Tag: frances crowe

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Media Ethics, Politics, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One of my regular readers messaged me Sunday night to ask if I planned to blog about Biden’s withdrawal. I said yes, but only once I’d figured out which angle to focus on. There are quite a few.

Monday morning, at 5:25 a.m., I had the lightning-bolt insight that I didn’t have to pick just one angle. This is a complex issue with many parts, and I can explore as many of those parts as I want to! So after an unsuccessful attempt to get a bit more sleep, I first sat down at the keyboard at 5:45 a.m., on five hours of sleep, and finally finished the first draft at 9:05 p.m. Then my wife suggested I break it into two pieces. In the clear light of morning, I followed her advice 😉.

Here are the first four:

 

  1. It’s Not About His Age!

There’s nothing magic about passing 80 that makes you suddenly lose all your ability. Pablo Casals was still making beautiful music into his 90s. Pete Seeger was still writing great songs, though he couldn’t sing them very well anymore. Grandma Moses (who didn’t even start painting until her late 70s) and Picasso were still making art. My activist friend, Arky Markham, used her public 100th birthday party to raise funds for her charity, while three years later her friend and mine, Frances Crowe, used HER public 100th birthday party to organize a demonstration for social justice. Her vision was “100 people with 100 signs for 100 causes;” she got 300. Strom Thurmond still displayed his reactionary politics as a US Senator into his 90s and served beyond his hundredth birthday. Though his Wikipedia bio notes that he wasn’t very competent for his last decade, that still means he was an effective senator long past the age Biden would have been at the end of his second term.

 

  1. But Biden’s Decline is Real—And So Is Trump’s

And yet, aging is real. We all age differently. Biden has been increasingly erratic. I believe George Clooney’s statement that the Biden he saw at a June fundraiser was not the strong, competent leader of the State of the Union Address or his more recent speech to NATO but “was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.” In an op-ed published in The New York Times on July 17, Clooney writes the Biden he was with last month “was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010” or “even the Joe Biden of 2020.”

I was also deeply concerned that Biden himself told a meeting of governors that he doesn’t want to schedule events past 8 p.m. because he needs to get more sleep. Unfortunately for Biden, being president doesn’t get you a lot of sleep. You’re going to be woken up frequently to deal with crises, and your schedule will demand late-night meetings. At least the president doesn’t have to deal with senior night-driving issues and drive there, as some of us do.

Even though his withdrawal was reluctant and belated, Biden has been deservedly lauded for putting his country ahead of his own ambition—something his recent opponent has proven over and over again that he is incapable of doing. Although you wouldn’t know it from the media coverage since the debate, Trump’s mental acuity (never his strongest suit) has also plunged. His speeches have been incoherent for months. As far back as April, Newsweek highlighted a prominent psychologist’s analysis on the David Pakman show that Trump was “faltering.” But for some reason, this story didn’t make many waves in the rest of the media, or in the public consciousness. Trump’s use of violent rhetoric, including plagiarizing Hitler not just once but on numerous occasions, got slightly more attention, but the media didn’t focus on it the way they did on Biden’s debate failure. I’ll go into more detail in Angle #5, in Part II.

 

  1. Deceiving the Populace Did Nobody Any Favors

The campaign should have been open and honest that Biden was declining. And Biden himself should have declared truthfully that even with just one term, he had one of the greatest records of accomplishment of any president in history—getting more done in one term than many presidents accomplish in two, despite never having control over both houses of Congress—and  it was time for him to relax, step back, and let a younger person get a turn to be the knight in shining armor. The ~14 million who voted for Biden in the primary should have been made aware that these flaws were showing up often enough to be worrisome—and they should have been presented with other choices. Challengers should have been given room to ramp up ahead of the primaries so that those 14 million voters would have been involved in choosing his successor.

And Biden’s record really is remarkable. Beyond the obvious big deals like bringing the economy back from the brink, hastening the end of the pandemic through science-based policy, passing infrastructure and recovery acts with a lot of good green stuff, walking his talk on supporting people of color and LGBTQ folks, and being the most labor-friendly president ever, here are 30 accomplishments you may not have heard about that harnessed the administrative power of the federal government to make huge progress on issues ranging from keeping our records private to shifting farming and energy to far greener paths to building stronger relations between countries that are historic enemies (such as Japan and South Korea).

 

  1. Biden Gained Office While Hinting that He Would Only Serve One Term

Recognizing that his age was an issue even in 2020, Biden signaled that he wouldn’t be likely to run again in 2024. While he didn’t come out and promise not to run again, private messaging was leaked to the public back then that strongly implied he would not seek a second term.

Later this week, I’ll post Part II, with more angles to examine, including a big surprise about the Democratic Party. As soon as it goes live, I’ll post a link here. If you post a comment, I’ll tag you when it’s ready.

 

Lifelong activist, author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker Shel Horowitz helps businesses succeed by building in environmental healing and social justice. His award-winning 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. Find him at https://goingbeyondsustainability.com

 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Eco-friendly, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Peace and War, People Helping People, Politics, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , ,

To lose Pete Seeger so soon after Nelson Mandela–two great champions of justice and democracy! If you want to know the true definition of an American Patriot, it’s spelled P-e-t-e  S-e-e-g-e-r. Not only was he an extremely talented musician and a devoted rabble-rouser on a host of social, labor, and especially environmental causes–for which he suffered greatly in the 1950s and ’60s–and not only can he claim a major role in cleaning up the Hudson River and co-founding the amazing Clearwater sloop and organization and folk festival…he was one of the most humble people I’ve ever met.

I used to see Pete Seeger at the Clearwater Revival, wearing a volunteer shirt and picking up trash. I got to bang a few nails with him once as he was building the Woody Guthrie (one of I think three small boats he built along with the Clearwater and the Sojourner Truth). And I interviewed at least once, saw him perform dozens of times live and numerous more on TV–growing up as a public television kid in New York City, where once the blacklist was lifted, he was frequently found on Channel 13–and hung out with him at some People’s Music Network conferences. He helped start PMN, started Sing Out! magazine, the Newport Folk Festival, a bunch of environmental and peace organizations, and many other ventures for the public good.

His 1963 Carnegie Hall concert is one of the 10 albums I’d absolutely insist on having if I were stranded on a desert island with one CD holder. Among other things, it contains the best of his dozen or so recordings of Wimoweh, long before that other group made it a top-40 hit. I own many other of his records, but that one is a standout.

 

And Pete walked his talk. Though he could certainly have afforded much grander housing, he lived for the last many decades in a small cabin outside Beacon, New York, on his beloved Hudson River, heating with wood he chopped himself. Though he could have gotten all wrapped up in ego, he spent his entire life championing newer musicians. He helped bring Bob Dylan and Tom Paxton to the world’s attention, as well as later songwriters like Dar Williams and many others.

Pete was one of three amazing lifelong activists born in the spring of 1919 who I knew personally. Miriam Leader (not much known outside of her various home communities) passed about a year ago. And Frances Crowe continues her active work for peace, justice, and the environment. The world is richer because these three people with giant hearts walked its ground. Goodbye, Pete, and thanks for all you’ve done to make my life richer. You’re probably already starting to organize amongst the angels ;-).

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By Posted on Posted in media-general, Peace and War, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

Last Wednesday, my local paper’s lead story was a profile of two long-time peace activists: Frances Crowe, age 94, and Arky Markham, 98. I’ve known them both for decades; you can’t be involved in peace and social justice issues in our area for long without encountering them. I saw both of them at the peace demonstration last Monday, in fact.

31 years ago, when I was actively freelancing for this same paper, I published an interview with a different pair of legendary local peace activists, and was thrilled when the paper ran it on the front page.

Of course, these four wonderful people are just the tiniest fraction of people doing good work for peace in our neighborhood and around the world.

Let’s tell our newspapers we want more stories like that on the front page :-).

Note: you may have to be a subscriber to view the link, but you should be able to at least see the headline and lead paragraph.

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