Open letter to the government of the City of Northampton, Massachusetts

Context: Residents of a tiny one-block street called Warfield Place have been fighting to preserve a line of beautiful cherry trees planted several decades ago. The city (pop. 28,726) has claimed  that the street needed to be redone and these trees are at the end of their useful life, while residents said the trees could easily survive for a few more years–and that many other streets with more traffic and worse infrastructure conditions deserved higher priority. Both sides have brought in arborists who support their positions. The residents recently brought in support from national leaders in the Buddhist community, and ordained the trees as Buddhist priests. Neighbors were actively negotiating with the city, as well as seeking help in the courts. Thursday morning, the city brought in heavy equipment and a large police presence and destroyed the trees.

For the numerous stories chronicling the controversy over the past several months, visit http://gazettenet.com and use the search tool at the top to look for “warfield place cherry trees” (nonsubscribers get five free articles per month). See more pictures of the trees in bloom taken by Shel Horowtiz (author of this open letter and owner of this blog) and protest signs at (20+) Facebook

A Warfield Place cherry tree in bloom, May 2, 2021. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
A Warfield Place cherry tree--close-up of flower, May 2, 2021. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
A Warfield Place cherry tree–close-up of flower, May 2, 2021. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
It was shocking to read in yesterday morning’s Daily Hampshire Gazette that the sacred cherry trees the community has fought so hard to preserve that it actually ordained them as Buddhist priests–the trees that hundreds of local residents and many others from farther afield, including several of national stature, signed petitions and joined protests and wrote letters to the editor to save–were torn down with no warning, even while the city was aware that a judge was considering a restraining order, and even while the city and the residents of the street were still negotiating.
The trees were murdered at 9:00 a.m. and the restraining order that would have prevented their untimely death was given at noon.
Why the rush? Why the need to act unilaterally when many people were willing to work out a solution that made sense for all parties: the city, the residents, and of course, the trees?
This is the legacy of Public Works Director Donna LaScaleia and Mayor David Narkewicz. All the considerable good work of the 10-year Narkewicz administration will not sustain its former reputation for progressive policies and fostering democracy. When people remember this adinistration, they will not remember how it stood against racism and for inclusion, how it was a champion of addressing climate change. Their memories will be rooted in this horrible and utterly avoidable incident.
It was an attack not only on these beloved trees, but an attack on democracy–on the ability of people to feel they have influence over their own lives, and their ability to have their concerns listened to, and, hopefully, acted on.
And it was also an attack on separation of powers in government; the city was aware that a judge was considering the injunction that was eventually granted (too late), but couldn’t be bothered to let that process play out.
And of course, removing living trees goes against the Narkewicz administration’s long-stated goals of mitigating climate change locally. Trees are far and away our most effective weapons against climate catastrophe.
I think what may have happened was a felt need to be right at all costs–not to admit that there could have been one of several other ways forward that would have had far more positive outcomes, such as:
  • Harnessing the neighbors’ considerable energy into a working committee that would actively participate WITH the Department of Public Works Director to develop solutions that worked for the city and the residents. Even if the ultimate outcome were the same, the residents would have owned it.
  • Moving Warfield Place off the calendar for a few more years until the trees died naturally, while adding plantings of newer trees so when that day came, the street would have a decent tree-canopy-in-process.
  • Redirecting the construction funds to a city block whose need for repair was undisputed.
This need to be right, to save face, culminated in an extreme wrong. The city engaged in a “process” that not only disenfranchised the Warfield Street residents, ending in a hostile unilateral action–it undermined Northampton’s reputation as a citadel of democracy, a place that values its citizens’ public discourse and involvement. This violation of residents’ real concerns makes it harder for the next administration to get people to even trust–let alone become involved in–city government. And the city has even created a construct where it faces accusations of a hate crime–even though Mayor Narkewicz spent so much of his decade as mayor creating a wonderful climate of acceptance and even embrace of diversity.
It’s very sad. It’s irreversible–the trees are gone, democracy was seriously weakened, and the city’s reputation is in tatters–and it was completely avoidable. I expected better of Northampton and am deeply disappointed.
While we can’t bring the trees back, and this action has done potentially permanent harm to Northampton’s civic virtue, it is still possible to atone. I ask in all seriousness: How, specifically, will the city make restitution? How will this administration restore confidence in the city? How will the city offset the negative climate impacts of the tree destruction? And how will the city make the residents and neighbors of Warfield Place whole again? It won’t be easy, especially this close to the end of this administration, but it has to be done, and done very soon. What exactly is the plan?
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Jews, who were forced away from Israel/Palestine more than 2000 years ago, have the “right of return” automatically. They can come and instantly claim Israeli citizenship, and the government helps them resettle–even offering intensive Hebrew language instruction. But Palestinians, who were only forced off their land in 1948, have no such right–even though some of those people are still alive and no one is more than four generations into the exile. Meanwhile, in many parts of the country, Palestinians can’t get building permits from Israeli authorities. “But they still need places to live. They still have children.” So they build illegally, and when Israel wants to up the repression, the government bulldozes these houses.

That inequity made CNN political commentator and journalist Peter Beinart (latest book: The Crisis of Zionism) very uncomfortable. As he struggled with the ethics of this inequality, he began learning more. Beinart is Jewish, has lived in South Africa, Israel, and the US,  and is very aware of the ethical teachings in classical Judaism about treating the stranger well, doing good deeds, being a good guest when you travel to others’ lands, and treating people fairly.

Over 200 people gathered on Zoom June 8, 2021 to hear Beinart discuss the prospects for peace and justice in the Middle East in a program for Critical Connections entitled “Palestinian Rights, Jewish Responsibility.” At least five rabbis were in the room, as were large contingents from both the mainstream and progressive Jewish communities. A number of Muslims were in the audience, as well.

Originally a supporter of two separate states, Beinart now sees that as impossible because of the ways the Israeli government has carved up the West Bank into “Bantustans” with Jewish settlements separating once-contiguous Palestinian areas. Instead, he has joined many Palestinian thinkers in calling for a single multiethnic state, sharing power, with parallel more-or-less autonomous governments for internal governance within each community, and offering equality for all.

Both Israelis and Palestinians would be safer with this model–just as South Africa is safer for whites as well as blacks, and Northern Ireland is safer for both Protestants and Catholics, he says. Once the dominant group gives up its total control and need to dominate, the oppressed group starts to get less hostile because the repression has eased off.

He says the late Israeli writer Amos Oz is wrong in calling for a “divorce” between Israeli and Palestinian society. “The marriage will not be easy. But it is essential.” And just as activists in the US have begun to make land acknowledgements to the indigenous people who had the land before Europeans, “acknowledgments and apologies [for past wrongs] have great healing power.”

Beinart took many tough questions, particularly from mainstream Jews worried about the security of Israeli Jews under that scenario.

  • On antisemitism from the Left: “We cannot deny that some on the Left are antisemitic–especially in recent weeks [during the exchange of bombs and rockets between Israel and Gaza]. All the Palestinian intellectuals and activists I know condemned those acts. But virtually all Palestinians will be anti-Zionist,” because Israel has dispossessed their families. It didn’t help that major Israeli statesmen made incendiary remarks. Abba Eban, for example, claimed that a return to the 1948-67 frontiers would be “Auschwitz borders.” Beinart made this distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism several times, and pointed out that the Palestinian statesman Edward Said was on record as appreciating the impetus behind Zionism–though not its effects on his people. Beinart also stood unequivocally against antisemitism from any source: “If Jews are being dehumanized, as Jews, we should speak up.”
  • On whether either side had a right to call the other fascist: He did not feel that Palestinians should see Jews as Nazis. But he also recognizes that there is a massive power imbalance and had strong criticism for those Jews who see Palestinians as akin to the Nazis: “If you see Palestinians as Nazis, you erase the moral responsibility of power. You frame it as survival, but the issue is denial of basic rights.
  • On how to negotiate in good faith: Both sides have made offers, but their offers were unacceptable to the other side. NNo matter how many offers have been tendered, they haven’t been able to reach common ground for a meaningful agreement so far.
  • On the safety of Israeli Jews in a single multicultural state and the danger of falling into Lebanon-style permanent civil unrest: Growing up in South Africa, he noted there was great fear among whites about what would happen when apartheid ended and blacks took power. South Africa is only about 10 percent white, while Israel/Palestine would be much more Jewish. Jews, he said, have enough economic privilege and enough political and social organization to protect their interests. He also noted several important differences between Israel/Palestine and Lebanon: Lebanon had a weak economy, a weak government with weak restraints on executive power, low literacy, and multiple invaders (Israel and Syria).Israel/Palestine is in a much stronger position. It has much higher per capita income and literacy levels, including among Palestinians, which according to political science research is correlated with democratic stability. For Jews, it also has strong judicial, parliamentary and media institutions that check executive power—those are a foundation upon to build in a state that offers equality to Palestinians
  • On whether comparisons between Israel and South Africa’s apartheid-era regime are apt. He noted that Israelis and Palestinians have vastly different experiences on a whole range of situations, from border checkpoints to land claims to obtaining various types of permits–and that numerous Israeli groups have described the occupation as apartheid. I didn’t hear him directly take a position–but he did say, “Self-determination does not mean the right for a given ethnic, religious or racial group to have a state that grants it rights that are denied to people of other ethnic, religious or racial groups in that same state.”
    . And “to be stateless is to be under the power of a government but” not to have the rights afforded citizens, or to have any agency in dealing with state power.
  • On why American Jews need to get involved and not see the conflict as an internal matter that only concerns Israeli Jews: US Jews have skin in the game because our government has a long history of supporting and funding even very extreme Israeli government positions.
  • On how to end anti-Jewish terrorism: “You have to show that nonviolence can work. When you respond by criminalizing BDS [boycott-divestment-sanctions] and calling it antisemitic, you doom nonviolence. [PLO President Mahmoud] Abbas has cooperated on security for 15 years. When you continue building [Jewish West Bank] settlements [despite that cooperation], you strengthen Hamas.” He also praised organizations such as Encounter, that provide opportunities for Jews and Palestinians to meet in structured formats, in a society that makes meaningful contact quite difficult, noting that “Israeli media doesn’t do a good job of presenting the reality of Palestinian existence. He does see hope in social media connections, and described a Clubhouse room that attracted many perspectives and was going 24/7 during the Gaza conflict: “Many of the Israelis were exposed to the Palestinian perspective, some for the first time.” This is a bilateral problem, though; he expressed concern about an “antinormalization” movement among Palestinians..

Author’s note: I have done my best to render material within quote marks as accurately as I can, but they are from handwritten notes–and while accurate in substance and meaning, may vary from his exact words. Also, I’ve grouped comments that were thematically related; this article does not attempt to put Beinart’s remarks in the sequence they were presented.

To read or subscribe to Beinart’s blog, visit peterbeinart.substack.com

Shel Horowitz is Editor of Peace and Politics Magazine and a peace activist for over 40 years. His latest book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

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Dear Republican Senators:

The man who was President at the time incited a seditious mob that tried to have you captured and possibly killed, just a few weeks ago. Yet 45 of you just voted to ignore this and act as if this was okay.

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.

Four years ago, you told us you would hold this man’s worst instincts in check. Instead, you’ve appeased and enabled almost every whim. What has that brought us? Here are 10 of hundreds of low points:

Frankly, you have everything to gain and little to lose by voting to convict. Several of you would like to run for that seat in 2024–and once you convict, you can ban him from holding public office in the future. You can’t win if he is in the race as a third-party candidate, and you also can’t gain that office if he is the nominee.

What few restraints we saw against this man’s megalomania came when the public resisted. Like most bullies, he will stand down if challenged–but gather strength and power if encouraged.

Yet you cower in your virtual basement as you cowered in the physical basement on January 6. You give in to your own fear. Fear of what? That he’ll badmouth you? He has zero loyaty. Sure, he’ll badmouth you. He’s been badmouthing anyone he sees as crossing him all along, even long-time allies from Bill Barr to Governor Kemp. He even wants to stiff Rudi, as he’s stiffed so many small businesses in his long and dishonorable career. So what? If 80-year-old Dr. Fauci can take the heat, so can you–especially now that he’s lost his platforms on social media.

Are you worried about being primaried? Let me tell you a couple of things:

  1. You are far more at risk of losing a general election to a Democrat who can call you to account for your four years of enablement and appeasement than you are at risk of losing a primary challenge by an ultra-right fringe candidate whose credibility you can easily undermine. Just ask your former colleagues in “safely Republican” Georgia.
  2. Despite his baseless campaign to overturn the results, there’s nothing dishonorable about losing an election. Thousands of former legislators have found excellent positions with major corporate or institutional employers, or started their own successful businesses (often consulting or lobbying businesses). Yes, you’ll lose your Medicare-for-all-style healthcare that only Members of Congress get to enjoy–but you can lobby your former colleagues to finally join the rest of the world in treating healthcare as a right.

This could be your last chance to show that even if you came late to the party, ultimately you were willing to honor your Oath of Office. That the Constitution and the idea of a democratic republic are ultimately more important to you than fealty to a would-be authoritarian dictator who has coddled our enemies, attacked our allies, and repeatedly attempted to shred anything in the Constitution he doesn’t like that day. Vote your princples, not your fears!

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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.

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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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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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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

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

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

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