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.

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]

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 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

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.

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. 

Were We the Lucky Ones?

A docudrama, We Were the Lucky Ones, streaming on Hulu recently inspired me to consider this question: Were Americans in my generation the lucky ones, post WWII? In the story a real family scattered across Europe during the pogroms against Jews in the war. Miraculously they managed to survive and to reunite with their loved ones.

Now I wonder if those of us who have lived in America since the 1940s may be the lucky ones. We have lived in a post-war period of democracy, freedom from fear, and peace for the most part, without the obscenity of war and dictatorship on our doorsteps. We have never had to experience the terror of autocratic regimes. Most of us can’t even imagine what that is like. We have been able to trust our families, friends, and neighbors, and to receive uncensored information free of propaganda, to travel freely across state lines and to other countries without being impeded or interrogated. We have never had a government that destroyed the basis of our republic in the document called the Constitution. Most of us were able to live decent lives and to sleep soundly at night.

Admittedly the “good old days” weren’t all good. They were rife with racism, antisemitism, sexism, discrimination, and fear of the Other. We lived in a time when America flirted seriously with fascism, schools were segregated, domestic violence and sexual abuse were hidden. We lived to see the development of nuclear weapons and suffered the threat of the Bay of Pigs, when Russian threatened us with missiles from Cuba. There were race riots and a war we never should have been in, political assassinations of some of our beloved leaders, terrorist attacks and later an insurrection, and so much more that never should have happened in “the land of the free and the brave.” 

But still we were mostly the lucky ones. We never headed to bomb shelters, most of us could feel safe in our homes, and we proceeded with our lives under the protection of the Constitution. It was safe to send our kids to school, to go to a café, a concert, a grocery store, and to worship in a variety of religious environments.

We could choose our politicians in free and fair elections and vote them out of office when we needed to.  When necessary, we protested what we believed was wrong in our local communities and nationally, peacefully and without fear of being silenced or arrested. We chose whether or when to start families, we read the books we wanted to. We trusted our friends and neighbors to look out for each other, and most of all we felt free.

Those freedoms could now become fading memories.  What looms large in November is a clarion call for civility, compassion, humanity, intelligent leadership, sound judgement, and continuing democracy.  Our country cannot afford to lose its standing in a global world or risk the hideous thought of a nuclear war because we have felons and fascists in charge who admire the likes of Mr. Putin and other autocrats and dictators.

Unless we act appropriately, the idea of American exceptionalism will be nothing more than a memory embedded in the jargon of despair. In the past, Americans have managed to come together in critical times in ways that revealed our character and upheld the principles of this country. We have demonstrated to the world our capacity for cohesion, compassion, sound judgement and right action. Now is the time to reclaim that spirit by making a commitment to disavow a dystopian future.

We stand now on the precipice of a giant sink hole that would take years to dig out of, if not generations. We owe it to our progeny to leave them a world in which we proved again our resilience and our love of freedom. 

We need to make sure that they too are the lucky ones who remain free of oppression and disaster,  the lucky ones who reunite with the spirit of this country in hard times, and the lucky ones who build a new and secure future together. That means doing the right thing in November for the loved ones in your life.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

The Desperate Need for Prison Reform

 In February this year, Texas executed a man named Ivan Cantu for murder despite the fact that evidence had raised serious questions about his guilt, persuading jurors from his first trial to ask the courts to reconsider his case. A campaign supported by thousands of Texans pushed to pause the execution and faith leaders called for a closer look at the case because of recanted testimony from a key witness, and claims that another witness lied on the stand. There were copious reasons to doubt Cantu was the perpetrator of the crime, but he was denied a delay. Just before he was executed, he stated again that he was innocent.

In April, Oklahoma executed Michael Smith, who claimed to the end that he was innocent. And in April, Missouri executed Brian Dorsey, despite pleas against it by 70 prison guards and a retired warden. Between the time of this writing and the end of the year, seven more executions are scheduled, two in Ohio and in five other states.  Between 2025 and 2027 Ohio alone has 12 executions scheduled.

Marcellus Williams is facing execution in Missouri, despite DNA evidence supporting his innocence.

Another man, Toforest Johnson has spent over 25 Years on Alabama’s Death Row. Now the prosecutor is calling for a new trial because Mr. Johnson’s conviction relies on the words of a witness who was paid for her testimony. Alabama continues to seek his execution.

These prison executions beg the question: What civilized, developed nation justifies executing anyone in the name of the state, (irrespective of whether they committed a heinous crime)?

Once in decline, executions in the U.S. have begun increasing in the last few decades. Hard line prosecutors, tough-on-crime governors, and the Supreme Court have played a role in the increase, according to a January Politico post on Instagram, which stated that SCOTUS is “more likely to push an execution forward than to intervene to stop it,” including in cases where doubt exists, or the means of execution could result in severe suffering.

Numerous states appear to be “jumping onboard,” the Politico post said. Alabama, South Carolina, Utah, and Florida are among the states restarting or scheduling executions. In Utah executions can be by firing squad, and in Alabama nitrogen gas is being used. In Florida, where last year six death warrants were signed by the governor, a unanimous jury requirement no longer applies.

According to the Sentencing Project the U.S. is the world leader in incarceration. There are two million people in the nation’s prisons and jails—a 500% increase over the last four decades. “Changes in sentencing law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. These trends have resulted in prison overcrowding and fiscal burdens on states to accommodate a rapidly expanding penal system, despite increasing evidence that large-scale incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety.”

Further, according to the National Institute of Justice,  analysis by the Pew Center some years ago showed that “more than one in every 100 adults at the time was behind bars, “with incarceration heavily concentrated among men, racial and ethnic minorities, and 20-and 30-year olds. Among men the highest rate is with black males aged 20–34. Among women it's with black females aged 35–39.” Thankfully, the Innocence project has helped free or exonerate hundreds of wrongfully convicted people since 1992. Many have been convicted because of eyewitness misidentification, misapplication of forensic science, false confessions, coerced pleas, and official misconduct.  

Part of the problem with mass incarceration relates to the “Prison Industrial Complex,” a term that describes “the overlapping interested of government and industry that critics point out uses surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social, and political problems,” Tufts University asserts. Their Prison Divestment project indicates that over two million people incarcerated in U.S. jails are subject to being part of the partnership between parties with vested interests in mass incarceration.

Prison labor comes cheap. It is based on exploitation that serves corporations, governments, and correctional facilities. I personally know a wrongfully committed woman who was paid 12 cents an hour for her work in the prison before her sentence was commuted. And a recent report on Democracy Now revealed that an Associated Press investigation traced a “hidden prison labor web” where former Southern slave plantations are being used as “work release” sites for incarcerated people. The people working at the plantations are disproportionately Black. Their labor makes it possible for agricultural products to keep flowing to major supermarket chains where prices keep increasing while workers remain paid in pennies and badly treated. That forced labor is legal, it seems, because of the 13th amendment exception on enslavement as punishment for a crime.

But enough about facts and data that expose a dreadful situation. It’s time to put a human face on the idea of slave labor and to humanize people languishing in prison and on death row. Imagine waiting to be tied to a table and killed. Consider the condition of incarcerated women and girls routinely abused and raped, many of whom languish in jail for decades, perhaps without hope of parole, because they finally had the courage to resist the violence perpetrated against them at home and revisited in prison.

It's clear that a civilized nation must do better, starting here, starting now.

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It's Time to Confront Violence Against Women

“Do you know how it feels to get smacked around?”

“He abused me psychologically to the point that I wasn’t able to talk or think by myself.”

“I was told I was worthless. Abuse made me feel I’m nothing.”

“I asked my mom why indigenous women were being murdered. I wanted to be a boy. No one should be scared to be an Indigenous girl or woman. Please don’t let it happen to me.”

Those are some of the heart-wrenching testimonies on the walls of two collaborative museum exhibits that commemorate missing and murdered Native American women and victims of domestic violence. The exhibits, Portraits in Red by artist Nayana LaFond, and Voices by Cat Del Buono are powerful and important.

LaFond’s work is deeply personal. She is a citizen of the Metis Nation of Ontario and a descendant of the Anishinaabe and other indigenous groups and she is a survivor of domestic violence. “In indigenous cultures art is medicine,” she explains. “I see the work I do as sacred.”   

LaFond began painting the portraits when she painted an Indigenous woman from Saskatchewan who had survived violence. The woman appears strong and powerful, despite a red handprint over her mouth, which became iconic. “Red is believed to be the only color spirits can see in most indigenous cultures so I paint them the way a spirit would see them,” the artist explains.

 Subsequently she posted a call on the website of a Pow Wow held annually to commemorate the Day of Remembrance for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. It changed her life and launched the Portraits in Red project. Offering to create similar portraits for other indigenous women at no cost, she had thousands of hits in no time from native women all over North America. Her portrait work grew exponentially with the women she paints having one thing in common; each of the women shares a symbolic red hand over their mouths, symbolizing violence and silencing. The women range in age; many wearing traditional dress. All of them offer a stunning wakeup call.

“When you’ve experienced something like these women have you want to claim yourself again,” LaFond says. “You want to speak up and be heard in a safe way. That’s why I do this work. I am claiming my own experience and turning it into something positive. I hope I’m creating change.”

“Voices,” an ongoing project by social change filmmaker Cat Del Buono, is a video collection based on more than a hundred interviews she has conducted with survivors of domestic abuse since 2013.  In the videos one sees only the mouths of women speaking and thus becomes part of an intimate, deeply sad conversation as women share their stories. Their voices serve to humanize and expose the travesty of domestic violence while encouraging others in need of help.

“The immersive nature of the exhibit reveals the enormity and the pain of domestic violence,” Del Buono says. “It’s powerful. It helps viewers understand that domestic violence doesn’t discriminate, it affects all ages and social classes. It isn’t just ‘their’ problem. It’s a society problem that urgently needs to be addressed.”

These two collaborative exhibits break the silence that surrounds violence and abuse that women suffer in larger numbers than we think. To see them together is to witness the enormity of the domestic violence crisis that goes far beyond North America and is pervasive in all cultures, classes, and communities. The statistics are staggering.

 About 4 out of 5 Native women have experienced violence. They are twice as likely than most other women to experience violence and they face murder rates 11 times the national average. The murder rate for Native women is about three times more than that of most other women. 98% of Indigenous people experience violence in their lifetime.

 There is only a six percent prosecution rate. In 2016, there were 5,712 incidents of missing and murdered Native American and Alaskan Native women but only 116 cases were logged into the DOJ data base. Sixty percent of the number of cases between 2005 and 2009 involving sexual abuse in Native communities were never prosecute by U.S. attorneys. On some reservations 96 percent of sexual violence cases against Native women were committed by non-Natives. non-Natives.

 According to Cat Del Buono, the data on domestic violence is equally staggering. On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the U.S. One in four women will be a victim of severe domestic violence in her lifetime; every nine seconds a woman is assaulted or beaten. Chillingly, one in five women in the U.S. has been raped in her lifetime, almost half of them by an acquaintance.

 Myths about domestic violence are untrue and pervasive, according to a YWCA “End the Silence” campaign in Spokane, Washington.  For example, “Domestic violence only happens to women.”  “Drugs alcohol, stress and mental illness cause DV.”  “Abusers are just out to control and need anger management.” “DV is always physical abuse.”  “If a victim doesn’t leave, it must not be that bad or they are ok with how they are being treated.”

 The fact is that all kinds of violence, against women especially, surrounds us and not enough attention is being paid to stopping it. We urgently need policy changes at every level of governance, serious and effective gun legislation, long overdue changes in the judicial system, educational programs that raise awareness of the epidemic of violence and abuse in all their forms, and sufficient resources at the community (and reservation) level aimed at prevention, identifying perpetrators, and sufficient resources to stop the scourge.

 As Cat Del Buono and Nayana LaFond know, “this is a societal problem that urgently needs to be addressed.” Their deeply important artistic work is a monument to those women who are alive and still waiting for an end to violence, and to their missing and murdered sisters. Let International Women’s Day remind us of that.

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The Time for Change is Now

As Greek philosopher Heraclitus claimed around 500 BCE, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. There is nothing permanent except change.” The noted philosopher meant that change is the only reality. Given our political processes in election years, institutional change is needed more than ever as we hover on the brink of disaster.

Four major changes need to occur, and none will be quick or easy, nor are they imminent, but maybe we can begin by ending the Electoral College, an antiquated system that means we are not a true democracy because our president and vice president aren’t elected by a majority of the popular vote, which is why five times candidates who won the popular vote didn’t get elected.   

The  Electoral College has its roots in racism and misogyny, as the Brennan Center points out. When it was established, it gave an electoral advantage to slave states in the South because they upheld the Constitution’s declaration that “any person who wasn’t free would be counted as three-fifths of a free individual for the purposes of determining congressional representation.” Racism still prevails through voter suppression. As for women, they didn’t get to vote until 1920, if they were white!

The 538 members of the Electoral College are chosen by state officials, a change from voter choice that resulted from the 2023 Electoral Count Reform Act designed to deal with prior problems regarding who became a member of the College. To win an election, a presidential candidate must have a majority of all the electoral votes cast to win. Nearly all U.S. states have a winner-take-all system in which all the electoral votes go to the candidate who won the popular vote in respective states.

To eliminate the College requires a constitutional amendment – difficult, but not impossible. The John R. Lewis Act passed in the House (but not Senate) in 2022 would have addressed many problems that arise as a result of the Electoral College. It’s a bill that desperately needs to be a priority in the next Congress.

Another pressing issue calling for change is lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and the federal courts, an “outdated relic” as the Brennan Center calls the practice. Lifetime appointments to the courts gives enormous, long-term power to judges to decide laws that can affect generations. The consequences of that longevity can be dire, especially as the courts become more politically polarized. Abortion is a case in point. SCOTUS overruled the constitutional right to abortion that was established fifty years ago because far-right Trump appointees on the Supreme Court, who promised in their confirmation hearings to follow precedent, proceeded to overturn Roe v. Wade.

That’s why the call for 18-year terms and regular appointments on the Supreme Court is growing. Term limits would enable every president to shape the direction of the court and its decisions during the four years she or he served a four-year term.  There would be no constitutional crises because of unexpected vacancies late in that four-year term and scheduled appointments for Congressional oversight would be less contentious. Enforcing ethical rules would also be upheld and belief in the court’s integrity would be restored. Secret money would no longer be able to influence justices.

As the Brennan Center notes, “On average, justices today sit on the bench for more than a decade longer than their predecessors did. … Unbounded tenure allows a single justice to shape the direction of the law … without regard to the evolving views and composition of the electorate. It puts justices in an elite and unaccountable bubble.  … It is time to reform the Supreme Court.”

When it comes to reform and rebellion, Campaign Finance Reform is up there with the Electoral College and SCOTUS appointments.  Many organizations, like the ACLU, “support a comprehensive and meaningful system of public financing that would help create a level playing field for every qualified candidate.”

To make our playing field more equitable we can look to the UK for guidance. First, they have a “regulated period” prior to each election campaign. The length of time depends on the election and covers the period that someone is formally a candidate who must only spend a limited amount of money on campaigning. There is no political advertising on TV, radio, or social media, other than a short, free pre-election TV broadcast. There are no debates! Political donations to national parties over a certain amount, about US$8000, must be declared as well as donations to local parties worth more than US$2000. Donations to members' associations – groups whose members are primarily or entirely members of a single political party – also need to be declared above $8000. That’s it when it comes to financial.donations ( *[1])

In contrast, citing superPACs and dark money, the Brennan Center says that “A handful of wealthy donors dominate electoral giving and spending in the U.S. We need limits on campaign finance, transparency, and effective enforcement of these rules – along with public financing”.

 A fourth issue that calls for action is voting systems that keep people from the polls. Purged voter rolls, gerrymandering, and deceptive election practices, primarily meant to block voters of color, low-income communities, students and seniors, must be addressed so that everyone can participate in the democratic process of voting.

This is a time for constitutional change despite challenges. We must keep the pressure for reform up if we are not to become a banana republic.

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[1] Other source: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2021-0121/CDP-2021-0121.pdf

Democracy vs. Fascism: America's Choice in the 2024 Election

Let’s get real about the most vital issue Americans face as we slowly march toward our dubious future as a nation.

It’s not about President Biden’s age which is annoyingly centerstage. After all, Donald Trump is only three years younger than the president, morbidly obese, and an obvious psychopath.  It’s about one issue and one issue only and that is whether we survive as a democracy and what will happen if not.

So far in this threatening time President Biden is the only viable candidate if we value our freedom in this contentious time. Given his commitment to the principles of democracy and the protection of the Constitution and his years of experience and achievement domestically and internationally, there is no other choice. That story needs to be told often and powerfully. The fact is you don’t have to like him or always agree with him, but you do need to realize that our future depends on his re-election, because once democracy disappears you never get it back, at least not for decades if you’re lucky. Every other issue from the economy, taxes, gun control, reproductive healthcare, First Amendment rights, education, a free press, and our stature in the world depends on saving our democracy. It’s that simple – and that urgent.

Americans are lucky. We haven’t lived under an autocracy or a dictatorship. We have no idea what that’s like in real terms, but it’s never pretty. There are many examples of how bad it is. To be clear, autocratic governments and dictatorships are similar but there is a distinction between them as the Carnegie Foundation has noted. As they point out, there are two important differences: An autocracy focuses power on a single person, while single-party dictatorships can share power through a small group of people who are appointed by the dictator. Dictatorships always include inherent abuse of power, while some autocrats relying on centralized power can sometimes effect positive change for their citizens. Both autocrats and dictators, however, exercise total control.

It’s important to realize that dictators have absolute power (think Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler).   Human rights are suppressed, and any sign of opposition is quickly shut down with intimidation, imprisonment, physical violence, or assassination. Citizens have “shallow levels of freedom,” and “no personal autonomy or quality of life. Social organizations and democratic institutions cease to exist, and democratic countries see the end of their rights as enshrined in constitutions.” People can lose their religion, see sexual orientation and same-sex marriage outlawed while security police are ubiquitous, and surveillance is prevalent. Over time no one dares to trust anyone.

According to the Carnegie Foundation democracies flourished in the 20th century but by 2019 dictatorships outnumbered democracies, sharing features including repressed opposition, control of communications, punishment of critics, imposed ideology and frequent attacks on democratic ideals.  Cross-border travel is stopped, and fear prevails as information becomes propaganda.

In the course of my international work, I became aware of the reality of autocratic and dictatorial countries. Even knowing I could leave, if I behaved myself, I sensed the oppression.  A Kenyan woman advised me to be cautious about the kind of questions I asked. In 1960s Greece when the political future there was bleak, I naively remarked to a man sitting next to me on an airplane that I didn’t think much of his government.  He interrogated me for the rest of the journey about who I’d been speaking with. In Romania, where the deceased dictator Ceausescu had mandated monthly pelvic exams for female students and workers to ensure pregnancies were carried to term I saw scores of children in an orphanage as a result. The visit shook me to the core. In Burma someone whispered her oppression, and in China, at the 1995 UN women’s conference, as a journalist I was barred from opening ceremonies, and I suspected I was surveilled and tapped in my hotel room. My relief as the plane departed was palpable.

We need to think about what life was like in the Franco, Marcos or Pinochet regimes in Spain, the Philippines or Chile. Today we must think about what life is like in Hungary under the control of Viktor Orban. In power for years he has “chipped away at the foundations of democracy,” as Vox.com put it. There journalism requires permits, propaganda prevails, and refugees and Muslims are seen as an existential threat. Dissent is silenced or disappears if it occurs in public or on blogs. Books vanish from libraries and shops. It didn’t happen overnight. It was achieved gradually in subtle ways.

Nationalism, right wing religion, militarism, anti-liberalism, and the silencing of citizens are deeply destructive forces that result in devastation and despair.  We cannot, we must not, ignore the signs of autocracy and fascism that already exist, or the dangerous pledges of Donald Trump. Nor can we think it can’t happen here. Our challenge is to ensure that autocracy or dictatorship doesn’t surprise us because we ignored its signals or couldn’t envision such systems. To protect ourselves and our country we must exercise the strongest sign of resistance to oppression, and that is our vote. It is incumbent upon each of us to keep that focus as we head to local, state, and national polling stations.

We must be prepared to save our democracy.

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The Power of Hope and the Promise of the Parkland Generation

 Ever since David Hogg, Emma Gonzales, and other high school student leaders began organizing against gun violence when their Florida school experienced a massacre in 2018 that killed 17 people and injured 17 more, I’ve clung to the belief that if we could get to the Parkland generation as political leaders, we just might save our country. I believe that now more than ever.

David Hogg is 23 now and a student at Harvard. It should come as no surprise that he has reached a new level of political advocacy. Working with Kevin Lata, Rep. Maxwell Frost’s (D-FL) campaign manager in 2022, the two activists have launched a new organization that seeks to put more young people in elected office at the state level and in Congress.

Leaders We Deserve has a PAC to coordinate with selected campaigns and a super PAC to raise funds for those campaigns. The organization has a diverse advisory group that includes Reps. Root, Swalwell (D-Calif.), Justin Jones (D-TN) and Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.). It plans to hire staff going forward.

“A big part of this,” Lata told NBC’s Meet the Press, “is electing young people that have the values of our generation [which] understands the anxiety of not knowing if you’re going to be able to survive math class.”

Hogg, who cofounded March for Our Lives, put it this way to CBS: “There are so many charismatic, brilliant young people that have come from March for Our Lives, and have now started running for office, like Maxwell, and there’s so many more that I think can come. That’s why I’m doing this, it’s to help build that pathway.”

Both Hogg and Lata take a long view of the work they have begun.  They know it’s more than an ideology-driven effort. It requires organizational skills, political savvy, resources, an experienced staff and viable candidates. That’s why they are starting with a plan that includes raising money, connecting 15 to 30 candidates at the state level to media, and supporting them in the “mechanics of a campaign.” Their goal is to help young people gain and remain in elected office with a view to running for higher office when the time is right. They are starting in states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. As Hogg told NBC, the aim is to “make inroads and start building the bench now.”

They have notable role models to look to as their work progresses. Maxwell Frost was the first Gen Z member of Congress and he’s made a name for himself as he serves on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, asking astute questions while standing up to Republican extremists who work hard to politicize committee work in Congress. He also represents a progressive view unfamiliar to many in Congress who are out of touch with youth, Black, and Latino constituents.

It's worth noting that Frost, a former organizer, activist, and special needs teacher, was inspired to activism when he was 15 years old because of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He also witnessed and survived gun violence himself in Orlando in 2016.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is another example of effective leadership from younger members in Congress. She worked in the 2016 presidential election as a volunteer organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT.) Inspired by demonstrations led by indigenous communities in South Dakota who opposed a new pipeline, she joined them, resolving after that experience to commit to public service. Shortly afterwards, she launched her first campaign for Congress, and won against a long-time incumbent.

She became the youngest woman and youngest Latina to serve in Congress in 2019 and she quickly got to work. During her first term she introduced 23 pieces of legislation, one of which was the Green New Deal resolution, which envisioned a 10-year plan inspired by FDR’s New Deal. It was designed to open work opportunities in construction and restoring infrastructure, reduce air and water pollution, and fight economic, social, racial and climate crises. She was also recognized for her skill as a questioner in committee hearings, effectively standing up to Big Pharma, defense contractors, and other power players.

Leaders like Frost and Ocasio-Cortez reveal the possibilities inherent in the purpose of Leaders We Deserve. Along with Hogg et al. they offer an important and timely new vision of effective leadership at a time when we are worried about the aging of some current, long-time legislators and leaders, many of whom have no real connection to or understanding of their constituencies or other Americans.   

According to a Tufts University study an estimated 8.3 million newly eligible voters emerged in the 2022 midterm elections, including White, Latino, Asian, Native American, and Black youth. In the current Congress, 52 members of the House are Millennials, aged 27 to 42, up from 31 in the last Congress. They represent 10 percent of all current voting House members and are divided equally between Democrats and  Republicans. In next year’s election those numbers are likely to grow.

David Hogg sees this as “a second step for our generation and the people in power. We’re not just voting, we’re also running.”

Activist Ariana Jasmine.agrees. “Young people are the future. They are showing that they are fed up, and they are showing up even if they aren’t old enough to vote. They understand that the direction we’re going in is completely unsustainable.”

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Are We Facing the End of Free Speech?

CEOs from major businesses in the U.S. demand that Harvard University release the names of students from 30 student organizations who signed a letter casting blame on Israel for the attacks by Hamas. The business leaders further urged the university to provide names of the signatories with photographs so that students who signed the letter would not be hired once they leave Harvard. Students began immediately to take back their signatures, as Axios and The Guardian reported.

 A law firm withdraws its job offer to a New York York University law student, president of the Student Bar Association, who wrote in the Association’s bulletin, “This [Israeli] regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary,” claiming that she made “inflammatory comments” that “profoundly conflict with [our] values.

 edish climate activist Greta Thunberg and 26 others are charged by British police in London for joining a protest outside an oil and gas conference. The charge? “Failing to comply with a condition imposed under section 14 of the Public Order Act,” according to the London Metropolitan police.

 In England police have made dozens of arrests after protests across the UK arose in the aftermath of Hamas terrorist attacks and Israel’s response. Many protesters are unsure whether they can now carry placards or wear symbols, or join in chants after

Suella Braverman, a member of the Conservative Party who became the UK Home Secretary in 2022, wrote to chief constables in England and Wales saying that waving a Palestinian flag or singing to advocate for Arab freedom might be a criminal offence. “I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use … may amount to a racially aggravated … public order offence,” she said

An increasing number of countries are resorting to force and legislation to crush protests, treating them as a threat rather than a right, as Amnesty International points out. “Peaceful protest is a right, not a privilege, and one that states have a duty to respect, protect and  facilitate.”

 In Washington, DC 49 Jewish demonstrators in front of the White House, including rabbis, were arrested urging President Biden to call for a ceasefire on his recent trip to Israel. Their charge? Crossing safety barriers and blocking entrances. And a recent post on social media revealed that the U.S. State Department has instructed ambassadors and other government officials not to use words like “de-escalation, ceasefire, end to violence, restoring calm and bloodshed.” The post has since been taken down.

 These are troubling signs that in this country the Constitution’s First Amendment is being ignored or violated. As a reminder, here is what the Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (emphasis mine).

Arresting protestors making their voices heard in peaceful ways is a dangerous travesty wherever it happens, but it is particularly egregious in a country that prides itself on “the rule of law.” In this time of terror and rapidly escalating international conflict America’s leadership and example could not be more urgent. Calls for a cease fire and an end to killing fields where both sides have become tragic victims is not an act of violence. Nor is it a display of national allegiance. It’s much bigger and more urgent than that. It is a call for restraint, human rights, and shared humanity in the face of unleashed rage and hopelessness.

That collective rage, fear and hopelessness threatens the future we wish for our progeny, whether we are American, Israeli or Palestinian.  We cannot move forward in a world in which a slaughter of innocents, no matter where they live, continues. We can’t make progress in the name of peace without allowing all of us to inhabit land we love because our roots are there. We can’t make peace if we are continually oppressed, and myopic in our views. And we cannot move forward if we cling to limited views of right and wrong, framed by the concept of winners and losers, power and weakness.

The struggles we face are not a matter of politics, persuasion, or power.  They are about people; ordinary people who all matter. In this time of conflict of biblical proportion, a time when history could lead us to the table of resolution, let us not seek to silence those calling out for – indeed begging for - compassion, intelligent discourse and wise decisions free of partisanship.

Let us remember that our voices are not weapons. They are instead our monuments and our roadmap to a sane future for all of us.  No one should be punished for raising them.

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

The Time for Bread and Roses is Now

When I think about labor movements and unions, two favorite stories come to mind, and both are true. The first one is about a group of girls and young women known as the Lowell Factory Girls. They worked in the mills and factories of Lowell, Massachusetts in the 19th century. Little more than children who labored for long days doing dangerous and exhausting work, they revolted in 1836 when their dismal wages were cut while their factory-owner mandated living expenses went up.

One day an 11-year-old worker named Harriet Hanson, decided enough was enough. She walked out “with childish bravado,” as she wrote in her 1898 memoir, declaring that she would go alone if she had to. That wasn’t necessary. A long line of girls followed her and thus began a strike that led to an organized labor movement launched by women, and the establishment of an early U.S. union.

The second story is less well known. It involves a labor leader and activist, Esther Peterson, who was born into a conservative family in Utah. Esther, who was much older than me, eventually came to New York where she taught wealthy girls by day and the daughters of their household maids at night.  Working at home, the young girls sewed pockets onto Hoover aprons if they were old enough, alongside their mothers. The pockets were squares until management decided heart-shaped pockets were nicer. The work was piecemeal, and hearts took longer than squares. Esther was outraged that they weren’t paid more.

“Why don’t you do something about it,” her husband asked. “Organize a strike!” Esther, who grew up thinking unions led to danger and violence, resisted. But she decided to advocate for the children, so she organized the “Heartbreaker Strike,” inviting her wealthy day students’ mothers to go on picket lines since the police would never brutalize them as they would the poor mothers. It worked, and Esther was on her way to becoming a beloved labor leader.   

I think of the Factory Girls and Esther now, when so many large-scale strikes loom large, and for good reason.  It’s no coincidence that workers at UPS and in Teamsters unions, Amazon warehouses across the country, Starbucks, and Hollywood writers and actors are striking or contemplating striking for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. American Airlines cabin crews may soon be joining them as I write this commentary.

That’s a wide, diverse swath of American workers and a huge number of jobs, goods, and services at stake. The implications are alarming. A short time ago the threat of a railroad strike was enough to make economists shudder and that’s only one sector that could have wrought havoc throughout the country.

Leaders of unions that represent large numbers of people working in companies trying to deny them their right to unionize act as though union organizing was something new and egregiously difficult. The fact is that huge, organized strikes are nothing new in this country. We’ve had labor unions forever, inspired originally by the 18th century Industrial Revolution in Europe. Shorter work days, livable minimum wages, and rational benefits have always been a bit part of union organizing. For example, poor pay and working conditions led to strikes by the Pullman Railroad Workers and the United Mine Workers in the late 19th century.

Over the years unions grew across many sectors and by 1979 there were 21 million union members in America. Today union membership is growing again after a slump, thanks in part to the pandemic and a rapidly changing labor market.  Young workers are unionizing across various sectors now because of tech-driven jobs. They are joining farmers, factory workers, food handlers, and others as they seek safe and equitable employment, just as factory girls and children sewing apron pockets did before them.  

For UPS drivers, Amazon workers, Starbucks baristas and others, companies that refuse to bargain are enraging. Labor leaders and workers have had enough. They are tired of corporate leaders who make phenomenal amounts of money a year, own mansions and yachts, and still continue reneging on workers’ rights.  Amazon, for example, has engaged in dozens of unfair labor practices, Including terminating the entire unit of newly organized workers.  Starbucks “has become the most aggressive union-busting company in America,” according to a staffer for Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and more than 200 workers have been fired for taking part in organizing activities.

I’m not trying to put a Pollyanna spin on unions. I know there is a troubling history of corruption and criminal intent in some organized labor movements and unions, and that is not something to be overlooked.  But I agree with John F. Kennedy that, “Labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits. … They have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor.”

More to the point perhaps in these troubling political times, labor leader Delores Huerta was right when she put the point this way: “If we don’t have workers organizing into labor unions, we’re in great danger of losing our democracy.”

My friend Esther would agree with her old boss, JFK , and with Delores Huerta, with whom  she worked on labor rights for women and children.

Balfour's Big Blunder and Today's Israel

“What goes around, comes around” and “You reap what you sow” are truisms that come to mind when I learn what is happening in Israel. I wouldn’t know much about it if I relied on mainstream media or cable news because no editorial decisionmakers dare risk raising the issue of ethnic cleansing in a country that the U.S. supports in policy, rhetoric, and military support, despite the consequences. Nor do policymakers want to utter a word that might result in the alienation of Jewish organizations, funders, or voters. 

As a Jewish American, like many others, I am heartbroken by what is happening to Palestinians because of the excessively rightwing government now in power in Israel, a country that was founded because of atrocities committed against them. 

Understanding how Israel got here is helpful. A brief history is instructive. In 1917 a document, the Balfour Declaration, was issues by the British government calling for the establishment of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine. It was the first time the term “Zionism” was used by Britain, a major political power.   No boundaries for what would constitute Palestine were specified in the document, but it was made clear, rhetorically, that the national home of Jews would not cover all of Palestine. The declaration also called for safeguarding the civil and religious rights for Palestinian Arabs, who made up a vast majority of the local population.  In 2017 the British recognized publicly that the Balfour Declaration should have assured political rights for Palestinians in the declaration.

So how did we get here? That question is largely answered in Ilan Pappe’s 2006 well documented book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. He explains that in 1948 over 700,000 Arabs, three fourths of the Palestinians living in territories that became Israel, fled or were expelled from their homes. Pappe identifies that exodus as the planned beginning of ethnic cleansing by Israel, designed by David Ben Gurion, a leader in the Zionist movement, and his advisors who had declared before 1948 that they were developing plans for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in order to establish Israel. The exodus and expulsion of 500 Arab village residents along with terrorist attacks against civilians came from that plan known as Dalet.

The Palestinians called the ethnic cleansing occurring during Israel’s establishment Nakba (catastrophe) as they became “stateless refugees.” For Palestinians, Nakba continues, and no wonder. Many Israelis, including political and religious leaders think Plan Dalet didn’t go far enough. In March, for example, a Palestinian man was killed by an Israeli soldier or settler. Israeli settlers then set hundreds of Palestinian homes and cars on fire in the occupied West Bank and Netanyahu’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a senior member of the Knesset, said in an interview that he thought “the village needed to be wiped out.” Two years ago he told Palestinian members of the Knesset that “it’s a mistake that Ben Gurion didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948.” Smotrich was recently appointed governor over the occupied West Bank.

Another favorite ethnic cleanser advocate, National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, has been given an Israeli national guard, actually a militia. He’s the guy who went to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque in May and stood there in mock prayer as a Jew in an affront to Palestinians, thus mixing politics with religion. (The site of the mosque is called Temple Mount by Jews.)

Clearly tensions are mounting. No wonder. In February the Israeli military killed ten Palestinians, include two elderly men and a child, and injured numerous others in a raid on Nablus, then blocked Palestinian medical teams from treating them. More recently Israeli forces raided a refugee camp along with several Palestinian cities and villages where they fired live ammunition into crowds of people, injuring over 70 and killing two young Palestinians, one of whom had a disability. Again, they blocked Palestinian ambulances from providing medical care and used tear gas in a hospital.

Attacks are increasing and getting worse. In June a brutal assault was carried out, authorized by Smotrich, to hasten settlement expansion. F-16s and Apache helicopters fired on Palestinian ambulances, killing a teenager. Also in June, Israeli forces fired at a car, killing a two-year-old and critically injuring his father outside their home. Mohammad, the child, was the 27th Palestinian child killed by the Israeli military in the first half of this year. His death will not be the last of the child victims.

Palestinian journalists are also being targeted. In June six of them covering Israeli raids, were targeted. A cameraman was shot covering the Jenin killings, a journalist was killed in raids along with two youngsters, and another journalist was shot in the head. Let’s not forget that it’s been a year since the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli forces – an anniversary that American media failed to mention.

I have written frequently about Israel’s increasing violence against Palestinians, so I know to expect blowback, some of it chilling. But I cannot remain silent, and neither should our government in light of what has just occurred in Jenin, and is likely to continue elsewhere. As Israel becomes a fascist dictatorship, it’s imperative that we call out the “intentional escalation of violence by an occupying military power” as Jewish Voice for Peace says.

We must not reap what we sow in silence.

Are We Ready for Another Pandemic?

Almost four decades ago, when I was deputy director of the first major global health communications program supported by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), my work involved child survival and family planning.  But our project, and its lessons learned about health promotion, went further than that, modeling a proven methodology related to behavior change for better health outcomes. 

It was during those years that the HIV/AIDS crisis erupted, which I learned about before most people took it seriously, through a journalist I knew who had written about what was coming at us around the world and here at home. When I alerted my boss to what would become a deadly epidemic, advising him that as a health communication organization we needed to be paying attention to the problem and thinking of ways to mount a strategic health communication response, was typical.  “If you’re not gay it’s not going to amount to much,” he said, which in itself was shocking in its prejudice. It was also irresponsible coming from someone working in public health. When HIV hit hard and several gay men in our organization began to die, the head of the organization publicly apologized to me in a staff meeting for not taking the crisis seriously.

 Later, when I worked in public health advocacy, promotion, and communication internationally, I followed news, challenges, and concerns shared with the public health community from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). That’s how I knew that they were worried because, they said, we were long overdue for another huge epidemic, bigger than the early 20th century “Spanish flu,” and we weren’t prepared for it.

So when Covid-19 showed up, I wasn’t surprised that we still weren’t prepared, nor was I particularly shocked when the Trump administration was totally unprepared for an event that would take millions of lives here and globally. What was shocking was the disinformation, misinformation, and dangerous false information Republicans glibly spread in soundbites and press briefings as more and more people succumbed to the virus.

Those memories come back to me now because history seems to be repeating itself when it comes to public health preparedness related to epidemics and pandemics in light of myriad lessons learned by now.

It’s not for lack of scholarship on this issue. In researching this topic, I found no shortage of analysis about a rising concern about what’s going on as we recognize that we’re going to have to struggle all over again when another health crisis occurs.

The pressing issues include the need for more research as new and mutant viruses rise, scaling up production of newly developed and FDA approved vaccines, planning for broad and  rapid vaccine distribution, cost containment, and equal access to vaccines from various health facilities. It’s no longer only about Covid. Other infectious diseases are on the rise. According to WHO, “zoonosis”, infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans, now number over 200 identified bacterial, viral or parasitic agents. “They can be transmitted through direct contact, food, water, or the environment, constituting a major public health problem,” WHO says. “Many of these emerging infections have the potential to cause global  pandemics.”

The Covid pandemic revealed the challenges related to supply chains and their disruptions when it comes to vaccine distribution, in addition to vaccine shortages, which can occur when companies no long choose to make vaccines, often because of manufacturing and production problems. That leads to insufficient stock piles, and reduced competition so that prices for vaccines rise.

Another major failure in pandemic preparedness revealed itself during the Covid crisis. As health communication specialists like Kizzmekia Corbett, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) point out, “Public health practitioners need to recognize that our research is only as strong as our communication. Even our strongest peer reviewed, evidence-driven findings won’t have full impact if we cannot clearly and effectively communicate them to the public.”

Practitioners also need to understand and respect the field of health communications as a multidisciplinary methodology aimed at behavior change for health promotion and disease prevention. Vicki Freimuth, former director of communications at the CDC, says that “the agency struggles to assure that experienced communication professionals are included in decision-making and developing scientifically sound public messages free of political influence.” (personal communication).  The exclusion of experts whose work has proven that behaviors can be changed (e.g., mask wearing) with research-based messaging is a troubling omission.

According to a poll taken in March and reported by  Politico, two-thirds of respondents believed the threat of future deadly pandemics is growing, while almost 90 percent wanted the federal government to be more prepared for another pandemic in its budget and planning. Still, the focus in Washington, DC seems to be on assessing what went wrong during Covd-19.

Mauricio Santillana, a professor at Northeastern University paints a daunting picture regarding future efforts. He says the influence of politics on government funding causes a “collective amnesia,” that leads to reactive responses to crises vs. proactive  prevention.

If the government prioritizes the prevention of deadly viruses, perhaps they will remember to include health communication strategies along with financing and other challenges that accompany pandemics that need to be stopped quickly. I’m not holding my breath.

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Elayne Clift has a master’s degree in health communications and has worked internationally with a focus on maternal and child health. 

Choosing Freedom: A Political Imperative

 When Franklin Delano Roosevelt uttered his famous phrase, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” at his first inaugural address in 1933, he recognized that fear of the Great Depression could paralyze people and interfere with ways to address an unprecedented economic crisis. He realized that catastrophic thinking and overwhelming anxiety had the power to harm his plan for economic (and political) recovery.

 He recognized, as Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl did, that “between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

FDR and Frankl were both right, and in many ways, we find ourselves in that space where fear and insecurity reside, inhibiting our ability to respond appropriately and effectively to the political, economic, and emotional situation we find ourselves in as a nation as we approach the most crucial election of our time.

In his 1941 State of the Union address, FDR also said that there was “nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy.” He noted that he looked forward to “a world founded upon four essential human freedoms, as the New York Times pointed out in an op-ed. by Jamelle Bouie last month .Those were the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom of every person to worship God in his [sic] way, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. They were the guiding lights of his New Deal, and “they remained the guiding lights of his administration through the trials of World War II,” as Bouie reminds us.

In his essay, Bouie also enumerated four freedoms that today’s Republican party embraces. They are, he says, the freedom to control, the freedom to exploit, the freedom to censor, and the freedom to menace. “Roosevelt’s four freedoms,” he claims, “were the building blocks of a humane society – a social democratic aspiration for egalitarians then and now. These Republican freedoms are also building blocks not of a humane society but of a rigid and hierarchical one, in which you can either dominate or be dominated.” 

It’s a parallel vision of a future in which we do not have the basic freedoms and human rights that FDR espoused. Should the Republicans win the White House and the Congress next year, we will find ourselves living in a theocratic, oppressive country driven by oligarchs and dictators who embrace fear, violence, and autocracy with absolutely no regard for fundamental freedom, privacy or self-determination.

So let’s think about some of the freedoms that should drive us to the polls in droves next November. First and foremost are the freedom from fear and the menace of gun violence as we walk the streets, attend houses of worship, schools, entertainment or simply go to the market, the movies, and the mall.

Let us also think about the urgency of freedom to control our bodies and our futures as we remember the women and girls who have been denied bodily autonomy and privacy and who have suffered and died as a result of forced pregnancy because the State owns their wombs. Let us remember the women jailed for miscarriage, the health providers who live in fear of losing their licenses, or worse, and the mothers, sisters, friends, advocates who could well be imprisoned for driving someone to the airport or across a state line.

Let us remember the freedom to speak openly and honestly, and to gather, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, and the freedom from censorship so that we can read books we choose, and the freedom to worship in our own ways, and the freedom to keep our children free from want, whether it’s food or healthcare or the right to be who they are. Let our friends and families be free to live in the houses and neighborhoods they wish, be they Chinese, Syrian, Cuban, Muslim, Jewish, gay or straight, or otherwise. Let there be an end to Otherness, persecution, blinding stereotyping, and ungrounded assumptions that strike fear in the hearts of so many of us in this time.    

Let us be free from financial and physical exploitation in the workplace, especially when that exploitation involves children. And let us be free from willful prejudice, evil intentions, unenlightened faux leaders, and restrictive political actions that inhibit democracy, human rights, and social justice once and for all.  

And let us remember the wisdom of Nelson Mandela, who said “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others,” along with the wise words of Dag Hammarskjold, former General Secretary of the United Nations, who so wisely noted that “’Freedom from fear’ could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.”

It’s a philosophy we need to value, remember, and embrace. We are called upon it in this moment and in the days to come to do the right thing for future generations.

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 Elayne Clift writes about women, health, politics and social justice from Brattleboro, Vt. www,elayn-eclift.com

The Horror of Healthcare Financing

It’s no secret that America’s healthcare system is broken. Most of us can cite a litany of problems we’ve personally experienced. But few would include the travesty surrounding how healthcare costs are billed and covered.  I ventured into that morass recently and what I learned provided another compelling reason for universal healthcare and a single payer system.

 It began with a pneumonia vaccination that I received at my doctor’s office instead of a Walgreens pharmacy. I expected a charge but assumed it would be minimal. Then I got the “patient statement” from the hospital where my doctor practices. On the statement a “pharmacy” line item appeared in the staggering amount of nearly $700. Other charges were for “preventive care services” and “physician fees.” I saw these charges as redundant since I saw my doctor for a “wellness check” that constituted preventive care with a physician.

 Although I was billed a small amount for these services because “contractual allowance adjustments” covered the bulk of the bill, I began trying to learn what it all meant. I started with two simple questions: Who sets healthcare costs and fees, and who regulates those fees, which included overhead costs and $243 the hospital is charged for “medicine” (serum). 

 Thus began an exhaustive search for answers that led me down a frustrating rabbit hole. Among the Vermont state offices called for information were the Governor’s office, the Healthcare Administration Financial Regulations office, the Division of Licensing Protection, the Department of Health Division of Rate Setting, and more.  Fifteen calls later I still had no answers. Instead, each call resulted in a circular handoff, often to agencies I’d already called. No one in these agencies, it seemed, had any idea how costs were established, who regulated them, and who paid for them.

 This led to a discussion with my local hospital’s CEO and financial officer who walked me through a bureaucratic maze of rules and regulations emanating from federal and state mandates, organizational finance relationships and more. It was so complex that even though I worked in public health as an educator, policy analyst, and advocate for over forty years and hold a master’s degree in health communication and promotion I could not understand everything they shared with me.

One of the things I learned is that no one actually pays the gross charges, which are based on what will be reimbursed by insurance companies, and the costs of various services and procedures as identified by Medicaid and Medicare, with fixed rates periodically negotiated based on current reimbursements. This is known as “cost shifting.” In Vermont, organizational relationships regarding financing of healthcare also play a part in this cost sharing.

 Christopher Dougherty, CEO of Brattleboro Hospital, agrees that the current system of healthcare financing is an odd system that “puts us at risk.” He is troubled by the fact that the financing system is modeled on covering the costs of services rather than measurable outcomes of patient care. That viewpoint aligns with equitable, accessible, quality healthcare for all and it is grounded in the holistic and cost-saving idea of health promotion and wellness, and the fact that healthcare is a human right.  

To explain the convoluted, crazy financing of American healthcare, which is fundamentally a national disaster, requires a full investigative report if not an entire book. My purpose here is two-fold: First, it’s to expose the problems in healthcare financing and to encourage healthcare consumers to self-advocate when those, or other healthcare dilemmas, affect them personally. That means asking key questions of politicians and healthcare professionals along with other measures that lead to accountability and transparency. It also means voting for leaders who understand and care about healthcare issues.

My second objective is to underscore the urgency of a universal healthcare system that eliminates the outrageous bureaucratic enigma and the power brokers that now drives health care and costs. To paraphrase the late Princess Diana, “there are three [organizations] in this marriage,” and one of them is not the patient. It is Big Pharma, the insurance industry, and the fact that healthcare delivery systems like hospitals are increasingly dedicated to business models rather than putting people above profits. This powerful triumvirate must be called into question, revised and re-invented in ways that will be difficult to achieve. But they are not impossible.

In 2020, T.R. Reid wrote a book called The Healing of America.  Reid researched five developed countries in which some form of universal healthcare was practiced. Drawing upon what he learned, he developed a model of universal healthcare that would be viable in the U.S. His recommendations went nowhere because Americans are loathe to pay higher taxes for social services (a chunk of which would be financed by corporate America paying its fair share of taxes), and very few in Congress, who are loathe to lose an election, understand what a social democracy looks like.

 Ironically, when I was mired in trying to get to the bottom of healthcare costs, not just in my state, but nationally, I was facilitating a seminar for hospital personnel, called “Humanity at the Heart of Healthcare.”  As great physician writers and profoundly humanistic caregivers still out there know, we need to return to that foundational idea in the delivery of health care. With enough people standing up for the principle that caring and curing can go hand in hand, we can focus on the Hippocratic idea to “do no harm,” (including financially).

As poet Amanda Gorman wrote in her poem Hymn for Humanity, “May we not just ache, but act.”  Now is the time.

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Suffer the Little Children

They come from countries of unrelenting poverty, oppression, war, and violence. They come to escape all of that with parents, relatives, friends, or alone. They walk miles and miles, day after day, hungry, thirsty, afraid, exhausted. As a recent report in The New York Times revealed the number of migrant children crossing the U.S. border from the south has “soared” for several reasons, including declining situations in Latin American countries along with pandemic induced migration, and the election of President Biden. Last year the influx of migrant children rose to 130,000. That’s three times higher than five years ago.

 With this influx of unaccompanied children, child employment has reached Dickensian levels and conditions in most parts of the U.S. Another New York Times article illuminated the reality of this exploitation. One teenage worker “stuffed a sealed plastic bag of cereal into a passing carton. It could be dangerous work, with fast-moving pulleys and gears that had torn off fingers and ripped open a woman’s scalp.” That factory “was full of underage workers … spending late hours bent over hazardous machinery.”  In other places kids work in slaughterhouses, wood sawing businesses, or tend giant ovens making granola bars and other snack foods.

 According to the Times report, this kind of child labor is part of a “new economy of exploitation,” in which migrant youth constitute a “shadow work force that extends across industries in every state.” This new labor force has been growing, particularly in the last two years, and it’s all in violation of child labor laws. In addition to the work in plants and factories, children wash dishes and deliver meals in various venues. They help build vacation homes, harvest crops, and work as hotel maids, usually at night, after trying to stay awake in school during the day, if the families they stay with actually send them to school as mandated.

 Often these children are housed with adults they don’t know. These “sponsors” often exploit the kids, pressuring them to earn money to help with expenses, or payoff smugglers who have helped place the children with them. Oversight and monitoring of these housing situations are often ignored, even though they are mandated.  As one caseworker told the Times, “It’s getting to be a business for some of the sponsors.” Schools, businesses, workers in federal agencies, and law enforcement are guilty of “willful ignorance,” as the Times reporter put it.

 Child trafficking is another related issue. Anti-trafficking legislation exists in the U.S. but is inadequately adhered to, and made more difficult because of the growing number of children coming across the border, often with worrying debt to pay off. According to the Times report, concerns about unaccompanied minors at the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement began to grow two years ago when labor trafficking began growing, exacerbated by the inappropriately quick release of children from detention centers rather than maintaining a focus on preventing unsafe releases.

 Child marriage is also something we should be concerned about in this country. According to Equality Now, shocking as it may seem, here in the U.S. child marriage, which occurs when one or both parties to a marriage are under 18 years of age, is legal in 43 states, but 20 U.S. states do not require any minimum age for marriage, if there is parental consent or a judicial waiver.

 A human rights violation, “child marriage legitimizes abuse and denies girls’ autonomy. When young girls are forced to marry, they are essentially subject to state-sanctioned rape and are at risk of increased domestic violence, forced pregnancy, and negative health consequences, while being denied education and economic opportunity.” Equality Now explains. Yet, nearly 300,000 female children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018, most of them to much older men. And in some states, child marriage is considered a valid defense to statutory rape.

 Child abuse doesn’t stop there in this country. It starts with our inability to end the continuing brutality of gun violence that is the biggest killer of children and teenagers in America. It begs the question, how much do we really care about children when rightwing politicians and the people who vote for them support so-called leaders’ refusal to fund daycare, food programs, and healthcare for children in need, or parental leave so that infants are safe and bonding with their parents? How can we claim to care about children of all ages and ethnicities when Republican legislators try to slash Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, deny healthcare to trans kids and mess with the child tax credit program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program known as SNAP? 

 It's abundantly clear that all children in this country are in serious trouble, physically and emotionally, and that a sizeable swath of Americans in high and not so high places don’t seem to care and are willing to put future generations in jeopardy – all of which raises the real question:

How is it we go on allowing children to suffer (and die), and still delude ourselves that our country is exceptional?

 Perhaps it is, but sadly in is so many wrong ways. Just ask the children.

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Choosing Political Promise Over Continuing Chaos

As we begin a new year with the relief of midterm elections behind us, many Americans are enjoying a sense of comfort about our political future. We saw a blue wave when a red one was predicted and a long overdue increase in diversity among those elected to office at all levels of governance. We moved closer to holding accountable those who wished to do us harm, including a past president and his collaborators and insurrectionists. So it may seem too early to be thinking about 2024, or what 2023 will bring.

While the sense of relief was warranted, we’re still not out of the woods, and we mustn’t allow comfort to yield to complacency and chaos.  Given the way autocracy has already crept into our lives, vigilance is still necessary.

Americans have never experienced a true, full-blown autocracy although we’ve come close. We have never had one single person hold absolute power over society, the military, the economy, and civil rights. We have not had to fear threats, punishment for lack of loyalty or disobedience and we have not lived with hideous rules and regulations, demands, or orders. We have no real idea of what it’s like to live in a country that has these rules and orders, where death or imprisonment loom large for ordinary people.

But we have seen alarming elements of autocracy creep into our lives over the past few years and we can’t ignore them in the belief that “it can’t happen here.”  We may not have a Viktor Orban or a Putin at the helm yet but we have experienced much of what occurs in autocracies.  We’ve seen voting rights eroded in 47 states, a politicized Supreme Court, an increase in domestic terrorism, political violence and police brutality, an end to privacy and horrific repression for women, hateful acts against immigrants, Jews, and the LGBTQ community – all scapegoats that foster fear mongering aimed at controlled political agendas and a planned landscape by rightwing zealots operating from a fascist playbook. Let’s not forget that we also came perilously close to an overthrow of our government in a violent coup attempt.  

Autocracy often begins incrementally so those not affected by early moves don’t notice the first steps. It becomes easy to take democracy for granted, unless you find that you are hassled by police, or graffiti appears on your synagogue or business, you need an abortion or birth control, or you find yourself watching what you say to whom, and where you congregate with friends. Soon science is suppressed, books are banned, school curricula are controlled, and texts are revised while religious schools are funded.  Environmental concerns are dismissed, and climate change is ignored. All of these things have already occurred in our country. What’s next? The military ending protests or dissent?

As President Biden says, “Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it.” 

Further, a troubling view held by a large segment of our electorate is also something we must keep in mind as we march toward one of the most crucial elections of our lifetimes.  Many Americans find false comfort in the notion that a centrist government is a safe government, but that assumption requires a deep understanding of what constitutes centrist positions and political priorities. For the most part, centrist Democrats and their Republican colleagues fail to enact legislation that focuses on the human rights and basic needs of constituents whose lives are an anomaly for those who have the wealth and status to achieve political power. Issues like livable wages, parental leave, child welfare, support for single mothers and working women, affordable housing, help for the mentally ill, community policing that includes opinion leaders and social workers from within the community, and other necessities promulgated by progressive leadership (like gun laws) never make it to the Congressional floor or are voted against.

Those who like to call themselves progressive centrists often talk about moderation and reasonable social equality in balance with moderate authority and sensible order. But who decides what is moderate or reasonable or what constitutes a fair balance between just law when all values are laden with interpretive views rather than fact based, objective analysis?

As George Lakoff has noted in an essay about “The New Centrism and its  Discontents,” When a Democrat ‘moves to the center,’ he is adopting a conservative position – or the language of a conservative position. Even if the language is adopted and not the policy, there is an important effect. Using conservative language activates the conservative view…which strengthens the conservative world view in the brains of those listening.”

In addition, MoveOn.org has pointed out that, “Governments actually working for people shouldn’t be seen as a radical idea. Everything that gets labeled ‘far-left’ in the U.S. is common sense policy in the rest of the industrialized world. Guaranteed healthcare. Paid family leave. Government drug price regulation. Gun control. It isn’t radical. We’re talking about the basics of a functioning society.”

Democrats (small and large D), whose pluralism often interferes with their solidarity, must keep autocracy and centrist governance high on their list of priorities when the next time to vote arrives.  As Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) has said, “Winning elections is not about looking good. It’s about being good.The path forward is to actually enact policies that address the pain people are feeling across the country, not pretend that pain doesn’t exist.”

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Where is Abigail Adams in Today''s Political Discourse?

In all the talk about encroaching autocracy in America and elsewhere, politicians, pundits, media personalities and others need to remember the words and wisdom of the revolutionary first First Lady, Abigail Adams, who admonished her husband to “remember the ladies.”

Another First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, echoed her predecessor in a recent CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour when she called out the absence of misogyny in various analyses of forces at work when countries descend into autocracies and dictatorships.

She was right to do that. In the growing discourse about various factors that prevail when democracies slide into autocracy, white supremacy, race, class and caste quickly rise to the surface as identifiable and frightening factors.  But not a word is uttered about the systemic oppression of women, which has been part of dictatorial regimes and cultures throughout history. 

Examples abound from ancient times to now, with women being treated like second class citizens in almost every country and culture. In ancient Greece women were thought to hinder democracy as the weaker sex. Considered property, they lived in seclusion without rights, valued only as the bearers of male progeny. In medieval times religious institutions kept women quiet and voiceless while the idea of women as property prevailed into more modern times as women were “owned” by their fathers and husbands by virtue of economic indenture and lack of agency in male dominated societies.

Fast forward to the 20th and 21st centuries and consider the fact that women were denied the vote in America until 1920, and dictators like Hitler and Ceausescu mandated childbearing, rendering women nothing more than semen vessels and property of the state, something we are seeing emerge in our own country. Women continue to have limited access to leadership positions, economic parity, and agency over their own lives – largely legislatively ignored and increasingly court ordered.

The question is why.  The answer? It is intentional, overtly or unconsciously, because in a world dominated largely by (white) men terrified of losing patriarchal power, woman are immensely threatening.  The fact is powerful men know that women have different priorities than they do, and that those priorities are grounded in a profound commitment to human rights and social justice, not in greed, moral and financial corruption, massive profits, or overwhelming power. They also know that women are deeply intelligent, strategic, capable people and that they are organizing as never before.

One has only to look at the brave women of Iran who are willing to face torture, rape and murder for “Women, Life, Freedom”, or to consider the courage of Kurdish women who fought on the battleground and Rohingya women standing up to their oppressors.  Or to remember the abuelas of Latin America who never gave up the fight to find their missing children, the women of Liberia and India whose work saved lives and changed policy, the French and Ghetto resistance movement women who helped win a war. Then there were the women who shared their personal stories about rape and sexual abuse at global conferences and with local newspapers, the million women who marched in Washington, DC the day after Donald Trump became president, the women artists, writers, musicians, photographers, organizers, the mothers demanding gun legislation, the lawyers who raised an army of volunteer lawyers overnight to litigate on behalf of immigrants at airports or helped a ten year old raped child escape forced childbearing.  The examples go on and on and on.

That is why male retaliation against women in Iran is so violent, why rape is increasingly a war crime, why the Supreme Court of the United States has rendered women property of the state, why domestic abuse and gun violence against women are on the rise, why books by and about women are banned in such high numbers, , why women are going to jail for having a miscarriage and more broadly why teachers can no long teach history or talk about gay marriage or use certain words, or encourage girls to play sports or to dream of becoming president and so much more.

It all paints a portrait of misogyny at its most extreme because powerful men simply cannot abide a world in which women too are powerful whether in their homes, communities, states, or countries. The very thought of sharing the podium or the parliament or a pay scale with females is completely abhorrent because deep down powerful men know that women bring skills and experience to bear on pressing issues of our time, so they resort o to further and deeper methods of domination, exclusion, and abuse.

And that is why we must include misogyny in the public and private discourse surrounding our deep concerns and increasing acknowledgement that our democracy, and democracy elsewhere, are indeed in a precarious and perishable place. It is why women are choosing, and working hard, to revolt against the evils of autocracy that could well render them “a leaf blowing in the whirlwind,” a destiny that political philosopher Hannah Arendt warned us all against.

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