"Where is the Poor People's Voice?"

That was a question put to a TV reporter by Rev. William J. Barber II after the Democratic National Convention last month. Barber, founder of the Moral Monday movement and now a notable political activist, is President of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.  His is a voice and a vision to be reckoned with as he calls for concern grounded in morality for the poor and working poor.

 Why, Rev. Barber asks, are poor and low-income people never targeted in Democratic ads? Why are their issues never talked about, despite the fact that they are clearly a political force by virtue of the fact they represent an estimated 25 percent of people in this country?

 These were questions I also asked after the Democrat’s virtual convention. Why, I wondered, did we need to hear yet again from Bill Clinton, John Kerry and John Kasich?  Where was a real-life person of situational or generational poverty who could speak to the reality of their lives and their families’ struggles?

 Rev. Barber’s answer was that poor people are ignored because they don’t donate money to political campaigns, and they don’t vote. Why should they, Barber explains, when they feel invisible and not cared about? That’s a pretty damning statement about a party that claims to care about everyone, but can’t move beyond talking about the “middle class,” and (mainly) white working folks.

 It’s time for Dems to get it: When a quarter of Americans are poor or low-income workers who can’t make ends meet, can’t access healthcare or a decent education, and can’t make it through a pandemic it’s unacceptable to ignore or exclude them. We need to remember that poverty is not a dirty word. There is no reason to be afraid or ashamed of impoverished people as a constituency, no matter their race or ethnicity, but there is every reason to acknowledge that they exist as an underclass in one of the the world’s richest countries. As human beings they deserve the dignity and attention so readily proffered to other Americans.

 That calls for an increased awareness among political leaders, and the public, of the lives poor and low-income people live.

 Being poor and being in poverty are two different things, as Latonya Walker, a social worker in Detroit points out on her blog. While being poor is an economic state that involves dependency on a system of care, often for generations, poverty is a psychological mindset that derives from the situation one finds themselves in due to a life changing event. Divorce, illness, loss of work, or a death in the family can lead to homelessness, the need for government assistance, or generalized instability. If prolonged beyond one generation, it can be difficult to escape.

 The effects of generational poverty are chronic, resulting in continued low education levels, inadequate childcare, low workplace skills, health issues, high incarceration rates and high infant mortality rates. Homelessness and substance abuse also become chronic. It’s heartbreaking that a quarter of American children are living in low-income families that have at least one working parent who because of low hourly wages and few if any job benefits, like health insurance, paid sick or vacation leave, are unlikely to escape the effects of generational poverty.

 That’s why it’s important for political leaders to take a focused, holistic, and humane approach to well-funded public policies that address in practical and meaningful ways the need for improved, accessible education programs for both children and adults, universal healthcare, living wages, ending mass incarceration, and protecting voting rights. They could be helped in that effort by inviting the voices and the aspirations of poor people and people living in poverty to be heard and understood. In other words, they need to put a human face on the pressing issues of poverty so that they, and all Americans, can see those faces, learn from their experiences, appreciate the challenges of their lives, and act to relieve the constraints that keep them impoverished, afraid, and without hope for a better life. 

 The fact is, the poor and nearly poor are a formidable force and they are organizing to vote in this crucial election. They have the power to flip election results in more than a dozen states. It makes absolutely no sense to ignore them if the Democratic party is serious about economic security. If Democrats truly stand for morality and justice with the force and conviction that Rev. Barber does, they need to listen, and learn, from those who may inherit the earth in biblical terms, but who have precious little to be content with in these troubling times.

 As Rev. Barber says so eloquently, “Our deepest moral traditions point to equal protection under the law, the desire for peace within and among nations, the dignity of all people, and the responsibility to care for our common home.”

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Elayne Clift writes from Saxtons River, Vt.  www.elayne-clift.com

Guns, Voting Rights, an Election and Cognitive Dissonance

Over the July 4the weekend, 160 people died from gun violence in America. One was a six-year old in Philadelphia, another was an eight-year old in Atlanta, and a third was a 15-year old in New York. Chicago saw the worst of it with 17 people fatally shot including two children. Sixty-three others were wounded. And that’s just the count for the holiday weekend. 

Research conducted recently by the University of California/Davis revealed a link between the rise in violence in the country and a surge in gun-buying since Covid-19 began, with over two million more guns sold in a three-month period this spring.

Given the continuing lack of gun safety legislation, and the increasingly public displays of white supremacy, the increase in gun sales shouldn’t come as a surprise. Violence of all kinds is on the rise.  The question is, Why haven’t more Americans been proactive on the issue of community gun violence as we face a November election? How is it that post Columbine, Newtown, Pulse and all the rest, we haven’t taken to the streets as we did for #BLM?

As Elizabeth Warren wrote in her 2015 book A Fighting Chance, “If a mysterious virus started killing eight children every day [as gun violence does], America would mobilize teams of doctors and public health officials. We’d move heaven and earth until we found a way to protect our children. But not with gun violence.” (It was an eerily prescient analogy.)

The death of civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis reminds us of another problem that plagues us as we draw closer to the most critical election in our lives. Remember that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated legal barriers at state and local levels that kept African Americans from voting. But in 2013 the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Roberts, effectively struck down the Voting Rights Act in a decision that allowed Republican states to enact voter ID laws, roll back early voting, and purge voter registration lists. Last year the Roberts court also barred challenges in federal court to partisan gerrymandering. Why in this now fragile democracy aren’t we repeating the brave and bold actions of the Civil Rights Movement to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to cast their ballot?

With secret government “police” being deployed to U.S. cities to kidnap and arrest journalists and citizens exercising their constitutional right to free speech, and with a runaway pandemic raging, which is nothing short of negligent homicide on the part of the president, why are we not in the streets demanding that Donald Trump resign (as Russians are now doing to oust Putin)?

As one friend put it, “You wouldn’t stay married to a serial killer, so why are so many Americans still putting up with Trump?”

The answer may lie in the concept of cognitive dissonance, defined by psychologists as “having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.”

Cognitive dissonance includes feeling discomfort when a behavior or attitude is in conflict with one’s values and beliefs, or when new information is contrary to those beliefs. A sign of the phenomenon is ignoring facts and therefore making irrational decisions, according to experts, which goes a long way in explaining why so many people aren’t wearing masks – or still insist on thinking that Trump is an effective leader.

Interestingly, when people experience an inconsistency between what they believe and how they behave, they often take actions, or don’t take them, to help reduce growing discomfort. So, for example, they may reject, explain away, or avoid information, even when that information is vital to their health and safety, or saving the country. They may grow angry at forced compliance (masks), avoid learning (fact-finding), and find decisions hard to make, but once a decision is made, it is justified as the best available option.

Donald Trump is clearly experiencing cognitive dissonance in the extreme, along with his other psychological disorders. His thought processes are deeply damaged (and limited to begin with), he is totally irrational, and his paranoia and narcissism only add to the dangerous mix.

Although I’m not a psychologist, I suspect that other Republicans who cannot stand up to Trump despite knowing he is dangerously delusional struggle privately with their own cognitive dissonance. As for mask refusing, fact denying, irrational decision-makers, it’s a possible explanation for their strange and troubling behavior.

The rest of us are understandably fatigued, frightened, and feeling fragile, which makes marching in the streets at the risk of being picked up by gun toting government goons less than appealing. Still, we must act to protect ourselves from the overt fascism that is coming straight at us, and we must overwhelmingly Vote Blue in November or our current nightmare will not end.

We would do well to remember the words of the late John Lewis: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. … [And] Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Whatever form it takes, and psychology aside, the time for trouble that we create is now.

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Elayne Clift writes from Saxtons River, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

Who We Are, Who We Could Be

“This is not who we are.” “We are better than this.” 

I can’t bear to hear those platitudes from people who are blind, lazy, or have no sense of American history.

This is who we are, and who we have been since Columbus stood on American soil. Since then Native American peoples have been oppressed and the oppression continues.  Forced into soul-destroying reservations, the 17th to 20th century Indian Wars led to the Wounded Knee massacre where thousands of Native Americans were slaughtered. The Trail of Tears march that forced native people off their land killed more than 15,000 first Americans. Today Customs and Border Protection contractors tear through sacred tribal sites destroying archeological treasures that represent America’s history and culture to build a wall for keeping brown people out of this land.

This is who we are, and who we have been since lynching terrorized black Americans into submission and an inferior caste system. Post-Civil War to the 1950s, African Americans living in the south were subjected to unimaginable physical torture that usually ended with being hung and set on fire. Jim Crow laws legalized racial segregation to ensure African American’s couldn’t vote, hold decent jobs, or get a good education.

In 1921 black residents in Tulsa, Oklahoma were driven from their homes while their entire community was burnt to the ground. The crime was so effectively silenced that few people today know about it.

The infamous Tuskegee Study subjected black WWII airmen to syphilis without their consent so that researchers could conduct experimental treatments. None of the 399 men infected with syphilis received penicillin even though it proved to be an effective treatment.

This is who we still are, as police continue murdering black men and women and bludgeoning peaceful protesters standing up for justice in the names of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, and multitudes more.

But fragile though they are, there are signs of who we can be in the face of dictatorial repression. Mass protests, along with global solidarity from people of all ages, races, and economic strata willing to risk Covid in the name of justice, offer hope for another kind of “new normal” as we move forward in these deeply difficult, terribly troubling times.

Police taking a knee and line dancing with protesters gives me hope. Children, black and white, singing and chanting “No Justice, No Peace” gives me hope. Local leaders, like the mayor of Washington who painted the street with “Black Lives Matter” in defiance of a would-be monarch in her city give me hope, as do those who are calling racial injustice an emergency that requires ending police funding and forging new paths to saner, safer policing.

Organizations ranging from local theaters to community foundations to businesses publicly apologizing and pledging reform in hiring, training, and intolerance of racial injustice gives me hope. People learning about the history and violence of institutional racism gives me hope. Bad cops getting charged with felonies gives me hope. Whistleblowers and those willing to forfeit their careers in the name of justice give me hope. Political and military figures who say Enough is Enough! Give me hope. Rev. Al Sharpton’s eulogy of George Floyd gives me hope.

Recent polls like those conducted by Monmouth University and CBS News give me hope. The Monmouth poll showed that 76 percent, including 71 percent of white people, called racism and discrimination a “big problem” in the U.S., an increase of 26 percent since 2015.  Almost 60 percent of Americans see protesters’ anger as fully justified. And the CBS poll revealed that almost 60 percent of Americans believe police officers are more likely to treat black people unfairly than to mistreat whites.

I’m not saying the change we urgently need will be fast, easy or unanimous.  But we are at a bend in the road, because we are on the brink of disaster. We can no longer deny, disregard or ignore that reality. We know now that there is no justice, no peace without racial justice and that demands that we understand the connections between race, class, poverty, discrimination, i.e. “intersectionality.”  Black writers and leaders like James Baldwin and Angela Davis and Martin Luther King, Jr. understood that before many of us did. Today no one understand it better than African Americans who still can’t get a good education, a decent job, or a safe roof over their heads and who worry every day about driving, jogging, living while black.

“What’s really driving home for me right now, what this moment is teaching me, what the death of George Floyd and all the other losses teaches us is that there is no justice anywhere for anyone until there is racial justice. That’s the starting point, the nexus for change,” a friend wrote me.

Her comment reminded me of another crucial moment, and movement, that demanded sustained change. The women’s movement’s starting point, its nexus for change came with the realization that unless women had agency over their own bodies, there would be no justice, no equality, no self-determined future. The movement had measurable results and it’s not finished yet.

Still, we can hope that the hymn is right: “Once [we were] lost, but now [we’re] found, now we see.” As Rev. Sharpton said, the time has come.

The Pain of Feeling Other's Pain

More and more I avoid watching the news. I closed my Twitter account ages ago and I rarely visit Instagram, now more political than picturesque. I recoil at the thought of opening Facebook.

 Every day it’s one sad, upsetting, outrageous story after another. Innocent black youth murdered by police. Armed men with Nazi flags entering a state capital building. Newspaper headlines screaming “Syrian Children Freeze to Death. Bombs Rain Down,” while in an Afghan maternity hospital women and newborns are gunned down, and in America refugees seeking asylum are given a choice by ICE: Separate from your children or remain in detention indefinitely.

 All the cruelty makes me weep, and reflect that we can drown in the agonies and sorrows of our time - or we can choose to act.  I empathize with those who agonize, and I admire those who act.

 Recently a book inspired me to act. It is called The Book of Rosy: A Mother’s Story of Separation at the Border to be published this month. It’s a well-told tale by and about two remarkable women and how they connected with each other. It is also the story of an amazing grassroots organization and the Latin American women they have reunited with their children after being separated at the U.S. border. 

Co-author Rosayra Pablo Cruz crossed the border with her two sons because she had survived an attempt on her life and her older son was subsequently threatened.  Separated from her sons upon arriving in the U.S, she was sent to detention in Arizona while her sons were put in foster care in New York. With the help of a grassroots organization called Immigrant Families Together, Rosy, who now lives in New York, was finally reunited with her sons months later. In February she was granted asylum.

Julie Schwietert Collazo, a bi-lingual writer, editor and translator is the founder of the organization that helped Rosy. Dedicated to reuniting and supporting immigrant families separated at the US/Mexico border, the organization’s story is extraordinary.

It began with Yeni Gonzalez, an immigrant mother from Guatemala whose three children were transported by ICE agents to New York. When she was unable to pay a $7,500 bond, a group of American mothers led by Julie, who heard Yeni’s story on NPR, quickly mobilized to raise the bond money. Then they arranged to transport Yeni safely, state by state, to New York. There she was reunited with her children and Immigrant Families Together (IFT) was born. To date it has raised over a million dollars and paid over 100 bonds.

 Rosy’s story is stunningly moving as she describes the magnitude and the impact of the human tragedy taking place still. She shares the horrific journey north this way: “The trip is long enough for your stomach to struggle to accept food and water when you finally have access to them again. … The journey is long enough for you to make choices that, when you think about them later, fill you with disgust, like eating mangoes full of worms or drinking dirty water from a creek where cattle stand to cool off. You grip the mango with both hands… and you’re so ravenous, you don’t even avoid the worms.”

 Of the agony of detention, she writes, “In my short time here, I have seen women go crazy with hysteria. They curl up on their bunks and refuse to leave their cells. They cry without ceasing, as if their hoodies are bottomless wells of tears. I have seen them shut down, becoming shells of who they once were. I have seen them lose their will to fight, their will to go on. … I ache for my two boys, of course, but if I let my tears flow, I will become one of those women, hanging on the edge of her own being, and then, what will I be able to do to get my boys, who have been taken from me, back into my arms?”

 Her description of the icebox detention cells is as chilling as the cells themselves. “Months from now, Rosy writes, “when there are news stories about children dying in the icebox I won’t be surprised.”

 Concluding her story, Rosy says, “This is the immigrant experience I wish people could see, not because it’s my experience, but because it’s the story of so many of us, coming to the United States to escape violence and to build lives in which we will contribute to society. … We want to be part of your American dream. We want to help you realize it. We want to share it with you.”

 Rosy’s story is particularly compelling because Donald Trump, on advice of his revered advisor Stephen Miller, has closed the border with Mexico indefinitely, using Covid-19 as the excuse, when it’s really meant to end immigration altogether.

 I’ve been wanting to go to the border to help for a long time, so pre-Covid I contacted Julie. She led me to organizations that still need volunteers. I don’t know when, but I hope to go after the pandemic ends. The detention centers will still be full, despite Covid deaths and deportations.

 How could I not choose to act after reading Rosy’s story and knowing the vital work of Immigrant Families Together?  

Why Democrats Need a Media Advocacy Campaign in 2020

When the late Dr. C. Everett Koop issued his first Surgeon General's report about the dangers of smoking in 1982 the media reported it widely. As a result, Dr. Koop realized that publicity and persuasion were effective tools in promoting healthier behavior. In 1984 he launched the Campaign for a Smoke-Free America by 2000 on the 20th anniversary of an earlier Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, issued in 1964. That earlier report resulted in Congress requiring health warning labels on cigarette packages, and the 1970 ban on TV cigarette advertising. The multi-faceted anti-smoking campaign led to the percentage of Americans who smoked dropping by 33 percent over the course of Dr. Koop’s tenure.

When Koop positioned smoking as a public health issue, he was doing what media advocacy professionals call “framing.”  When he talked about how many people would die of smoking- related cancer, he didn’t just use big numbers. He added, “that’s the equivalent of [X number] of jumbo jets full of passengers crashing in a year.” That’s called “creative epidemiology.” And when he told a story about someone dying from smoking, he related it to a real person in the community where he was speaking, “juxtaposing” his message on a situation that audiences could relate to.

Koop didn’t change the culture of smoking by himself.  Many communication professionals contributed to the success of the anti-smoking campaign that led to behavior change and altered social norms nationally.  Working together, they mounted one of the most successful media advocacy efforts ever undertaken.  It’s now a case study of a methodology that changed health behavior, safety belt use, forest fire prevention, and more.

Media advocacy is the strategic use of mass media to advance public policy and address political issues that have important and harmful social consequences.  It’s rooted in community action and shifts attention from an individual’s attitudes and behavior to greater awareness and collective change, often relating to the political environment. Grounded in communication theory, it has proven to be an effective means of effecting change for everyone’s benefit.

Another method in behavior change communication is social marketing. It derives from a key question asked in the 1960s: “Why can’t you sell brotherhood like you sell soap?” That query led to a new communication objective: the “selling” of socially beneficial ideas and practices that could change behavior to improve all aspects of life, from protecting the environment, to making healthier lifestyle choices, to effecting policy. 

The first objective in social marketing and media advocacy is raising awareness about a problem. Persuading people that something must change follows, leading to individuals and communities taking action, whether its stopping smoking, joining a Green Movement, or voting out a bad president.

As we approach the election in the aftermath of Senate impeachment deliberations, and face continuing support for Donald Trump, voter suppression attempts, and likely cyber interference, Democrats urgently need a strategic, unified media campaign designed to counter Fox News and other sources of misinformation, as well as denial about what’s at stake in November.  

Unified media advocacy messages for TV talk show pundits, social media posts, blogs, opinion editorials, news stories and political ads all need to employ the same pithy soundbites, display the same effective visuals and use recognizable symbols and tag lines. They must offer solid facts, creative epidemiology, localized messaging, credible sources and charismatic, trusted spokespeople who put a human face on Trumpian tragedies.

A media advocacy campaign must focus solely on the threats the Trump administration presents. Candidates, whose policies don’t differ much, should stop repeating narrow, superficial one-liners on health policy, free education, and the economy. The spotlight must always be on the lies, illegalities and dangers of Donald Trump’s corrupt administration, told in human terms.

“More than 18,000 people are held at any one time by ICE. Over 12,000 of them are traumatized children, many separated from their parents, who will never recover emotionally. That’s equivalent to sixty jumbo jets full of asylum seekers. Here is just one of their stories.   ….”

“The fires that ravaged Australia and destroyed a part of that continent larger than Rhode Island signal irreversible environmental disaster if we don’t act immediately to address global warming.  Here’s what science tells us:…….”  And still the president denies climate change.

“Joe Smith died at age 34 because he couldn’t afford his insulin. The Trump administration should be ashamed, and held accountable.”

There are myriad issues like these from polluted waters, to food safety to plundered national parks, begging for heightened awareness and voter turnout. Raising that awareness and promoting action falls to Democratic messengers. If Democrats fail to provide strategic messages that hit home, voters won’t know what’s happening under the radar because of the Trump administration, and how it affects them.

Focused media campaigns expose neglected issues. They discredit opponents and humanize compelling facts.  They reveal lies. In today’s media environment where brevity is essential, a knockout sound bite -- pithy, memorable, and repeatable—can have a huge impact. So can one whopper of a photo.

Designing a media advocacy campaign calls for seasoned professionals.  Still, “Once you ‘get’ media advocacy, you have to do it or you have to live with the fact that you’re not doing everything you can to make a difference,” as one media advocate put it.  Those words couldn’t be more applicable as we face the great urgency of protecting democracy and ensuring a future grounded in the wisdom of our Constitution. Surely Democrats can identify their Dr. Koop in time. The question is, will they?

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Elayne Clift has a master’s degree in Communication and has worked internationally on numerous media campaigns.

When Do I Get to Feel Good About My Heritage and My Home?

When I was a pre-teen growing up in small-town New Jersey I loved the fact that I was a first-generation American. My parents, with their families, had fled anti-Semitic pogroms in Russian Ukraine as small children, and all of them had built new lives in America. It seemed dramatic to have a family history of hardship and courage, a unique culture, special food, and a language I could neither speak nor understand except for a few words. I liked knowing that I had Russian roots, with its great writers, composers and ballerinas as well as a mysterious history.

But I was robbed of that sense of pride as a result of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who rabidly tried to destroy communism in 1950s America, even where it didn’t exist. McCarthy viciously accused politicians, actors, journalists, teachers and others of subversion or treason without evidence.  Ordinary people across the country began to fear him and what came to be called the Second Red Scare. My father was one of them.  “Don’t let on about Russia!” he warned. “Just keep quiet about it.” And so I never talked about my heritage again.

Some years later while in high school I went through a period when I was proudly Jewish. I read the Old Testament from cover to cover and fasted on Yom Kippur, holiest of days as we solemnly embraced the Jewish new year at the mournful sound of the Shofar being blown. I read Jewish writers and wept at Holocaust stories. The young rabbi in our small town was a lovely man who with his family represented modern Jewish life to me. He also understood my desire to celebrate my Jewish identity in the days before girls had bat mitzvahs, a coming of age ceremony at age 13, enjoyed by boys at their bar mitzvahs. And so, reading from the story of Esther, he devoted one March Friday evening to a confirmation service for me.

During this time, I felt enormously proud of Israel for creating a post-Holocaust oasis for Diaspora Jews, and giving all Jews a homeland and sense of national pride. But as I grew into adulthood while Israel’s politics were becoming ominous, and as I learned more about the country’s history and came to understand its punishing behavior toward the Palestinian people who share its land, that feeling of pride began to slip away from me. I wondered and worried about things I read or overheard in conversations, both pro-Israel and against. How, I wondered, could a people who had suffered so much, visit such suffering upon others?

Then I grew older and became more deeply familiar with American history and its treatment of indigenous peoples, its slavery and continuing racism, its homophobia, misogyny, despicable corruption, incipient violence, false alters to self-righteousness and sharply dangerous shifts right such that today we can actually cage dying children. Now I find that I’ve lost virtually all sense of national pride. The truth is it’s hard to feel proud when you’re anxious and afraid, and when you’re more likely to shudder than to sing a country’s falsely premised praises.

As I write these words, cognizant of the adoration of the almighty dollar while the planet gasps for life, I find the platitudes of our political rhetoric not only hollow, but deeply shameful, especially now that we are on the cusp of actually losing our democracy to dictatorship as we quite possibly enter an era when we may be called upon to witness and engage in the utter abrogation of any national decency.

Joe McCarthy eventually got his comeuppance, the Soviet Union disbanded, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War took a long break - until now. The Vietnam War ended finally, although it will never leave our consciousness as we continue to trudge on endlessly conducting untoward military action that robs so many of so much and keeps the world in danger.

In the 1990s my husband and I visited Israel. It was a conflicted journey.  As a Jew, there is no denying that the concept of an Israeli state gets inside you, and you feel a connection to the country when you stand on its land. At the same time, as a feminist, I had a really hard time reconciling the misogyny inherent in Jewish orthodoxy and seeing it at play. Further, and ever more vigorously I find myself, once again, feeling a sense of shame for my heritage, because of Israel’s political behavior toward other human beings, and the lack of response to that behavior by so many other Jews. I experience deep sadness, because others more powerful than I have rendered it impossible for me to embrace my Jewishness with as much love and pride as I once did.

Now the question for me is will I be doomed to forfeit yet again any pride I might have felt for my country and my heritage? Will I be expected to be quiet, to behave like a proper Jew, to be a good citizen? Or dare I believe that the dangerous path on which I find myself (along with others) will not leave me (or others), scarred as we continue moving forward, healing, and hopefully into a more enlightened, safer, caring world?  

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Elayne Clift writes from Saxtons River, Vt.  www.elayne-clift.com

Environmental Disasters Loom Large But Remain Unnoticed

These are hard and exhausting times. Impeachment issues and the president’s continual bombardment of lies and insults that call for correction are wearing us out, remaining front and center both in the media and our minds. As a result of our fatigue and alarm, and because media is abrogating its duty to report essential news outside of Trump’s tantrums, it’s not surprising that disastrous decisions by the president, and their consequences, have gone unnoticed. None of the actions and policy changes of the current administration is more urgently in need of increased awareness, and resistance, than those that relate to environmental degradation and destruction posing serious threats to our health and safety.

Among the most egregious decisions of the Trump administration is the recent “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” proposal promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This terribly dangerous idea would require scientists to disclose all their raw data, including confidential medical records, before the EPA would consider academic studies as valid. Scientific and medical research would be severely limited leading to Draconian public health regulations as well as environmental crises. EPA officials call the plan a step toward transparency, but it is clearly designed to limit important scientific information that should drive policy related to clean air and water, among other health-related environmental impacts.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump pledged to roll back government regulations as part of his pro-business “America First Energy Plan.” Once in the White House he immediately signed executive orders approving two controversial oil pipelines and a federal review of the Clean Water Rule and Clean Power Plan. Shortly thereafter, the Clean Water Rule was repealed.

The administration is allowing drilling in national parks and other treasured venues and opening up more federal land for energy development while the Department of the Interior plans to allow drilling in nearly all U.S. waters, opening up the largest expansion of offshore oil and gas leasing ever proposed. This year the administration completed plans for allowing the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be made available for oil and gas drilling as well.

You have only to look at who Mr. Trump turned to or appointed to head key agencies that deal with energy and environmental policy. For example, three of four members of a transition team mandated to come up with proposals guiding Native American policies had links to the oil industry and his first head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, challenged EPA regulations in court more than a dozen times. Pruitt also hired a disgraced banker with no experience with environmental issues to head the Superfund program, responsible for cleaning up the nation’s most contaminated land.

Other departmental gems include Andrew Wheeler, who replaced Pruitt. He was a coal industry lobbyist and a critic of limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Then there’s Rick Perry who was tasked with developing more efficient energy sources and improving energy education. At Interior, Ryan Zinke who didn’t last long. He was followed by an attorney and oil industry lobbyist who put his personal energy into deregulation and increased fossil fuel sales on public lands. At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a scientific agency that warns of dangerous weather, monitors atmospheric changes, oceans, and more, Trump’s guy was a lawyer and businessman who had advocated against NOAA.

In August, Mr. Trump instructed Sonny Perdue, Agricultural Secretary, to exempt Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the world’s largest intact temperate rain forest, from logging restrictions and mining projects. The president had already told the Department of the Interior to review more than two dozen monuments with a view to reducing the size of Bears Ears National Monument and other sacred land.

National Geographic has been tracking how the administration’s decisions influence air, water, and wildlife. Here are just some of the ways environmental policies have changed since Trump became president. The U.S. has pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, loosened regulations on toxic air pollution, rolled back the Clean Power Act, revoked flood standards accounting for sea-level rise, green-lighted seismic air guns for oil and gas drilling that disorient marine mammals and kill plankton, and altered the Endangered Species Act.

A recent New York Times analysis counts more than 80 environmental rules and regulations “on the way out under Mr. Trump.” So far 53 rollbacks have been completed and 32 are in progress. The Trump strategy, the Times points out, relies on a “one-two punch” in which rules are first delayed, then overridden by final substantive rules. It packs a big punch any way you look at it.

Not long ago I visited Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts where the philosopher, writer and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau lived for two years in a solitary cabin in the mid-19th century. Often credited with starting the environmental movement, he articulated a philosophy based on environmental and social responsibility, resource efficiency, and living simply. He believed fervently that we must keep the wild intact. “What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” he asked.

It’s a question we should all contemplate in the runup to November 2020.

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Elayne Clift writes about women, health, politics and social issues from Saxtons River, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

A Time to Mourn, A Time to March

In 1969, the largest antiwar protest in the United States took place in Washington, D.C. when an estimated half a million people gathered in the nation’s capital to plead for an end to the Vietnam War.  Demonstrations were held in other cities and towns across the country in the months that followed. I was at the one in New York City, where so many people participated it was impossible to duck into a storefront for relief from the crush of people who’d had enough. It was an amazing way to experience people power up close.

America has a long record of marches that changed history. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s African Americans, joined by many white activists, mobilized for a difficult and unprecedented journey to equality and human rights that continues today. It started with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott after Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a while man and was followed by several marches and other actions, culminating with the 1963 March on Washington. That was the largest political rally for human rights ever seen in the U.S. with approximately 300,000 people converging on the Mall to protest for African Americans’ freedom. It was there that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. The event led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Five years later, the Poor People’s Campaign, a multicultural movement, led to Resurrection City where tents were set up along the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. A major march occurred there called a Solidarity Day Rally for Jobs, Peace, and Freedom. It happened on June 19, 1968.

At about this time the women’s movement was coalescing and mobilizing to act for women’s rights and full equality, as their foremothers had done for the right to vote.  The suffragettes had stopped at nothing, suffering forced feedings and other brutality in jail. It paid off when the 19th amendment was passed by Congress in 1919, a 100th anniversary being observed as I write.

Fifty years later activists organized a Women’s Strike for Equality in New York. Over 50,000 women attended and over 100,000 demonstrated in solidarity in 42 states. Later, marches on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment began – and continued across the country. (Congress still has not ratified the ERA, but we’re getting close.)

After the ERA, women marched again for abortion rights and reproductive health and privacy with massive demonstrations taking place in Washington in 1986 and 1989. I was there in 1989 as an activist and journalist, proud to join the crowds that equaled or surpassed protest marches that had taken place against the Vietnam War. Then, of course, came January 21, 2017, when hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington after Donald Trump became president.

Today, people in places as diverse as Romania, Venezuela, and Hong Kong are marching against their governments to demand equality, freedom, justice and human rights. Representing all ages, genders, abilities and classes, and defying everything from bad weather to police brutality they are fighting together against corruption, greed, and autocracy.

The common denominator in all these historical moments and current events is that people have gathered together to mourn what they were losing, or never had, and then they marched.  They took to the streets and marched in solidarity until governments listened and they changed history – sometimes incrementally but always dramatically.

I wonder why that isn’t happening now, here, again.  Why aren’t Americans, the majority of whom dislike or despise what the Trump administration has wrought, and robbed us of, mobilized like we once were around monumental issues and threats to our security and wellbeing? Why is our collective outrage not on display in such powerful ways that there is no ignoring our refusal to collude?

When children are ripped from their parents and caged in cold jails indefinitely and made ill physically and emotionally; when youth are murdered because of their skin color, when adults die for lack of access to medical care, when gun violence takes innocent lives every day, when women have no control over their own bodies, when the president has a total lack of morality because of personal gain and massive ego, when we know he is guilty of violating the Constitution and of committing impeachable offenses, when he surrounds himself with unqualified and often cruel acolytes, what is keeping us from marching and marching and marching – and perhaps even camping out on the Mall indefinitely– in defense of democracy and human rights?

Why, I must ask, haven’t we called for and enacted a National Day of Mourning, and Marching?

As one activist of the 1980s put it, “No matter what they are called, perhaps the single most powerful, peaceful way to bring about social chance is for people to stand together publicly on behalf of an important cause.”  In a more current context, that’s what protesters in Hong Kong did As one of them noted recently, “All we can do as citizens is keep going, protest peacefully and let the government and regime know our demands.”

Are we ready, America?

America Faces an Uncertain Future. Why is it Happening?

Having Donald Trump militarize America’s Independence Day, subjecting children and adults to, yes, concentration camps, and defy the courts are not events that can be easily ignored or overlooked.

However, firing climate change scientists or banning them to a Midwest gulag is a lot easier. So is rescinding food and drug safety regulations, rolling back health care protections for LGBTQ patients, foreclosing on working home owners, destroying public education, and compromising the country’s air, water, and wildlife.

There’s more, and it signals the Trump Administration’s dangerous, pro-profit, white supremacist politics, disrespect for the rule of law and the Constitution, and contempt for human rights.  Every day we draw closer to full-fledged fascism while the Democrats diddle, and most mainstream and cable media regurgitate premature political polling while allowing Trump to suck the oxygen out of the air waves.

Collective fatigue and self-preserving denial are understandable, but it’s time every one of us took serious notice of what is happening because a dangerously demented authoritarian, voted into office  - just as Adolf Hitler was - is getting away with murder (literally if you count the dead immigrants at the border) and no one seems able to stop him – not Congress, not the courts, and not the Constitution.

When I first considered writing this commentary, I thought about all the departmental travesties taking place, most without much notice. I began doing research, department by governmental department and that’s how I came upon troubling information at numerous government agencies. Here are just a few examples.

Thanks to an expose by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, I learned that a number of specialists working within a scientific group advising government for nearly sixty years on various issues, including defense and most recently climate change, were being fired. Scientists working on Department of Agriculture issues were given a month’s notice to decide if they would move their families to Kansas – where no facility for them to continue their work exists, or be fired. A short reprieve was issued for scientists working at the Department of Energy so that studies underway could conclude, but the future of the group’s 65 impressive scientists is unclear, even as it diversifies its client base. As the Washington Post pointed out, “Research is being decimated by the Trump team, especially when it comes to climate science and other research that doesn’t comport with the Trump agenda.”

Thanks also go to Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) who called out Ben Carson for failing America’s working families at HUD.  Interviewed by NBC after her tough grilling of Carson in a Congressional committee hearing, Porter said, “I wanted to engage Carson on the critical issue [of foreclosures] but what I got was evasion. Carson’s two-plus years as the leader of HUD have been marked by failure after failure to do right by this country’s working families.” Porter continued, exposing Carson’s total lack of awareness of his agency’s jurisdiction, his claim that “poverty to a large extent is a state of mind,” and his proposal to to slash HUD’s budget.

The National Education Association exposed the horrific record of Betsy De Vos at the Department of Education, where promoting education privatization is a top priority while serving special needs and trans children is being rolled back. DeVos also wants to repeal federal protections that hold predatory for-profit colleges accountable, to rescind sexual assault guidelines, and to put guns in schools.

National Geographic posted “15 Ways the Trump Administration has changed environmental policies,” while The Guardian wrote about the “nosedive” the FDA is taking in warning people about food and drug regulations not being enforced, and Politico revealed how the Trump administration is rolling back health care protections for LGBTQ patients.

The more I learned, the more I realized how much is happening “under the radar” – an expression that sounded familiar. Looking back on my commentary topics over the last 18 months, I realized that I had twice written pieces with that phrase in the title. That made me question not what was happening, but why it was happening.

Here are a few possibilities. One is that many in the Fourth Estate are largely failing to demand and drive accountability. Given that the courts, federal and Supreme, are being stacked against democracy and sound Constitutional interpretation, it is urgent that media editors and producers “call a thing [like racism] a thing.” That means not normalizing a dangerously delusional president or treating him like an ordinary candidate in next year’s election.  It means asking tough questions and demanding answers. It means putting priority issues over advertisers.

Further, the Democratic Party must realize this is no time to pussyfoot. Its strong suite is plurality which must not become its pitfall.  Democrats need to unify, fight, respect boundaries, message wisely, and start saving America. Equally, entities and individuals inside and out of government must vociferously say “No!” when Trump breaks rules, bullies, and acts crazy.

Americans, no matter how tired or disillusioned, must demand leadership that recognizes the slippery slope of looming dark days -- because it’s not only about the economy, jobs and healthcare. It’s about our future and our survival as a democratic beacon to the world.

Perhaps yesterday may have been too early to act, but surely tomorrow will be too late.

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Missing in Action: Democrats, Media, Public

Following the debacle created by Attorney General William Barr when he decided unilaterally that Donald Trump wasn’t guilty of collusion or obstruction of justice, it seems appropriate to declare that we are facing dark times in America. It should be clear by now that we are experiencing an unprecedented, deeply dangerous Constitutional crisis that begs the question: Why aren’t Democrats, some media, and the public reacting more vigorously to the growing nightmare of encroaching autocracy, if not outright dictatorship?

Political pundits will continue to deconstruct what happened following the release of the Mueller report for some time. Ideas about what went wrong and why regarding the myriad illegalities rapidly turning us into a Banana Republic will, we hope, ultimately be revealed. I leave that discussion to others.

I am compelled instead to focus on damaging failures by a disturbing number of Democratic leaders, some seasoned media figures, and a somnolent public, who seem insufficiently concerned with the serious threat this country faces: The creeping death of our Republic, so carefully crafted on a a set of principles grounded in the highest ideals and structured in a way as to ensure their continuity.

Now, more than 200 years later, as we watch those principles and ideals being decimated and discarded, how can it be that – with so many canaries in the coalmine – about 40 percent of Americans appear to be inured to the dangers ahead as we face a Constitutional crisis of huge proportion. I repeat: A Constitutional, not a political, crisis that every sentient citizen ought to be deeply troubled by, and none more so than our elected officials.

And yet the speaker of the House of Representatives, and other Democrats, say that Donald Trump isn’t worth impeaching. Or that it’s too soon to impeach. Or that we need more solid evidence of the deep, pervasive culture of corruption this administration and this president have spawned.

I am reminded of the saying, “Today may be too soon, but tomorrow will surely be too late.” For while I understand the argument for taking the time to build a solid case for impeachment in the face of Republican’s incalcitrant political posturing and lack of moral or ethical behavior, I also worry that a duplicative, drawn out inquiry, and more dangerously, expecting voters to rid us of our present scourge at the polls next year is sheer folly. Too many voters don’t seem to understand what’s happening before their eyes and many of them have no interest in the Mueller report. They put Donald Trump in office – or at least the Electoral College did – and now they want to “move on,” while disinformation, voter disenfranchisement, and Russian hacking are likely to grow.

It bears repeating that this is not a political issue. It’s not even solely a moral or ethical issue. We are living through a failure of conscience, of intellect, and of will that every American needs to understand and face with the utmost consciousness. One need only remember the terrible travesties of this administration – the caging of children, the scapegoating of Muslims, the sanctioning of violence, hate crimes, and white supremacy, the vile utterings and copious lies of an ill-equipped and often cruel leader who reveres dictators, the injustices increasingly suffered by so many Americans, the rape of sacred lands and pollution of the environment, the dangerous rollbacks in regulation in the name of profit, the threat of nationalizing media and arresting journalists, and more.

Consider just this one fact:  The Justice Department has itself just obstructed justice. People can argue that we need to address “real issues,” like health care, jobs and the economy. I agree that the media has failed to expose numerous policy issues we face while allowing Mr. Trump to suck all the oxygen out of the air waves. But none of these things will ever be attended to if we don’t recognize the urgency of defeating autocracy before it’s too late.

As for the canaries in the coalmine, none is more prescient, it seems to me, than the deepening misogyny and racism we are witnessing. Where, for example, were the Democrats in Congress when Ilhan Omar was vilified because she is a woman, a person of color, and a Muslim? 

And surely the media, while drawing attention to dangerous Trumpian demagogues hell-bent on destroying our systems of governance, needs to cover more fairly the competent women running for president. Every one of us should be outraged by moves to marginalize, trivialize, and punish these extraordinary women. Such dismissal of women as potential candidates reveals the underbelly of countries dominated by patriarchal autocracies.

The late Norman Birnbaum, illustrious journalistic and scholar, noted that “Modern authoritarianism is not subtle, but it is omnipresent.” He also said “Avoidance, falsification, and trivialization mark our encounter with past and future.” He was right -- modern authoritarianism is staring us in the face.

Let’s hope, therefore, that Winston Churchill was also right. If we act wisely, this may not be “the beginning of the end.” With enough courage to impeach, perhaps it is “the end of the beginning.” A new beginning couldn’t be more timely or urgent.

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Elayne Clift writes about women, health, politics and social justice from Saxtons River, Vt.

Women Beware! Birth Control, Abortion, and Your Healthcare Are at Risk

You’re a middle-class mom with two kids, a mortgage, a fragile marriage, and an elderly parent to care for when you find yourself pregnant. You’re a sexually active college student and because of a condom failure you’re pregnant. You’re pregnant with a wanted child when you learn your fetus has a serious anomaly and probably can’t survive outside the womb. You are a rural woman with limited income who gets routine healthcare at a Planned Parenthood now threatened with closure.

Variations on stories like these abound. For all kinds of women, and their advocates, they are terrifying, as federal and state legislators continue gunning for Planned Parenthood and vehemently resisting female autonomy, privacy, and decision-making.    

As a recent New York Times piece by the editorial board stated, “In its continuing assault on reproductive rights, the Trump Administration has issued potentially devastating changes to the nation’s nearly 50-year-old family planning program, Title X, which allows millions of women each year to afford contraception, cancer screenings, and other critical health services.”

To be clear, health clinics like Planned Parenthood have been barred from using federal funds for abortions, but they have been able to to offer non-federally funded abortions and other family planning services under one roof. Now the Department of Health and Human Services wants to make clinics that provide abortions navigate ridiculous regulations if they want to receive Title X funds. I mean ridiculous regs, like having separate entrances for abortion patients, or establishing an electronic health records system separate from their regular system. Providers will also be prohibited from making abortion referrals, or providing information that adheres to standards for “informed consent.”

In addition to threats at the federal level, more and more states are attempting to pass ridiculous anti-abortion laws, like requiring wider hallways or revamping janitor’s closets.

More Draconian is the unethical “domestic gag rule” that allows so-called “pro-life” staffers in Title X facilities to say a particular procedure doesn’t exist or to lie to patients about false risks of abortion.

As Dr. Leana Wen, the new president of Planned Parenthood, told The New York Times, “There will be many providers that will face an impossible decision: to participate in Title X and be forced to compromise their medical ethics, or to stop participating in that program,” a step that would lead to overwhelming demand for reproductive health care but not much in the way of supply to respond.

Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, states have been constructing a maze of abortion laws that codify, regulate and limit whether, when and under want circumstances a woman can have an abortion, as the Guttmacher Institute points out. Major provisions to states laws, some on the books, other in litigation or defeated, include requiring that abortions be performed in a hospital or set gestational limits on abortion.

One example is the attempt to ban abortions when a faint heartbeat is detected, which can occur as early as six weeks, before a woman may know she is pregnant. Another is state restrictions on coverage of abortion in private insurance plans, and states allowing individual health care providers to refuse to participate in abortions. Some states mandate that a woman have counseling, including information on purported links between abortion and breast cancer, the ability of a fetus to feel pain, or long-term mental health consequences for the woman.

The Trump administration clearly wants to evict Planned Parenthood from the federal family planning program. It also hopes to ban abortion referrals. At the state level, early abortion bans called “heartbeat bills” are being proposed in several states. So far, five of them have advanced this legislation but every “heartbeat bill” passed to date has been overturned in state or federal court. With Judges Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, who know what will happen?

Five states have already passed preemptive “trigger laws” which would immediately ban abortion outright if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Several abortion cases are currently in federal appeals courts or pending litigation in various states. Lawsuits are challenging such issues as required waiting periods, required ultrasounds, 15-week bans, admitting privileges, abortions for minors, and Medicaid coverage.

The situation, not only for women seeking their constitutional right to abortion, but for women – and men - seeking appropriate, quality, accessible, affordable reproductive health care ranging from preventive screening and contraception to treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, grows ever more dire as the Trump administration, and state legislators attempt to control what should be women’s private, personal decisions.

The irony is that rules rooted in anti-abortion (and anti-sex education) feelings threaten access to contraception, which prevents unwanted or unintended pregnancy and consequently increases health care costs in a nation where the cost of care is already skyrocketing.  Can anyone explain why that makes sense? 

More importantly, perhaps, can anyone fathom what would happen without Planned Parenthood?

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Elayne Clift writes about women, health, and social issues from Saxtons River, Vt.

www.elayne-clift.com

Women vs. Fetus: Is Social Control Out of Control?

Not long ago, a woman in late pregnancy suffering severe depression tried to commit suicide. She survived but her baby died. She was charged with murder. A pregnant woman who lost her unborn child in a car accident in New York state was charged with manslaughter. So was a woman in Indiana who gave birth to a stillborn baby.

Even in cases where a fetus hasn’t died, pregnant women have been charged with crimes in various states – for miscarrying, falling down the stairs, failing a drug test, or taking legal drugs during pregnancy, often prescribed by doctors.

These examples, reported in a recent New York Times series exploring “legislative intrusions into the womb,” reveal a paternalism that is not new, but is alarming, and growing in the Trump era. They are also reminiscent of other frightening autocratic and dictatorial eras. Hitler, for example, “recruited” German women to produce Aryan children. Under the Romanian dictator Ceaușescu, assassinated in 1989, women were subjected to monthly pelvic exams in their workplaces while high school girls were routinely digitally raped by male doctors to ensure that all pregnancies were carried to term. In The Handmaid’s Tale, resurrected in the face of Trumpian resistance to reproductive freedom, forced insemination of those selected to be Mothers is assisted by designated Wives.

If all of this is disgusting to imagine it should be because it derives from a vile act of social control. Such control, still relatively rare but growing, is already occurring in America.

Here’s just one example.  Politicians in Ohio recently considered a bill that could have allowed abortions to be punishable with life sentences or the death penalty. The proposed law, would have extended the definition of a person in Ohio's criminal code to include the "unborn human." That meant that a fetus, from conception to birth, would be considered a person, leaving people who perform abortions or women who have them vulnerable to severe criminal penalties.

According to the ACLU, at least 38 states have fetal homicide laws, most of which relate to fetuses killed by violent acts against pregnant women. So-called pro-life advocates use laws like the Fetal Protection Act, the Preborn Victims of Violence Act and the Unborn Victim of Violence Act to argue that fetuses are persons, or “a child in uterus,” and need to be protected in all circumstances.

The ACLU argues that “a pregnant woman and her fetus should never be regarded as separate, independent, and even adversarial, entities. Yet that is precisely what some anti-choice organizations, legal theorists, legislators, prosecutors, doctors and courts have attempted to do in the past decade.”

Legislation designed to protect fetuses can take different forms, the ACLU points out. All of them endanger reproductive rights. States may amend existing homicide statutes to include fetuses as victims, they can pass statutes defining a fetus as a person, or establish a new crime category called “feticide” or fetal homicide. They can also permit civil suits against anyone who causes the death of a fetus, or enact new statutes to penalize injury to a pregnant woman that causes fetal death or injury. This law is aimed primarily at practitioners, which flies in the face of the constitutional right to choose, established by Roe v. Wade, which calls for abortion to be exempt from punishment when performed by “health care workers with the consent of the woman or in medical emergencies, and self-abortions.”

Clearly, fetal protection legislation fosters the policing of pregnancy, just as it did in Romania. It makes it more likely that practitioners will become overzealous, thereby complicating routine healthcare decisions. In Florida, for example, a woman was told by her doctor that he would send law enforcement to her home if she didn’t get to the hospital immediately for a C-section. A New Jersey mother lost custody of her newborn after refusing a surgical delivery.

All of this raises the larger, deeply troubling issue of social control, which usually comes at the expense of women. Writing in The Atlantic’s latest issue, editor Peter Beinart sounds this alarm: “Authoritarian nationalism is rising in a diverse set of countries [for various reasons, but] right-wing autocrats taking power across the world share one big thing, which often goes unrecognized in the U.S.: They all want to subordinate women.”

The question is why, and Valerie M. Hudson, a political scientist at Texas A&M, has this answer: “It’s vital to remember that for most of human history, leaders and their male subjects forged a social contract: ‘Men agreed to be ruled by other men in return for all men ruling over women.’ This political hierarchy appeared natural—as natural as adults ruling children—because it mirrored the hierarchy of the home. Thus, for millennia, men, and many women, have associated male dominance with political legitimacy. Women’s empowerment ruptures this order.”

In other words, keeping women “barefoot and pregnant” is essential to patriarchy. Autonomous women liberated from childbearing, empowered with reproductive choice, unleashed into the marketplace, the academy, and government threaten male power. That reality has played out in various forms throughout history.

Seeing it happen in the 21st century is unacceptable.

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Elayne Clift writes about women, politics and social issues from Saxtons River, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

Is It Really Silly Season So Soon?

January 1, 2019 and the horses were out of the gate, their hoofbeats assaulting our already over-taxed patience. The political horseplay began with a vengeance - before the new Congress set foot in Washington and before anyone had formally declared they were running for President next year. The new year promised the American public, and the world, a long and rocky race as all eyes, arguments, and predictions focused on the 2020 election.

Some pundits say the palaver is right on time. But most of us would probably concur that it’s way too early to begin the non-stop spewing and sputtering when we don’t even know who the serious contenders will be, or what they have to offer.

Still, the mainstream media dug in its heels and to the exclusion of reporting real and urgent news, they started having a field day. The New York Times, for example, ran a piece with this over-written, somewhat hysterical headline: "Rashida Tlaib’s Expletive-Laden Cry to Impeach Trump Upends Democrats’ Talking Points"!  "Expletive-Laden Cry"? She said one bad word at a private event and got caught on tape. The M-F- word, it seems, is enough to ruin a woman’s budding political career, but a guy who says publicly that he likes to “grab pussy” gets a pass and becomes president?

Dancing while Female?  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez danced, beautifully and joyfully, while in college, mimicking a famous movie dance scene. Someone taped it. A right-winger posted it, and hey presto, she's the bad "little girl."  

Elizabeth Warren went public first and she's immediately "unlikable." Sound familiar? Not only was Hillary Rodham Clinton tagged “unlikeable,” her headbands and hairstyles were scrutinized ad nauseam, as was Michelle Obama’s choice of sleeveless dresses, now the norm in women’s fashion.

Common denominator? Fear of powerful women, i.e., misogyny, and it needs to be called out every single time it rears its ugly head, whether in Congress, in conversation, or by TV pundits, social and print media, among the worst offenders for stoking this kind of sexist nonsense. Women like Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters know that game when they see it, and they aren't afraid to confront it, making them superb role models.

Moving on, how fair is it to be polling for favorite 2020 candidates and reporting on outcomes when most potential candidates have not yet declared? How in the world can anyone know who they are inclined to vote for until they hear what frontrunners have to say, never mind time to scrutinize their experience and policy perspectives?

It was nothing short of shocking to hear potential candidate Terry McAuliffe, former governor of Virginia, do a self-serving pre-stump speech critical of the progressive agenda of the Democratic party’s left in which he revealed how out of touch he is with what just happened in the mid-term election. Similarly, California Senator Dianne Feinstein didn’t get what the Blue/Pink Wave was all about. With all due respect to Joe Biden, Sen. Feinstein, and Mr. McAuliffe, the election was not about same old white guy-driven policies and agendas that don't speak to the new generation of Democratic constituencies. It was about inclusivity, relevance, and effectiveness in a 21st century political world.

That world is culturally, ethnically, and economically diverse, moving toward progressive ideas and goals, deeply committed to social justice, the earth’s survival, a democratic future, and other critical issues of our time. People like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke and others deserve their chance as McAuliffe, Feinstein and Biden have had theirs.

Messages about economic gains for the middle class (which means mostly white people) no longer resonate at a time when the U.S. government is caging and killing kids, when our water and food is no longer safe and children are dying because of rolled back regulations, when adults and seniors are dying prematurely because they can’t afford their medicines (like insulin) and can’t access health care, when Americans can’t earn a living wage, when people get killed just for being black and hate crimes are on the rise, when the planet we share is in real danger of dying, when ethical and moral behavior in Congressional offices and chambers no longer exists, and when we are on the brink of serious disasters, man-made and natural, with no one at the helm or in government agencies who understands or cares so long as their coffers are full.

This is not a time to be politically regressive. Our full attention, our intellectual faculties, our conscience and compassion have never been more important or more necessary. They must be exercised by each of us to the fullest degree if we are to survive as a nation and as citizens of a morally and physically safe world.

Everyone must commit to that effort, including those who have served as our political voice in the past, and those who want to find their way and use their voices to offer appropriate legislation and new, important ideas, knowing that they will be heard and that their ideas will be considered carefully, not judged on what they say privately, what they wear, or how they dance.

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Elayne Clift writes about women, politics, and social issues from Saxtons River, Vt.

www.elayne-clift.com

The Sham, Shame and Real Purpose of a Senate Committee

The Sham, the Shame, and the Real Purpose of a Senate Committee

In the end it wasn’t what “she said, he said.”  It was what she did, what he did.

She gave moving, credible testimony. He rambled and raged. She was composed and coherent. He was defiant and disrespectful. She was polite and dignified. He was rude and belligerent. She was calm. He dissembled, putting to rest the myth of female hysteria. She was quietly self-assured. He threw a self-pitying, tearful tantrum.  She told the truth. He lied.

The world watched as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford told her riveting and difficult story with grace and courage. Then it watched, cringing, as Judge Brett Kavanaugh stumbled his way to self-aggrandizement and entitlement, unleashing a dangerous temper unsuited to service on the Supreme Court.

They witnessed a Senate Judiciary Committee in shambles as Republican members, all white men, reprised behavior familiar from the vile verbiage visited upon Anita Hill in 1991, including by two senators who were on the committee when she testified.

The contrast between the morning hearings when Dr. Ford gave her difficult opening statement and the afternoon when Kavanaugh simpered his Trumpian opening remarks couldn’t have been starker. The morning was civil and respectful. The female prosecutor hired to ask Republicans’ questions, while interrogating Dr. Ford as if it were a trial, said nothing overtly offensive.

Later, the civility ended when Republican committee members reverted to form, Senator Lindsay Graham spewing invectives at his Democratic colleagues while exonerating Kavanaugh.  It was then that the prosecutor, who’d been assigned to ask Republicans’ questions, disappeared, fired midstream when she asked something Republicans found dangerous.

Could anything make clearer what Republican men on the committee think of women?  Could they have treated Dr. Ford, Senator Dianne Feinstein, or the prosecutor with more contempt?

What was happening as we watched the fiasco? What is the real issue?

It’s sexism. Misogyny. Male privilege and male sense of entitlement. It’s the patriarchal power struggle grounded in robbing women of agency, autonomy – even over their own bodies - and a place in the public square. And it’s gone on forever.

Aristophanes understood that in 411 BC when he wrote Lysistrata, a play about women using their sexual power to stop war. Susan B. Anthony and the women at the 1848 women’s convention faced it when they fought for women’s suffrage. Contemporary women recognized it when Anita Hill was trashed. We know it now as we continue to fight for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and the right to privacy and decision-making in our reproductive lives.

We live in a culture where male privilege and power are embedded, entrenched in every sector of society, from corporations and churches to academia, entertainment and news organizations, sports, science, and medicine. It’s a culture in which females are admonished to nurture and ensure the comfort of males while at the same time, we are reminded to protect ourselves from the uncontrollable sexual excesses of males because they can’t help themselves and can’t take responsibility for their behavior. We are taught to be good girls who dress properly, remain abstinent and restrained, who never go anywhere, not even the bathroom, alone. We are trained to be silent.

When women found the courage to tell Sigmund Freud about their sexual abuse he labeled their stories fantasies. Anita Hill was told that too. That’s why women don’t tell their stories. “No one will believe me,” they say.

Now that’s changing. In the last month calls to sexual abuse hotlines have spiked by 200 percent. Friends are telling friends. Wives are telling husbands and partners. Girls are telling parents. And women like Ana Marie Archilla and Maria Gallagher, the two brave women who demanded that Senator Jeff Flake look at them when they were talking to him, are putting politicians on notice: We are not going to be invisible or quiet or silent any longer. We matter!

As Rebecca Traister wrote in a New York Times editorial, and as poet Audre Lord, feminist writer Carolyn Heilbrun, and activists like Tarana Burke, founder of the Me Too Movement, recognize, what has been denied to women until now is anger and expressions of anger. That stops now. We are speaking up, crying out, and refusing to be silenced any longer.  

So, as I write this commentary a cursory, controlled FBI investigation aimed at appeasement is occurring. The outcome of that investigation and what happens subsequently carries deep significance for our political future. But it doesn’t match the importance of what is happening in our culture as we make change and see it coming, however slowly.

It is coming because of courageous women like Anita Hill, Christine Blasey Ford, Ana Maria Archilla, Maria Gallagher, and the multitudes of others who will not be silent  any more in the face of violence perpetrated against them. We will no longer defer to malicious men. We will no longer suffer political rape symbolized by the cry to “plow through” uttered by men in power. We will fight with everything we’ve got until men crawl kicking and screaming toward seeing, hearing, believing and respecting women.

It begins with three simple words: “I believe her.” And “thank you, Christine.”

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Civility and Civil Disobedience: We Need Both

In the recent uproar over civility, it was deeply frustrating to note the absence of civil disobedience in the discussions, and to see the time-honored tradition of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. being conflated with actions perceived to be rude and unkind.  It was also dangerous, and another sign of the ideology of autocracy being used to quiet resistance when government, and its officials, are doing the wrong thing.

One can argue that shouting at an agency head whose policies are vile to most Americans in a public space is nasty, or counterproductive. But it’s troubling to have that kind of action equated to the quiet, dignified way in which the Red Hen Restaurant asked Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to leave the premises because customers and staff were uncomfortable with her presence.

Civil disobedience is consistent with civility. It is non-violent and never incites harassment or foul language. It simply calls attention to and peacefully protests uncivil and unjust acts and laws. As former Vice President Al Gore noted, “Civil disobedience has an honorable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, … civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play.”

Peaceful resistance against oppressive regimes is a characteristic of civil disobedience. It’s meant to confront, expose and end an unruly system being imposed on citizens by the powerful in positions of authority.  It is, as Henry David Thoreau said, “the true foundation of liberty.” Gandhi knew that when he led the famous Salt March in India and Martin Luther King knew it when he and others led the civil rights movement with marches and sit-ins.

The demonstrations against the actions and policies of the Trump Administration, from the historic Women’s March of January 2017 to the protests demanding sensible gun legislation, an end to the Muslim Ban, and now an end to the tragedy of incarcerated children are all examples of legitimate, desperately needed, and constitutionally protected acts of civil disobedience.

All of these actions were carried out by peaceful protesters, as was the protest in Charlottesville, Va. in August 2017, when 32-year old Heather Heyer was killed by white supremacists marching and shouting slogans like ““Jews will not replace us!” Where was the call for civility then? Where is it after any of Mr. Trump’s rallies when he incites vicious verbiage and vile acts?

Where was it when Mr. Trump mimicked a disabled man, or insulted a Gold Star family, or bragged about grabbing women by their genitals?  Where is the demand for civility when Muslims are harassed or attacked or when swastikas are painted on Jewish schools, synagogues and gravestones? Where is the call for civil behavior when police are called because a black person is driving or shopping or simply trying to go home?  What has happened to civil behavior at the borders and in the detention centers (jails) when workers are instructed not to touch or comfort weeping, terrified children?

Why did no talking heads on television or in the mainstream print media insist that civil disobedience be part of the conversation? Surely, at the very least, a debate about where the line should be drawn between civility and appropriate civil disobedience was called for.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The time is always right to do the right thing.”  Now is the time, if ever there was one in this country, to do the right thing, and that includes peacefully protesting evil proclamations, policies and politicians. Autocrats and dictators thrive when they can suppress civil discourse and action, whether by fear and intimidation, trivialization, objectification, or ultimately arrest, all of which have already occurred in “the land of the free and the brave.”

The first step toward oppression and irreversible autocratic control often appears as attempts to silence protest and attack the press. It begins by calling others vermin and labeling protesters and reporters “uncivil” – all while behaving in the most odious and uncivil ways possible. It’s a cruel irony, and a calculated one. And it must be stopped dead in its tracks.

That’s why we must continue to resist by demonstrating peacefully, in the face of others’ terrifying and terrible behavior, the solidarity and strength of good, kind people whose behavior can only be called brave, decent, respectful, and totally representative of civility.   

Is America Up to Its Newest Challenge?

We’ve been through a lot for a country with a relatively short history.  Starting with the American revolution against the British, we’ve faced many challenges that could have broken us. There was the Civil War, which cost us more American lives than any other, World War I, World War II, the 1929 stock market crash, the Dust Bowl era and various economic crises, the Vietnam War, political assassinations in the 60s and the 1970 Kent State massacre, race riots that could have divided the country again, the terrorist attack on 9-11, and more.

But what we face now is alarming in unprecedented ways. There have been bad presidents before and governments rife with corruption as well as administrations that lacked skill, compassion, and ethics. In those times, as David Kaiser wrote in TIME Magazine in 2016 after the presidential election, we overcame threats because of “the nation’s ability to come together and embark upon a great enterprise to solve a critical problem.” In the face of our current crisis, we seem unable to muster the spirit of compromise, cohesion, good judgment, and sound governance, not to mention moral compasses.  

As Kaiser wrote in TIME, “Americans are entitled to hope that the new crisis will not end with hostile armies marching through our territory and fighting battles.” He had yet to envision that cyber warfare would eliminate the need for marching troops, nor could he imagine just how disastrous a Trump presidency would be.

In a recent New York Times editorial, Sen. Orrin Hatch is quoted. “This great nation can tolerate a president who makes mistakes, but it cannot tolerate one who makes a mistake and then breaks the law to cover it up.” He was talking about President Clinton in 1999. The senator’s hypocrisy is stunning, and extremely dangerous at a time when the Republican opposition cannot own – and reverse – its behavior, even when our country is faced with monumental threats.

The Times editorial addresses the “growing possibility” that Mr. Trump might attempt to end the ongoing investigation into his campaign, his administration, and his possible obstruction of justice if not overt collusion with the Russians. Should such a moment come, The Times said, we will “suddenly find [ourselves] on the edge of an abyss, with the Constitution in [our] hands.”

If Mr. Trump succeeds in his attempts to shut down the ongoing investigations, he will have destroyed the very foundation of American democracy and rule of law, already fragile by nature because it relies upon tradition, good sense, and strong motivation for the greater good. He will, most awfully, have set himself above the law and effectively become a dictator. 

Should that terrifying scenario come to pass, it will be up to Congress to uphold our laws, maintain the separation of powers established by our founders, and keep intact the constitutional framework that has kept us a government, “of the people, for the people, and by the people” for over 200 years. There will be no time for continuing polarization in the Capital or the public square, no room for vitriol and partisanship, no benefit in clinging to harmful ideologies and hateful rhetoric. We will all be on the sinking ship together, and none of us will be singing to the end.

Everyone paying attention now acknowledges the fact that our democracy is truly threatened. We admit to feeling terrified by what could happen. We openly use the word “fascism,” so long danced around. We talk with a façade of levity about leaving if it gets much worse. We see Facebook posts of what Hitler and Goebbels said and we shudder before sharing. We learn about protesters being arrested, and the Sinclair broadcasting syndicate scripting pro-Trump messages for their many stations.

We join hashtag discussions about police brutality, racial injustice, ICE roundups, anti-Semitic and Muslim hate crimes, pro-natalist positions, abuses in education, the environment, and the interior by functionaries like Betsy DeVos, Scott Pruitt, and Ryan Zinke. We bemoan the fact that the new Secretary of Health and Human Services is a former senior vice president for corporate affairs at Eli Lilly and Co. who served as president of Lilly USA LLC.  We worry about how the State Department can operate without a Secretary or a full staff of seasoned diplomats in a world on the brink of disaster in various parts of the world. 

We stress over the lack of access to safe and effective healthcare, none moreso than women in need of reproductive healthcare. We worry about shrinking consumer protections, reduced regulations that keep our water and air clean, and who will be seated next in our federal and Supreme courts. We fret about voter registration being tampered with, and innocent immigrant children being shipped to countries they’ve never known, and we wonder how long it will take to correct the problems created by this administration if and when we finally elect sane legislators.

But most of all, what we worry about is this:  Will politicians finally put America and its people above any consideration of personal power or benefit, and will they, at long last, have the decency and moral courage to stop the travesties of a Trump administration before it is too late?

In short, can we, together, meet America’s greatest challenge ever, and can we come back again?

The Legacy of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and the Kids Who Would Make Her Proud

They are gay, straight and transgender. They are Jewish, Christian and Muslim. They are black, white and Latino. They are middle-class, affluent, and poor. And together they are doing something we’ve never seen before.  They are connecting the dots – recognizing something we now call “intersectionality,” defined by Merriam Webster as “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.”

They are the teens of Parkland, Florida, the kids in DC and Chicago schools, the 11-year old children who spoke so eloquently to the crowds in Washington at the March for Our Lives on March 24th.  Their words were heard around the country and the world by multitudes of people who flowed into the streets of their hometowns to plead in unison that, “Enough is enough.” Together, the voices of millions formed a chorus speaking truth to power as they awakened to the connections being made in the name of universal human rights.

Now, I’m not one for quoting the Bible but I can’t refrain from paraphrasing the Book of Isiah: “And [the children] shall lead them.”

  And not just away from gun violence in schools, movie theaters, malls, clubs, or the horrific violence of police shooting innocent black people and getting away with it.  These future leaders were speaking about the much larger issues that America has failed to address, like poverty, class, race, gender, disability and institutionalized discrimination. They were pleading for the survival of all of us, and for a future defined by unity and not division, love and not hate, compassion and not greed, dignity and not death, whether by commission or omission.  They were demanding that we place values above violence, and they did it with such respect, force, energy, and eloquence that there wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd.

They taught us a life lesson and they gave us a reason to hope.

They went beyond “Mi casa es su casa,” because they know that what happens in their casa, their community, their houses of worship, their schools could happen in any one of our houses, neighborhoods, or common spaces, no matter what color we are, how much wealth we have, or how mainstream we may have become.

The root of the youth movement today, so tragically launched by the events of February 14, 2018 in a school in Florida, is what empowers students of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School and the others now joining them. Its foundation is what they understand about the “realpolitik.” They are defining and now representing a new generation that is not only unique but vital, because these “kids” truly get it that together we stand, divided we fall. 

Additionally, they know how to bring their vision and their message to voters, to so-called leaders, and to those whose political futures are at stake. Strategically, these emerging adults are nothing short of brilliant. They understand how to use social media and they have a natural proclivity for using the methods of media advocacy, which means they put a human face on their issue, they tell stories to humanize statistics, they include action steps in their message – Register, Educate, Vote! – and they repeat tag lines that are pithy, powerful, and easily repeated.

The woman for whom the now well-known school was named, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, would be so proud of these students. A journalist and author, women's suffrage advocate, and conservation activist, she was every bit as feisty and politically astute as the students who attend the school that bears her name.  Her influential book The Everglades: River of Grass, published in 1947, redefined the popular conception that the Everglades were nothing more than a worthless swamp. It has been compared to Rachel Carson's important book Silent Spring.

According to her Wikipedia profile, Douglas was “outspoken and politically conscious, defending the women's suffrage and civil rights movements.” She undertook her work to protect the Everglades when she was nearly 80 years old and she lived nearly 30 years beyond that, working to the end.

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas’s spirit and legacy are now being felt not only by students who went to school one day as youngsters and came out (if they were lucky) as young adults creating a new kind of leadership. It is being realized by Americans and others who may never have thought of themselves as “political” but who will be forever changed by what happened that fateful day, and the movement it spawned.

For that, we can all be grateful.

Beware the Growing Demise of Democracy Globally

With each passing day, a question rises to the top of my troubled thoughts: Why don’t more people seem to get it? Why don’t they sound concerned about what pundits dub the death of our experiment with democracy? Why can’t they grasp that autocracies are rapidly flourishing?  Why doesn’t that scare us into greater vigilance, and more sensible votes?

Democracy becomes threatened in many ways. While violent power grabs are increasingly rare, the number of elected officials subverting the very processes that led them to power – a global phenomenon - is alarming.

In most cases, plutocracy, or oligarchy, means governments ruled by the rich for personal gain. As analysts have noted, with the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United, which allowed unlimited amounts of money to flow to politicians, “the wealthy are getting the democracy they pay for” in America.

In order for autocrats to hold onto power, voting rights are threatened or removed. Recent examples in the U.S. are the purging of voter registration rolls in Republican controlled states, and restrictions that make it harder for Blacks and Latinos to vote. At the same time, the media is positioned as an “enemy of the state,” not to be trusted with information, and facts, they share.

Another threat to democracy exists when voters are apathetic and take the rights they enjoy for granted. We have notoriously low voter turnout rates, although this year that may change. But when people feel they can’t do anything that will make a difference, they stop paying attention, and don’t go to the polls.

Carol Anderson, a history professor at Emory University, sounded this alarm recently. “Bringing an independent judiciary and investigative branch under the domination of the executive is one of the first moves of regimes that do not respect the rule of law.” She cites Pinochet’s Chile, Nazi Germany, and Putin’s Russia as examples. “The rationale is simple,” she says. “Besides the military, the judiciary and law enforcements branches are the most powerful in a state. Control and politicization of that wing allows rulers to criminalize opponents … when in fact they are really defenders of a more viable, democratic nation.”

It’s not just what’s happening in America because of the Trump administration.  Examples of threats to democracy around the world are frightening, and they matter. Civilization is once again threatened by regimes that quickly, effectively, and surreptitiously bring down democracy. As a collective movement, those regimes are again creating the resurgence of totalitarianism, with unimaginable results because nations of the world no longer live isolated from each other, politically, socially, or economically. 

Here are examples of what is happening elsewhere. In July, people in Poland marched to protest “the impending death of democracy” under the Law and Justice Party. Parliament had passed a bill giving the government the power to remove all Supreme Court judges through forced retirement. The president also announced he would sign a bill making it illegal to discuss Poland’s role in the Holocaust. (There were good Poles who resisted, but Poland also committed atrocities; denying them is denying historical fact.)

In Hungary, the right-wing party won sweeping political power in its national elections. Under Viktor Orban, the political climate is one of “a political greenhouse for an odd kind of soft autocracy, combining crony capitalism and far-right rhetoric with a single-party culture,” as Patrick Kingley put it in The New York Times. Orhan has instituted financial penalties for groups that help migrants, changed the electoral system, assaulted the country’s Constitution, curbed the media along with the country’s checks and balances, made homelessness a crime, and diverted huge sums of money to his loyalists. He is now influencing other Central and Eastern European countries like Romania.

In Egypt and Turkey, things are not going well either. Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pushed his most serious opponents out of scheduled elections. Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy says the country is “caught between an American-style Sisi and an Egyptian-style Putin.” Yet Sisi enjoys the support of Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Rex Tillerson.

Meanwhile, Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan, is dismantling democracy in his country and turning it into an autocracy divided by ethnic and religious factors. In the name of “stability,” Erdogan has concentrated power in his office. As of next year, he can appoint the cabinet and a number of vice-presidents without parliamentary approval, and he can select or remove senior civil servants at will.  Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic, must be turning in his grave.

The problem of dissolving democracies doesn’t stop in Europe or the Middle East. Latin America has had its destructive experiences and so have African countries. In Kenya, people are worried that their democracy is disappearing. Television stations have been shut down by the government, opposition politicians are under arrest and journalists have been threated with jail under President Kenyatta.

The rise of authoritarianism is real, dangerous, and on our doorstep. Nationalism, polarization and tribalism are being used to centralize power, destroy institutions of democracy, and lay the groundwork for re-writing rules that have been the foundation of democracy.

The question is, will we allow enemies of freedom to kill the democratic safety nets we have come to take for granted, or will we resist mightily at the ballot box and beyond?

Think It Can't Happen Here? Think Again

They were kids at summer camp, passing hot days in routine activity and comradery. They were also learning to speak German, singing German songs, practicing military drills and greeting superiors with Hitler salutes. Wearing Nazi-style uniforms, the children marched, took rifle practice, and raised Hitler Youth banners. There were 16 locally organized camps like this one in the 1930s.

The campers’ parents belonged to the German American Bund, people of German ancestry who formed citizens groups in many countries extolling “German virtues” and lobbying for causes helpful to Nazi Party goals. The German American Bund formed in 1936 as “an organization of patriotic Americans of German stock,” according to Alan Taylor writing in The Atlantic in June, 2017. The U.S. Bund soon boasted tens of thousands of members across 70 regional divisions.

In 1939, the Bund held an “Americanization” rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden to denounce Jewish conspiracies, FDR and others. Attended by 20,000 supporters, the 27 photos of the rally, and the children’s camps, included in Taylor’s Atlantic piece, are chilling.

As WWII began the Bund was disbanded, its leader arrested for embezzlement and deported to Germany.  But the American Bund happened.  Right here in the U.S. we had a large, active, hate-filled Nazi group training its youth to be brown-shirts. It was our own Third Reich.

Arne Bernstein, author of Swastika Nation, learned about American Nazis first-hand as a young man when a neo-fascist group threatened his Jewish neighborhood. “In the 1930s, 1940s and beyond,” he wrote on The History Reader blog in 2013, “fascism and Nazi loyalty was as American as a proverbial apple pie.”

Bernstein says the German-American Bund eventually boasted a following of 200,000 nationwide. The FBI put the number at somewhere between 6,000 to 8,000 while an American Legion study found over 25,000 members. Whatever the actual number of American Nazis, there were enough of them to develop “a nationwide system of family retreats, businesses, publications” and Americanized versions of Hitler Youth and SS squadrons. Among those who didn’t seem to have a problem with the Bund were Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, along with the 15,000 members of The Silver Legion of America.

In 1935 Sinclair Lewis published a novel called It Can’t Happen Here.  Like The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s making a comeback now. Lewis’s novel is a cautionary, alarming and seemingly prescient tale, about the fragility of democracy. It tells the story of an elected authoritarian president who becomes a dictator in the time of the Great Depression. The country’s new president wants to save America from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press, as the jacket cover says. Sound familiar?

Upon publication, the book originally resonated for Americans worried about the possibility of a fascist regime in this country, and the growth of such regimes abroad – think Hitler, Mussolini, and now right-wing factions rising in Europe, again in times of political upheaval and economic turmoil.

Lewis wasn’t the only one writing about the threat of fascism as American angst grew. Articles proliferated, one by Walter Lippman, who noted that the country had “come to a period of discouragement,” as Michael Meyer noted in his introduction to the novel’s new edition. Myer points out that America had its fair share of right-wing polemicists then as now. William Randolph Hearst proclaimed, for example, that “whenever you hear a prominent American called a ‘Fascist,’ you can usually make up your mind that the man is simply a loyal citizen who stands for Americanism.”

By page two of Lewis’s novel, readers know what’s coming, foreshadowing a chilling sense of our own time, when a general rhapsodizes on the idea of nationalism. “Our highest ambition is to be let alone … We must be prepared to defend our shores against all the alien gangs of international racketeers that call themselves ‘governments.’ …A great nation must go on arming itself more and more…for peace….” And on goes the diatribe about isolationism, military strength, alien gangs and other perceived threats to thunderously affirming applause.

Lewis’s novel is full of fiery speeches, proselytizing pastors and politicians, simplistic rhetorical proclamations, and bizarre claims that grow more fervent as the noose tightens on a nation. While the story moves all the way to executions and concentration camps – scenarios we are not ready to imagine possible – it is still a cautionary tale, one that ends with the liberal journalist and leader of the resistance fleeing to Canada “where quiet men awaited news of freedom.”

The leader has realized too late that “the tyranny of this dictatorship isn’t primarily the fault of Big Business, nor of the demagogues who do their dirty work. It’s the fault of … all the conscientious, respectable, lazy-minded [liberals] who have let the demagogues wriggle in, without fierce enough protest.”

That’s an analysis worthy of our attention, as Lewis’s novel is a book worth reading in these troubling times. Because it really can happen here. It already has.

Is the Democratic Party Disappearing?

Ever worry about this? “What if we gave a party and no one came?”  Right now, I’m worried that many of us are invited to support a party that we don’t really want to be part of and don’t feel good about voting for, and the disturbing thing is the problem is of their own making.

When Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and others blathered about “A Better Deal” recently I, and I’m sure others, despaired. It’s not just about the economy, Stupid! I wanted to tell them. It’s not just about the middle class and working (white) people! It’s not about more of the same blah, blah, blah we’ve heard since the 1990s. And I’m not sure who’s writing their copy, but what were they doing using a Trump-loaded word like “Deal”?

At a time when the Democrats should be about to launch a vigorous, inspired campaign designed for a major takeover of Congress, why are they poised for self-defeat yet again?

When will the leadership realize who their constituents are and understand how they are failing them?  Where is the vision for a better future, not a better deal? To put it another way, where is our next “Yes We Can” moment? Without a bit of inspiration, how can the majority of us come together as a nation that can feel proud of itself again as we regain our stature in the world?

To illustrate just how pathetic the Democratic party is right now, consider this. An extensive online search for “Democratic Party platform” yielded the campaign rhetoric and plan for 2016! It’s 2017 and we’re heading into a crucial election year. Where are you, Mr. Perez, Mr. Ellison, Nancy, Chuck, et al? Enough with the continuous calls for contributions. It’s time to tell people of color, people explained in the book Hillbilly Elegy, people terrified of losing their health care, the LBGT community, women and others who once trusted you what you stand for and what you’re going to do to insure that their futures are healthy, safe, and yes, economically sound while also ensuring that their Constitutionally protected rights are not going to be snatched from them behind closed doors by a creeping and creepy autocracy.

Speaking of creepy, how could any Democrat in leadership possibly dare to violate women’s right to control their own bodies by endorsing anti-abortion candidates?  Are they really ready to throw women under the bus for a few votes?  And what’s next – embracing racist candidates? Homophobic candidates? Islamophobic candidates? I doubt it, which underscores the point that betraying a major constituency is, in this case, tantamount to political pimping.

“There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates,” according to Rep. Ben Lujan (D-N.M.) who declared that “we need to have Democrats that can win in districts across America.”  Yes, Mr. Lujan, there is a litmus test – or there once was. It was meant to ensure that all Democrats would stand for the principles and values for which they were once known and trusted.  

So, sorry, Nancy Pelosi, the fact that you grew up in a “very devout Catholic family” whom you loved should have absolutely nothing to do with your political position on women’s health, reproductive rights and choices.

Bernie Sanders?  Sorry, but backing Heath Mello to serve as a mayor is not okay given his anti-choice legislative background.  Such endorsements represent political prostitution and showcase misogyny writ large, which the Democratic party and its frontrunners may realize as contributions dip dramatically and polls become troubling because many former supporters understand what a huge betrayal the leadership just handed us.

Yes, “raising wages and incomes of American workers and creating millions of good-paying jobs” is important. So is lowering the cost of living “for families,” but let’s not forget the multitudes of young and single people out there, or women heads of household, or disenfranchised, appropriately angry and afraid minorities.  Yes, “lower prescription drug prices, crack down on monopolies and the concentration of economic power.” But where is campaign finance reform?  Where is climate change, environmental integrity vs. oil drilling in treasured national parks and polluted waters, the urgency of infrastructure, support for science and research, a viable, well-articulated health policy that fixes the flaws in the ACA? Where is the commitment to ensure safety nets like social security and Medicare/Medicaid? Where are women in your plans?  In other words, where is your 2017-18 policy platform?

Writing in The Guardian recently, columnist Jamie Peck said, “the Democrats seem more determined than ever to bungle their comeback from 2016’s humiliating defeat. From small-thinking policy proposals…and slogans that read like satire…to their quixotic obsession with wooing ‘moderate’ Republicans and the rich to the detriment of progressives and the poor, their strategy is, at best a wet fart. At worst, it’s a plan to sell out everything they once stood for.”

I’m with Jamie Peck and other thinking Dems who’ve simply had enough. At this point, who among us can say we’re still coming to the party? The question now is, what are Democrats going to do about it?