be discriminated against.
Early in his term, Biden kept campaign promise to end the MPP Remain in Mexico program—one of several policy pieces that inflicted massive violations of human rights (and international law) in his predecessor’s immigration policy of deliberate cruelty. MPP (and several other immigration changes instituted under DT) put thousands of people at grave risk of kidnapping, rape, and murder at the hands of the cartels they were fleeing. Even though the policy, developed by the notorious xenophobe Stephen Miller, undid generations of settled procedure without any plausible justification, A DT-appointed judge forced the Biden administration to reinstate this horrible program.
Just this week, another DT-appointed district judge overturned the CDC’s public transportation mask mandate, drastically increasing the risk of COVID spreading when people are next to each other in tightly enclosed spaces for hours at a time. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle is one of many DT-appointed judges (along with Supreme Court Justice Barrett) whose confirmation was rushed through with many other nominations in the closing days of his administration; she was deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’m getting on a plane again for a while—and I flew five round-trips since April 2021 when my vaccine took full effect. By what spurious reasoning do you take away the right of the Centers for Disease Control to control disease? Some lawyer should rapidly organize a class-action lawsuit on behalf of people who bought tickets with the understanding that they would be protected by a mask requirement in airports, bus and train terminals, and on the planes, trains, and buses.
Whatever happened to “the land of the free” and “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”?
Is there anything we can do about this?
Yes. Before I start suggesting things, I need to state that I am not a fan of the Democratic Party, have a long history of supporting electoral reforms that would reduce both Democratic and Republican Party power (like ranked-choice voting and nonpartisan administration of elections), and have written many letters, posts, and articles criticizing the current system. Nevertheless…
The first step is to win enough elections—whether for School Board or Senator—to wrest control of every possible office from the right-wing conspiracy theorists, January 6 conspirators, climate change deniers, bigots who see themselves as legitimized by a Republican Party no longer willing to confront evil and punishing the handful of its members who are still willing to go out on a limb and do the right thing. While I wish we had a viable alternative, under the two-party system, our choice in most races must to support Democrats.
But I do give money to groups like Movement Voter Project that funds progressive grassroots groups to influence elections in swing districts—and reminds politicians who of the promises that got MVP to support them. That creates a progressive sphere of influence in ways normally reserved for powerful corporate donors and wealthy individual contributors in the 1%.
The third step is to consider major reforms like changing the judicial nomination process (perhaps through a non-partisan commission), ending lifetime appointments, and forcing the Supreme Court to apply the same Code of Ethics to itself that other courts require. This will be much more successful if we have accomplished step one.
The fourth step scares me and I wish we had a better alternative. This could come back to bite, and bite hard. But the judiciary has been running roughshod over the rights of average citizens, and especially those with less privilege.
So, reluctantly, we need to consider expanding the Supreme Court. We have to remember that the appointments of three of the six current conservative Justices (Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) were confirmed by brute force with narrow majorities, and that Obama’s nomination of current Attorney General Merrick Garland was denied by brute force—McConnell refused to even hold a hearing and 17 Republican Senators supported him in public statements.
I said at the time and still say that Obama should have pushed back, saying that failure to hold a hearing by a certain date would constitute approval. Thomas and Kavanaugh defended themselves very poorly against credible claims of sexual harassment (Thomas) and sexual assault (Kavanaugh). Barrett was confirmed on October 26, 2020, less than two weeks before the November 3 election—but for these same Senators, March to November, 2016, was too close between nomination and the election.
In other words, the Republicans have not earned their 6-3 SCOTUS majority. The consequences of their cheating their way to a majority will be felt for decades unless we find a way to stop them. If we can limit their power through steps 1-3, maybe this “nuclear option” is unnecessary. But given this Court’s avid willingness to throw away settled law, undermine both the legislative and executive branches, and not even bother to justify their decisions with written opinions, I’m expecting we will have to move on this.
Don’t the Republicans ever get tired of their own shameless hypocrisy? A lot of the rest of us are sure tired of it. It’s time for the Dems to focus their messaging on why the Party of Never-if-a-Democrat-proposed-it is no friend of the people.
I offer these as a gift to the Democratic Party, its candidates, and its supporters.
Why do Republicans support socializing the costs of billionaires’ mistakes and misdeeds while privatizing their profits? Why should working folks have to pay to clean up their mess when billionaires don’t even pay taxes on much of their wealth?
Why do we pay so much more for health care, for university education, for prescription drugs, for so much else–and get less for our money than most other countries? Why did Republicans hold all three branches of government and come up with nothing to address these crises?
If we want to free the world of power-mad dictators and thugs like Putin, we need TRUE energy independence from renewable sources like solar, wind, small-scale hydro, and geothermal–so Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries can’t push us around because of our dependence on fossil fuel. That’s also our way out of the carbon crisis.
If you want to halt fuel-cost-related inflation, ditto. That will lead to better health outcomes, too.
Green energy will continue to create good, well-paying jobs right here in the US–and by the way Biden has presided over the longest steady growth in employment since 1939.
If expulsions of immigrants at the border due to fear of COVID–which are against both international law and human decency–aren’t warranted for Ukrainians, there’s no justification for their use to keep Black and Brown people out. Don’t accede to Republicans’ racist demands to hold COVID prevention/protection/treatment funding hostage to keep this cruel, illegal, and discriminatory policy in place.
Stop defending domestic terrorists! January 6 was an attempted coup, an attempt to blow up our democracy. Even Republican Secretaries of State admit that the 2020 election was the most fraud-free in history and that Biden won honestly (something we can’t say with certainty about Trump in 2016, since the Republicans blocked recounts in three crucial swing states). And yet you refuse to discipline even the most blatant seditionists in your ranks! Doesn’t democracy mean anything to you anymore?
Why are you, the party that claims to believe in freedom, passing laws that take “cancel culture” to levels approaching those of early Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia? How dare you make it a crime to teach or read honest history! How dare you try to suppress the speech rights of whole classes of people! How dare you try to roll back women’s reproductive rights, the right of people of color to vote, and the right to live without fearing violence because of who you are, what way you worship, or what you look like? Stop trying to grasp at your fading power OVER others and focus on your power TO do good in the world (hint: oppressing others is not doing good in the world)
Why was it OK to refuse to even hold a hearing on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland because nine months before the election was “too close to the election”–while Barrett was rushed through just weeks before?
The Guardian reports on a shameful attempt to criminalize the school district of Texas state capital Austin’s annual LGBT Pride Week!
When is the ultra-right going to recognize that non-heterosexuals are people too?
This is one part of the culture war that they aren’t going to win. Since the legalization of same-sex marriage, conservative heterosexuals have sat next to openly LGBT folks at Parent Teacher Association meetings, worked with them on community issues, and in many cases, discovered that beloved family members and friends and work colleagues were not hetero.
47th Gay Pride Parade, New York City, 2017. Creative Commons photo by Elvert Barnes
AND they noticed the sky hasn’t fallen, the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, and the only thing that has really shifted due to that normalization (something I would not have predicted even as recently as 20 years ago that I’d live to see) is the crumbling of prejudices based on demonizing people they thought they didn’t know.
Sunlight and exposure, as usual, prove the best medicine against prejudice. That genie will no longer fit in the old repressive bottle, no matter how many idiotic laws the right-wing fringe manages to force through their state legislatures–and thats a good thing.
Maybe Putin would have had better luck if instead of invading to “denazify” Ukraine, he tried a nonviolent embarrassment campaign to denazify Texas ;-).
Personal disclosure: I discovered that I am bisexual at age 16 and spent about a decade where LGBT rights was the cause I was most strongly involved with.
