Category: Protests and Crackdowns

By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology

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.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, localism/locavore, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Transparency vs. Secrecy

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.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice

Many progressives are preparing for the possibility that the Dems will win in November, but DT will refuse to cede power in January.

One of my mentors in nonviolent struggle, George Lakey, interviewed my one-time co-author Stephen Zunes about how eight different countries used nonviolence to defeat coup attempts. Go read the whole thing. Here’s my favorite paragraph:

When the first people to resist use tactics and rhetoric that make sense to those in the center who have been hoping to stay “above the fray,” the center is likely to throw its weight more strongly against the coup. Then, together, it can be defeated.

While I am no longer the news junkie I once was—I want to preserve my sanity when the news is often so distressing–I am definitely paying attention to DT’s constant attacks on our democracy.

It is obvious to me that even though he doesn’t study anything he should be studying, he does study how fascists come to power and does his best to emulate them. I think there is a high probability that if his plans to steal the election are unsuccessful, he will resist the transfer of power as the first US president ever to do so. I’m very aware of the chatter about what to do if that happens and I think it is likely that a general strike can be organized quickly and he will have to capitulate. We have a big advantage in that the military is not in love with him, to put it mildly. So he will have to rely on the armed goons within his base, who are not going to be disciplined enough, not going to agree on targets and tactics, and hopefully not too many of them actually willing to shoot random strangers just because they disagree with them.

I have been a student of non-violent resistance for almost 50 years. Non-violence has brought down viciously authoritarian governments and was often more effective than violent resistance. While it certainly didn’t bring down the government, nonviolent resistance was even surprisingly effective against the Nazis . There are hundreds of documented examples of this. All those people who smuggled hidden children or hid people in an attic or helped virtually all of the Danish Jews escape over the sea to Sweden in a single night. We saw decades-long non-violent resistance to the incredibly cruel and violent British occupation of India, and in our own American South, and in South Africa, and the Arab spring.

It is worth pointing out that these were not benign governments. They were nasty, vicious, violent. And they fell in the face of this kind of power.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Ethics: General, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

On a discussion forum for nonviolent (NV) activists, my friend David has been a consistent advocate for filling the jails, and has expressed frustration that so few people are willing. The discussion recently turned to encompass the question of property destruction (I’m an opponent). I shared my thoughts about both tactics, and added the concept of meeting people where they are and building a ladder for them to go deeper. I thought it might be useful to share it here, even though I recognize that it won’t be relevant to many of my business readers. You can see the entire conversation at https://thepowerdynamicofnonviolence.blogspot.com/2018/12/if-you-can-persist-in-face-of.html

Activists project pro-immigration signs onto the US border station, Brownsville, Texas, February 15, 2020. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Activists project pro-immigration signs onto the US border station, Brownsville, Texas, February 15, 2020. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

@David Slesinger, it’s beginning to sound as if you feel that ONLY NV actions that result in arrests and jail are meaningful. I strongly disagree with that premise–and so would Gandhi (the local textiles movement), MLK (Montgomery bus boycott), and the Hebrew midwives Shifra and Pu’ah, who may have invented nonviolent resistance 3000+ years ago. (I’m at least not aware of any earlier documentation of a nonviolent action against state power than the scene in the Old Testament where Pharaoh confronts them.) The majority of Gene Sharp’s 198 NV tactics do not involve arrest.

I have been involved with hundreds of actions that provided meaningful protest and in some cases helped to change government policy that did not risk arrest.

Also, it’s important to give people a ladder. You have to meet people where they are ready. Most new activists take tentative steps at the beginning. Over time, some of them move up that ladder. Serving any jail time of more than a weekend or so is pretty high up the ladder. Serving a sentence of months or years is almost all the way at the top (a little below martyrdom) and many of us never reach it. You have told me many times about your frustration that so few people are willing to do as you’ve done.

Unknown raises excellent points about property destruction. Destruction of private property is a mistake both morally and strategically, for the reasons Unknown cites and also for its effect of making enemies of those whom other NV tactics would turn into allies.

I am a rape survivor. I have also experienced the break-in and looting/ransacking of apartments I was living in. They feel remarkably similar; the difference is in degree. Both are a violation. So was the time I was visiting my college after finishing, staying at the Gay Center–and a rock wrapped in a Nazi hate message came through the window. It wasn’t my property, but I felt just as violated.

I do make a distinction between property belonging to a single person (and that would include the merchandise inside a small store) and the use of property destruction aimed at the state or at e.g. military contractors–such as the actions of the Berrigans and their compadres in damaging draft records and nuclear missiles. WE should note that unlike looters, they got no personal gain, were really careful to avoid collateral damage to living creatures, and waited around to be arrested. They maintained the moral high ground even while destroying things. But this is extremely rare. Most instances of property violence are perceived as criminal or even terrorist by the public at large AND the power structure.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Innovation, language, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

interracial couple in US flag regalia
interracial couple in US flag regalia

As the United States of America marks its 244th birthday today, it’s a good time to look at the state of this nation.

The US was the first modern constitutional democracy, just shy of 26 years earlier than second-place Norway. That’s a terrific achievement that makes many Americans proud–including me. But the founders of this country were White, male property owners, some of whom saw human beings as part of their property. And the democracy they created was an unequal one that gave voting rights only to White, male property owners. It took all the way until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to extend that franchise all the way down to Black women in all parts of the segregated South.

Americans think of ourselves as a “can-do” people. Over the course of its history, the US has often been in the vanguard, with the rest of the world playing catch-up later. The US was especially good at technology, pioneering innovations ranging from the interchangeable parts that made mass production possible to the amazing moon missions that took less than seven years from JFK’s speech at Rice University to Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind” as he became the first person ever to set foot on the lunar surface, to enormous leadership in green energy from the 1970s into the 1990s.

And Americans often see ourselves as the greatest country in the world. In many ways,  that image is correct. We have amazing natural and scenic resources, a wide diversity of people, cultures, ecosystems, and more. We are very resilient, even scrappy at times. We have a democracy that has not only lasted but expanded. We’ve birthed may popular movements for justice and liberation, and experiments in new ways to form community, that went around the world.

As one example, it’s hard to imagine the LGBT movement globally without the strength of that movement in the US starting in 1969 with Stonewall. Stonewall didn’t magically spring up out of nowhere. Little-known homosexual-rights advocacy groups like the Mattachine Society (for men) and Daughters of Bilitis (for women) had been around since the 1950s. The Gray Panthers, founded in Philadelphia, took on agism. Disability activists pushed through the Americans with Disabilities Act.

But we also lead in many areas where leading isn’t a good thing. 73 percent of US homicides involve a firearm, and per capita firearms ownership is more than twice the number of #2 Yemen. The US is the only country to have more guns than people. We have the highest healthcare costs in the world but far from the best outcomes. And of course, new cases of Coronavirus are raging in the US, while Europe and Asia have done a much better job on control.

And despite the perception of American exceptionalism–that we’re a beacon to the rest of the world–there are many areas where the US is far, far below “the best in the world.” This could be a much longer list, but here are a few examples:

The US has enabled an enormous transfer of wealth from middle-class and working-class people to the 1 Percent. People of color have faced numerous additional institutional barriers to participating in that wealth.

The US has also been a hotbed of hatred, where for centuries, people have been attacked and often killed for their real or perceived skin color, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other factors. The FBI’s most recent statistics, for 2018, document 7,120 hate crime incidents (this list taken verbatim from the site):

  • 59.5 percent stemmed from a race/ethnicity/ancestry bias.
  • 18.6 percent were motivated by religious bias.
  • 16.9 percent resulted from sexual-orientation bias.
  • 2.2 percent stemmed from gender-identity bias.
  • 2.1 percent resulted from bias against disabilities.
  • 0.7 percent (58 offenses) were prompted by gender bias.

My guess is that these terrible statistics don’t even count police murders of people of color.

What is the Real America?

Technically, America is much more than the US. It’s everything from the northern tip of Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina–and Americans live anywhere within. But right now, I’m just talking about the US.

And the answer is…all of the above, and more. Our diversity is part of our resilience and our strength. But our education (in school and out, and that includes social media) tends to sharpen our existing divisions and make it hard to find people who disagree with us–let alone have those meaningful, structured conversations that explore how we can work together with people who are not like us.

And it hasn’t helped that the current president has repeatedly and publicly embraced racism,  misogyny, ableism, and difference, while promoting suppression of real news and science, monolithic social mores that ignore or (sometimes even physically) attack different perspectives, and dictatorships in other countries. A president who has put children in cages, essentially closed the borders to legitimate asylum seekers (long before COVID), slashed the safety net, appointed a likely child abuser to the Supreme Court, and made a mockery of our cherished democracy.

This Moment: A Time for Action

Many things are changing in our society this year:

  • The pandemic has changed the way we interact–and created a ridiculous ideologically based divide between those who take precautions and those who don’t
  • Anger around police mistreatment has created a mass movement
  • COVID has shown that our entire society can pivot, that all those “impossible”changes around issues from climate change to racism are actually less drastic than what we’ve already changed

In short, the cauldron is bubbling. What emerges depends on what we put in–but this could be a time to Make America Great, finally.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Gratitude, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,
A recent Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, OR, June 4, 2020

Happy Juneteenth. As you probably know by now, June 19th is a Black American holiday celebrating the day the last slaves in a Confederate state finally got the news that slavery had been overturned 2-1/2 years earlier (four Union states still permitted slavery for a few more months, until the 13th Amendment became law).

A recent Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, OR, June 4, 2020
A recent Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, OR, June 4, 2020

You also probably know that the guy in the White House planned to have his first live indoor rally in months today–and rubbing salt in the wounds, it was going to be in Tulsa, site of the worst violence against a black community in the history of the US (in 1921). And of course, you know that the US has been rocked by racial justice protests for weeks, following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

The public outcry was so fierce that even a group as tone-deaf as his campaign staff (who apparently knew about both of these events ahead of setting the date), and as deliberately inflammatory and reluctant to admit wrong as the man himself, had to walk it back. The rally will still be in Tulsa, but tomorrow.

Both Bruce Dart, head of Tulsa’s health department, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the federal response to coronavirus, are very unhappy about this, BTW, as COVID-19 cases have been climbing rapidly there.

Which brings home the point that nonviolent citizen action is effective even against a thuggish, narcissistic, pathological liar and would-be lifetime dictator like this one. Here are five particularly famous examples, among thousands. I have personally participated in dozens of nonviolent events or sustained campaigns that had significant impact, most spectacularly the Seabrook Occupation of 1977 and the year-long Save the Mountain campaign I founded in 1999.

Not coincidentally, black organizers of Tulsa’s annual Juneteenth celebration, who had canceled the event over the virus, uncanceled it and are now expecting 30,000 people (11,000 more than will be at the re-election rally).

How I Will Mark Juneteenth

I’m attending two Juneteenth events today: first, a virtual celebration featuring two black Jewish rabbis who are both musicians at 5 pm ET/2 pm PT, and second, a live candlelight vigil, with distancing and masks, at the site of the Sojourner Truth statue in Florence, Massachusetts, a 20-minute drive from my home.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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Erica Chenoweth, nonviolent activism researcher
Erica Chenoweth, nonviolent activism researcher

Yesterday and today, I’ve listened to a bunch of the EarthDayLive2020 conference. It’s exciting to see this intergenerational, intercultural, and very smart group of activists and performers  attracting thousands of viewers over Zoom.

One speaker, Erica Chenowith, tossed off a remark that changed everything I think about the 2020 US presidential election. She said—and this is so clear after all the progressives exited the race—that we get involved with this election not to choose our ally but to choose our adversary (she used the term “enemy,” but I think my term gets her meaning more accurately).

This, to me, might be the secret sauce for getting progressives to come out and vote. In this scenario, Biden migrates from lesser evil to far, far better adversary. With a moderate and relatively honest Democrat in the White House, progressives will have a much easier time moving our agenda forward. Biden will be more pliable on economic issues, on the social safety net, and on the environment. He is no Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, but he is someone who does listen, and who occasionally changes his mind—as he did on same-sex marriage. In the Bill Clinton era, he supported the horrid DOMA, but he pushed Obama well to the left when marriage equality came to the tipping point.

He is already likely to reinstate the US into the Paris Climate Accord. Once he understands how the Green New Deal will create jobs, put discretionary spending into people’s pockets, and reduce our vulnerability both to foreign oil oligarchs and to runaway multinational corporations—thus reducing the risk of war—I think he would support it or at least not interfere with it.

And while the Obama administration, where he was VP, had a poor record on immigration justice, the cruelty that DT has consistently shown to immigrants and refugees is orders of magnitude worse. I saw this with my own eyes in a week volunteering at the US/Mexico border in February; my wife wrote this piece about it.

In other words, a Biden administration would be a much more welcome adversary. It would be more humane, more willing to work with other countries, interested in preserving rather than destroying the environment—and far more predictable. And it would be a complete rejection of the apparent main goal of the current occupant: to make himself even richer and everyone else be damned. In other words, Biden will be someone who will respond as we would like him to, at least some of the time—and who is unlikely to ever engage in the viciously destructive hate-based politics we see every day.

There’s ample precedent. LBJ, the long-time Southern politician, not JFK, the liberal icon, was the one who signed several pieces of civil rights legislation and declared war on poverty. Richard Nixon, a Republican and anticommunist extremist, was probably the president who did the most to protect the  environment other than perhaps Obama–not because he believed in the cause, but because public outcry left him no other choice. (Of course, the good work Johnson and Nixon did on these issues in no way gives them a pass around the Vietnam war, domestic repression, etc.)

I’d love to hear from progressives who take electoral politics seriously—is this the way we attract young disillusioned progressives who are ready to sit out the election because we are once again stuck with a centrist candidate who doesn’t really represent us? Please weigh inFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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50 years ago today, Earth Day was launched as a one-time event. Who would know it would not only become annual but  turn into a massive worldwide movement that has changed our world for the better in so many ways?

Earth Lightning, by Stephanie Hofschlaeger
Photo by Stephanie Hofschlaeger

The Environmental Movement is Now Mainstream

Since that first Earth Day, we’ve made a lot of progress. A few examples:

  • Public awareness of climate issues–and of the lifestyle changes we can make to improve things–is at an all-time high
  • Millions of people have taken to the streets to demand action on climate
  • Science has made huge strides in areas ranging from green energy to biomimicry; amazing new green technologies are constantly becoming more efficient, less expensive, and more deployable
  • Many countries have shifted away from fossil and nuclear toward clean technoogies such as solar, wind, and hydro–and these technologies are much more efficient than they were 50 years ago
  • Veganism and vegetarianism (two of the easiest ways to reduce our personal climate footprint) are far more accepted, even in places like Germany that used to be quite hostile)
  • From bringing our own reusable bags (pre-COVID) to discovering foods like tofu, the way we shop and eat has drastically shifted, even for those still eating meat
  • Nearly every country in the world agreed to the Paris Climate Accord (which doesn’t go nearly far enough, and which the current US administration has pledged to leave–but it’s a start)
  • A 16-year-old Swedish climate activist addressed the UN, arriving in the US aboard  a green-energy boat (yes, I’m talking about Greta Thunberg)
  • Almost every major company has at least a sustainability coordinator, if not a whole department–and these folks have drastically reduced the negative impact of business on the environment
  • Here in the US, the well-thought-out Green New Deal is getting serious attention
  • We’re beginning to recognize climate justice: looking at the environment from a lens that includes economic and social justice issues, such as why so many polluting plants are in poor communities and why so many of those communities are “food deserts” with little or no access to healthy foods

My Environmental Journey Started That Day

I was 13, and I was one of the people “captured” by that first Earth Day.  Ever since then, I’ve given a lot of thought to, and taken a lot of action on, ways I can live more lightly–and how I can help others, both individuals and institutions, make that shift.
This has taken many forms, from street activism to lobbying to addressing business audiences with messages on how to make green social entrepreneurship sexy and profitable to writing books that show how this can be done.
I’ve also made many lifestyle shifts, from biking 5 miles to high school at age 15 and  becoming vegetarian at 16 to converting my house to a heat and hot water system using cow poop and food waste from our farmer neighbors at age 61 and carting unbagged groceries out to the reusable bags I keep in the car at 63 (since we can’t bring them into the stores anymore).
In my activist life, I’ve been lucky to participate in three major environmental victories:
  • In 1977, I was one of about 2,000 people and 1414 who got arrested at the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. We had no way of knowing that our action would birth a national safe energy movement. On the 40th anniversary, I wrote about why this action was so important. (The link is to Part 1 of my 5-part series. There’s a link to the next installment at the bottom of each earlier one.)
  • In  1984, I worked with my city counselor to get the first nonsmokers’ rights regulations in Northampton, Massachusetts. Very few communities had any protection for non-smokers at that time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that within a few years, most restaurants in town were non-smoking and that the number of restaurants in town increased significantly.
  • And in 1999, I founded and became the public face of the movement that saved a mountain right near my house.

It was the success of Save the Mountain that led me into the work of educating the business community on how to be profitable while saving the world.

I hope to be able to notch a fourth victory: helping to turn the business world away from a profit-only model and toward a model of making a profit through identifying, creating, and marketing products and services that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war and violence into peace, bigotry into strength in diversity,  catastrophic climate change into planetary balance, pandemics into global health, etc. I see business as a lever for creating the world we want.

This is not new. Social impact companies have been around at least since the mid-19th century, but it’s been on the fringe. Believe it or not, UK chocolate giant Cadbury was founded as a social impact company. But I think now we have the chance to change the entire business culture, so profitable business social and environmental responsibility becomes mainstream.

But There’s Still Lots to Be Done!

For all its positive presence, business is still a long way from solving problems it largely created. Pollution, resource depletion, and labor issues are just a few of many issues that need to be addressed, especially as world population grows faster than at any time in history. And governments are not always our allies. The present Brazilian and US federal governments, for instance, are actively sabotaging the eco-agenda. Each of us needs to make the difference we can make–and each of us CAN find a way to make that difference (contact me if you want help figuring out what the most impactful way for you and your business).

No Cost Resources and MY Gift to Help You Celebrate Earth Day THIS Year

Let’s start this Earth Day party off with something that will help you save energy, water, and money–my ebook, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life—With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle. I normally sell this for $9.95, but as my Earth Day gift to you, you can get it at no cost. Just visit PainlessGreenBook.com and enter “earthdayblog” in the code box. This will also sign you up to my informative Clean and Green Club monthly newsletter.

Our national museum, the Smithsonian Institution, has organized an online Earth Optimism Summit with a fantastic lineup including Denis Hayes, who organized that 1970 Earth Day…Christiana Figueres, top negotiator of the Paris Accords…NASA’s former Chief Scientist and current director of the National Air And Space Museum Ellen Stofan…Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org (among many others)
Another national virtual summit, Earthday Live 2020, offers three days of programming and a strong social justice focus.

A group based near me in Western Massachusetts, Climate Action Now, offers several Earth Day events starting this evening with a 6:30 ET panel of legislators and activists. This may be especially interest if you live in Massachusetts, but it’s virtual and open to all.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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Elizabeth Warren hugs a woman in front of Homestead Detention Center

Regardless of what you think of her politics, her personality, or anything else, you have to admit she is quite a wordsmith.  Personally, I thought Elizabeth Warren was the best presidential candidate I’ve ever had the chance to vote for. But after her dismal Super Tuesday, it was clearly time for her to get out. She used the opportunity to be memorable once again, and to remind us that it was never about her, but about the movement.

Elizabeth Warren hugs a woman in front of Homestead Detention Center
Elizabeth Warren hugs a woman in front of Homestead Detention Center

Warren’s amazing pep talk of a withdrawal statement was one of the most remarkable pieces of oratory-in-writing (and, I’m guessing, oratory delivered in person to our campaign staff) I’ve ever seen. Since many readers of this blog are professional communicators, it’s worth analyzing and learning from it. Here it is, with my commentary:

I want to start with the news. I want all of you to hear it first, and I want you to hear it straight from me: today, I’m suspending our campaign for president.

No shilly-shallying, no evasion. Straight to the unpleasant truth.

I know how hard all of you have worked. I know how you disrupted your lives to be part of this. I know you have families and loved ones you could have spent more time with. You missed them and they missed you. And I know you have sacrificed to be here.

Acknowledging how her volunteers and staff have put their lives on hold. Few candidates do this. More should.

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you, for everything you have poured into this campaign.

Not just acknowledging, but giving direct thanks.

I know that when we set out, this was not the call you ever wanted to hear. It is not the call I ever wanted to make. But I refuse to let disappointment blind me – or you – to what we’ve accomplished. We didn’t reach our goal, but what we have done together – what you have done – has made a lasting difference. It’s not the scale of the difference we wanted to make, but it matters – and the changes will have ripples for years to come.

Rooting the disappointment in optimism and accomplishment.

What we have done – and the ideas we have launched into the world, the way we have fought this fight, the relationships we have built – will carry through, carry through for the rest of this election, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Going for the long-term view.


So think about it:

  • We have shown that it is possible to build a grassroots movement that is accountable to supporters and activists and not to wealthy donors – and to do it fast enough for a first-time candidate to build a viable campaign. Never again can anyone say that the only way that a newcomer can get a chance to be a plausible candidate is to take money from corporate executives and billionaires. That’s done.

Look how she frames this: as a forever improvement to a broken system. Wonderfully bold.

  • We have also shown that it is possible to inspire people with big ideas, possible to call out what’s wrong and to lay out a path to make this country live up to its promise.

  • We have also shown that race and justice – economic justice, social justice, environmental justice, criminal justice – are not an afterthought, but are at the heart everything that we do.

And at the heart of this message. This was a campaign based from the start in social justice.

  • We have shown that a woman can stand up, hold her ground, and stay true to herself – no matter what.

Something we needed a certain amount of assurance about, after the debacle of 2016.

  • We have shown that we can build plans in collaboration with the people who are most affected. You know just one example: our disability plan is a model for our country, and, even more importantly, the way we relied on the disability communities to help us get it right will be a more important model.

This collaborative approach is rare in political campaigns, especially at the presidential level. Acknowledging the contributions of experts who don’t merely study but actually LIVE the experience in formulating policy.

And one thing more: campaigns take on a life and soul of their own and they are a reflection of the people who work on them.

This campaign became something special, and it wasn’t because of me. It was because of you. I am so proud of how you all fought this fight alongside me: you fought it with empathy and kindness and generosity – and of course, with enormous passion and grit.

Fairly typical kudos to the staff and volunteers. Nicely done, but other candidates have done the same.

Some of you may remember that long before I got into electoral politics, I was asked if I would accept a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that was weak and toothless. And I replied that my first choice was a consumer agency that could get real stuff done, and my second choice was no agency and lots of blood and teeth left on the floor. And in this campaign, we have been willing to fight, and, when necessary, we left plenty of blood and teeth on the floor. And I can think of one billionaire who has been denied the chance to buy this election.

Back to the long-haul strategy, the idea that this is a fight that takes time, and that there are victories along the way, from years past to even as recently as this week

Now, campaigns change people. And I know that you will carry the experiences you have had here, the skills you’ve learned, the friendships you have made, will be with you for the rest of your lives. I also want you to know that you have changed me, and I will carry you in my heart for the rest of my life.

Doesn’t she sound like she’s giving a graduation speech? She’s reminding them of the inspiring, even life-changing experience they all had together in support of this larger cause: building a movement.

So if you leave with only one thing you leave with, it must be this: choose to fight only righteous fights, because then when things get tough – and they will – you will know that there is only option ahead of you: nevertheless, you must persist.

A lot going on in these three lines. A command to do what’s right, a reminder that you’ll face deep-seated opposition, and a call-back to the popular meme that sprung up around her after Mitch McConnell refused to let her read Coretta Scott King’s remarks on the Senate floor. McConnell was the one who said, “Nevertheless, she persisted,” and within days, that was on bumper stickers all around the country

You should all be so proud of what we’ve done together – what you have done over this past year.

  • We built a grassroots campaign that had some of the most ambitious organizing targets ever – and then we turned around and surpassed them.

  • Our staff and volunteers on the ground knocked on over 22m doors across the country.

  • They made 20m phone calls and they sent more than 42m texts to voters. That’s truly astonishing. It is.

  • We fundamentally changed the substance of this race.

Not just listing some of the accomplishments, but quantifying them. She’s reminding them that she is a policy wonk, that she uses data to substantiate her claims and justify her many detailed plans.

You know a year ago, people weren’t talking about a $0.02 wealth tax, universal childcare, cancelling student loan debt for 43 million Americans while reducing the racial wealth gap, or breaking up big tech. Or expanding Social Security. And now they are. And because we did the work of building broad support for all of those ideas across this country, these changes could actually be implemented by the next president.

Again, reminding them how they helped to change the discourse and make space for the next president to put these things into practice.

A year ago, people weren’t talking about corruption, and they still aren’t talking about it enough – but we’ve moved the needle, and a hunk of our anti-corruption plan is already embedded in a House bill that is ready to go when we get a Democratic Senate.

A subtle call to get that Democractic Senate majority, and a subtle reminder of the large pile of bills passed by the House but in limbo in the Senate.

We also advocated for fixing our rigged system in a way that will make it work better for everyone – regardless of your race, or gender, or religion, regardless of whether you’re straight or LGBTQ. And that wasn’t an afterthought, it was built into everything we did.

A universalist call for inclusion and intersectionality that manages to avoid insulting white working class straight Christian men, who are just as much “everyone” as those who identify as other than that.

And we did all of this without selling access for money. Together 1.25 million people gave more than $112m to support this campaign. And we did it without selling one minute of my time to the highest bidder. People said that would be impossible. But you did that.

Again, she is rewriting the expectation of what’s not only possible but can become normal.

And we also did it by having fun and by staying true to ourselves. We ran from the heart. We ran on our values. We ran on treating everyone with respect and dignity.

Social change can be fun! As Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.”

You know liberty green everything was key here – my personal favorites included the liberty green boas, liberty green sneakers, liberty green make up, liberty green hair, and liberty green glitter liberally applied. But it was so much more.

A bit of branding. In truth, I hadn’t noticed this. Warren’s signs have been blue-and-white for years (I live in Massachusetts and I’ve seen them since 2012).

Four-hour selfie lines and pinky promises with little girls.

In other words, what you staff and volunteers did helps to shape the next generation. A strong claim to deeper meaning.

And a wedding at one of our town halls. And we were joyful and positive through all of it.

Celebratory! And a talking point: what other candidate would inspire a wedding at a Town Hall, and what other candidate would make space for that to happen?

We ran a campaign not to put people down, but to lift them up –

Another message of empowerment, and a huge contrast with the incumbent.

and I loved pretty much every minute of it.

OK, so she’s probably exaggerating. But it is clear that she loved most of it. It’s obvious that she enjoys debating, meeting constituents and fans, showing up with media in tow even at a detention center for migrant children, doing funny TV appearances, chowing down regional food, showing off her policies, etc.

So take some time to be with your friends and family, to get some sleep, maybe to get that haircut you’ve been putting off – you know who I’m talking about.

Humor in the face of stress and disappointment, followed by…

Do things to take care of yourselves, gather up your energy, because I know you are coming back. I know you – and I know that you aren’t ready to leave this fight.

Another call to stay active and involved.

You know, I used to hate goodbyes. Whenever I taught my last class or when we moved to a new city, those final goodbyes used to wrench my heart. But then I realized that there is no goodbye for much of what we do. When I left one place, I took everything I’d learned before and all the good ideas that were tucked into my brain and all the good friends that were tucked in my heart, and I brought it all forward with me –

Reiterating that the fight goes on, and so do the policy wins and the friendships.

and it became part of what I did next. This campaign is no different. I may not be in the race for president in 2020, but this fight – our fight – is not over. And our place in this fight has not ended.

Because for every young person who is drowning in student debt, for every family struggling to pay the bills on two incomes, for every mom worried about paying for prescriptions or putting food on the table, this fight goes on. For every immigrant and African American and Muslim and Jewish person and Latinx and trans woman who sees the rise in attacks on people who look or sound or worship like them, this fight goes on.

Reiterating the intersectionality piece, the economic and social justice pieces, and the importance of defending the most vulnerable members of society.

And for every person alarmed by the speed with which climate change is bearing down upon us, this fight goes on. And for every American who desperately wants to see our nation healed and some decency and honor restored to our government, this fight goes on. And sure, the fight may take a new form, but I will be in that fight, and I want you in this fight with me. We will persist.

Bringing in the environment, which hadn’t shown up here so far. And again, reminding of how low the bar has fallen.

One last story. One last story. When I voted yesterday at the elementary school down the street, a mom came up to me. And she said she has two small children, and they have a nightly ritual. After the kids have brushed teeth and read books and gotten that last sip of water and done all the other bedtime routines, they do one last thing before the two little ones go to sleep. Mama leans over them and whispers, “Dream big.” And the children together reply, “Fight hard.”

A big, emotional close. Showing how the campaign’s motto is changing lives into the next generation. I would have ended it there but she has one more inspirational line:

Our work continues, the fight goes on and big dreams never die.

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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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