Dear Republican senators,


Before you vote not to convict, please consider a few things:

  1. If you are worried about a primary challenge from Trump supporters, put those worries aside. If you vote to acquit, you will face a challenge from at least one person who believes in the Constitution. It might be in the primary, it might be in the general election, and it might be both. If you are worried about death threats if you vote to acquit, that is one of the strongest reasons not only to convict but to make sure that those identified as committing violent acts on January 6th are swiftly brought to justice and serving long prison terms. Appeasement of bullies didn’t work with Hitler, didn’t work with Trump, and won’t work with a bunch of white nationalist hoodlums. Giving in will only embolden them and make it less safe for you as you try to do your job in a climate of increasing street violence by heavily armed thugs.
    Noose erected by rioters at the Capitol. January 6, 2021
    A gallows hangs near the United States Capitol during the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. Photo by Tyler Merbler, licensed under Creative Commons.
  2. It is in your self-interest to make sure as many as possible are identified, arrested, and convicted. Potential future rioters must know ahead of time that they will face major consequences for threatening the lives and safety of our elected representatives and for vandalizing our public spaces. And for those of you considering a run for president in 2024, you don’t want to face him again i the primaries.
  3. If you are one of those who voted to impeach or convict President Clinton for not keeping his pants zipped and lying about it, recognize that what the 45th president did was far, far worse. He even tried to turn House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s desperate plea for help during the insurrection into  “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” I don’t justify Clinton’s conduct. I only ask you to look at why you were willing to throw one president out of office for something that only affected himself, his family, and Ms Lewinsky but are not willing to hold accountable another who is entire presidency was mired in corruption, ending in clear incitement to overthrow our system of government.
  4. If there were pipe bombs planted in advance of the January 6th insurrection, doesn’t that only provide more evidence to the Impeachment Managers’ argument that the incitement didn’t start on January 6th? It started well before the election.
  5. This is your last chance to have history cast you in a positive light. Do you want to be remembered for understanding that your country, your republic, is more important to you than being loyal to a man who has been loyal to no one, even willing to throw fiercely loyal Vice President Pence and Attorney General Barr to the wolves because he saw even them as so insufficiently loyal that Pence’s personal safety was not a matter of concern? Or do you want to be remembered as such a coward that you put your chances of re-election–which will be no sure thing even if you vote to acquit, as I’ve noted above–ahead of your oath of office?

The choice is yours. History is watching. Do the right thing. Vote to convict.

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Dear (in alphabetical order) Representatives Castro, Cicilline, Dean, DeGette, Lieu, Plaskett, Neguse, Raskin, and Swalwell
 
In the weeks since the coup attempt at the Capitol, I was unaware of the 2-minute video shown at Trump’s rally until yesterday. The article in Just Security (link is near the bottom of this post) analyzes this video in detail. Please read the analysis before watching the video–you will notice a lot more as you view the film, including many images that flash by too quickly for the casual viewer to notice, but they still do their work on the viewers’ brains.

The analysis clearly demonstrates that 1] the Trump agenda for January 6 was to incite an insurrection, 2] this was planned ahead of time, and 3] Trump was actively involved in making this movie and choosing to show it at the rally. And this might be the item that convinces more Republicans to convict.

A gallows hangs near the United States Capitol during the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. Photo by Tyler Merbler, licensed under Creative Commons.

 As someone who has studied marketing, I recognize in this analysis many instances of subliminal/hypnotic brain manipulation of the sort described in dozens of books including such classics as The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard (1957) and Subliminal Seduction by Wilson Bryan Key (1974)–not to mention the Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Tack this onto two months of prepping his followers to repudiate the election results as a “steal,” and it is a recipe for rebellion.
 
Here is the first paragraph from the analysis. I urge you to read the entire article, but at least the section entitled “II. The Movie Shown at the Ellipse”

On January 6, Trump supporters gathered at a rally at Washington DC’s Ellipse Park, regaled by various figures from Trump world, including Donald Trump Jr. and Rudy Giuliani. Directly following Giuliani’s speech, the organizers played a video. To a scholar of fascist propaganda, well-versed in the history of the National Socialist’s pioneering use of videos in political propaganda, it was clear, watching it, what dangers it portended. In it, we see themes and tactics that history warns pose a violent threat to liberal democracy. Given the aims of fascist propaganda – to incite and mobilize – the events that followed were predictable.

Thank you for your service as an Impeachment Manager. The American people are rooting for your success. This man needs to be banned from ever holding office again.

Window broken in Capitol riot January 6, 2021. Photo by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.)
Window broken in Capitol riot January 6, 2021. Photo by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.)

 

 
 
Sincerely,
Shel Horowitz
Marketing consultant to social entrepreneurs, speaker, and award-winning author of eight marketing books
Transformpreneur at Going Beyond Sustainability

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In Wednesday’s daily Gratitude Journal (which I’ve been posting on Facebook for more than 1000 days), I took a rare digression into things that don’t deserve any gratitude:

…Evil raised the ugliest manifestation yet today. Let there be no mistake: the armed invasion of the Capitol by right-wing thugs egged on by DT himself was an attempted Fascist coup. This should have been prevented by police. How and why were these thugs allowed inside the building? Why didn’t they stop similar craziness in Michigan this summer and Wisconsin a couple of years ago so this would not have happened?

Even then, I was able to find some bright spots:

But I am grateful that the cops eventually did clear the fascists out. I hope every one of them is identified, arrested, and charged with some serious crimes.

What I am grateful for in this attack on our freedom to vote, on our very democracy, is the groundswell of pushback.  Finally, we are hearing calls to invoke the 25th Amendment (incapacity of the president), re-impeach to prevent any future run for office, press criminal charges. Finally, the handful of Senators and 100 or so members of the House who have supported this fraudulent and baseless effort to undermine the count are being asked to withdraw their objections or face consequences. And this “little episode” may shorten DT’s term by two weeks, putting at least some limits on the damage he has been inflicting since the election, instead of governing. I will be very grateful for that, though we still won’t open the special bottle of Port we’ve been saving until Biden has taken the oath of office.

But now, it’s some 40 hours after the insurrection began. Representatives Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush have pledged to submit articles of impeachment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and–do we call him Majority Leader now?–Chuck Schumer have said it’s time to impeach if VP Pence continues to refuse to start the 25th Amendment process.

What are they waiting for? Pelosi has publicly acknowledged the danger of letting him stay in office for the less than two weeks of his term. He can be expected to wreak maximum havoc, even more than the round of unfounded pardons, absurd executive orders, firings, etc. that has been the closest he has come to governing in the past few weeks. It is well known that since he lost, he is spending even more of his time fulminating, Tweeting, and golfing–and now, inciting sedition.

It’s been too much for even the toadying loyalists like Bill Barr and yes, even Mike Pence.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Shel Horowitz

“When someone shows you who they a­re, believe them the first time.”

–Maya Angelou

 

Despite his 20,000+ lies while in office, I believe Trump when he says he won’t cede power peacefully (at least not voluntarily). He flouts conventions and precedents constantly, has done what he can to turn the presidency into both an authoritarian dictatorship and a personal wealth spigot for him, his family, his businesses, and his cronies, and has no idea how to look beyond his own narrow self-interest to nurture the good of the country.

But here’s the thing about bullies: they crumble when they face serious organized opposition. Even Trump, for all his bluster, has about-faced many times when his crazy anti-democratic stuff met resistance.

We have hundreds of already-organized groups in this country with combined membership well into the tens of millions (including 21 listed below). If they join together to create massive public opposition and concerted action, they will be unstoppable and the Trump attempt to stay in power after he loses will fail.

What would that look like? We’ll revisit that before we’re done. But first, some context:

 

Nonviolent Resistance Can Stop Coups and Bring Down Governments

Trump doesn’t study history and doesn’t read his briefings—so he doesn’t realize that resistance can go a whole lot deeper than he has ever experienced. Concerted nonviolent action has brought down some pretty repressive governments—including the Communist governments of Eastern Europe and military dictatorships in Latin America, as well as the dictators of Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring a few years ago. And it has reversed many coup attempts—including Germany, in 1920. And even the Nazis frequently scaled back the repression in the face of concerted nonviolent resistance.

The late Gene Sharp documented 198 separate methods of nonviolent resistance—and that was before the Internet added many more and COVID forced new creativity as it became unsafe to gather in large crowds.

Another researcher, Erica Chenoweth, discovered that when just 3.5 percent of the population actively participate in nonviolent resistance, that’s enough of a tipping point to bring down governments. She also found that more than twice as many nonviolent campaigns as violent campaigns led to political change (53% of the time, versus 26% for violent protests.

Trump has shown us who he is, over and over again.[1] Trump seems to think no laws apply to the president and has been rewarded by a Senate unwilling to set limits or consequences.

Worse yet, Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have hijacked the judiciary—creating a massive long-term threat not just to environmental and human rights initiatives, but to the freedom of activists in every movement. We’ve seen protestors isolated far from the action, new laws that turn certain kinds of political action into felonies, and court decisions that reverse crucial civil rights legislation while opening the floodgates of the 2010 Citizens United decision even wider, in 2018, to “dark money” corruption of politics.

McConnell has made it very clear that his refusal to hold hearings on Merrick Garland had nothing to do with letting the American people choose and everything to do with stacking the court. And they’ve stacked the entire judiciary by refusing to confirm many Obama nominees while ramming through 218 Trump appointees to lifetime appointments on federal District, Appellate, and Supreme Court courts who will threaten our freedom for generations.

This is why they are rushing through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court; Trump feels that a Court with three of his Justices is more likely to confirm his self-coronation, while McConnell understands that he is sentencing the country to decades more under a conservative Court that has been repealing so much of the progress we’ve made—a court far out of step with the majority of Americans. On October 5, Justices Thomas and Alito even floated the idea of reversing the right to same-sex marriage.

And Trump may be right. With three Trump picks and three long-serving conservatives out of nine Justices, the court could find a way to allow him to serve another term even after losing. It was a less conservative court in 2000 that ordered (5 to 4) a halt to the Florida recount and made George W. Bush our first unelected full-term president since Rutherford B. Hayes took office in 1877.

And that’s why doing our best to block this nomination is one of two strategies to prevent an authoritarian coup (the other happens after the election).

 

Step 1: Raising a Ruckus about the Supreme Court Seat

Let’s face facts: if the Republicans really want to ram this nomination through, they can (and if history tells us anything, they probably will). But if we make the costs high enough, they may choose not to—or they may shove her onto the court only to find to consequences they hadn’t planned on.

For instance, if the Republicans see that ignoring their own 2016 precedent and getting Barrett on the court will mean they drop five Senate seats, several of the 22 Republican Senators up for re-election could defect—especially if they’re among the nine Senators that Indivisible’s Payback Project has targeted to vote out of office. If getting Barrett on the Court angers enough people, it could even create an emboldened new Democratic Senate supermajority.

If the three Trump appointees are forced by massive public pressure to recuse themselves from any decisions involving the 2020 election, Senators may wonder if it’s worth the risk of a Democratic Congress raising the number of Justices to 15, giving President Joe Biden six Supreme Court seats to counterbalance this ethics travesty that started with the Garland refusal and continued with the disgraceful confirmation of Kavanaugh.

And if the inevitable suits and countersuits (or a bunch of Senators unable to work because of COVID) hold up any swearing-in until after the inauguration, Barrett (who has less than three years’ experience as a judge) won’t have a chance to repay Trump’s favor by finding a way to keep him in office.

In any case, it’s our duty to protect our increasingly fragile republic by doing what we can.

We have at least two arguments to build opposition:

  1. The process is blatantly unfair and completely opposite McConnell’s own precedent, and there isn’t time to conduct thorough hearings before the election; and
  2. The more we learn about this nominee the more we see that she is not qualified and out of the mainstream of American judicial thought.

 

The Process

As a constitutional lawyer, Obama should never have allowed the McConnell tactic to succeed; he could have said, “if, by X date, you haven’t held a hearing, I will take that as consent.” But he failed to stand up to this power play, and that’s now the precedent.

And this precedent gives us moral leverage to oppose this nominee named far closer to the election, as long as we maintain nonviolent discipline. Use their own words from 2016 to hold them to a higher standard—do it publicly, on their social media pages, and privately, with emails, phone calls, and postal mail. You can find those quotes at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nnuQNpD4vPB4hjcpGDf_h-dYd0iVgR41DzJUs1frEQQ/edit .

 

The Nominee

Barrett has less than three years’ experience as a judge. And eight months of that time, the courts have been closed. She has no experience as a trial lawyer, either. That she is a popular law school professor doesn’t qualify her for this seat.

More concerning, we’re beginning to learn about her extremism. She has been a paid speaker at least twice for the Alliance Defending Freedom, labeled by southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. She is not just a member but a “handmaid” of the fringe group (1800 members) People of Praise, which claims women must be subservient to their husbands in all things. She served on the board of one of its schools and lived in one of their group houses for a while. She did not disclose this membership in the paperwork for either her current Court of Appeals seat or for the Supreme Court, and the group scrubbed her name off its website. An AP article describes the group as “hierarchical, authoritarian and controlling, where men dominate their wives, leaders dictate members’ life choices and those who leave are shunned.

Another thing she failed to disclose: she and her husband signed a newspaper ad in 2006 newspaper advertisement seeking to end “the barbaric legacy of Roe vs Wade” and claiming that many abortions were done “for social reasons.” According to Forbes, the organization behind the ad calls for criminalizing discarding of unused frozen embryos when attempting in vitro fertilization.

Remember, even Richard Nixon had to abandon two of his hard-right choices. We really need to make some noise about these extreme positions.

 

Time to Take Action!

Already, 150 civic groups have spoken out against this nomination, as have 41 faith groups. Even a Catholic group came out against the nomination in a strongly-worded statement that says,

Years of decisions by Judge Barrett on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals prove that she does not hold all life to be sacred, as we are instructed to do by Catholic Social Teaching and Pope Francis.

The next Justice who fills the seat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg must advocate for the equally sacred issues that Pope Francis calls all people of good faith to defend: the vulnerable, those in poverty, and immigrants. Until an appointee is presented who can meet this call, as Justice Ginsburg did, the Senate must not consider filling the vacancy.

To move forward with the nomination of Judge Barrett weeks before a Presidential election is an assault on our democratic system. The people and their next chosen President must decide on the next Supreme Court Justice. Catholic voters will not accept a partisan power grab by President Trump, Senator McConnell, and his Republican colleagues.

But none of that is not enough; it’s time go out into the streets with massive peaceful protest. Let’s form an activist coalition of many groups, including large national organizations like MoveOn, The Movement for Black Lives/Black Lives Matter, National Organization for Women, NAACP, Feminist Majority, CAIR (a Muslim rights organization), JStreet (a progressive Jewish organization), Natural Resources Defense Council (environmental), Sierra Club, ACLU, democracy activism groups like Common Cause, People For the American Way, Indivisible, Sunrise Movement, Our Revolution, Represent Us, Extinction Rebellion, 350.org, Code Pink, and the many others who signed that opposition letter—and of course including the Democratic Party, Progressive Democrats of America, etc.: a mix of center-left and openly progressive organizations.

That coalition should have a public presence outside the in-state and DC homes and offices of every Republican Senator who said in 2016 that it was too close to the election and the seat should be held for the winner. And that presence needs to be especially strong and vocal for those whose seats are up this year (including Graham, McConnell, and Collins, among others). With social distancing making small numbers spread over more space, a handful of people at a time is enough to have impact.

That coalition needs to actively lobby every Senator, getting the Democrats to resist and making the political consequences clear to Republicans (with stats on the combined organizational membership in their state). To reach out to the media daily. And to deluge the Republican Senators up for re-election with hundreds of phone calls (to their Washington offices and to every district office), emails, social media tweets, and in-person meeting requests to let them know that they cannot play fast and loose with our democracy, and that there will be consequences if they try. If their tax status permits, to publicly donate large sums of money to the Democratic opponents.

None of us can do this alone. But if these organizations recruited volunteers in a coordinated effort, they’d have plenty. It’s also a visibility opportunity for the participating groups.

More importantly, this coalition will be in place and functioning when we get to Step Two, Safeugarding Democracy. So if you are a member or financial supporter of any of these organizations or any that signed those condemnations of the nomination, tell their CEOs and boards to get moving with a massive coalition to protect America’s democracy.

 

Step 2: How We Can Safeguard Democracy After the Election

Trump has many ways to try to steal the election. In broad categories, they include 1) excluding or intimidating likely Democratic voters (like the 94,000 prevented from voting in Florida in 2000 and 16.7 million at risk this year, according to election fraud expert Greg Palast), 2) judicial and legislative intervention after-the-fact, and 3) simply refusing to give up power, figuring that the armed thugs willing to defend him will be enough.

I’m not that worried about the third category. After insulting them over and over again, Trump probably can’t rely on the military to maintain his power—and the militia groups, while scary, probably can’t do it by themselves. They would need tens of thousands of highly organized and disciplined troops willing to attack their fellow citizens, subvert the constitution, and put their own lives and liberty at risk.

Thousands of government employees charged with carrying out the day-today tasks of governance, many of whom have been resisting him internally since 2017, would withdraw cooperation.  If Biden establishes a shadow government, he can run the country from some other building than the White House. We’ve learned a lot these past few months about how to work remotely.

Biden has also noted last July that “the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”­­

It’s the other two categories that concern me. Denying likely-Democratic voters the chance to vote, or invalidating their ballots, has been a Republican tactic since at least 2000, and was used to swing Florida that year and Ohio four years later, resulting in the eight-year unelected presidency of George W. Bush. And arcane laws exist that could hand Trump another four years even if Biden wins. For example, Republican legislators might try to appoint Electoral College electors who don’t represent the party that won their state (although, as the article points out, that strategy isn’t likely to work).

Here’s how resistance might play out, led and coordinated by that same coalition of activist groups we discussed in Part 1:

  1. Those protests in front of Republican lawmakers’ homes and offices expanded to every collaborating member of Congress, judge, or Justice, every state legislator or governor who tries to subvert the election.
  2. The organizations call for a complete and comprehensive withdrawal of consent to this government’s legitimacy. Enough bureaucrats, government building security screeners, custodial staff, and air traffic controllers stop working, enough people (and their businesses) stop paying federal taxes, and enough members of the armed forces leave their posts that the federal government comes to a screeching halt. The same can be done at the state level for states that are enabling the coup. And withdrawal of cooperation is especially delightful because it’s hard to combat with reprisals, and thus appealing to non-activists who don’t want to risk their safety or their freedom.
  3. Those organizations schedule the less risk-averse to mobilize in the streets, to shut down DC’s grand boulevards, to surround the White House perimeter fence with an ongoing presence—and to replace any who are arrested with another wave. Just as in the Civil Rights movement, filling the jails helps immobilize the government, and eventually, they will have no place left to put the new detainees.
  4. They call on the UN to delegitimize the rogue government internationally. Trump doesn’t get to meet with foreign dignitaries, who seek out meetings with Biden instead. The US temporarily loses its votes at the UN until democracy is restored, as Peter Beinart suggested in a New York Times Op-Ed. Overtures by US diplomats are ignored. International troops arrive to keep the peace.
  5. Biden and Harris find a Supreme Court Justice to administer the Oath of Office in a televised public ceremony and begin setting up the shadow Cabinet and taking control of the bureaucracy (there is no Constitutional requirement that the Chief Justice is the one who administers it). Trump is marginalized until he can be arrested for treason (and tax fraud, emoluments violations, and all the rest of it).

In the few months remaining before all this might boil over, it’s time for each of us to get ready—starting with the easy and obvious steps that any of us can take:

  • Sign this petition calling on all those pro-democracy groups to organize a coalition to block the Barrett nomination and protect democracy after the election
  • Personally contact any organizations you belong to or donate to and ask them to join the coalition. Write letters, make phone calls, send Tweets
  • Contact your own two Senators and Representative in Congress. Ask for meetings with them and bring a delegation that includes two or three very knowledgeable people as well as supporters who can get loud if that becomes necessary. Ideally, this group should have members from different organized communities and ethnic or subculture groups within the district.
    If your Senators are Democrats or independents, ask that they do whatever they can to block a vote on the Barrett nomination until after January 20. If they are Republicans, tell them you demand the same courtesy to the American people that they demanded in 2016, and make it clear that if they vote to confirm, you will not only vote against them but urge others to do so.

And think about whether you’re prepared for deeper steps that could have personal consequences, such as jail, physical injury, seizure of your property:

The most important thing is mindset. People will tell you there’s nothing you can do to stop fascism—but they’re wrong. For millennia, people have organized successfully for justice, for peace, for the environment, for the space to be themselves. I personally started the movement that saved a mountain while the “experts” moaned, “there’s nothing we can do!” Those who believe they can win increase their chances of winning.

 

A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com

 

[1] Trump has actively sabotaged hundreds of progressive or liberal policies implemented over the past several decades (Trump’s environmental record alone would be reason to get him out of office). He is increasingly open in his racism, his attacks on women, people with disabilities, Muslims, Arabs, veterans, and so many others (even his own former Cabinet members). He is brazen in his financial corruption, his ignorance of his office, and his rudeness to our allies while cozying up to brutal dictators around the world.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Buried in the registration form for the first post-lockdown rally to re-elect you-know-who:

“By attending the rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to Covid-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors or volunteers liable for any illness or injury.”

Juneteenth (Emancipation Day) celebration, Richmond, Virginia, 1905. Courtesy, wikipedia.
Juneteenth (Emancipation Day) celebration, Richmond, Virginia, 1905. Courtesy, wikipedia.

So typical of the hypocrite-in-chief. The man who first denounced the virus as a hoax, then fueled anti-Asian racism, and most recently caused a quantity of precious test kit swabs to be thrown away because he refused to put on a mask to tour the plant. The man whose bungling of our public emergency started with the dismantling of long-standing resources to fight pandemics and continued through the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.

(Aside: the cowards who ran the factory let him come in anyway. They should have said, “No mask? Then no tour.” Perhaps they were afraid of being ridiculed in a nasty tweet. Or of losing a federal contract. The former, which was quite likely, would put them in a prestigious club of people and organizations important enough to be publicly scorned by the country’s most incompetent president. The latter would have been a juicy lawsuit, and meanwhile, New England’s governors would have been falling all over themselves to grab those suddenly available supplies.)

The man who also refused to take the necessary actions months ago that would have contained the virus impact, as countries from Vietnam to New Zealand did, along with countries more comparable to the US, like Germany and South Korea.

Say one thing, do another is a hallmark of this man. That Tulsa rally is an example.  Yes, we see his occasional (and usually, too-little, too-late) condemnation of racism. But we also see this event scheduled on Juneteenth, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa had been the site of the most successful black neighborhood in the United States, until white racist mobs burned it down and killed hundreds of people on May 31 and June 1, 1921. And of course, we now the long history of his racist actions and comments, going all the way back to his vendetta against the Central Park Five and the housing discrimination he and his father were repeatedly sued over by the US Justice Department.

If it were either Juneteenth or Tulsa, it could conceivably have been a coincidence. But to have the kick-off event for the revived in-person re-election campaign held on that day, in that city, could not be a coincidence. It’s a dog-whistle to the racists, no doubt schemed up by one of DT’s senior advisors (I don’t think the man himself is educated enough to know about Tulsa, and it wouldn’t shock me if he hadn’t known what Juneteenth is.)Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Along with much of the nation, I get to decide what vision for the next four years inspires me. As a progressive, I have many friends in both the Warren and Sanders camps. 

I  think either Bernie or Elizabeth would do well in debates against DT and win big against him, IF the likely Dem voters in swing states are allowed to vote and if ballots are counted fairly. Those are two very big IFs, and they will be an issue with pretty much any Democratic candidate. For Sanders, it’s even more of an issue because the party is so hostile to the idea of his nomination that they will do whatever they can to sabotage it. One only has to look at the dirty tricks the Hillary Clinton campaign used against him four years ago.

But my big worry with Bernie is he may get elected but be functionally unable to govern, because the Dem establishment will block his agenda at every turn, as the Repubs promised but failed to do with DT. Bernie is not a team player or a negotiator and he will get sabotaged.

I also think Elizabeth is smarter and her plans are more well-thought-out. She would prove that HRC didn’t lose because she’s a woman but because she 1) came with a whole lot of negative baggage, such as the pay-to-play scandal, 2) ran a terrible campaign (as just one example: failing to visit Wisconsin even once between the convention and the election, despite losing hugely to Sanders in the Wisconsin primary), and 3) faced a disinformation campaign funded by at least one foreign government. I voted proudly for Bernie in the primary four years ago (and not-so-proudly for HRC in November), but I’m voting for Warren tomorrow. I live in Massachusetts and feel she’s done an excellent job as my Senator.

I do agree with my Bernie-supporter friends that if she does poorly on Super Tuesday, it’s time for her to endorse Bernie and get out.

I have to wonder yet again why the Dems didn’t bring us mandatory hand-countable paper ballots (I wrote that post back in 2007)  and ranked-choice voting when they had the chance in ’09. I don’t think DT would be squatting in the Oval Office if there had not been active voter suppression (see that top link in this post again) and if there were paper-ballot recounts in those three very marginal states that put him over the top–and yet the Dems ignored (and may have actually sabotaged) Jill Stein’s effort to get recounts there. Their failure means I and millions of others do not accept the 2016 results as legitimate. It would have been healthy for the country to settle the question of who actually one.

I also don’t believe DT would be president if we’d had ranked choice four years ago. We might have President Hillary Clinton, President Ted Cruz, or President Bernie Sanders–but we would not have this lying, cheating, mean-spirited sociopathic bully destroying our foreign policy, our environment, our education, and our human rights.

I am proudly voting for Warren tomorrow. And in response to those who say a vote for anyone other than Sanders is ultimately a vote for Biden, let me quote democracy activist and constitutional scholar Jennifer Taub:

Q: Bernie supporters told me that a vote for Elizabeth is a vote for Biden. Is that true?

A: No. A vote for Elizabeth is a vote for Elizabeth. Bernie’s camp is reasonably worried that nobody will have a majority of delegates when they get to the convention this summer?.

There are rules in place that Bernie helped write in 2016. Under those rules, on the first vote at the convention, pledged delegates must vote according to our primaries. If nobody has a majority, then there will be a second vote. On the second vote, delegates can realign. And so on.

It’s quite likely that neither Bernie nor Biden nor Warren will have a majority at the outset. So, all three of them will be viable and there will be some serious horse trading.

Please join me in voting for the future we want, and not any kind of “lesser evil.” We might have to do that in November, but we certainly don’t have to do it now.

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Effigy of "the Donald," photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC
Effigy of “the Donald,” photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC

That guy who’s squatting on government property at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC (The White House) has more chutzpah than just about anyone, anywhere.
His latest gambit, telling the two most liberal Supreme Court Justices they should recuse themselves, is especially ironic considering how Attorney General William Barr behaves as a matter of course, and how blatantly biased Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham conducted themselves during the travesty of the impeachment kangaroo court with a preordained outcome.
There’s an old Yiddish joke that defines chutzpah as the man on trial for killing his parents who pleads with the court, “Have mercy. I’m an Orphan!”Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Every year, bestselling author and social media visionary Chris Brogan challenges his huge reader base to come up with three words to provide focus for the coming year. This year, I decided to take the challenge for the first time since 2016. My three words are:

  1. Clarity (click to read Part 1, where I discuss this word)
  2. Justice
  3. Healing

Justice

Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain
Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain

Today’s installment is about Justice, and how it shapes both my career and my activism.

My career has evolved quite a bit from its founding (as a term-paper typing service!) in 1981. For the past several years, I’ve focused my writing, speaking, and consulting on helping business turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. By showing companies how to make a profit doing this, I hope to leverage far greater change than I would if I tried to motivate them through guilt, shame, and fear.

Lets make this concrete: I listed several benefits for each of five different examples in this blog post.

Ready to know more?  In the very early phases of this shift in my business, I did a TEDx talk, “Impossible is a Dare.” (you have to click on “Event Videos”, and then on my talk). It’s a nice 15-minute introduction to this idea as it existed in 2014; I’ve refined it quite a bit since then. A much deeper introduction is my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, endorsed by Chris, Seth Godin, Chicken Soup;’s Jack Canfield, Joel Makower (Executive Director of GreenBiz.com) and many other business and environmental leaders. And of course, I’m happy to talk to you about how I can be a “Sherpa” on this journey for your organization. 

But now, let’s go back to the activist side. In order to talk about Justice, I also have to talk about Injustice: what we’re trying to change.

And from there, how I personally am working to change injustice into justice through community-based activism: the work I do in my non-career time. There have been a few times in my life where that work dominated my day and pushed the career part off to the side. This is one of those times.

Marchers at a rally for racial justice and immigrant rights, Holyoke, MA. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Marchers at a rally for racial justice and immigrant rights, Holyoke, MA. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

As a citizen of the US, I’m deeply concerned about the attack on our planet and its people (and other living beings) by the current federal government. This government and its most visible spokesperson have viciously attacked immigrants, people of color, people without a Y chromosome (not male, in other words) or who don’t identify with the gender of their birth or any gender, people who are not Christian or even Christians who condemn him, people with disabilities, people suffering in poverty who face attacks on safety-net programs such as SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps) as well as authoritarian responses to homelessness, people who’ve survived crimes this government doesn’t view as important (such as sexual harassment), and even 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg–as well as people who might be likely to vote for someone other than that very visible spokesperson.

Humans, at least, can defend themselves. Forests, oceans, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the plants and animals that we share our planet with–they need human beings to defend them against the brutal attack by this administration. Since January 2017, this government has rolled back dozens of environmental protections, stripped government websites of information about issues from the human impact on climate change to toxic pollution databases, barred government scientists from speaking out, and of course, pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord.

As of October, 2019, that same visible spokesperson had lied at least 13,435 times while in office. He has violated his Oath of Office every single day since he was sworn in, because he refused to divest himself of emolument-laden business interests and thus undermines the Constitution; he illegally uses his position for personal enrichment. He even went so far as to order the next G7 Summit held at his own golf resort (public pressure forced him to walk this one back; even Fox raised an eyebrow). And of course, there were the two violations so egregious that they led to his impeachment. I would have preferred a much fuller bill of criminal activity (this link lists nine potential counts as far back as July, 2018).

But the problem goes far deeper than one corrupt and mean-spirited individual in a position of great power. 

As a citizen not just of the US but also of the world, I worry to see similar patterns repeating in many other countries, among them Brazil, Hungary, India, and Bolivia–and less intense versions attempting to rear their heads in places like France and UK.

I’ve been an environmental and social justice activist since October, 1969. That’s just over 50 years. Since that time, I’ve done much to improve the lives of my fellow residents of Earth, whether human, other animal, plant, fungus, or other lifeforms. I’ve been involved in numerous campaigns, and was glad to play a role in winning some of them. But there’s so much more to be done!

Each of these situations involves many cases of justice denied. I will do what I can to turn that around; I will continue to write and speak and act and organize and demonstrate and lobby from a place that says we are better than this, that we don’t accept this as normal, and that we are not willing to turn the clock all the way back to 1930s Germany. And I will continue to take comfort in the small victories we win, and the many friends I have made in the Resistance who prove to me that we are, indeed, better than this.

And each of us has an impact, often far greater than we realize at the time. Never accept that you cannot make a difference as an individual! But recognize that it’s easier to make that difference if you work with others.

I can take direct credit for victories ranging from a crosswalk at an intersection that desperately need one to starting the movement that saved a mountain when the “experts” thought our victory was impossible. And I’m far from done.

In May, 2019, my wife and I were accepted as sanctuary accompaniment volunteers, helping protect an upstanding immigrant who has to live in a church because he would be deported if caught outside the grounds. This is a hard-working man who just wants to provide for his family, including three children born in this country. He has lived in the US for nearly two decades, and in the church for more than two years.

A month later, we participated in an eight-person delegation to stand witness outside the prison holding up to 3000 migrant teenagers in Homestead, Florida. That prison, like the far worse one in Tornillio, Texas, was closed due to public outcry. The affinity group we went with is called Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice of Western Massachusetts. In February, we will be part of a ten-member JAIJ delegation doing relief work on the border at Brownsville, Texas and Mataoros, Mexico. Despite our tiny numbers, we’ve had a lot of influence, because we’ve been doing talkbacks, media interviews, and multiple public events since our return from Florida, and we’ve raised thousands of dollars to support the relief mission.

As in all my environmental and social work these 50 years, I hope to see my work become obsolete and unnecessary, because the problem has been fixed.

I dedicate my 2020 work for justice to the spirit of Frances Crowe, of Northampton, Massachusetts. She requested, for her 100th birthday, a demonstration with 100 signs representing 100 causes. She got 300 people marching in the streets, and I think she got her 100 causes, too. A few months later, she attended one of our public talks about the Homestead Detention Center just two weeks before she died. She was working on a climate scorecard for individuals to observe and improve their behavior at the time of her death.
I first met Frances at one of those actions that turned out later to have made a huge difference. She and I were both among the 1414 people arrested in 1977 while occupying the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear power plant, in New Hampshire. She was 58; I was 20, and I didn’t have a leadership role. When we got out, we discovered we’d birthed a nationwide safe-energy movement.

Part 3, on why I chose “Healing” for my third word, went live on January 20. Please leave your own three words (or any other appropriate comment) in the comments. Note that they are moderated, so don’t bother spamming.

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Simulation of TV newscast. By Original photograph by Sylvain Pedneault. Derivative work by Mike Liao. - Self-made. (Modified from Image:FirePhotography.jpg, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4500164

Remember some of those unflattering names for TV in the 1960s and 70s? “Boob tube.” Idiot box.” I think these names are rooted in the neurological changes TV works on our brains, combined with the inherently passive nature of watching–AND with the low content quality that too often marks this powerful and addictive medium.

TV too often incites violence and racism. And I don’t choose to play in that sandbox. For every Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street inculcating positive values, for every National Geographic or Discovery Channel special that broadens our sense of what is possible, there are dozens of shoot-em-up adventure shows and newscasts to focus our attention on the worst parts of our society. And it’s all tied together with ads designed to make us feel inadequate because we don’t buy certain brands. As Mick Jagger sang, “He can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke/the same cigarettes as me.

The original promise of cable TV was no ads in return for the monthly payment (1970s). But that original promise didn’t last very long! I grew up in NYC, which had seven stations on the VHF band, plus what must have been another 20 on UHF for those who had sets that could pull them in. Moving to places that had only two or three channels on the broadcast spectrum, I could see the appeal, at least for those who love TV.

TV is not an active part of my life.

We moved when I was 10 and left the big clunky ancient black-and-white TV behind. We didn’t get another one for two years–just in time to watch All In The Family. That was pretty much the only show I watched through high school. Through much of my early adult life, we didn’t even own a TV.

And when we got one, it was mostly as a video monitor, with some PBS kid shows on the side. We thought it was healthier to let our kids watch up to an hour a day of content-supervised TV than to ban it altogether and have it become alluring forbidden fruit.

A few years ago, when regular old broadcast TV was discontinued, our cable company gave us a converter box free for the first two years. We never even got it to work properly, and when the two years were up, we returned the box and eventually convinced them that we shouldn’t be paying the $10 month for a service we weren’t using. They acted deeply shocked but eventually lowered our bill. They supply both our landline phone and our broadband Internet.

A few times a year, we go to a friend’s house or a public place to watch a presidential debate, World Series game, or other special broadcast. I think TV news is the worst kind of mind pollution and get my news from other sources–that’s been true for decades, even when I had a working set. I still read my local daily newspaper, which has great coverage of my own region and at least some coverage of the wider world. I read a ton of e-newsletters that keep me informed within my various niches, and click to interesting links on social media (which has its own positives and negatives)–yes, including some TV clips. I’ll listen to radio news and public affairs programs such as All Things Considered (NPR) and Democracy Now (Pacifica). And yes, I spend some time daily on social media.

In fact, I deeply resent being forced to watch TV news with all its shallowness and violence when I ride elevators, wait for planes or buses or trains, or use a hotel fitness room. If there’s a great skit on Saturday Night Live or a new Randy Rainbow parody, or shocking testimony implicating high government officials, I will hear about it on Facebook and watch online. I worry about the people who spend so much time watching violence disguised as news, especially if they do it right before bed, leaving the whole night for the subconscious to absorb the message that this is normal.

It’s not.

There’s plenty of good in the world. People doing amazing things: harnessing technology to solve problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change…finding new ways to empower others…joining with neighbors or colleagues to do something too big for any one person or company–but the media is trained to focus on what’s wrong: “If it bleeds, it leads.” There are some nice exceptions, like Yes Magazine, Positive News, and Good News Network (among many others), that consciously focus on positive news–and even some mainstream outlets join this happy chorus. Also, because I’m in the green business world, I read publications like GreenBiz, Eco-Business, and Triple Pundit that are tremendously tilted toward highlighting positive innovation but don’t shy away from negative stories that need to be told.

While I don’t duck from the unpleasant things happening, I don’t steep myself in them. I surround myself with enough positive news (through those and many other channels) to insulate me from the bad effects of soaking in negativtiy. I recommend doing that as much as possible.

What strategies do YOU use to stay focused on the change you can make rather than letting the problems paralyze you? I’d love to see your comments, below.

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One of my marketing buddies, Marisa Murgatroyd, posted a picture of Greta Thunberg along with an inspirational message about how Greta’s work empowered Marisa to find her own place to make change.

Greta Thunberg on the cover of GQ, with commentary by Marisa Murgatroyd (Instagram screenshot)

It attracted a lot of comments, many of them expressing thanks for a great post–but others, far too many, dissing Greta and her work. Here’s my comment, in italics.

Thanks, Marisa, for posting this. Shocking how many people are posting to tear this young woman down because she’s changing the world. She will probably grow out of her extremism but if the world is lucky, she will keep her passion. I ask every person who is putting Greta down: what have you done in HER lifetime to make the world better, and what are you doing now toward that goal? Why is it important to you to spend your good energy attacking someone who is making a difference in the only ways she knows how?

And before you attack ME for using the word, “extremism,” remember this:

  1. This was a response to people who see her as an extremist. I used their own talking point to perhaps be listened to–to increase the chances that I might change a mind or two.
  2. Greta is acting out of deep despair. She does sound extreme at times. But let’s remember how hard it is to act out of despair, even if you don’t have Asperger’s (as she does). Positive motivators tend to work much better. To act from a dark place in a positive way is itself remarkable. In time, she will learn (as I did) that the world can be a very positive place, and we get the fun job of making it more positive, harnessing and amplifying the trends in the good directions, doing our best to neutralize the haters and the planet-killers. And that while the pace may seem glacial, we are actually winning.
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