Blog 15
February 3, 2017
Coup or Revolution
This has been a tough week. Trump and his band of white male nationalists are running rampant and the analysis by those in the know looks frightening. https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.wl311iwss. In short, Steven Bannon , Breitbart and Jeff Sessions have brought Trump into their cadre of white men who believe that they know what is best for the U.S., and they know how to undermine our democracy so that once again we will be a “moral religious nation” according to their definitions of moral religious and nation. Sarah Posner on Terry Gross writer from The Nation gives a cent analysis of this on Terry Gross. http://www.npr.org/2017/02/02/513041005/exploring-the-nationalistic-and-christian-right-influences-on-trump?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social.
The word on the street is that they will create “shock events” (the travel ban on Moslems for example) that draw us all into the streets and along with us the anarchists and white nationalists who will attempt to break up peaceful demonstrations. Unrest, chaos will lead to a call for martial law. To add to the confusion and fear, all this is happening very fast with Trump saying one thing one day and then issuing a contradiction the next. When I am not fully awake this feels like an inevitable coup.
Even the long time Republican supporter David Brooks writes:
“It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity — substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment.”https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/opinion/the-republican-fausts.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fdavid-brooks&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection
However, there is still air in my belief that there is power in the powerless. We can with will, reveal, resist and revolt against the unimaginable destruction of our country. For the first time in many years people on the left ,all over this country, are getting together to witness what is happening and speak out against it. Those of us in Indivisible are already working on the 2018 election and searching for ways to reach out to groups different form our own including those who voted for Trump. Today a group of Jews will pray at a Mosque with Moslem neighbors. By our actions, we will demonstrate an alternative to the dark white male nationalist agenda of the Trump administration, but it won’t be easy. I believe we will prevail, but there will be many destructive “shock event” along the way. We have to keep our eyes on these events and on the larger story of an attempted takeover and refuse to relinquish our freedoms and the freedoms of all Americans.
Wise words
Charles Blow “No Trump not on our Watch January 31, 2017
Excerpt.
America will not stand for this, so if obsequious conservative politicians or lily-livered liberal ones won’t sufficiently stand up to this demagogic dictator, then the American people will do the job themselves. Over the weekend, protesters spontaneously popped up at airports across the country to send an unambiguous message: Not in our name; not on our watch. It is my great hope that this will be a permanent motif of Trump’s term. If no one else is going to fight for American values, it falls to the American people themselves to do so.
Governor Jerry Brown State Address
Excerpt.
While we now face different challenges, make no mistake: the future is uncertain and dangers abound. Whether it’s the threat to our budget, or to undocumented Californians, or to our efforts to combat climate change – or even more global threats such as a financial meltdown or a nuclear incident or terrorist attack – this is a time which calls out for courage and for perseverance. I promise you both.
But let’s remember as well that after the perilous voyage, those who made it to America found boundless opportunity. And so will we.
Let me end in the immortal words of Woody Guthrie:
“This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me…
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.”
California is not turning back. Not now, not ever.
Understanding what happened at Berkeley
From Kaethe Weingarten on Facebook:
From my perspective four blocks away, this article shows bias. Even my 9 and 6 year-old grandchildren understood the difference between outside agitators and peaceful protest and also the difference between free speech and threats made by the invited speaker to undocumented students. There were 1500 peaceful student demonstrators and 100-150 outside agitators. No arrests were made by the Berkeley police and Berkeley students got up at 5 AM to clean up the debris. It was not a free speech battle: it was a decision about everyone's safety.
From Talia’s Letter talia.lavin@gmail.com
Jiayang Fan
"The muddling of fact and fiction is a tried-and-true tactic of totalitarian regimes. What’s more, when the two are confused for long enough, or when an indefatigable war on truth has been waged for a year, or two years, or perhaps eight, it will likely be harder and more tiresome to untangle them and remember a time when a firm line was drawn between the true and the false as a matter of course. If amnesia breeds normalization, fatigue has always served as the authoritarian’s great accomplice. ...
But democracy, freedom of expression, and, above all, the right to truth are not antiquated pieties. They belong to citizens who can still make their voices heard, before resignation metastasizes into complacency, exhaustion into self-doubt. The struggle will be to maintain openness and tolerance as the norm, the values that our children absorb into their identities naturally—to be defended rather than be defensive about.”
Action
From Talia: I wanted to clue you all in to a really great organization called Flippable, who's working to capitalize on the new wokeness of the Democratic electorate to FLIP SEATS blue all across the country. One thing that's so refreshing about them is their deep pragmatism, and their clear hold on elections happening all over the country. As they've emphasized, this isn't even a wait until 2018: over the next 100 days, there are 14 special elections for state and federal seats all over the country. They've singled out three races they believe to be winnable, and I wanted to direct you to those races and encourage you to add your efforts and your publicity!
From Peter Yedidia on Facebook about how to make calls:
YOU SHOULD BE CALLING, CALLING AND CALLING AGAIN
Helpful advice about how to influence your representatives from An anonymous source:
"... this is guidance from a high-level staffer for a Senator:
There are 2 things that all Democrats should be doing all the time right now, and they're by far the most important things:
1. The best thing you can do to be heard and get your congressperson to pay attention is to have face-to-face time - if they have townhalls, go to them. Go to their local offices. If you're in DC, try to find a way to go to an event of theirs. Go to the "mobile offices" that their staff hold periodically (all these times are located on each congressperson's website). When you go, ask questions. A lot of them. And push for answers. The louder and more vocal and present you can be at those the better.
2. But, those in-person events don't happen every day. So, the absolute most important thing that people should be doing every day is calling.
You should make 6 calls a day: 2 each (DC office and your local office) to your 2 Senators & your 1 Representative. Calls are what all the congresspeople pay attention to. Every single day, the Senior Staff and the Senator get a report of the 3 most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (in DC and local offices), and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics. They're also sorted by zip code and area code.
And this is IMPORTANT:
She said that Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4-1, and when it's a particular issue that single-issue-voters pay attention to (like gun control, or planned parenthood funding, etc...), it's often closer to 11-1, and that has recently pushed Republican congressfolks on the fence to vote with the Republicans. In the last 8 years, Republicans have called, and Democrats haven't.
SO, WHEN YOU CALL:
A) When calling the DC office, ask for the Staff member in charge of whatever you're calling about ("Hi, I'd like to speak with the staffer in charge of Healthcare, please"). Local offices won't always have specific ones, but they might. If you get transferred to that person, awesome. If you don't, that's ok - ask for their name, and then just keep talking to whoever answered the phone. Don't leave a message (unless the office doesn't pick up at all - then you can...but it's better to talk to the staffer who first answered than leave a message for the specific staffer in charge of your topic).
B) Give them your zip code. They won't always ask for it, but make sure you give it to them, so they can mark it down. Extra points if you live in a zip code that traditionally votes for them, since they'll want to make sure they get/keep your vote.
C) If you can make it personal, make it personal. "I voted for you in the last election and I'm worried/happy/whatever" or "I'm a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos," or "as a single mother" or "as a white, middle class woman," or whatever.
D) Pick 1-2 specific things per day to focus on. Don't go down a whole list - they're figuring out what 1-2 topics to mark you down for on their lists, so, focus on 1-2 per day. Ideally something that will be voted on/taken up in the next few days, but it doesn't really matter…even if there's not a vote coming up in the next week, call anyway. It's important that they just keep getting calls.
E) Be clear on what you want - "I'm disappointed that the Senator..." or "I want to thank the Senator for their vote on..." or "I want the Senator to know that voting in _____ way is the wrong decision for our state because..." Don't leave any ambiguity.
F) They may get to know your voice/get sick of you - it doesn't matter. The people answering the phones generally turn over every 6 weeks anyway, so even if they're really sick of you, they'll be gone in 6 weeks.
From experience since the election: If you hate being on the phone & feel awkward, don't worry...there are a bunch of scripts (Indivisible has some). After a few days of calling, it starts to feel a lot more natural. Put the 6 numbers in your phone all under Politician, which makes it really easy to click down the list each day.
https://5calls.org Help with making calls
Kevin DeLeon http://sd24.senate.ca.gov State Representative. California Values Act.
We can either retreat or we can fight: http://go.kamalaharris.org/page/s/fight-introduction
From Kaethe Weingarten by mail
ReplyDeleteAnd I would add write call email those who are showing courage. I've written Sarah poster for example