Are big protests a waste of time unless they’re part of an overall strategic plan? Nonviolent social change theorist George Lakey and I have been discussing this.
I believe my settings close comments after two weeks, and I couldn’t find a way to turn that off temporarily for this one post). So just to make sure there’s a way to keep the dialogue going, I’m posting my response here, as a new post, starting just below:
Marching at the Women’s March on Washington with my wife and children (from left: son-in-law Bobby, daughter Alana, wife Dina, me, son Rafael)
I agree with most of what you’d laid out here, George and certainly the key kernel that mass action makes the most sense as part of a well-thought-out and multidimensional campaign. And yet, I’m more optimistic than you about the power of a one-off mass action to build momentum for change. It has to be sustained, of course—but it can play a key role.
My own involvement with the Movement began because I attended a mass rally about Vietnam, at age 12 (1969). One of the speakers said something that was life-changing for me. But it was not until I was in high school that I began to realize that the real work of social change happened in the meetings to plan those marches, more than the marches themselves—and to participate as other than a drone showing up to other people’s events.
The reason all those no-nuke Alliances sprang up was because of what we did at Seabrook, a mass action.We inspired many other groups around the country to borrow our strategy, process, tactics, and even nomenclature, to organize affinity groups as we did, to educate about the issues around nuclear power and the safe-energy alternatives, and to be trained in nonviolent civil disobedience. And the reason we heard about Three Mile Island in the news two years later when we hadn’t heard about the earlier accidents at Enrico Fermi, Browns Ferry, and elsewhere was because of this national/international mass movement that started at Seabrook. It was having thousands at the site and 1414 arrested that pushed the issue into America’s consciousness. The first two Seabrook occupations almost a year earlier, much tinier, had almost no impact outside the local area.
Occupy could have been much stronger with leadership and goals, I agree. But still the movement had a great deal of impact. Like Clam, some of its process innovations have become part of the Movement. You talk about those turned off by Occupy, but what I saw was a generation of young people who moved from inaction, maybe even apathy, to deep, personal, and highly inconvenient action. They made sacrifices for social change. And I think a lot of them moved into actual organizing after the camps closed.
The recent Women’s March had very little strategy behind it but sparked the immediate and clear message that resistance is mainstream, that DT does not represent normal, and that oh yes, there was something we could do. And of course, it provided yet another opportunity for DT to make a fool of himself saying ridiculous things about the protests. I don’t remember another time when nonviolent protests unscrewed the legs of legitimacy from a government less than one day old. And again, a lot of folks who had never done anything political went from the march to the meetings. The thousands of hives of the resistance were enormously strengthened by that unstrategic mass event.
I’m glad you brought up the business community. This is where I have very strategically placed most of my own organizing in recent years: showing that business can create meaningful social change, not out of guilt and shame but out of enlightened self-interest: the profit motive. This is the subject of my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, as well as my “Impossible is a Dare” talks. It’s the opposite of mass organizing: small groups and even one-to-one conversations.
So yes, let’s incorporate big protests into a wider strategic view, as the Civil Rights organizers did. Let’s read Alinsky and Gene Sharp, MLK and Gandhi, Barbara Deming and Dorothy Day, and of course, George Lakey. Let’s study the successes AND weaknesses of all these movements including Occupy, BLM, and the current resistance. And lets create strategies that keep the needle moving, both publicly and behind the scenes, toward the world we want. Outside of my social change work through my business, I’ve been focusing my own parts of the resistance on the amazing opportunity to get people who haven’t been talking to each other not just talking but supporting and acting in solidarity. I see this work—and especially the chances for Jews and Muslims to work together in solidarity—as deeply strategic based on seizing the moment where a conversation is much easier to have under the lens of both groups being under threat.
PS: George, I apologize for the late reply. WordPress only showed me your waiting comment last night. I approved it immediately but wanted to bring my much clearer early-morning thinking to my response. [end of my quoted response]
Have you seen the infamous Pepsi ad that’s been called “tone-deaf” by progressives, and which Pepsi pulled quickly? Before you read the rest of this post, please write your impression of it in the comments.
And I agree with Whoopi: the message is about inclusion.
Yes, it is co-opting the movement. Advertisements have always co-opted cultural memes. If you wear $60 torn jeans, you can thank the hippies and grunge-punks who wore their clothes to rattiness. For that matter, Bud commercials and Wheaties cereal boxes have been co-opting sports culture for decades (it feels like millennia).
I’m old enough to remember when hijab-wearing women and people of color and same-sex couples would not have been allowed anywhere near a commercial. What I see most of all is a message to DT that we are united in our diversity (and that includes the cops, who are actually our allies most of the time–and which the movement made a big mistake in automatically trashing in the 1960s).
I also agree with Whoopi that water is my preferred drink over any kind of soda.
That Pepsi was attacked to the point where they pulled the ad is much more shocking to me than the ad itself.
But I guess I shouldn’t be shocked. Here in the Blue Bubble, behind the “Tofu Curtain” (not a phrase I invented) in Massachusetts’ Hampshire/Franklin Counties—one of the bluest parts of a very liberal state—those accusations of “tone deaf” are all-too-familiar. Two among many examples:
A program in which cops in the schools did something sociable with the kids was kiboshed and the very progressive police chief (an out lesbian who was seen at Pride Day marches long before she became chief) was trashed as tone-deaf
Two towns over, several years ago, a production of “West Side Story” was canceled because some people thought the whole idea of the play was racist. I don’t know if they read the script or saw the movie, but to me, that movie makes a statement against racism, just like Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (which has also been criticized for racism, because it uses the N-word—even though it was written in the 19th century when that was the term used and the whole premise of the story is to show the absurdity and cruelty of racism)
It reminds me of the days when the left (my teenage self included) would practically canonize any extreme statement that happened to be made by a person of color or one who identified as any shade of LGBTQ, even if that statement incited violence against innocent people who happened to be white and straight. I should have spoken out against those outrages 45 years ago, but I was just as hoodwinked.
I’m not talk about any false unity of sweeping real grievances under the rug. But I am objecting to the shrill side of political correctness that demonizes the Other without even listening, even when the Other is mere steps away on the political spectrum, dividing instead of uniting and leaving us all at risk when the real forces of repression sweep in.
Here are two press releases from two different NGOs responding to the same major news event (and the graphic that one of them included). I’m giving you the headline and first paragraph, and a link in each headline to read the whole thing—and then I’ll dissect them for you. Neither of these is a client and I had nothing to do with writing them—so this is purely about the lessons we can draw.
Empty podium with Presidential Seal in Yosemite National Park—included in the BSR press release
BSR regrets today’s executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, a set of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policies that are intended to reduce the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels and cut carbon pollution from the power sector by 30 percent by 2030. In combination with the administration’s dramatic cuts to climate programs at the EPA and U.S. State Department, this announcement undermines policies that have stimulated economic growth, consumer savings, job creation, infrastructure investment, private-sector competitiveness, and public health.
The Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Climate Action Plan, including withdrawing support for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, “is completely misguided and ignores the irreversible clean energy economy that is already underway, creating good-paying jobs and economic vitality in communities across the country,” Ceres President Mindy Lubber said in a statement today. Lubber served as the EPA Administrator for the New England Region in 2000.
Which did you find more effective?
Ask yourself just two questions: which worked better for you, and why? Then scroll down to see what I felt worked well and poorly about each.
While the BSR release did a better job understanding the need for rich content, with numerous links and a picture, the copy was pathetically weak. This press release:
Used a wimpy headline that doesn’t take a position
Chose a stock photo that doesn’t add anything to the reader’s understanding—why not a photo of demonstrators thanking a company for providing clean energy and good jobs?
Made a terrible verb choice in “regrets”—which makes it sound like an accident that was BSR’s faults—rather than a much more appropriate verb, like “condemns”
Buried the real story in the second paragraph, which has hard-hitting facts to make a clear case against the Executive Order:
Just 18 months ago, the U.S. federal government estimated the net economic benefits of the CPP at US$26-45 billion, with consumers set to save US$155 billion from 2020 to 2030. In addition, the CPP provides regulatory support to the clean energy economy, which, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy and Employment Report, supported more than 3 million U.S. jobs in 2016. The public health benefits are also significant. Research suggests the Clean Power Plan could prevent 3,600 premature deaths and more than 300,000 missed work and school days by cutting pollutants that contribute to soot and smog. – See more at: https://3blmedia.com/News/BSRs-Statement-US-Administration-Executive-Order-Climate-Change#sthash.qUNCeiiF.dpuf
I would have used a headline like “BSR: Trump’s Short-sighted Reversal of US Climate Change Leadership Could Cost Consumers $45 Billion and Kill 3600″—and then moved right into a bulleted list of the facts. I also would break up BSR’s long paragraphs.
This very long press release has enormous amounts of juicy content, but you’d never know it from the headline and lead. Even further down, it notes that companies investing in carbon mitigation are seeing 27% return on investment, 29% revenue increases, and 26% reduction in carbon emissions. Isn’t that a lot more newsworthy than “BSR regrets…”?
The Ceres release, while also flawed, is much better. It starts with a headline expressing a strong point of view (although we don’t know who is stating this point of view), moves into a sound bite, and finishes the first paragraph with a significant and highly relevant credential.
So what are the flaws in the Ceres document?
The release itself is pretty much all rhetoric, without the facts to back it up. BSR had the facts, but didn’t call attention to them.
There’s no link to Lubber’s complete statement (and only two links in the whole release).
The important point about losing competitive advantage to China is all the way down at the bottom of the release.
With a full auditorium in Miami, and 2000 livestream sites reaching 200,000 people (according to ACLU’s Executive Director, Anthony Romero, who opened the March 11 session), the American Civil Liberties Union moved beyond the courtroom and into community organizing. While ACLU lawyers have often been present (and advising) at actions in the streets, I personally don’t remember a time when the group—founded in 1919 in resistance to the notorious Palmer Raids, rounding up activists at the behest of the Attorney General of the time—actively worked to create a mass movement of resistance.
While it also covered the Republicans’ proposed replacement for Obamacare and attacks on Planned Parenthood, The training—really, more of a presentation, other than Lee Rowland’s remarks—focused largely on the administration’s attacks on Muslims and immigrants and ACLU’s Freedom Cities initiative developed in response—working to gain local law enforcement officials to adopt a nine-point platform of non-cooperation with federal ICE anti-immigration actions.
Following are the notes I took. I didn’t take notes for the first couple of speakers, which included Romero, ACLU National Political Director Faiz Shakir, and I believe there may have been one other.
ACLU’s PeoplePower.org screenshot
Lee Rowland, Senior Staff Attorney: Your Rights in Protesting
We will stick up for controversial, even abhorrent points of view. We believe none of us should be silenced. There are people who think Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization.
Public forum spaces: streets, sidewalks, parks—you have the right to protest. But in the street, you do not have the right to block traffic unless you have a permit specifying that. A permit gives you a bunch more rights, and you can work with government to work out a parade route, use amplification.
1/21/17 was the single largest day of protest in American history. Let’s give that a run for its money!
The sidewalks outside Trump Tower have become a very popular place. Sidewalk protests are automatically legal as long as you don’t block access to doorways.
Parks. You can sing, pray, dance. But each park has a trigger number for attendees. Exceeding that number requires a permit. Know that number. Breaking news is an exception. Spontaneous protests in response are not restricted by number.
Other government property that aren’t designed as public spaces. The general rule is that the government has more ability to shut you down if they can argue that your presence is disruptive. Airports can stop you from disrupting but not from expressing speech (including sign holding). The farther from the core of facility’s purpose, the more rights. So you won’t have a lot of rights at the departure gate, but maybe at arrivals…or outside. [Editor’s note: I participated in protesting the immigration ban at Bradley (Hartford) Airport just after the first Executive Order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority nations. We had about 3000 people in the baggage claim area.] If you’re organizing at an airport, get a liaison from the airport staff if you can.
Congressional Town Halls. They can’t shut down buttons, small signs. They can regulate the size but not the content.
The government can’t censor you just because it disagrees with your opinion.
But these high-fallutin’ rights on paper don’t always translate to the streets.
Watch your surroundings. Being armed with your rights empowers you. You can yell to demonstrators being arrested about their rights including right to remain silent and to refuse a search. You have the right to photo/video anything in public view. Officers will lie, but make notes and tell the ACLU.
We as Americans have to go out and grab that moral arc and turn it toward justice.
Louise Milling, Deputy Director
Health Care: Affordable Care Act is the most significant civil rights/civil liberties legislation in this century. It has saved and changed people’s lives. 20 million were lifted out of the ranks of uninsured. It bars discrimination on preexisting, gender, transgender. Gave us no-cost birth control. More services for people with disability. To live out the civil right of not being in an institution.
The Republican replacement bill attacks the structure, the financing. It kicks the legs out from underneath of the stool. American Medical Association, AARP, hospitals have come out against it. This bill jeopardizes millions of us and the people we care about. We’re going to step up for this one.
Planned Parenthood: This bill says Planned Parenthood can’t be part of the Medicaid program. And that people on Medicaid can no longer go to Planned Parenthood for cancer screening, birth control. 1 of 5 women turn to Planned Parenthood for health care at some part of their lives. Planned Parenthood is targeted because Planned Parenthood provides abortions. But not through the Medicaid program. Their vision is that Planned Parenthood should be stripped of participation in Medicaid because it provides a constitutionally protected service that allows women to protect our lives. Is that what decency looks like?
Medicaid: It’s an entitlement program. The federal government promises it will contribute money to pay for the services it covers. It’s going to take care of you. This bill would be a radical transformation. It says we are going to cap the money we will give toward any particular person. That means fewer dollars, fewer services for the most vulnerable, for the most essential thing—our health. The harm will be felt most acutely by people with disabilities. Medicare provides payment for support to go to work and live independently.
This was unveiled on Monday. By Wednesday it was already in committee for markup. They want it for a full vote in March and on the president’s desk n April. Less than two months for a program that would deny health coverage for millions? To totally radically restructure a program that’s been in place for six decades?
We saw four senators change their responses (AK, OH, CO, one other). We need you to tell your reps why this matters, the values that motivate you to come forward. It matters to the members of Congress, to the woman on Medicaid who goes to Planned Parenthood, to the man in a wheelchair who is able to go to work, to the rural woman who’s able to get insurance. This is for the people, by the people. I’m asking you to pledge to come together and stand up in the name of decency, care, dignity, fairness for all. Game on!
Andre Segura, staff attorney in national office
Trump administration is launching an assault on immigrants and people of color. In his first week, he released really bad Eos (executive orders), calling for the border wall, more ICE agents, and the Muslim ban. This hit home. We are immigrants and children of immigrants, people of color, of different faiths, with accents. That’s what makes our country great and we’re seeing this assault. I think of my two boys. Are they going to be called racist names? My parents with their beautiful Columbian-American accents?
3 Issues
Muslim ban. Friday afternoon after he took office, and there was immediate chaos. ACLU and partners worked overnight to challenge that. We filed at 5 a.m. the next morning. We filed to put a stop to that order. I drove to JFK in the morning. There was a small but loud protest, and a dozen attorneys inside. Over the next few hours, more and more attorneys came. And I looked out the window and saw a sea of protestors. And that’s what became the story. Regular people came out and said this is not the country I want to live in and I’m going to go protest. We now have the second ban. Trump rescinded that first ban after numerous lawsuits. But the second one suffers from the same flaws and it needs to fail. We need you to come out and voice your support.
President Trump is trying to bully cities and states to become part of his deportation force, by threatening to withdraw their funding. So this means when a police officer pulls someone over or knocks on a door, they have to think, is there some issue with their immigration status. This is damaging to local law enforcement. We need to stand up so people don’t fear going to the police to report crimes. All the best law enforcement departments are saying this. We are bringing criminal charges against Joe Arpayo [extreme right-wing/anti-immigrant former sheriff in Arizona]. The lesson is that when local law enforcement takes immigration into their own hands, you will see more profiling and more discrimination. So we’re asking you to push more cities not to roll over and give up good policies. We need to demand that they protect our immigrant neighbors.
Immigration/deportation raids. ICE comes in wearing helmets and bullet-proof vests, it’s like a military operation. Trump wants to add 10,000 ICE agents to the 5-6000 already there. They will not be accountable or transparent. You will not know what they are up to in your town. But we’ve seen excessive force, guns drawn, children scared. Trump is saying we’re going after only the most violent. But we’ve seen the reality. It’s parents, Dreamers [undocumented people brought to the US at a very young age], domestic violence victims. People are being questioned coming off domestic flights. We have to stop it.
We can do some things. We have know-your-rights materials if ICE shows up at your door. They need to have a judicial warrant. Otherwise, don’t open the door. Get out and educate people about their rights. We do not want you engaging with ICE and their raids. If you hear of a raid, go out, document, film it. We need that information.
Padma Laxmi, immigrant from age 4
Joined her mother two years after her mother arrived in America in search for a better future, with $100 in her pocket. “She sculpted the mist, willing a life into existence. And I love this country for allowing that to be possible. America has shaped our dreams, values, and insecurities for three generations. There is no story of ours that is disconnected from the American story. But lately I’ve begun to feel like an outsider.” I grew up in NYC, our neighbors were Peruvian and Filipino, doctors and cab drivers. Seeing all those faces from around the world is what kept me from feeling I didn’t belong. Through my work on Top Chef, I’ve met people from all over America, meeting people in Charleston, New Orleans, Miami. What makes these cities great is the diversity of the people living in them—and that makes the food delicious. I am so grateful I ended up here. And that I can pay it forward by mentoring and employing other young women and starting a health foundation.
What makes America great is our culture of inclusion. We all are a superpower because we’ve managed to create the best of each immigrant culture and create our own uniquely American culture. For all its faults and felonies, our country has been, until now, admired world over. We’re squandering that good will and reputation globally and here and home. What happened to ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses’? I am standing here in defense of liberty, freedom, and true equality.
My mom came here in the ’70s inspired by the feminist movement. She wanted a better life for me than she had, equal opportunity. Today, we have a state of emergency. Rights and freedoms we’ve taken for granted are being eroded daily. I am alarmed by the rising hatred and violence. But even before, I’ve been horrified by images of black and Latino boys being bludgeoned to death by the very system we were told would protect us. Our system is two systems: one for the white establishment, and one for those unlucky enough to be born brown, gay, trans… I want my daughter Krishna to live in a country governed not by fear but by compassion.
I didn’t see my mother for two whole years. I know that pain of separation. Tearing undocumented parents from their children doesn’t help anyone. Giving refuge to a Syrian family teaches the very American principles of empathy and tolerance.
I don’t have to be Muslim or Mexican to be offended. We should all be offended. We shouldn’t have to walk in someone else’s shows to see that those shoes hurt terribly. This January at the Women’s March, I protested for the very first time. I was holding my little girl’s hand, she’s 6. It felt wonderful. I realized we are all powerful and we must exercise our power now. There’s a sign in the NYC subway, ‘if you see something, say something.’ I’m saying something now—to all of you. Providing shelter to refugees in need is not a partisan issue. It is a human rights issues. Letting folks use what ever bathroom they want, as we do in our own home, is just common decency.
I watch Krishna play with her African American friend Cassius. She’s biracial and can pass for white. When our kids, a few years from now, go to the store for butter, they will surely be treated differently. That’s not right. They are equal in the sandbox. Shouldn’t our policies reflect this too? Now is not the time to close our eyes and think ‘this, too, shall pass.’ We must do more than march. We must consistently resist discrimination of any kind. We must not tolerate the intolerance. To do nothing is a crime against our nation. We owe it to those suffragettes, those who refused to sit at the back of the bus, to our fallen soldiers to preserve what they fought so hard to defend.
Democracy isn’t a static thing. It’s an ever-evolving organism and we must not let it or ourselves devolve. Yes, we are brown. And we too are American And yes, we are Muslim, Hindus, Jews. That Sikh father shot in his own driveway, he was American too. And over half of us are women, and we deserve equal pay. And the right to choose what we want to do with our own bodies. We too are the United States of America. Let’s remember that first word in our country’s name. Let’s not forget who we are.
Faiz Shakir
ACLU’s National Political Director came back on stage for a quick recap of the action plan:
Request a meeting with local law enforcement officials, put it on PeoplePower.org. Some of them just need a pat on the back and great job. Some need more persuasion.
At almost any protest event these days, you’ll hear the chant, “Tell me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.”
Unfortunately, the targets of our protests—the new US federal government that came into power in January—show us almost every day what democracy DOESN’T look like. It’s looking more and more like dictatorship.
Caricature of Donald Trump by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/5471912349/sizes/m/in/photostream/
The list of every bad thing the government is doing would be far longer than would fit on a blog, but it’s important to keep the overall “doubleplusungood” (as George Orwell coined it in his antitotalitarian classic 1984) trend in mind. A reminder of a few lowlights:
A Senate whose Republican majority has gone toady, backing up a series of draconian measures and horrific appointments on party lines, despite nominees’ overt lack of qualification—six of his picks have zero experience in government—resistance to disclosing potential ethics conflicts and finances, and severe hostility to the departments they are supposed to head (only in the nomination of DeVos for Secretary of Education did exactly two Republicans break away—three were needed to block the appointment)—and despite the opposition to DT’s tactics many Republican leaders expressed during the primary season last year
These same Senators silenced Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren as she attempted to read a statement by the late Coretta Scott King (MLK’s widow) about the racist history of DT’s nominee for Attorney General
A general attitude that the law doesn’t apply to him because he is the president—a position that even Richard Nixon wasn’t able to get courts to support, and Nixon had an actual voter mandate that DT lacks. This shows itself in a host of issues from refusal to disclose his taxes to violations of the Emoluments Clause.
George Lakey, activist and author (most recent book: Viking Economics)
George has been a hero and mentor of mine ever since I first heard him speak around 1977. His presence at Movement for a New Society’s Philadelphia Life Center was a big part of why I moved to that community for a nine-month training program in nonviolent action, back in 1980-81.
He argues that this is our moment to break out of reactive protests and into big sweeping social and environmental demands. He notes that the LGBT movement was one of the only progressive movements to gain traction under Reagan—because its agenda was so much bigger than just fighting cutbacks. Twenty and thirty years earlier, the Civil Rights movement accomplished sweeping social change as well.
So instead of defending the weak centrist gains of the past 30 years, we go beyond and organize for our wider goals. We refuse to play defense against DT’s shenanigans and instead take the role of pushing for a new, kinder, people- and planet-centered normal. With direct-action campaigns that link multiple issues, such as Standing Rock, and with alternative institutions like the Movement for Black Lives, we create a nonviolent invasion of deep social change (this is my metaphor, not George’s).
In short, we think bigger—and act bigger. and instead of crawling to the politicians, we force them to court us as they see us come into our true power.
The Republican attack on what George calls the “medical industrial complex-friendly Affordable Care Act” (a/k/a Obamacare) is a chance to bypass the witheringly bureaucratic and unfair insurance system and push for real single-payer, Medicare-for-All plan of the sort that’s worked so well in Scandinavia (he explores the Scandinavian social safety net in his latest book, Viking Economics)
The Standing Rock Water Protectors have linked multiple issues into a coherent whole: clean water, the environment generally, the rights of indigenous people (among others)
Movements around creating a meaningful safety net, such as the $15 per hour minimum wage, can reach disaffected white working class voters as well as people of color; when those who voted for DT on economic grounds realize he has betrayed them, we can win them over (I would add that this will only work if we have mechanisms in place to defuse the racism and nativism that DT used to attract them, and have meaningful ways to integrate the lesson that all colors, races, and religions can be allies to each other and are stronger together—and Lakey does point out that the United Auto Workers has been successful organizing on these unifying principles)
I could add a lot to George’s list. As one among many suggestions, let’s push to not only end all subsidies to the fossil and nuclear industries but let’s push for a complete transition to clean, renewable energy—whether or not we get any help from the government.
Read his essay. Come back the next day and read it again. Then share it with friends, social media communities, and colleagues and discuss how you personally and your group of individuals with shared positive purpose can make these changes happen.
*Why did I replace DT’s last name with stars? And why do I call him DT rather than by his name? Because I am doing my best not to give him any search engine juice. I don’t want him showing up as “trending” or driving traffic to him.
I’m starting this post at 2:30 a.m. on January 21, as I prepare to board a bus to Washington, joining the Women’s March for human rights that will greet the newly sworn in US president on his first full day of office. Hundreds of thousands are expected in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and many smaller communities. Post-event note: at least 3.3 million to 4.6 million demonstrators came out around the US, plus hundreds of thousands more elsewhere in the world in more than 600 events. I’m finishing it the next day.
Several people have asked me, “Why don’t you give him a chance?” And my father-in-law, a liberal, shocked me with a different question: “He won. Why are you still marching?” Later, someone else asked me the same question on Facebook.
Marching at the Women’s March on Washington with my wife and children (from left: son-in-law Bobby, daughter Alana, wife Dina, me, son Rafael)
The Chances DT Has Failed to Take
I have given him not one chance but many, and he has failed to take them. I feel it is my patriotic duty to speak out against his agenda, to remind him that he not only has no sweeping mandate—he lost the popular vote “bigly”—and to remind my fellow Americans that his election was not clean and his behavior has not met any legitimacy tests.
This was already abundantly clear during the campaign. Back in August, I wrote an open letter to DT that called him out for his racism, misogyny, and bullying.
Despite my harsh language, when he eked out his narrow victory, I was still willing to give him lots of chances. But here’s what happened, just to name a few:
I gave him a chance to appoint experts in their fields to run the massive government departments, Most of those he has appointed are business people with no experience managing such a large bureaucracy and in many cases have stated opposition to the missions of their departments. The few who do have relevant experience are scary: for Attorney General, a man rejected by his own Senate for a judgeship because of racism; for Homeland Security, a Guantanamo torturer; for Secretary of State, the head of our largest oil company—a company that has foreign entanglements in Russia and elsewhere and created possibly the most effective corporate disinformation campaign ever, attacking the thoroughly documented science of climate change (which even Energy Secretary nominee Rick Perry, a former climate denier, now admits is real).
I gave him a chance to start telling the truth. Yet just as during the campaign, I’ve seen one outrageous lie after another. Examples: the ridiculous claim that he really won the popular vote and the above-mentioned false kvetching about the media distorting his inauguration’s attendance figures.
I don’t want to make this blog into a book, so I will stop there. I would love to have been wrong on this. I would have deeply delighted in the emergence of a new and different DT, one who really was trying to “make America great.”
My Patriotic Duty One final reason why I marched: the most important one of all! As a patriotic American who believes this country is already great and that DT’s and/or his surrogates’ policies on the environment, women’s rights, minority rights, education, freedom of the press and other freedoms in the Bill of Rights, and a whole host of other issues are not just the wrong path, but take us down the ugly (and utterly unacceptable) road that Germany and Russia took in the 1930s. I not only refuse to be part of that takedown, I feel it is my duty as someone who cares about my country to stand up and say NO. When my as-yet-unborn grandchildren ask me, decades from now, what I did to protect our country and planet at this critical time, I will be able to stand proudly, as my mother did about her role in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, and say that I was there. I stood up for what’s right.
For many of us, we are one month away from the greatest threat to democracy in the history of our country. The incoming administration presents a threat greater than the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams…the persecution of antiwar activists in World War I and the Palmer Raids that followed that war…the McCarthy witchhunts…the George W. Bush coup and the illegal, immoral wars that resulted.
Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. The word “Chanukah” means “dedication,” and celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after throwing out the occupiers. I am dedicating this blog post to all those who feel threatened by a president-to-be who has repeatedly spoken out in hatred and incited violence against Muslims, immigrants, people of color, women, even people with disabilities, and who has done nothing to quell the violence of his supporters against these groups as well as people who identify as LGBTQ and Jews.
It also happens to be my 60th birthday. I made my first action for social change at age 3, and became serious about activism at 12. I’ve been doing what I can to create a better world ever since, and I will “not go gentle into that good night”
I have personally been actively organizing ever since the morning after the election. I’ve attended meetings on how to be an ally for people facing hate crimes in the streets or ICE agents on their doorstep. I’ve written to DT making the business case for keeping the Paris climate accord and I’ve written on how social entrepreneurs can still thrive in the coming years. I’ve signed what feels like hundreds of petitions, made dozens of phone calls, reached out to dozens of activists to show a path of hope and action, attended a “where do we go from here” mass meeting with about 800 people, and marched in front of the nearest state capital while the electors voted—and in the streets of nearby cities for several rallies.
Demonstrators at the Connecticut State Capital as electors voted December 19, 2016. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
I’ve just read two different articles that I wish I’d written.
First, in the Washington Post, a great analysis by Erica Chenowith of the power of nonviolent action, with links to excellent primary sources. She lists 10 different ways nonviolent resistance out-accomplishes violent resistance—with examples including the tens of thousands saved by nonviolent resistance to the Nazis. This is a tiny fraction of the total. The brilliant nonviolence historian Gene Sharp listed 193 different nonviolent activist tactics, decades ago. By now, the number is probably much higher.
And second, an essay by Barbara Kingsolver on why we cannot sit back in paralysis, how we have to act. She recognizes that many of us are grieving. More importantly, she recognizes our tendency as liberals, to make our accommodations and be good citizens, just as we were under Reagan and both Bushes.
But, she says, this time is different. We have no obligation to cooperate with a president who:
Trumpets an agenda of repression, completely at odds with the wishes of most Americans (even many who voted for him)
Has no mandate (having lost the popular vote by the largest margin of any “winning” presidential candidate in history)
“We went to bed as voters, and got up as outsiders to the program,” she writes. And provides a nice list of ways we can agitate and organize, even if we see ourselves as polite Boomers who long ago left behind the 1960s-70s politics of the streets.
Personally, I never left the streets behind. But it’s been nice, in recent years to march as often to celebrate victories as to protest injustice. We may not have that luxury very often in the next few years. But that doesn’t mean we crawl into a hole and give up.
Its perhaps fitting that I found both of these stories through Mary Jane Sullivan, whom I met on an activist bus to an organizing conference in 1978, and who was my housemate for my last year and a half in Brooklyn, 1979-80. Like me, she has spent her whole life fomenting positive change. There are millions of Boomers like us, and millions of Millennials like my kids, who still see activism as a key component of our lives.
NOTE: You’ll find several action steps at the bottom of this post. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, please scroll down to that section and take action before leaving this page.
Watch this video made by Standing Rock Water Protector Candida Rodriguez Kingbird on November 14.
Read a transcript by clicking this link. She claims that a crop duster was spraying the encampment, and only the encampment. Kingbird’s video, or commentary on it, has appeared on many progressive sites and social media profiles.
We know the level of repression against Standing Rock Water Protectors has been consistently shockingly high. There are numerous reports of the authorities using water cannons, tear gas, and even rubber bullets against this peaceful group of Native people fighting nonviolently to protect their water—from a project that was originally to go very close to Bismark, but was rerouted because of worries about what it would do to the water supply.
The link in the paragraph above is to a Christian Science Monitor story with video. The Monitor is a respected mainstream news outlet known for its good journalism over many decades.
Although a search for “chemical weapons standing rock” didn’t turn up any video of the spraying or any reportage based on a claim by someone else—or coverage in mainstream media, I find Kingbird’s testimony thoroughly believable. I found her a credible witness, someone clearly not used to being a public figure. I didn’t feel she was acting, just reporting—and speaking from the heart.
There is the (faint, IMHO) hope that Obama will protect the area either by revoking the DAP permit or protecting the land as a National Monument in his final weeks, but I am personally not optimistic that either will happen, or that it will survive a near-certain overturn attempt form the new administration.
Actions You Can Take
Petitions (click the marked text to sign, then share them widely):
I do not condone the violence on either side. But I’m sorry, when you have just elected a president who has given license to bullies and attackers for months, it is time for Trump voters also to say “this is not OK.”
Spectators applaud an LGBT pride march. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
And if DT is really going to take his own “president for all Americans” election-night rhetoric seriously, he needs to issue a far stronger and more convincing demand to stop that behavior than the wimpy few words he reluctantly issued after a CBS reporter asked him directly to rebuke the attackers. And those who voted for DT for reasons that have nothing to do with the subjugation of women, people of color, and non-Christians need to speak out loudly and publicly. Hate crimes of any kind are not OK—and the Right as well as the Left both need to say so.
Trump voters who refuse to speak out and call for cessation of the violence are proving Hillary’s “deplorables” comment. The way to prove her wrong (and I think she is) is to speak out loudly that you, as a Trump voter, will not tolerate violence and threats against racial/religious/sexual minorities and women. That we as a country are better than this. That we can disagree and still be a democracy.
I am putting a safety pin on my coat as a sign that I am someone willing to intervene if I am a witness to a hate crime. I’ve been trained in nonviolence and conflict de-escalation (though it was long ago). If you’ve had some training, think about joining that movement. And if you haven’t, find a way to get that training. Google “nonviolence training” with your city’s or state’s name. And if DT actually implements his proposed Muslim registry, I will be part of a movement to flood that database with non-Muslim registrants so it becomes useless. These are personal risks I am willing to take. We have seen too many times what happens when good people do nothing while others perpetuate evil in their name.
I understand if those actions might be more than you’re willing to do; here’s one that’s totally safe: Sign this petition. Please note in the comments section of THIS that you’ve signed, or better yet, share your own personal letter that you’ve written to Trump.
