The Price of Purges

Imagine this: A historic hurricane barrels towards Florida’s Gulf Coast, or massive fires move quickly through California, or a giant tornedo tears through the Midwest. But there is no way to know these disasters are coming because the Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency that tracks and monitors weather events that threaten massive numbers of people who live in susceptible areas.

There is no help during or after these disasters occur because the Trump administration has made deep cuts to staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that are alarming state officials and some Republican lawmakers.  

Imagine kids going hungry because as the Food Research and Action Center notes, millions of people throughout the country are struggling to make ends meet while Congress is cutting food programs that feed hungry kids.  SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is among the cutbacks that provide school meals critical to children’s health and learning. More than 42 million people rely on SNAP to put food on the table.

The program not only reduces hunger. It improves health outcomes and reduces health care costs. Any cuts to SNAP harm children, older adults, and people with disabilities, who make up the majority of SNAP households.  Reducing SNAP benefits increases food insecurity and shifts the burden to local governments and charities who can’t fill the gap. Local economies are also harmed, especially in rural areas. Cuts to other food programs result in some schools not being able to serve free school meals affecting 12 million children.

The list of purge problems continues.  According to Kevin Caroll, author of a piece in The Dispatch in February and a former military intelligence officer and CIA case officer points out that investing in intelligence saves U.S. taxpayers’ money and American Lives.

There are eighteen agencies in the intelligence community augmented by civilian and military intelligence organizations. They prevent attacks by terrorists and vigilantes. They aid in diplomacy efforts through intelligence about foreign countries.

The economic costs to Americans are disconcerting. According to a Wall Street Journal report on price hikes due to tariffs, cars, fuel, building materials, appliances, beef, clothing, and computers will take a hit of up to a 10 to 45 percent increase. Cars, for example, will go up to $50,000 to 59, 000 while computers will rise above $1000.

Imagine how climate changes are rapidly imperiling the planet. As John Wesley Powell wrote after navigating the river at the Grand Canyon in 1896, “We are now ready to start our way down the Great Unknown. We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not.”

It seems apt given an article by Yale Climate Connections that addresses the importance of climate change when we consider budget cuts like those taken at NOAA, FEMA and other federal agencies. The article states that “the impacts of climate change will be apocalyptic for many nations and people, particularly those that are not rich and White. People and communities with the least resources tend to be the first and hardest hit by climate change, not only because poorer people and communities are inherently more vulnerable to the impacts of any disaster, but also because the extremes induced by climate change tend to be worse in the tropics and subtropics, home to many poor nations.”

Global extreme weather events are becoming more common and increasingly worrisome.  Japan’s tsunami is not that far behind us and recent warnings of possible other lethal waves have occurred. The Santorini earthquakes and elsewhere are alarming along with fires that burned large swaths of Los Angeles.  We’ve seen photos of scary floods, starvation from droughts, and fluctuating temperatures globally. 

All these events have policy implications. As Thomas Edsall wrote in The New York Times on March 3rd, (edited for length) we should “Expect the elimination of thousands of jobs, the decimation of liberal institutions, reduced funding of safety nets, more homelessness, hunger and disease, poverty, financial starvation of universities and nongovernmental organizations, unannounced raids, unreliable data, an increasingly authoritarians worldwide, pervasive suspicion and revenge. Expect more suffering, fear, less security and happiness.” That’s not hyperbolic. The purges are impacting American and global economies, housing crises, absent insurance policies, agriculture and food supplies, not to mention morbidity and mortality.

Given deep worries about looming healthcare crises I must include the horrific impact of shutting down research and practices that relate to whether we live or die. Imagine this: you or someone you love is in treatment for cancer but will no longer be able to access experimental protocols or proven therapies, or your child has a chronic condition that requires inaccessible special care and protection, or measles, polio, and pandemics like those now rampant in other countries, return with a vengeance but there are no vaccines, or data, available.   

The time to address these likely catastrophes driven by narcissists, oligarchs, and bullies is now, whether in the halls of Congress, the media, on the streets, in town halls, and in voting booths. We can do this if we really try, and try we must.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, VT 

The Demise of Education is a Looming Catastrophe

It’s happening slowly but the consequences will be stunning. From pre-school to elementary and high school to higher education we stand to lose generations of youth and emerging adults who will have been denied their right to accessible, quality education that fosters critical thinking, higher learning, and skills that will allow them to be valuable members of society no matter what they choose to undertake as adults in the workforce.

They may want to be tradespeople, future teachers, scientists, healthcare professionals, policymakers, business owners, and more, but no matter what level they have achieved in school during the Trump administration their educational growth will not be met without a Department of Education. Their futures (and ours) will be compromised and stifled by the myopic, unformed policies promulgated by ignorant sycophants who don’t value education or expertise and fail to understand the importance of quality educated citizens if a nation is to thrive.

What we are facing is a frontal assault on excellence in education that will have higher social costs than we can imagine. We will have forfeited the “American exceptionalism” that many of us like to claim because curiosity and creativity will be absent from curricula.

 Right wing authoritarianism, couple with sheer stupidity, will mean no more excellent faculty at every level who leave the profession because they fear what they say, write, or say will be cause for dismissal. No longer will there be truthful historical context, great literature, and Socratic challenges upon which to build. The truths we tell our children and the ways we help them develop as competent, caring adults will disappear. Bullying will grow bigger while brains shrink, along with our values, compassion and sensitivity toward others because they are things we also learn in school.

Consider what an education department does.  It manages over a trillion dollars of student loan debt and oversees the Pell Grant that provides aid to students below a certain income. It also administers student aid which enables universities to offer financial aid. Its Office for Civil Rights conducts investigations and issues guidance on how civil rights laws should be applied and tracks a database that shows disparities in resources, course access, and discipline for students of color and lower socioeconomic groups.

But the Trump administration has instructed the office to prioritize complaints of antisemitism and has opened investigations that relate to transgender rights. Much of the department’s money for K-12 schools is allocated to large federal programs for low-income schools and disabled individuals.

The Trump administration has also slashed funding that colleges and universities depend on including grants and contracts that support research being conducted in these venues. These cuts result in researchers being fired, and fewer Ph.D. students being accepted at colleges and universities. This impacts highly motivated and competent immigrants who want to advance their scientific training in the United States and who contribute enormously to research and innovation in all fields.

The withdrawal of grants and contracts normally provided to places of higher learning along with targeting schools over antisemitism and diversity initiatives is why so many colleges and university have stopped student organizations and pro-Palestinian protests and have started violating First Amendment rights of free speech and peaceful assembly.

It’s sickening to see places that were once revered as bastions of growth, academic distinction, personal achievement, and logical thinking fold. Universities have always been the reservoirs of knowledge, discourse, increased insight, and realized aspirations. Now they aren’t playing that role because they are being silenced, made fearful and irrelevant, while bowing to power instead of upholding principles that were formerly embraced as guides to learning since the days of ancient places of learning.

At lower levels of education, teachers’ responses to what is happening as a result of the administration’s attitude toward the closing of the Department of Education are telling. In a survey by PBS News Hour in February respondents made clear what’s at stake.

They are worried about the elimination of special education and disability services because of teacher cuts or resignations which will result in larger classes and no accommodation for various learning needs. Rural schools will be among the hardest hit schools. Many will close or consolidate, and teachers will likely be less qualified.

One respondent noted that “the loss of DOE will be predominantly felt in all our programs designed to help economically disadvantaged students and families…it will be like going back in time to the 1960s, when children with learning differences and challenging behaviors were not entitled to an education at all.” Funding for computers, lab equipment and other learning tools will not be funded, nor will technical and training support for teachers exist. Graduate programs  will end.

Linda McMahon, who has no relevant credentials to bring to bring to her job as head of the Education Department, as long as it lasts. She has called her “final mission” to be eliminating what she sees as bureaucratic bloat. She wants to turn the agency’s authority to the states, and we all know how block grants turned out.  If you lived in some states, you were definitely screwed. While the elimination of the department requires an act of Congress, the show of ring-kissing at the State of the Union speech made clear that the department is in very deep trouble. 

It doesn’t take much imagination to understand what’s at stake here, whether you are a student, a parent, an educator, a policymaker, or a sensible, compassionate human being.  We cannot let this stand. Make sure your legislators know that.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.  www.elayn-clift.com/blog

Six Triple Eight and Rosie the Riveter Belong on the Mall

Six Triple Eight and Rosie the Riveter Belong on the Mall

In his final week in office, President Biden signed important legislation that would allow a monument dedicated to American women to be placed on the National Mall.  It would honor women’s suffragists who, after seventy years of trying, would finally be recognized for what they achieved in 1920 - the right to vote.

The Women’s Suffrage National Monument was approved on the eve of Donald Trump’s second term. Preceded by the Vietnam nurses 1993 monument it will be the Mall’s first large scale monument dedicated to American women’s history. The site has yet to be determined and there is no design yet or competition announcement for sculptors.

Given the current situation in Washington, where neither women nor art are respected, it will take time before the Suffragists are on the Mall and even more time for Rosie the Riveter or the 6888 to show up, but it’s about time women representing their wartime labor is recognized in a place of memory and respect

We have Joe Neguse (D-CO) to thank for the Suffrage monument. He introduced legislation for it to be created in 2020 and his bill passed in the House. Unfortunately, it has remained stalled in the Senate until now.

Still, it’s not too soon to start advocating for another group of women to be honored on the Mall. “Rosie the Riveter,” representing women who labored in America’s factories during World War II, deserve to be there too along with the all-women 6888 regiment. The Rosies filled critical wartime factories and the 6888 restored morale among exhausted soldiers who had waited for mail from home.

Some Rosies received a bit of recognition at the Capital last spring when they received Congressional Gold Medals for their efforts. But that’s not a lasting memorial that everyone can see. As one of them, Mae Krier, said at the Capital, “Up until 1941 it was a man’s world. They didn’t know how capable us women were did they?”

Thanks to an endearing poster that has a woman in a bandana flexing her muscle we know about these women, but we have very little information about who they were and what they did unless you’ve seen the documentary about them. The reality is they were wives, mothers, daughters, and girlfriends whose men were fighting in the war. With little reservation they quickly became heads of households while learning demanding skills and holding down vital jobs in America’s factories to help the war effort.

By 1943 “Rosie the Riveters” were known and respected, but few people realized that one out of five defense workers were women, or that the largest employers of women during WWII were airplane manufacturers, and companies like Chrysler, Goodyear, and Ford. Nor did they know just after the war that more women worked in the labor force than during the war.

More than 310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry in 1943, making up 65 percent of the industry’s total workforce (compared to just 1 percent in the pre-war years). The munitions industry also heavily recruited women workers, as illustrated by the U.S. government’s Rosie the Riveter propaganda campaign.

Sadly, when Johnny came marching home again, the Rosies, who’d been admired for their skills and work ethics when they were needed, found themselves being subject to propaganda via a slew of medial messages that tried to convince them that their real place was in the home as wives and mothers. They suffered mass layoffs as vets took their jobs, but some of them proudly expressed the pride they had taken in their work.

One of them was Arlene Crary who lived in Wisconsin but went to work for almost two years at a Boeing factory in Seattle where she was paid $1.48 an hour.  Eva Chenevert lived in Detroit. A year after graduating high school she was hired by Chrysler to make skins for airplanes.  She was faced with misogyny and racism as a Black woman. Still, these women and others like them soldiered on.

As the National Park Service points out, “Rosie’s impact extended well beyond the war years. Her image became a rallying cry for the women’s rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, inspiring legislation like the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Today, Rosie continues to inspire advocacy for gender equality and representation in fields like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ("STEM.")

Illustrator Norman Rockwell deserves our thanks for an early image of Rosie the Riveter that appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in the 1940s. Soon other images followed, including the iconic one we all know that appears on various items and shows up at women’s marches.

The important thing about Rosie and her legacy isn’t just about breaking barriers and women’s war efforts. It’s about what she stands for. Her poster words "We Can Do It!" continues to encourage young women to challenge limitations, pursue their ambitions, celebrate their achievements, and work for a future in which all women are recognized and respected for the work they do.

Surely Rosie the Riveter, and all that she stands for, along with the 6888, deserves a monument on the Mall. It’s long overdue for her to stand alongside other pioneering women like Vietnam nurses, Suffragists, and Eleanor Roosevelt, all of whom took risks that helped us move toward an egalitarian future. There should always be space for that.

The Shock and Awe of Immigrant Deportations

They left Colombia to escape violence hoping to legally apply for asylum in the United States. Tthey were among the first to be deported by the Trump administration. It happened after five flights returned hundreds of Colombian migrants to their home country in the waning days of January, the Washington Post reported on Instagram.

As the new administration got into full swing, applying for asylum instantly became increasingly difficult. One way to halt applications was cutting off established and future appointments with CBP One, a mobile app that offered migrants a legal pathway to apply. Without that option still available, the Colombian family turned themselves in at the border hoping they could keep their scheduled appointment. Within days they were deported.

Another family, profiled on Instagram by Occupy Democrats last month involved three generations, a three-year-old child, her mother, and her grandmother, all American citizens from Puerto Rico who spoke fluent English when they were shopping in a Milwaukee store. Denied the chance to talk to an official they were taken to a detention center where the child was separated from her mother. When presented with birth certificates an officer released them.

An immigrant daughter who graduated from an Ivy League college and later earned a law degree, told a cable TV reporter that she received a call to bring her father to a government office because his green card was pending. He had lived in the U.S. for dozens of years, worked and paid taxes, and never been in trouble with the law so she had no reason to think he would encounter difficulties. But upon arrival the daughter was told to leave the room. When she refused, security escorted her out. When she returned, her father was gone – deported. 

Errors, cruel separations, and  entrapment is happening in many places. Children are separated from their mothers. People are followed home in their cars by ICE, identified perhaps by a woman wearing hijab or a dark-skinned man spotted in a grocery store. People who contribute to their communities, are vital to our economy, and never disobey the law are dragged away in front of their families. Many are victims of mistaken identity. Stories like these vary but they are similarly painful, heartbreaking and grievous.

Physician-writer Danielle Ofri, writing in The New York Times just after the January election, said that “Doctors and nurses [who are immigrants] should get ready for mass deportations. Patients are scared too. One patient who had multiple chronic health issues told Ofri that she was afraid of being picked up because she would not be allowed to take her medications “in the immigration camps.” She had stopped coming to the hospital for checkups because she was “scared ICE will be in train stations and bus stops.”

As horror stories mount individuals and families are going into hiding, clinging to their children who no longer go to school and who can’t seek healthcare. The price of eggs doesn’t compare to that kind of trauma.

Yet the Trump administration continues to cling to ideas that are built on myth, assumptions, stereotyping, racism and an appalling lack of understanding about what will happen if millions of hardworking, productive, honest, skilled and unskilled workers are forced out of the country.

Historical context is called for here. In 1980 Congress passed the Refuge Act which meant that people claiming political asylum had to meet a set of requirements to qualify for refuge or asylum.  But Ronald Reagan chose to view people fleeing political violence in Latin American as economic migrants, a designation that caused many applicants to be disqualified for asylum.

At about that time the government began resisting the sanctuary movement, especially in places of worship. In 1984 the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a predecessor to ICE, launched a full-scale investigation into the sanctuary movement and its leaders. Undercover agents were employed to collect evidence that religion was being used as a covert way to push a radical political agenda and to thus undermine immigration laws.

Soon, leaders of the sanctuary movement were charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to violate federal law. Not long afterwards, sanctuaries began spreading from churches to college campuses, local legislative bodies and state level protections and laws.

Now Donald Trump insists that sanctuary cities are havens of crime so overrun by dangerous immigrants that he needs to have an army of agents like ICE, the National Guard, and the military to control a plague of epic proportions perpetrated by people of color, poor people who have suffered unimaginable violence and persecution. That, of course, demands an expansion of “detention centers” which are, in reality, concentration camps where innocent people and families can languish for years.

“Many of these deportations threaten a range of fundamental human rights including the right to family unity, the right to seek asylum from persecution, the right to humane treatment in detention, the right to due process, and the rights of children,” Human Rights Watch points out.

These rights are being denied by an administration that is hell-bent on making America white again, run by cowards and oligarchs who suck up to and financially support a wannabe lifetime dictator.  But as Rebecca Solnit wrote in The Guardian, “The more we stand up, the harder it is for this authoritarian agenda to succeed, and the more uncomfortable we make it for those going along with the lies and cruelty, the harder it will be to persecute any single person who says what’s being done to immigrants is terrorism.

 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Remembering the Gifts of Black Culture, Creativity and Science

Each February, National Black History Month, we remember an essential part of our national history. It’s one that includes the racism that led to slavery, oppression, segregation, violence, and the marginalization that continues today.  But it’s also a time to recognize the gifts that Black contributions have made creatively, culturally and scientifically to American life and beyond.

From jazz, blues, gospel and hip-hop music to the visual arts, theater, dance, film, and plays, we have grown from the work of people like Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, and so many others whose musical gifts have given us so much. Playwrights like Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson have told us through their stories what life was like for people who were marginalized and persecuted because of their skin color. Talented actors like Sidney Poitier and Cicely Tyson along with directors like Spike Lee and Tyler Perry illuminated stories that changed us.

Others like the dance icon Alvin Ailey and dancer/choreographer Judith Jamieson  showed us the power of dance while  painter Faith Ringgold and photographer Chester Higgins, to name just a few, helped challenge social norms as they depicted the struggles and achievements of other Black individuals, sharing the complexities of Black history and culture.

The recent death of Nikki Giovanni, a renowned African American poet, reminds us of other Black women poets, writers, and iconic changemakers. Writers like Zora Neale Hurston, who became a significant black woman writer of the early 20th century with her autobiographical novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, about the effects of misogyny and racism for Black women of her generation.

Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Alice Walker, is best known for her 1982 novel, The Color Purple, which explored female African-American experience as well. Walker also wrote about the taboo topic of female genital cutting in her novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy, a tribute to her courage as part of the black feminist movement.

Toni Morrison saw books as “a form of political action.”  Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, tells the story of a young black girl obsessed with white standards of beauty. Her later novel, Beloved, based on a true slave narrative, won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing the evils of slavery.

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou shared the story of her childhood rape.  Reading black authors Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois aided her recovery. In the 1950s, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild meeting James Baldwin and other great authors. She wrote and read the inaugural poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” for President Clinton.

Audre Lorde was another iconic figure. A self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” her work championed women breaking their silence, never better than in The Cancer Journals when she was post-mastectomy.

Gwendolyn Brooks, poet, author and teacher, dealt with personal celebrations and struggling people. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 she was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize. She was also the first black woman to be a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.

In the realm of science, among the most recognized names in science are the Black women who worked for NASA on the space program. Katherine Johnson, a mathematician, was one of them. She calculated the path for the spacecraft that put the first U.S astronaut in space and applied her math skills to  advance electronic computers.

Mary Jackson, an engineer and mathematician joined the NASA Langley Research Center in 1951. She was the first African American female engineer to work at NASA where she worked on a 60,000 horsepower wind tunnel capable of blasting models with winds approaching the speed of sound.

Dorothy Vaughan, a computer scientist and mathematician, applied her math skills to computers at the NASA research center and became the first African American woman to be promoted to supervisor.  

Dr. Mae Jemison, a physician, engineer, and astronaut was the first African American woman to travel to space in 1992.  She was a science mission specialist and a co-investigator on a bone cell research experiment conducted during her eight-day mission.

But not all Black scientists of note are female or space experts. Let’s not forget George Washington Carver who founded a research lab where he worked to discover over 300 uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes.

Much later, Emmett W. Chappelle, an American scientist made valuable contributions in the fields of medicine, philanthropy, food science, and astrochemistry. His achievements led to his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work on bioluminescence, in 2007.

George R. Carruthers, however, was a space physicist and engineer who worked for NASA. He perfected a powerful ultraviolet camera for NASA to use when it launched Apollo 16.  Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2003, he was awarded the National Medal for Technology and Invention in 2011.

There are so many others in all sectors to honor this month and so many more who have yet to grace us with their work. For now, let’s be mindful of those we’ve been lucky to be touched by as we look ahead to who are yet to come.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt

Welcome to the Gilded Age

It’s déjà vu all over again. The robber barons are back. The wealthy have their cottages by the sea in the Hamptons, in international mansions, and at Mara Lago instead of Newport. Their yachts are shining and staffed while rivers of money flow from the coffers of billionaires who escape paying taxes and offer their obscene wealth in exchange for political favor and power. Clearly, we are once again a nation of prospering oligarchs and exploited paupers.

The glittering Gilded Age that reached its apex between 1880 and 1920 was a golden era of opulent architecture, extravagant fashion, expensive art, and expansive parties. Built on the economic growth that occurred following the Civil War and Reconstruction businessmen and bankers made out like bandits by investing in railroads, factories, and various industries that produced the raw materials needed for the development of innovative inventions that enabled mass production.

That led to “conspicuous consumption,” a term coined by a social critic at the time.  Mark Twain, who dubbed the era the “Gilden Age,” was among other critics troubled by the growing disparity between social classes.

While some in the monied class applied their wealth to building libraries, museums and public improvements in large cities (often prodded to do so by their wives), they overlooked the dark side of the needs of those who were on the other end of the social and economic spectrum. For example, they overlooked child labor, dangerous working conditions, and the exploitation of immigrant workers.

The Vanderbilts, Astors, and Carnegies looked the other way, ignoring life in the tenements of New York City and factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where the 1911 fire killed 146 trapped young women workers. Journalist and social reformer Jacob Riis brought the reality  of these travesties to light in stark photographs of slums, schools, factories, public health, and more in his photographic collection, How the Other Half lives housed at the Library of Congress.

Among today’s most recognized magnates and robber barons are three of the wealthiest and most morally corrupt men in America. Their enormous wealth and lack of social conscience makes their predecessors seem tame.

Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon and owns the Washington Post is heavily invested in Uber, AirBnB, and X has a net worth of US$ 236 billion, while Amazon employees earn about $15 an hour despite the physical demands of the job and expectations about productivity. Amazon also continues to ban unions and illegally fires workers for trying to organize them. He also has had workplaces patrolled for signs of unionizing activity.  It’s positively Dickensian.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, is heavily invested in SpaceX, and owns X (formerly Twitter). He has Bezos beat in terms of net worth. According to Forbes, which tracks this kind of thing, Musk is worth over $420 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg is the third wealthiest man in America with a net worth of nearly $218 billion. He became a billionaire at the age of 23.  Owner of Meta, formerly Facebook, his latest travesty is ending fact checking on his social media platforms and that’s not the worst of it.  

Billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk are faux philanthropists who donate minimally to various pet organizations.  No libraries or museums for them. Just space capsules, AI, and a seat at high tables.

As Lasa Liberator points out, “they are often held up by the media as shining examples of philanthropists, but the reality is none of them has a foundation or philanthropic organization. By donating limited amounts of immense wealth, their public relations people argue they are changing the world for the better. That’s what they would like you to believe. While this philanthropy may seem generous from the outside, it is more often than not a ploy for the world’s wealthiest to dodge taxes, [or a way to]boost their public image, and increase their net worth, all while rarely doing that much actual good “along the way.

These newly anointed oligarchs, and others like them, are wedded to power, prestige, and political influence. They will do anything to curry favor. That makes them dangerous in ways that their forerunners were not, especially in a time of autocracy, patronage, and a good deal of pathology.

In this Gilden Age we are led into a different kind of conspicuous consumption. It’s one that consumes lies and clings to false narratives while ignoring history, facts, and good governance. It overlooks social justice issues like child labor which has made a comeback, as well as exploitive unsafe working conditions, especially for immigrants who mange not to be deported.

It burns the budgets that could help provide adequate housing, better schools, accessible healthcare and vital safety nets. It allows food and water to be contaminated because the ruling class doesn’t have to eat or drink what the lower classes do. It returns women to the Victorian age of silence and servitude.

Today’s robber barons and their elite political allies not only steal dignity and hope; they put us at great risk and conspire against anything that is fair and forward thinking while serving their own selfish purposes.  As Eugene Debs put it during the last Gilded Age, “"The time has come to regenerate society [while] we are on the eve of universal change."

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Health, Hunger, Housing: A Deadly Trifecta

As inauguration day approaches, trepidation and diverse emotions are running high.  In anticipation of what awaits us, given Donald Trump’s dubious appointments of unqualified sycophants, worries loom large about multiple possible dysfunctions. Among the sectors that are likely to be dramatically impacted are healthcare, hunger, and the housing crisis, each of which impacts the others.   

When it comes to growing fears about healthcare in a country already challenged by a broken system nothing speaks louder about how bad things could get than the lionization of Luigi Mangione, who killed the CEO of United Healthcare on a Manhattan street.

Three  New York Times columnists weighed in on what that event revealed about “the intense rage people feel toward insurance companies,” and what they said is important. As Zeynip Tufekci put it, “Dealing with health insurance companies when you’re vulnerable and knowing that a company is profiting off you is a visceral, enraging experience.” Tressie McMillan Cotton added, “every week there is a story about a well-informed, insured person fighting with their insurance company.” And Michelle Goldberg noted, “When you’re dealing with [insurance companies] you’re constantly reminded that decisions about your health and wellbeing are being made without any regard to your best interests. … It exemplifies the heartless precarity that underlies so much of American life.”

Add to this what Dr. Peter Hotez, Co-director for vaccine development at the Texas Children’s Hospital, said when asked what public health challenges the Trump administration will face on Day One.  “We’ve got some big-ticket concerns regarding infectious disease and pandemic threats. The new administration is not going to have the luxury of time to organize and think about it. They’re going to be confronted with this from the very beginning.”

Hotez cited concerns about avian flu, new strains of the Covid virus, and other potential outbreaks, like measles (and polio) if vaccines are no longer the norm. Juxtapose this with proposed cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, and the power of insurance companies to decide what gets covered. As Andrew Witty ,the new CEO of United Health Group said recently, “We will continue to guard against ”unnecessary care.”

All this is added to the fact that we have extremely high costs already while the U.S. scores badly on many key health measures like life expectance, suicide rates and infant and maternal mortality. People already face disparities in the quality of care and many risk bankruptcy in times of medical crises and debt.

Heath care and hunger are closely connected issues because as access to quality health care diminishes, and costs rise in a time of reduced insurance coverage, “a growing number of families in America struggle to put food on the table,” as a report from the Food Research & Action Center points out. “Without greater investments in anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs, hunger in this country will continue to climb.”

The FRAC report reveals some startling statistics.  In 2023 one in seven households in America experienced hunger, especially in Latinx and Black communities. Many families have had to choose between buying food and other basic necessities, especially if they live in a single-parent household headed by a woman. Thirty-three percent of households with incomes well below the poverty threshold lived with food insecurity in 2023.

Among the food insecurity programs in the U.S. aimed at addressing poverty is SNAP, which helps provide resources to participants of the program to purchase food. But several legislators want to cut nearly $30 billion in SNAP benefits, despite the increase in food insecurity. A travesty in a time when our military budget for 2023 was $916 billion.

Congress is unlikely now to reinstate the Healthy School Meals for All available to all students introduced during the Covid pandemic. (Eight states have such policies.) “Congress must also pass a permanent expanded and inclusive Child Tax Credit to create a more prosperous, nourished, and equitable society,” FRAC says. It must also “tackle the root causes and structural racism and other forms of discrimination that exacerbate hunger.” One way to do that is to ensure fair wages, and “improved access to affordable housing, health care, and disability benefits” to end the cycle of poverty and hunger.

Recognizing the interconnections between healthcare, hunger and housing couldn’t be more important, as a 2023 report by the New York Times indicated.  Being homeless affects  people differently and addressing the facts and myths surrounding homelessness must be understood.  For example, the stereotype that homeless people are dangerous, unpredictable or violent is a prevalent myth. It’s the homeless that experience violence or hate crimes for the most part. They also suffer poor health and are subject to injury and disease, as Tracy Kidder’s book Rough Sleepers, revealed so movingly.

As Pathway to Housing notes, “Homelessness is a general term that describes someone who doesn’t have a permanent residence … it is not just an issue in urban areas. … [it] happens nationwide.” It’s also false to assume that people who sleep on the streets refuse help or shelter, which Pathway to Housing says is “rooted in paternalism.” It’s also a false assumption that all homeless people are addicts. “Homelessness is not a choice that people could avoid if they got a job. That idea derives from the judgement that homelessness is a moral failing instead of a set of circumstances and structural issues,” notes Pathway.

There is much more to say about these three interconnected problems. (See, for example, how Finland solved the problem of homelessness .)  Each one deserves attention, political will, and humanity. Dare we hope to find it?

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

From Chattel to Child to Red-cloaked Mother

Throughout the ages it’s been true. Now, here we go again. Sexism and misogyny 3.0. With the second reign of Donald Trump women will continue to be ignored, excluded, trivialized, objectified, assaulted, shamed, and afraid.

In the truly old days women became chattel when nomadic societies ceased to be mobile and agrarian. Before yielding to land ownership, life meant that everyone in the family and community had respectable tasks. Men hunted, women planted, and no one was treated as a lesser being. When land was claimed and “owned,” everything changed. Men became warriors who fought each other for everything that was on the property, including livestock, tools, furnishings, and women, along with children, who were regarded as a husband’s personal property.

Fast forward to modern times and notice how women are still treated as chattel. Here’s a true example, shared by Catherine Allgor, Ph.D. at the National Museum of Women’s Art in 2012.  A woman applies for a mortgage to buy a house. She is older than her husband, is senior to him in their careers and earns more money. She has bought houses before, her spouse has not. Still, in the transaction, she is listed as “wife,” and as such she is subjected to the legal practice of coverture, a term that still exists since colonial times.

Based on English law, coverture meant that no female had a legal identity. A child was covered by her father’s identity, and a wife’s identity relied on her husband’s, which is why till relatively recently wives assumed her husband’s surname. Before that, wives were considered to be “feme covert,” a covered woman who did not exist legally. (Sound familiar?) Originally that meant that females couldn’t own anything, had no rights to their inheritances, or their children. They couldn’t work, enter a contract, or have bodily autonomy because husbands had the legal right to rape.

Coverture, Allgor explains, is why white women weren’t allowed to vote until 1920. They couldn’t serve on juries until the 1960s, and marital rape wasn’t a crime until the 1980s. In my personal experience during that decade, I was denied in-state tuition when I earned my master’s degree, because although I met every requirement for it, including being co-owner of a house, the college argued that I wasn’t legally a resident of Maryland because I didn’t earn half of our family income.  It took me seven years to win the case against them.

Women are still infantilized and treated as children. It occurs in the workplace, the marketplace, the academy, religious institutions, and in homes when others, often men in domestic settings, treat women as errant children. Infantilizing women is linked to objectification because it sets up an unequal power and control situation. Women in various settings threaten the androcentric paradigm that has us locked into various, unrelenting forms of patriarchy. Examples include using demeaning nicknames, suggesting that women don’t understand a topic, using physical gestures like a hug that they wouldn’t use to greet women vs. men All of these gestures and words are meant to convey to women that men have superiority over the person who is subjected to these differentiations.

In 2018 the Harvard Business Review published an article written by four female researchers that revealed that words used in the business sector choose different ways to describe women vs. men in significant ways. Their research found that even young females are often described as “bossy” while that term is not applied to boys. In adulthood being called “ambitious” is an insult for women but not for men. … “The problem is that the words used to evaluate women differ from those used to evaluate men which reinforces gender stereotyping,” say the authors. “Similarly, people are more likely to use [words] like “superb,” “outstanding,” “remarkable,” and “exceptional” to describe male job applicants. In recommending female applicants, people used fewer superlatives but less specificity.” Then fact is: Words matter.

The incoming president and his pals play all these cards in spades.  Name calling, put downs, sexual transgressions and more will not suddenly quiet down or disappear. The likelihood is they will be exacerbated by an overblown sense of superiority and adoration by Donald Trump’s second win. Every bit of misogyny and sexism women have had to endure in the past will be more pronounced and dangerous by this administration and its rightwing collaborators.

Consider the fact that women have been robbed of bodily autonomy, lifesaving reproductive healthcare, and policies that are geared to breeding rather than being. Already women are dying from preventable crises during pregnancy and miscarriage. That is nothing short of state sponsored femicide. Women, like words, matter, but not in the incoming administration.

 An article in The Brooklyn Rail published in 2017, shortly after the last election Donald Trump won, captures the shocking reality that links the political situation ahead of us to the chillingly relevant book The Handmaid’s Tale, which suggests “parallels between a fictional totalitarianism, and the policies and ideological proclivities of Donald Trump’s administration. In many ways, these comparisons make sense: the world of The Handmaid’s Tale contains the brutal objectification of women, widespread loss of civil rights, the manipulation of facts to control the political narrative, and an authoritarian state that fetishizes a return to religious or   traditional values.”

Is it any wonder that the red cape symbolizes what women have feared since Roe v. Wade was overturned? Will history prove to be prologue?

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Beware the Return of Nuclear Power Planats

 As I sat down to craft a holiday commentary, I was distracted by the death knoll of the Fourth Estate, “the last firewall between democracy and autocracy,” as one commentator put it after the Washington Post and the LA Times announced they would not run their planned pre-election endorsement of a presidential candidate.  It was a stunning blow to the principle of a free press, guaranteed by the Constitution, violated now by billionaire bullies Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, and Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the LA Times because they were afraid to upset Donald Trump.

Then another worry gnawed at me. It also involved Jeff Bezos, one of many mega-moguls deeply committed to the re-emergence of nuclear power plants to support their own interests. Bezos is part of a group of investors who have invested in a Canadian company that supports nuclear fusion for start-ups and has raised about $20 million dollars. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is also invested in nuclear energy because like Bezos he wants to be sure he has sufficient electricity to power his mega-business.

According to Nucnet.org, pro-nuke researchers have claimed a “watershed moment” in the development of nuclear fusion technology after “a powerful magnet that [could] hold the key to future generations of unlimited energy” was tested. MIT researchers called it a record-breaking event that opens a clear path to fusion power, “hailed by some as ‘the holy grail of clean energy.’”

Let’s remember the three largest nuclear accidents that have occurred as nuclear energy is being positioned as a scientific miracle. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident at a power plant in Pennsylvania caused a cooling malfunction that  led to part of a reactor core melting down, releasing  radioactive gas.

The 1986 Chernobyl accident was the result of a flawed reactor design operated by inadequately trained personnel, according to World Nuclear.org, which tends to whitewash health and other effects of  nuclear disasters.  Steam explosions and fires ensued releasing radioactive material into the environment. Deposits of radioactive materials spread to many parts of Europe. Thirty people died within weeks of the event and 5000 cases of thyroid cancers were reported, while over 350,000 people were evacuated. It was the largest controlled radioactive release into the environment ever recorded for a civilian operation.

In 2011 the second-largest nuclear accident happened after Japan suffered an earthquake on its coast. A tsunami followed affecting the power supply and cooling capability of three reactors and several spent nuclear fuel storage pools. The result was the release of radioactive material into the air and water, with over 100,000 people being evacuated from their homes. A decade later several towns remained off limits and recently Japan has had to deal with radioactive contamination in wastewater.

Today the United States is the world’s largest producer of nuclear energy and accounts for over 30 percent of global nuclear electricity generation. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2022 the U.S. had 55 operating nuclear power plants working in 28 states. Since then, some have been closed because of safety concerns, and the one in California is slated to discontinue operating in 2025.

The U.S. National Regulation Commission (NRC) licenses plants for 40 years and plant owners can apply for renewal up to 20 years, but  there is no limit on the number of times a license can be renewed. The NRC has approved license renewals for more than 75 percent of U.S. reactors, many of which have been running for 40 years already. One plant in Florida is seeking renewal of a plant that’s already 60 years old.

According to a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council ( NRDC) nuclear team, “These aging nuclear reactors cannot complete economically with other low carbon energy sources … or with investments in energy efficiency. … New nuclear power plant designs are not proven to be safe, reliable, or economically viable.)   

The NRDC also worries about nuclear proliferation due to renewed and new nuclear power projects. They point out that countries capable of enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium can manufacture nuclear warheads. Several countries have already stored materials and equipment that could be diverted to secret nuclear weapons programs. It’s frightening to note that the U.S currently stores over 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste disposal.  Most of it is kept where it was generated with no permanent disposal solution. 

The NRDC also notes that “with sea levels rising and increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, both operational and decommissioned nuclear plants that store nuclear waste on-site are at risk.”  Already, 55 of 61 U.S. cites are not designed to withstand flooding hazards, which could create a situation like Japan’s disaster.

Jeff Bezos and his billionaire friends don’t mind putting us in danger so that they can realize more obscene profits. They don’t need to worry that word will get out about looming problems with nuclear plants that could feed their need for massive electricity. They know how to ensure it never appears in the major newspapers.  Just buy them up and tear them down.

After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

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 Elayne Clift writes and worries from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Taking Stock of Election Shock

Usually around this time I begin thinking about writing my cheery Christmas letter to share the highlights of another year in the life of our family. This year is different. I’m still trying to grasp what just happened and what it will mean for all of us.

My initial reaction was blurted out in staccato texts to friends who were in the same state as I was: “Stunning!” “Horrific!” “Devastating!” “Dangerous!” Then I entered an emotionally strange place that felt like a Venn diagram in which anxiety and numbness meet in the center of a space that felt more like despair. Now I’m asking myself how and why the shock of the election happened.

It started with questions.  How could a 34-time convicted felon and a man who was found guilty of sexual assault be able to run for president? Why was the Justice Department so slow in moving forward on his trials? How could the Supreme Court grant him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted to if he were president again? How could people vote for someone who lies incessantly, whose language is vile, whose racism and misogyny are so blatant, who dreams of being a dictator, not be enough to stop him?

Then I moved to what I fear most.  People like Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Steven Miller, the authors of Project 2025, and other-like minded tyrants taking control of every government agency and firing thousands of career civil servants.

I worried about what it would mean to close or limit agencies like the EPA, the Department of Education, NOAA, and FEMA and to ignore the ever-worsening climate crisis.

I thought about a country with such a broken, for-profit healthcare system that would result in skyrocketing illnesses and deaths (with no data to prove it), and millions of people suffering as a result. I wondered how bad it would get without vaccinations, fluoride, Medicaid, reduced Medicare, and no insurance.

I thought of the women who will have no agency over their own lives, and I imagined the women who would die because they couldn’t get reproductive healthcare when they were in crisis or who would be jailed for having a miscarriage. I worried about a reprise of the Comstock Act that would ban abortion nationally and deny women any form of birth control (except sterilization, which some young women have already resorted to).

I worried about people of all ages who would be rounded up, separated, and held in the equivalent of prisons indefinitely. I really worried about revenge politics, roundups of opposition leaders and activists, the disappearance of news outlets, and random violence. As Robert Reich said in a piece in The Guardian the day after the election, “Countless people are now endangered on a scale and intensity unheard of in modern America.”

I also worried mightily about our lost standing in the global community and the threat of an expanded war in the Middle East while Ukraine is handed to Putin who can then march into the NATO countries to start a Third World War with nukes.

Then I began to question what kind of a country we have been historically, culturally and now presently. How did we allow this to happen? I came to this conclusion:  We are a country conceived and birthed by smart, visionary, educated men who were elite white supremacists wedded to racism, misogyny, religious singularity, patriarchy, and conformity.

What we are seeing now, it seems to me, is the underbelly of an America that has always flourished, and has grown in modern times, driven by color, caste, economic advantage or disadvantage, religious beliefs, ethnicity, power, and corrupted politics, all of which have divided us into Us and Them. That makes for a dangerous, disquieted and increasingly binary way to live. It stokes fear, limits compassion and clear thinking, and people like Donald Trump rely on it for their own gains.

As an Instagram post said the day after the election, “America has showed its true character and it’s heartbreaking,”

So where do I go from here?  My answer begins with my belief that resistance doesn’t die, it re-emerges when it is vital to survival. Early Americans knew that when they threw tea into Boston harbor. Slaves resisted in various ways including dancing and drumming. People stood up to McCarthyism and to an American fascist movement in the 1930s and 40s. We started labor movements and unions to protect workers, and we made sure women could vote by refusing food and enduring forced feeding. We resisted a war in Vietnam and successfully ended it. It’s in our DNA in huge numbers when things get bad because ultimately,  most of us refuse oppression, discrimination, exploitation, and evil and choose instead to embrace freedom and democracy. 

There are some among us who don’t get that yet, but they will soon see how powerful and effective it is.  Paraphrasing Billy Wimsatt, Executive Director of the Movement Voter PAC the day after the election, we have what it takes to meet and overcome this moment as our elders and ancestors did under unthinkably difficult circumstances. We can draw on their strength and wisdom as we chart our way forward and join what is likely to be one of the largest resistance movements in history.

For now, we must take a breath and remember all we did together to avert this outcome. In that spirit let’s comfort each other as we regroup before continuing the fight for a compassionate country grounded in equality, justice, and sustainable freedom and democracy.

Taking Care of the Caretakers

In 2017, when I researched and published an anthology about women caregivers, I neglected to reach out to the Domestic Workers Alliance which advocates for the more than two million women who work as nannies, housecleaners, and home care workers. I focused on women who told their personal stories of caregiving for spouses, children, parents and friends. It was a bad oversight that has troubled me since.

I was reminded of that in June when the Federal Domestic Worker Bill of Rights was reintroduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM). Introduced initially in July 2019, before the pandemic hit by (then)Sen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Jayapal. It was groundbreaking legislation aimed at ensuring workplace protections for domestic workers in the U.S. and it is still sorely needed.

An article published in Mother Jones Magazine in April pointed out that “domestic workers perform grueling work with few protections,” often providing care in isolated settings that render their work invisible, as feminists have known for decades as they fought for women’s caretaking in the home to be seen as actual labor. As the Mother Jones article also noted, in the U.S., such work has also been done by Black women who were systematically excluded from the New Deal’s labor agenda. Ever since then, they have struggled to achieve standards that are in place for others covered by labor laws.

According to the Domestic Workers Alliance, 84 percent of domestic workers don’t have a written agreement with their employer. Twenty-three percent don’t feel safe at work, and 81 percent receive no pay if their employer cancels the job with less than three days’ notice. Over a third of domestic workers don’t get a meal or rest break and if they do they aren’t given compensation for that time. If they are full-time employees, they are extremely unlikely to get paid sick leave or vacation, or any kind of insurance. The work could involve childcare, cooking and cleaning houses, or providing physical care for family members who are aging or have disabilities.  Yet their work is among the most undervalued in our society and the workers are among the most vulnerable people in the country.

The Alliance also points out that in the early  20th century, southern lawmakers prevented domestic workers from being included in federal labor laws because the majority of them were Black. It states that “to this day, the legacy of slavery continues to shape domestic work and domestic workers have limited protections under civil rights laws.” That reality means that domestic workers are exploited and are often subject to long work hours with low pay, sudden job loss, sexual harassment and abuse.

The movement for ensuring all labor rights to domestic workers is global. The International Domestic Workers Federation is a global membership organization that operates in every part of the world. It began establishing its network in 2006 with the objective of building a strong, democratic and united domestic/household workers global organization to protect and advance domestic workers rights everywhere. 

Here is just one story (edited for length) shared on their website. “Like many indigenous domestic workers in Mexico, Maria is an internal migrant; she travels from a small village to Mexico City daily. In the beginning she worked long hours, with no rest time, little food, and extremely low pay (US$7) for ten or more hours of work a day…. She felt she had to endure the conditions as a single mother of two daughters…she desperately needed the income. Years later, Maria moved to a new job, just before the pandemic hit. Fearing that she would infect the household her new employer asked her to live-in but she couldn’t because she had two children, leaving her without income until she learned about an organization that was providing emergency Covid-19 benefits to domestic workers. In addition to emergency relief, she learned about her rights, negotiating techniques, and realized that her work had value. She was able to return to work and now has a contract that insures her rights.”

It's a common story among domestic workers all over the world, and I should have sought their stories too.

In the preface to my anthology, Take Care: Tales, Tips, and Love from Women Caregivers, I wrote “Today being the main caregiver may be more vital to understand than ever”. As women have children later and elders live longer, women especially are challenged by competing demands and shrinking resources. Many of us have elderly parents in a time of growing dementia or increasing frailty or growing children who have their own challenges. We may have ailing partners, family members or friends. And no matter our age, we are there for them in caregiving roles, well before we may have expect to be there.

My own experience with caregiving began when I was young. My parents had married late, and both suffered from chronic conditions as they aged. By the time I was in high school I had to take on many of the demanding tasks of keeping  a home going. I understood early what it means to be a caregiver, although I did not have the usual challenges expressed in this essay.

Now, when changing demographics challenge the world, we need to realize that caregivers are a special group of people, usually women, but also men, who deserve to be respected, protected by labor laws, and free from isolation and fear. We are so fortunate to have them in our lives when we need them. Surely we can be their caregivers financially, fairly, and emotionally. 

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

Kamala Harris is in Good Company as She Moves Forward

As Vice President Kamala Harris has proven since she began campaigning to be president, she is no neophyte in the world of politics as some proclaim. Nor is she a potted plant: She has an amazing presence, a strong intellect, an impressive resume, and refreshing charm as she campaigns calmly and with dignity. She joins a distinguished group of accomplished women who precede her as capable, courageous change makers.

History is full of such women. Hypatia, who died in 415, was a mathematician and philosopher who risked upsetting the establishment’s sexism. She was killed for that, but we know her name. Hildegard von Bingen, born in 1098, is better known than Hypatia. Sequestered in an abbey at age nine she became a scientist, healer and mystic and is regarded as the most accomplished medieval woman.

Christine de Pizan was born in Italy in 1364. As a writer she advocated for women’s equality. Her works are considered to be among the earliest feminist writing. She argued that speaking up was a powerful tool for women. Olympe de Gouges, born in 1748 France, was a social reformer who challenged conventional views on many issues, including divorce, women’s roles, the need for maternity hospitals and the rights of orphaned children.

In the 18th century Mary Wollstonecraft was a renowned women’s rights activist who authored A Vindication of the Rights of Women, which remains a classic. Nearly a century later the women of Seneca Falls, including women of the Iroquois Nation, forged a new agenda for women, including the right to vote. The list of leaders, orators, and organizers of that movement is long and important. Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sojourner Truth, the Grimke sisters and many others changed women’s lives, although it took decades for them to vote.

Alice Paul continued the work of the Suffragists when she helped secure passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution enfranchising women. She authored the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, which has still not been adopted. Paul’s “Silent Sentinels” picketed the White House during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, remaining persistent despite attacks and arrests. Paul was jailed and quickly organized a hunger strike while enduring force feedings and threats of psychiatric incarceration.

These women, and others weren’t viewed as overtly political figures in their own time, but their social justice work was profoundly political. Dorothy Day is an example. A journalist and social activist, she resisted war and nuclear testing. She also led the peace movement, the civil and workers’ rights movements while advocating for women’s rights.

Eleanor Roosevelt, with help from the educator Mary McCleod Bethune, had a major impact on FDR and his reluctance to address racism. She became actively political by promoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights while urging women’s involvement in international affairs. She likely influenced FDR to appoint Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor, the first woman to serve as a cabinet secretary. Perkins was the driving force behind the New Deal and actively supported labor laws.

Subsequently women began being elected or appointed to their governments highest offices. Among them were Sirimavo Bandaranaike the world’s first female Prime Minister in 1960, and Vigdis Finnbogadottir, voted Iceland’s president three times, becoming the first elected female president in the world.  She was followed by other Nordic women as effective heads of state.

Norwegian politician Gro Harlem Brundtland made her mark as an environmental leader, Prime Minister, and party leader. She gained international recognition for her work on the environment, human rights, and sustainable development.

Ellen Sirleaf Johnson became Liberia’s first female president and won the 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace for her efforts to further women’s rights internationally.  Known as Africa’s Iron Lady, she promoted peace, justice and democratic rule, for which she was jailed by a military junta. 

Mary Robinson was President of Ireland and was highly regarded for her transformative effect on her country. She fought for the legalization of contraception, the decriminalization of homosexuality, the legalization of divorce, and women’s ability to serve on juries

Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile twice, was that country’s first woman president. She focused on the needs of the poor, reformed the pension system, promoted the rights of women, and recognized the rights of Chile’s indigenous people.

Outside the political arena of presidents and prime ministers, politically active women throughout history have contributed to the realm of social justice, human rights and equality. Among them are writers who see the world through a gender lens. Simone de Beauvoir, Tillie Olson, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde and others have illuminated the reality of people’s lives, the need for political action and reform, the value of women’s contributions no matter their class or caste. They help us see the urgency of defeating stereotypes, overcoming destructive assumptions, and instituting compassionate laws and practices that demonstrate an understanding of what makes us strong, safe, and free.

Kamala Haris joins these women. She is part of a sisterhood who envisioned a different way of being. She is not an anomaly. In this time of fractious debate, it’s urgent that we recognize who she is, what she offers, and what she will do as she goes forward in good company.[i]

                                                             # # #

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

[i] Sources:

Britannica, Wikipedia, UN Chronical,           

National Women’s History Museum,

Nobel Peace Prizes, Council of Women’s World Leader

Forever Silenced: The Urgent Need for Police Reform

In March this year 15-year-old Ryan Gainer, who was autistic, was killed by police near Los Angeles when officers responded to a 911 call from a family member. According to CNN, body cam footage showed that two sheriff’s deputies shot Ryan within five seconds of seeing him. Videos captured someone in the home saying that Ryan had a stick. It turned out to be a gardening tool.

In April a young, Black Chicago man named Dexter Reed joined Ryan in the ever-growing list of Black men who are killed by police. Three days after buying a car, Dexter told his mom he was going for a ride, but he never came home. According to an ABC report at the time, Reed, 26, was shot 13 times during a traffic stop for not wearing a seatbelt. Ruled a homicide by the Cook County Medical Examiner's office, body camera video showed police firing dozens of times at Reed's vehicle while he was inside.

In June, police in Utica, NY shot and killed a 13-year-old Burmese refugee named Nyah Mway after he pointed a BB gun at officers who said that he ran from them after being stopped on the street. Body cam footage showed an officer tackling the youth to the ground and punching him. Then another officer opened fire as the two wrestled on the ground. Nyah had just graduated from middle school, the AP reported.

Of course, we all remember Tamir Rice who was playing with a pellet gun outside a recreation center in Cleveland in November 2014, when he was shot and killed by a police officer at the age of 12. The same year Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager in Missouri, was also killed by a police officer.

In her recent book, We Refuse, scholar and activist Kellie Carter Jackson writes about police brutality against Black people within a historical context. One of the stories she tells is of an event just before George Floyd was killed.

It is about a young man named Tye Anders who was accused by Texas police of running a stop sign. Terrified, he drove to his grandmother's house and cowered on her lawn. He was unarmed and had his arms outstretched when police cars arrived. Officers pointed their guns at him. This was at the time in 2020 when, as Carter Jackson put it, “nearly every week a hashtag named for a Black man or woman slain by police circulated on Twitter — Breonna Taylor, Audre Hill, Manuel Ellis, Tamir Rice. Often they were killed after a routine stop or other nonviolent encounter." Tye Anders 90-year-old grandmother threw herself on top of him. Injured, she was taken to the hospital, while her grandson was arrested and charged with fleeing from a police officer.

More recently, in July this year, the attorney general in New Jersey opened an investigation into the death of a woman who was fatally shot by an officer responding to a 911 call about a mental health crisis.  Like Sonya Massey, who was also killed by a policeman after a similar call, she should still be alive.

It's stories like these that made the Black Panther Party call for "an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of Black people" in the 1960s when it wrote their Ten Point Program and platform. Today, in 2024, we are still calling for the same thing.

Both Black/African Americans and Hispanic/Latinos are twice as likely to experience the threat or use of force during police-initiated contact, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In the U.S. during a given year, an estimated one million civilians experience those threats or use of force. Additionally, according to the Bureau, an estimated 250,000 civilian injuries are caused by law enforcement officers and more than 1000 people are killed by law enforcement in the U.S. annually. Further, the number of fatal police shootings has risen in recent years. In 2023, police killed the highest number of people on record.

Last year Mothers against Police Brutality, founded in 2013 by Kathy Scott-Lykes who lost her son in Georgia, launched We Remember, a national awareness campaign against the "relentless, ongoing devastation of police violence." Begun by ten mothers who lost their children to police brutality, their inaugural event "Say Their Names" recently launched a Billboard Observance Day in commemoration of their children. The billboards read, “They were forever silenced. Speak for them.”

After the murder of George Floyd Ben and Jerry’s made this statement: “The murder of George Floyd was the result of inhumane police brutality that is perpetuated by a culture of white supremacy. What happened to [him] was the predictable consequence of a racist and prejudiced system and a culture that has treated Black bodies as the enemy from the beginning. Floyd [was] the latest in a long list of names that stretches back in time.

Kellie Carter Jackson, Black historians, writers and scholars who tell us about the history of racism in America would surely agree. We need to learn from all of them and to recognize that the time has come to end this continuing tragedy.                                                                            

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Beware the Shrinking Divide Between Church and State

The Pope uses the power of the pulpit to tell his followers that they should “vote for the lesser of two evils.” Politicians call for mandating schools to teach the Bible. Oklahoma's top education official orders public schools to teach the Bible while Louisiana leaders direct schools to display the Ten Commandments and Texas leaders propose a curriculum that incorporates biblical lessons.

In 1947 when a woman named Vashti McCollum argued in the Supreme Court that religious education had no place in public schools, SCOTUS interpreting the First Amendment religious establishment clause known as “separation of church and state.” Though not explicitly stated in the First Amendment, the clause has been interpreted ever since to mean that the Constitution requires that separation.

I was a young student some years after that, and I still remember feeling that I didn’t belong. In today’s parlance I was astutely aware that I was the Other. I resented having to sing Christmas carols around a tree in December, having my absent days to mark the Jewish New Year considered an unexcused absence, and being obliged to recite the Lord’s Prayer every morning. So I’m acutely aware of the impact such a sense of exclusion can have and the damage it can cause to a child’s sense of self. 

Today, I am acutely aware that the eroding distinction between church and state is eating away at our American identity. That distinction and identity is essential to a democracy, as our founders realized, and it’s been disappearing before our eyes.  It’s also driving us further toward autocracy as part of a system of governance, which so many other countries have experienced.

It’s dangerous when popes, priests, politicians, educators and others use their power to alter our personal way of life and it’s distressful when controlling what we believe, what we think, what we choose, or choose to ignore, is no longer an option.

It’s also stressful, and illegitimate, when the courts, namely SCOTUS, mandate that no distinction should be made between church and state. Two years ago, “the conservative majority of the Supreme Court made it clear that there was little room for the separation of church and state,” as  the .ACLU put it, when they ruled on two relevant key cases.

They were referring to two major decisions in 2022 that over-ruled “75 years in which the court had recognized that both of the First Amendment’s religious clauses were vital to protecting religious freedom.” One of those cases involved the Establishment Clause which protected citizens from the government imposing religion on citizens or endorsing a religious position. The other case was about the Free Exercise Clause which ensured people’s right to practice their faith as long as it didn’t harm others. These were two incidents in which the Supreme Court overthrew settled precedent. In her dissent, Justice Sonika Sotomayor said these two cases led “us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation.”

The ACLU also points out that SCOTUS has allowed “official, nearly exclusively Christian prayer at government meetings and has sided with those who, in the name of religion, discriminate against customers, and recipients of government funded social services.”

Almost two decades ago, as ACLU shares, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor noted that “when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government,” we need constitutional boundaries that protect us from similar worries. Why, she asked, “would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly.”

Why indeed.  This election cycle it’s imperative that we keep in mind that we are voting not just for who will occupy the White House with their finger on the button, but who will be appointed to our Federal and Supreme courts for lifetime terms.  We owe it to the generations who follow us to leave them with a legal legacy that protects their freedoms, their lifestyles, and their democratic way of life, even when they are in elementary school.

The Pope’s words were misguided and should have been called out. The clergy writ large needs to realize that they are spiritual leaders and not political idealogues when they stand before us. Politicians who like to play God must be removed from office and never elected again. Educators must honor their mandate to educate children in ways that encourage their intellectual, social, and personal growth, and not their religious beliefs. And all of us need to remember the principles upon which our country was founded, because they will keep us free, and because no one, least of all a child, should feel like they don’t belong in their schools, their places of worship, their communities or their families.

Thomas Jefferson put it this way in 1802: "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

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 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Coming to Grips with Violence in America

Like so many others, I experienced huge relief when Vice President Kamala Harris emerged as the Democratic candidate for President in the forthcoming election. Watching her reveal her strengths as a competent politician, experienced leader, and likeable person lifted my hope for the future of this country, in both the short and long term.

My relief that we could return to political sanity, however, was tempered by the anxiety I’ve borne for months, fearing a reprise of violence once the election is over, no matter the results. I worry that we could see another insurrection at the Capital (or worse), and multiple acts of violence in a variety of other venues. It wouldn’t be the first time. The capital riots were stunning and terrifying but not all that surprising given the source. But the fact is our history is rife with political violence. The number of examples I found in researching the topic was stunning.

 One source revealed that the New York City draft riots of 1864 were the largest popular insurrection in American history. “Hundreds of young men poured into the streets to protest the federal draft lottery. The riots soon turned violent” and led to an uncontrolled mob burning homes, offices and other properties. The riots continued for four days until 4,000 federal troops ended the destruction and death.

And in 1898 2,000 armed white men spurred on by white supremacists rioted in Wilmington, North Carolina trashing the office of a Black newspaper, which resulted in dozens of Black people being killed. The mayor resigned along with several Black local leaders while thousands fled the city.

A hundred years later we saw political violence in the 1960s and 1970s, usually around social issues like civil rights, minorities, and abortion. And in the 21st century we actually experienced a nearly successful takeover of the United State government.

But America’s violent underbelly was present long before these kinds of acts. It was there from the beginning when we treated Native Americans so viciously, and it was there when we were wedded to slavery and lynching Black boys and men. Racist violence seems to be in our DNA. Just think about the brutal murders of everyone from Emmett Till to Martin Luther King, Jr. to George Floyd and all the others, male and female, in their homes, their cars, their beds, or just jogging down the street.

Violence in America also reveals itself in the form of sexual violence and abuse, whether in our local churches or in Hollywood, in bedrooms and workplaces, in department store changing rooms, schools, sports teams – the list is endless. The National Institutes of Health reveals that

“Family and domestic violence including child abuse, intimate partner abuse, and elder abuse is a common problem in the United States. Family and domestic health violence are estimated to affect 10 million people in the United States every year. It is a national public health problem, and virtually all healthcare professionals will at some point evaluate or treat a patient who is a victim of some form of domestic or family violence.”

Then there’s the epidemic of gun violence in America. Johns Hopkins University frames the problem as a public health emergency. “Firearm violence is a preventable public health tragedy affecting communities across the United States.” They reported that in 2022, over 48,000 people died by firearms in the U. S. That’s an average of one death every 11 minutes.  Almost 27,000 people died that year by firearm suicide and another nearly 20,000 died by firearm homicide. Then there were the unintentional gun injuries and deaths often caused by children or police.

There is violence in America’s prisons, violence against asylum seekers, continuing violence in the form of antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, racial profiling, and discriminations in everything from jobs, housing, restrooms and more. Each of these arenas of violence deserves legal, political, economic and human rights reform. 

There is another form of violence that is gender-based. It has been part of this country in largely invisible ways that often involve emotional vs. physical harm.  Take, for example, the fact that women did not get the right to vote until 1920, and that took a kind of activism that few could endure. Suffragists were tortured in prison for the right to have their voices heard and it took them decades to be granted that right – if they were white. 

In the 19th and 20th centuries women like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Clara Barton, and Jane Addams were considered ill, weak, hysterical or crazy and subjected to a brutalizing rest cure or incarcerated in mental asylums either by their husbands or by a male psychiatric establishment that killed them spiritually, and occasionally physically.

Today women still struggle to be recognized as competent leaders and professionals, to earn equal pay, to secure childcare, to avoid domestic or elder abuse, to escape sexual harassment, and to live autonomous lives, which includes the right to control their own bodies. All of that is a form of violence, based on power and control, aimed at women.

Taken together, these examples of violence in America remind us that there is so much work to be done to end the scourge of various violent oppressions. The time to start is now.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

J:accuse: A Response to Israel's War

“Enough is enough!”  “Never Again!” “Not in My Name!” All fine phrases, but what have these hollow words achieved?  Gaza remains a killing field, the United States continues sending massive military and financial assistance to Israel, and embassies around the world have not withdrawn their ambassadors. The media isn’t demanding answers from the administration or individual politicians, nor does it reveal the daily atrocities as social media does.

I can no longer passively bear witness to the unspeakable atrocities taking place in that small strip of land that Israel has flattened. I no longer have words to express my sadness, rage, or my utter despair.  That’s why I am taking a risk in sharing my sense of helplessness

I know I will receive a heap of blowback, not just from rightwing zealots and Zionists, but also from friends and family whom I love and know to be caring and compassionate – until it comes to Israel. I can handle that. What I can’t quite accept is the fear that I could come to harm because I am a journalist and a Jew as well as an outspoken woman and a liberal activist.

Still, I can’t be silent because “all it takes for evil to prevail is the silence of one good [person]”. I don’t want to be that person.

I can’t be silent about the fact that a people who were incinerated in the millions are now ignoring the fact that Israel is killing thousands of people – babies, children, women, men, in schools, shelters, hospitals, homes – in another genocide.

I can’t be silent about children whose young bodies are riddled with shrapnel, kids who suffer amputations, mothers who weep over their dead children, women who couldn’t protect their daughters from rape, fathers who lost their entire nuclear and extended families. The psychological trauma that will be with these victims, should they survive the war crimes, is unimaginable.

I can’t be silent about the systematic starvation of innocent people, or the refusal to let them drink clean water or receive humanitarian aid, including the most basic medical assistance.

I can’t be silent about the bombing of hospitals, schools, and shelters, which violates international law, because of a claim that some Hamas leaders are operating there. Nor do I accept the claim by Israel that it tries to reduce “collateral damage” by which they mean dead bodies.

I can’t be silent about the crimes against humanity, the utter cruelty, taking place in Israeli prisons; cruelty that includes tortures like water-boarding, attack dogs, daily beatings, rape, stress positions, enforced sleeplessness, and the amputation of hands and feet due to prolonged shackling – all of which have been reported by survivors of the prisons.

Quite simply, I can’t be silent when I feel ashamed as an American and a Jew, let alone a human being.

How is it that the U.S. looks away when other developed, democratic countries publicly recognize the monstrosity of a nation so self-righteous that it is considered a pariah country by other governments? How can people who know that genocide is taking place look the other way, or worse, ignore or defend it? What will it take to hold Netanyahu and his radical, fascist colleagues, accountable?

It's important to know, as the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) points out, that Israeli violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank did not begin on October 7th. It just got worse when Israel sealed off Gaza after the Hamas attack, beginning with a “hermetic closure [that blocked] access to food, water, fuel, electricity, medical supplies, and other goods” needed for survival.

ASC also reminds us that last year was one of the most violent in Palestine in over a decade. That’s because Israel confiscated so much land, began mass arrests, and attacked Palestinian cities militarily. It also took control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a deeply important religious site in Jerusalem. Since then, the handpicked Netanyahu government has increased its violent acts against Palestinian communities to resist any semblance of independence or equality for the Palestinian people, for whom the threat of violence has become a daily reality.

That perspective, and the long history of Israeli occupation and violence against Palestinians is deeply important to understand because context is the only way to recognize what is happening now. For example, few people realize that “Gaza has been under a violent blockade for almost two decades.” That means they live with travel restrictions, trade restrictions, restricted access to decent education, medical care, and jobs daily. According to ASC, “the effects have been brutal. Eighty percent of people in Gaza have been dependent on international assistance to survive.”

No wonder ordinary Palestinians feel abandoned while living in perpetual, devastating fear and destruction without hope? How many of us could be made to bury multitudes of shrouded family, or suffer slow starvation, continuous migration, and unrelenting abuse?

How can we witness such brutality in silence, which speaks volumes. Surely the time has come for our government’s silence to end and for each of us to break our silence. I am relieved to have broken mine.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

The Growing Crisis in Education

Two years ago, I wrote a column called “What Would Socrates Say?” Ironically, a recent piece in the New York Times by Ezekiel Emanuel and Harun Kucuk, both faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, caught my eye: It was called “Higher Education Needs More Socrates and Plato.” Their commentary captured most of my increasing concerns about America’s education sector.

When I wrote that column I’d taught for a year at a university in Thailand.  It was a rewarding experience for me and my students, most of whom were Asian. Their education generally involved being quiet unless called on by the teacher. When that happened intimidated students whispered variations on what the teachers had said, devoid of conviction, originality, or Aha! moments.

“That was not my style,” I wrote in a memoir about teaching in Thailand. “I called on students to interpret literature’s plots and themes, to question their classmates and me, to defend their own ideas, to think critically. Then I watched them light up and smile with satisfaction when I agreed with their ideas.” Those were my own Aha! moments.

I think about that as I watch our higher education system crumble into something worse than second rate. It’s a system that is being destroyed by political ideologies that influence curricula, teacher qualifications, and students’ futures in profoundly troubling ways. 

Concerns about gun violence, banned books, state mandates and laws, disgruntled parents, and depressed students are stunning signs of a system that is losing good teachers because it is failing them. That system is also compromising our youth’s future. 

How many students’ lives will be affected by the failures of a politicized education system?   How many youth will be unable to pursue the work they aspire to for lack of qualification, whether practical or professional? How many gifted teachers will be gone from America’s classrooms? What will happen to those requiring specialized education to be happy and productive? How will dumbed down education affect our economy, and our standing in the world? 

The idea that classic books and illuminating poetry and prose are no longer permitted, or have been removed from schools, along with censored, rewritten American history, is the stuff of autocracy and dictatorship. So is arresting students who are exercising their First Amendment right to peaceful protest and free expression.

At lower levels, arts funding in public schools is being drastically cut because of budget shifts that focus on math and reading. Gov. Ron DeSantis, for example, recently vetoed all arts grants in Florida. That will have a chilling effect on youngsters whether in schools, theaters, or cultural events.  Imagine how stifling that will be to children’s curiosity and creativity. When arts programs are treated like orphans in the room children are deprived of the opportunity to thrive through creative endeavors in the one place where the arts should be encouraged. 

As Emanuel and Kucuk point out, “broad-based education has as its goal the development of educated citizens who can act responsibly in an ever more complex and divided world.”

The rapid decline of what can be called a liberal arts education at every level, coupled with the decline of Socratic methods in higher learning, are a harbinger of a future in which citizens march to a dictator’s drum instead of shaping their own individual and collective futures.

One can’t consider an educational crisis without reflecting upon what has been taking place widely on college and university campuses in response to the pro-Palestinian movement.  While the First Amendment doesn’t protect violence or destruction of property for which perpetrators must be held accountable, it does protect peaceful protest and free speech.

An essay in YES Magazine by Bella Jacobs, a graduating student at Pitzer College in California gives me hope that essential discourse can still exist, and make a difference, on college campuses. There Gaza Solidarity encampments are joining other campus groups that are working toward “reimagining political movements as communities where we commit to a better world.” That kind of organizing and exchange among diverse peoples and emerging leaders “can lead to “engaged dialogues that …develop principled forms of protest that make our movement for peace impossible to ignore.”

That goal suggests a promising antidote to students being arrested and denied their graduation ceremonies, valedictorians slated to deliver commencement speeches being denied that honor, faculty dismissed for supporting students’ dissent with school administrators, politicians and excessive police force, all frightening reminders of dictatorships. Let’s hope we aren’t edging toward another Kent State where four students were killed, and others were wounded on campus by the National Guard for protesting the Vietnam War.

Perhaps the most vital question we should ask ourselves is this: How can we return to a time when educational environments at all levels fostered experiential, enlightened learning, along with civil discourse, instead of resorting to repressive actions driven by differing viewpoints that inflame dialogue and justify misguided funding. Perhaps only then can we again experience Aha moments that foster hope, community, and a safe, free future for all.

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 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Life in a Dysfunctional World

 Remember what it was like before our lives were ruled by algorithms, AI, autopay, QR codes, social media, virtual chats, usernames and passwords?

I remember when you could go to a store and a well-trained person was on hand to assist you if you couldn’t find what you were looking for. My dad owned a small haberdashery in a town where the customer was always right, the prices were fair, and the proprietor kept his patrons happy. It was a time when you paid your bills by check, queries were handled in person or by phone and disputes were quickly resolved, although they were infrequent.

By the time I went to college times were changing.  My father lost his business when box stores began appearing and being on your own took over. The chain stores quickly became ubiquitous, dotting the landscape with giant square buildings competing for customers.  

When I went to graduate school the Information Age with all its ramifications began taking shape. Precursors to cell phones excited folks even though giant computers were frustrating students who used them to do research that involved inserting stacks of cards into big machines.

Fast forward to the 21st century and you will understand the frustrations of living in an impersonal, stressful, infuriating new world. It’s one in which computers and corporations have taken over our lives and made artful obfuscation a new art. I experienced this in its highest form recently and my frustrated reaction makes Lady McBeth look relatively normal.

Here’s an example. When my husband and I traveled abroad I chose Air France to fly to Europe because I am terrified to set foot on a Boeing aircraft. Confirmation of our flights revealed in the fine print that our return flight was operated by Delta. That’s an American company I didn’t trust prior to Boeing planes scaring me out of the skies. I choose my Airlines carefully. It shouldn’t be up to the airline to decide which carrier I use.

When we boarded, we found ourselves ushered to Row 43, the last row in a huge jumbo jet, in front of the toilet. We had booked Row 22 and now there was no way to change seats. Why allow passengers to choose their seats if they can be arbitrarily changed?  The same thing happened on another internal Air France flight.

But the kicker was that our return flight was cancelled at the last minute, leaving us with a six-hour delay, and the need to overnight in a Boston hotel having missed our pre-paid bus to our car.

This was followed by numerous calls to Air France customer service, in which I encountered a stubborn virtual assistant. I persisted, voice raised, because by European Union law, we were entitled to a full refund for our return tickets.  It took threatening legal action before I finally received an email that the refund would be issued within 60 days. (It was).

Then I received my Verizon phone bill, which had overcharges of $220. To get credit, I talked to five agents over weeks, explaining that the international plan I’d purchased never worked. Additionally, despite not having signed up for the daily plan, my husband received twelve texts on his cell which shouldn’t have been there.

“Oh,” said the first agent, “he should have been on airplane mode.”  I explained that he hardly knows how to use a cell phone.  Each agent I spoke to read me the same script about customer care blah blah blah and assured, indeed promised, that those charges would be removed, and I’d be called back in a few days before my bill was due. None of them called.  It was all smoke, mirrors and lies. You’d think Donald Trump was the CEO.

When we moved house two years ago, Comcast gave us the wrong email addresses and landline number after I’d printed 500 business cards and alerted family and friends of our new contact information. We also went through hell trying to access everything from bank accounts to credit cards to companies who were paid by autopay because their websites wouldn’t recognize our usernames or passwords.  All this was followed by a hack that rendered me the “mad lady in the attic.”

There’s no end to this kind of dysfunction which holds us hostage in a dystopian tech world gone mad. Sadly, the future looks bleak given corporate power, lack of regulatory policies, and a frightening explosion of artificial intelligence.

I need all the strength I can muster to face the increasingly unfriendly world. But right now, I have to stop writing. Staples has finally called back to say my new laptop is ready.

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 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Another "Day That Will Live in Infamy"

Let’s get right to it:  The shocking decision by the Supreme Court has us non-Trumpers in a place of deep anxiety and overt fear. We know that our lives and our kids’ futures will be forever changed by a court that has become so outrageously biased and openly political that it is not hyperbolic to charge them with the end of our democracy as we’ve known it. 

Thankfully Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) announced on July 1 that she would file articles of impeachment because “the Supreme Court’s decision [on presidential immunity] “represents an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.”

In fact, some justices should have been impeached for lying when they said in their congressional hearings that “no man is above the law,” or when they lied about Roe v. Wade being “settled precedent.”  Alito’s flag tricks and Thomas’s high-flying vacations are also grounds for impeachment. So Bravo to AOC, and the three women Justices, for having the courage to immediately stand up to a compromised and contaminated Supreme Court.

Given the Court’s horrific ruling, President Biden is now free to appoint several new Supreme Court justices to the bench, with Congressional approval, to clean up the highest court in the land and restore justice to Americans.  Indeed, it’s time to expand the Court and set term limits if ever there was one. It’s at least a start for reclaiming our national sanity.

As for President Biden’s bad debate night, this seems like a good time to remind people that we aren’t just voting for a candidate, we are voting for democracy, freedom, and a safe, fair and humane future.  It’s too early to know whether Mr. Biden will be the Democratic nominee as I write this commentary. Compelling pro and con opinions fill the airwaves as polls fluctuate.

But the fact is, with all due respect, it’s not about whether the president is up to the challenges of another term. He doesn’t have to complete one, because no one is indispensable. That’s why we have a qualified person and an experienced team to take over should that be necessary.  

It’s vital that this election restores good governance, upholds the Constitution, cleans up Congress and the courts and saves our country from a dictatorial regime that would end life as we know it. We urgently need to avoid a terrifying agenda of oppression and lawlessness, and we need to stop the rule of oligarchs. We need to stop Donald Trump from being king. We need to take his agenda seriously and understand how it will affect every single one of us. To put it bluntly we need to understand Trump et.al. are a catastrophe waiting to happen. Remember: The minute the Supreme Court ruled on his immunity, he called for a military tribunal to put Liz Cheney in jail. What’s next on his list?

Anyone who has read just some of the blueprint for a Trump win – Project 2025 – should be terrified by its promises.  For starters it’s based on a platform grounded in Christian Nationalism. A February interview with a former Christian Nationalist, now a professor of religion, on NPR’s Fresh Air program, led with a reference to the New Apostolic Reformation, a group that “has become influential in American government and parts of the judicial system.” Their flag hangs outside the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson's office (and upside down at Justice Alito’s homes).

“Christian Nationalism is the idea that Christian people should be privileged in the United States in some way,” interviewee Bradley Onishi said. “Many, many members of Congress from the GOP support those principles. … The goal is to institute people at every level of government…”

If that doesn’t shake you, try this:  An organization calling itself “ministers of high representatives of Governments,” which claims as regional co-sponsors the governments of Saudi Arabia, Arab Republic of Egypt, Hungary, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Uganda, and Republic of Guatamala, leads the so-called “Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women’s Health and Strengthening the Family.” Some of the goals of Project 2025 derive from their document which reaffirms stringent anti-abortion rules, and “the family [as] the natural and fundamental group unit of society,” as well as many other chilling Victorian ideals.

The Declaration was introduced by Donald Trump’s administration in 2020 and signed by 32 countries. Reputed by the Biden administration, it continues to fuel antiabortion strategies. One of its key players is Valerie Huber, who presides over the cleverly named Institute for Women’s Health, which sponsored “International Safe Abortion Day” when the Declaration was signed. Huber is a crusader who has made a career out of fighting abortion and sex education. In her speech at the Declaration event, she accused the UN and WHO of “using their soft power to pressure nations into making ideological concessions” and “[advancing] their pro-abortion agenda under the guise of helping women.”  She is one of the contributors to.Project 2025.

There are 33 others like her who crafted the 900-page blueprint for a Trump dictatorship. It must be defeated. That’s why we all must vote in November, up and down the ballot, as if our lives depend on it. They do.

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

Your Vote is Your Voice: It Matters More Than Ever

A little while ago I became so frustrated by the need for an effective media campaign on the part of the Democratic administration and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to ensure that Donald Trump isn’t elected again that I wrote to the White House communications director and the Chief of Staff. I pointed out that there is a difference between political messaging and behavior change communication grounded in a methodology that has proven to be successful. As a communications professional (see bio line) I knew from my training and experience that a media advocacy and social marketing campaign aimed at persuasion was called for.

That’s when I decided to mount my own campaign on social media, various blogs, and my listserv, asking anyone who saw my posts to share them widely.

My idea was grounded in some essential elements of a successful behavior change strategy which could be easily replicated as bumper stickers, lawn posters, T-shirts, whatever, in the attempt to make the message simple, succinct, relevant, repetitive, actionable, and targeted to various audiences, – all components of a behavior change effort.  I also used the essential elements of a consistent visual and a tag line which would vary slightly each time I released another banner.  

I began posting the banners recently; the first three are Vote for Democracy; Vote to Defeat Tyranny, and Vote for Freedom. The visual is a headshot of Joe Biden. Each month between now and the election I will be posting variations on the overall theme of the importance of voting in November.  The idea is that we must maintain our democratic form of government and defeat the insanity of a second Trump term, irrespective of our personal politics – (if you would like to receive the messages to share, please message me on my blog:  www.elayne-clift.com/blog )

To that end I researched the Republican document, Project 2025, because so few people realize its horrific implications should Trump be elected.

Project 2025 proposes overhauls to every federal agency and office.  These project plans circumvent Congress and the courts. Prepared by 34 authors including Ken Cuccinelli, Peter Navarro, and Ben Carson, along with 31 other hard right Trump devotees, the “Mandate” has 30 chapters and is over 900 pages.  The introduction offers a “Conservative Promise” as the opening salvo of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, launched by The Heritage Foundation and their many partners in 2022. Its chapters lay out copious clear, concrete, terrifying policies and rules for White House offices, Cabinet departments, Congress, agencies, commissions, and boards.

Here are the four guiding principles of the Plan articulated in the Introduction:.

1.  Family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.

2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.

3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.

4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.” the principles that by consensus guide the crafting of this document:

Numerous sections go on to share the mandate’s ambitions, goals and specific objectives. These include “Taking the Reins of Government,” beginning with pages and pages of details, including how the Executive branch of government, i.e., the White House staff and offices, and various commissions and councils would be established, staffed, and run.

Some of the agencies subject to terrifying changes, if not total obliteration, include the National Security Council, the National Economic Council, the Office of Science and Technology, and the National Space Council. Other sections pontificate on Gender Policy in ways that demean and diminish women and girls, Civil Rights and Liberties that are severely limiting and racist, Cyber Security and Intelligence agencies in which career civil servants with necessary expertise would be replaced by political appointees.  FEMA, Department of Defense, along with departments that establish public health, immigration and education policies would be dangerously revamped, while the media, foreign policy, and the climate crisis would be severely curtailed. We’ve already seen signs of threatening changes in all sectors. Each of these section and more, including the “General Welfare” section, offer shocking visions that should alarm every American.

As a BBC News report revealed in June, “Project 2025 calls for firing thousands of civil servants, expanding the power of the president, and dismantling [several] federal agencies.”  Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), who is launching a counter project to stop Project 2025 said in the report, “Project 2025is more than an idea, it’s a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state- separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates ”public will.”

The threat to our democracy doesn’t get clearer than that. So although no one can be expected to plow through this deranged and dangerous document, it’s important to be aware of its specific plans and the impacts each American will be subjected to should Donald Trump win this election. Our fundamental freedoms, our ability to live in a country free of restrictions designed by the lunatic fringe, our safety – indeed our lives, our respect in the global community, and our hopes for peaceful resolution of conflicts that could avoid an unimaginable third world war are on the ballot this year. Our future, and that of our progeny, depends on each of us being fully informed and voting for a future of safety, sanity, and sustainability irrespective of party affiliation.

Please take the time to become familiar with what is at stake and share it widely.

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 Elayne Clift has a master’s degree in communication. She was Deputy Director of a global Health Communication project for five years, and taught Health Communications at the Yale School of Public Health.  She writes from Brattleboro, Vt.