Social Activism in the Age of Trump: What To Do and What We Are Doing

There have been calls for this thread and I think it's useful, so here you go. Busy this morning so can't contribute much right now but here's a quick step one:

http://www.injusticeboycott.com/

im adopting a wait and see approach

i'm definitely on board with the injustice boycott.

Unfortunately, once the composition of Congress and the state legislatures are settled by elections, court cases are the only direct means of political action. Indirect political action would include lobbying, protests, and increasing public discourse. Charitable giving is always available to offset the loss of public social safety net programs, even if it is less effective than coordinated government action.

My wife and I are likely to double the amounts of contributions we make to political and charitable organizations in 2017. We're already stepping up our year-end contributions. The local food bank, environmental organizations, and the ACLU are high up on our list.

thanks for this thread

I forgot to mention Planned Parenthood and Oregon's US Senator Jeff Merkeley.

i would argue that the us political system has become so debased and corrupt that "indirect action" is more meaningful and powerful, these days, than direct action. i am also less motivated in giving to organizations that will attempt to provide charitable alternatives to the collapse of our institutions than i am to organizations that are working to create stronger formal institutions. i'm sure that, for instance, knitting booties for homeless children is the best a lot of people feel they contribute, but that's not particularly my focus.

i agree- our actions are now more codified within instituions for better or for worse. my list:

-i work for PP
-donate to ACLU
-trying to participate in the democratic party on a local level
-go to protests/pro-immigrant events etc

that's about what i've got

also paying for decent journalism

this reminds me to cancel my NYT subscription

Thanks for starting this thread. Injustice Boycott sounds like a decent place to start.
I'm cynical about the effect of protests, but I do think about joining. Often wonder if any individual action can have as much effect as say, corporations taking business out of North Carolina due to HB2. Protests can bring awareness to these things, and I guess every action is a tiny pebble...
Donations to sympathetic causes is a great idea and I'll give at convenient times but usually I don't have much to give.
Will consider subscribing to righteous news outlets. Who else besides WaPo is doing serious work out there?
Definitely considering volunteering, but not at all sure what to do.

Shaun King has before been better at getting ideas than following through, so I'm cautiously optimistic about th injustices boykott. Such a good idea, but we'll see.

I'd recommend watching this video for more background and info: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1215976078441308&id=799539910084929

"Often wonder if any individual action can have as much effect as say, corporations taking business out of North Carolina due to HB2. Protests can bring awareness to these things, and I guess every action is a tiny pebble...
Donations to sympathetic causes is a great idea and I'll give at convenient times but usually I don't have much to give."

to me the upside of the trump phenomenon is realizing that major organizations can be coerced into making decisions based on vocal fringe minorities. ok, that's terrifying, but it also means that we don't have to represent "mainstream" thought or get a majority of people to agree with us in order to have a positive effect. corporations are more vulnerable to the pressure we place through vocal boycotts than government institutions are to the "power" of our vote.

Curious how helpful/effective people find this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/174f0WBSVNSdcQ5_S6rWPGB3pNCsruyyM_ZRQ6QUhGmo/edit#gid=114941615
I am trying to set asid a half hour a day to make calls, dunno if that's a pointless thing to do or not but it's a start.
Have recurring gifts to the SPLC and Make the Road, volunteering with kids and animals and elderly when i can, trying to find a way to make art that addresses my thoughts, reading the news and watching NewsHour, sub to NYT but should likely do a WaPo digital sub, just started with a BK action group to get organized on women's health issues
yoga and jogging to keep my head right
it all feels pretty small potatoes, dunno what else i should be doing

signed up for the injustice boycott but very skeptical that 200,000 people are going to make a difference w a nationwide boycott

Hmmm. I think there are more and less effective ways to use boycott as a form of protest, and organizations which are more and less vulnerable to boycotts.

The first thing I wonder is if "quiet" boycotts are necessarily less effective than ones which are accompanied by consistent propaganda pressure. My wife, for instance, has been boycotting Hobby Lobby for some time to no apparent effect. There's not really any organized opposition to Hobby Lobby, just grumbling at dinner parties.

The second thing I wonder, as regards Hobby Lobby, is if their non-monopoly status might not diffuse the effect of a boycott. When we need craft stuff, we go to Joann's. If Hobby Lobby were to completely remove their objectionable corporate policies, you know, we'd still get our stuff from Joann's, because it's become a habit of ours. So, since Hobby Lobby's policies aren't costing them anything, why should they change those policies?

The third thing is that if you're in a business, you cater to certain markets, and those markets are accompanied by certain prevalent political beliefs. So, for instance, Home Depot may have policies I find anathema, but I do not own a home, and do not undertake "home improvement" projects. My perception, which may be incorrect, is that the demographic which _does_ undertake home improvement projects, by and large, aligns politically with the political positions endorsed by Home Depot management. So this does not strike me as being a particularly fruitful area in which to undertake a boycott.

The fourth thing is that a lot of boycotts are based on misinformation and insufficient information. I was a little embarrassed this year or last year when people started boycotting Target for being too trans-friendly, because I was still boycotting Target for being too anti-gay. I'm not sure if they were anti-gay at some point and just changed their position, or if the belief that they were, as a corporate entity, anti-gay was simply based on a misinterpretation.

So, then, an effective boycott should be based on the boycotters, as consumers, doing without, rather than picking another choice to have their wants met. It should be accompanied by a great deal of noise and hoopla. It should, at the same time, take great pains to convey effective information and avoid misinforming its participants. Its participants, in turn, should be those who may be reasonably expected to purchase the goods or services offered by the boycotted company. Finally, it should be targeted towards an industry which does not stand to gain more than it stands to lose from anti-Trump boycotts.

Glad this thread exists.

I know we've got a lot of musicians on ILX, and have been thinking I'd like to contribute to some sort of benefit compilation. For Planned Parenthood, ACLU, SPLC - organizations that could help people who this administration could hurt.

Lee Fang ‏@lhfang 4. dec.
From the conservative turned BLM activist who crashed Bernie's Seattle rally then lied about it: a whole new scam: http://safetypinbox.com

Everyone is trying to figure out what to do, but something not to? Tweet libelous lies about black women trying to make performative white wokeness work directly for Black women. Especially if your beef is that they once criticized Bernie Sanders. Sites like TheIntercept needs to cut ties with cyberbullies like Lee Fang.

a thought for today for any technophiles.

i think we can all acknowledge at this point that the internet is basically a teenage nazi chatbot at this point. so any activity that disrupts normal - i.e. fascist - internet discourse is of greater than ordinary utility in resisting fascism.

this need not take the form of sabotage! the internet in general is very insecure and totally vulnerable to attack, so vulnerable that most of these attacks have evolved to be parasitic rather than directly destructive as they were in the old days, but there are plenty of completely legal and effective ways for technophiles to sever the host/parasite relationship.

my impression is that most people, and certainly most trump supporters, have no very clear notion of how to use or maintain an internet connection. refusing to assist others with internet connectivity issues would, at bare minimum, significantly raise the cost of staying connected to the internet. the weak part of any state is its reliance on technocracy, and disrupting technocratic communication through noncompliance is a relatively simple and effective matter.

My experience with various kinds of social justice-y organizations in the last few years has been that a top-down organization is not for me. I tried being in a "money out of politics" org that does state govt-level maneuvering and mostly only gathers people together under their banner for the purpose of giving the org more visibility and their leaders a slightly bigger bargaining chip. Most of the members don't do much on the ground when it's not election season. My heart wasn't in it.

At this point in life my job is sjw-y and I work with frontline communities, but if you don't have this advantage then my advice is pick an issue area where you are passionate, look around online at the landscape of orgs, and reach out to organizations of affected minorities, immigrants, LGTBQ ppl, unsheltered/housing insecure ppl, etc and ask what they need and then do it in whatever way you are asked for. Let the people from that affected community lead, and support them. Learn not to talk at meetings even when you think you know the answer (I'm so bad at this). Ask one person later in confidence if your idea has merit, and let someone else advance it.

If you want to get involved in local govt by all means do it! PTA leadership, school board, zoning committee, idk what is out there but frankly I suspect a lot of it is pretty boring and actually a lot of work. Make the casseroles, sit through the meetings, keep your eye on the ball so when someone tries to ban a book or remove sex ed or w/e you are at the meeting and not reading about it in the paper the next day thinking "Jeez why didn't anyone say anything??"

Giving money is not a cop out! Grassroots orgs always need money. Economic inequality is super real and your dollar can do a lot for a community org. Whatever values you admire, whatever resources you consume, fund them. When you read an article and you think, "That kids' mentoring thing with the free books is cool and made me have hope for humanity for at least 10 seconds" throw them $10. I pay $5 a month or $10 a month to a handful of orgs, just using low level continued giving so I don't even really notice it.

The specifics of what you can do will be mostly about your situation! Where you are, how much time you have. Generally I think it's most sustainable for ppl, in terms of time and emotional commitment, to act in their existing circles more or less rather than make the rare big gesture.

Great post, in orbit. That mirrors a lot of things I've been thinking about and provides some solid advice. I want to focus as much personal attention as possible on my local community while throwing small but steady amounts of money at some worthwhile national orgs.

I'm sorry for every place that isn't Minneapolis because you just aren't this cool, but here's an example of a local good thing to support: http://appetiteforchangemn.org

Appetite For Change uses food as a tool building health, wealth, and social change in North Minneapolis. AFC is a community-led organization that strengthens families, creates economic prosperity, and encourages healthy living.

http://watchtheyard.com/activism/these-black-kids-rapping-about-urban-farming-is-the-dopest-thing-youll-see-all-week/

*Giving money is not a cop out! Grassroots orgs always need money. Economic inequality is super real and your dollar can do a lot for a community org. Whatever values you admire, whatever resources you consume, fund them. When you read an article and you think, "That kids' mentoring thing with the free books is cool and made me have hope for humanity for at least 10 seconds" throw them $10. I pay $5 a month or $10 a month to a handful of orgs, just using low level continued giving so I don't even really notice it.*

^^^this. a friend of mine founded a non-profit in NM for immigrants (which i will shamelessly plug: http://www.santafedreamersproject.org/what-we-do/) and after Trump got elected she was approached by all kinds of folks who wanted to help, like, stuff envelopes and make coffee and what-not. all of which she appreciated but what she really needed was money, because money pays lawyers to do the actual work. getting involved in organizations by showing up and being visible and doing what's asked is def Right and Good, but if, as Laurel says, economic inequality is real and you happen to be on the "haves" end of the curve, then you are probably most useful as a source of dollars. some folks can feel like its a cop-out, and others want the validation of being in the trenches, but for real: just write a check

I guess basically if you aren't leading the charge, letting communities and organizations tell you what they need from you is the best way to go.

Yep!!

Also you can do more than one thing, so if you keep a low profile in one space as a personal policy to support others, maybe find another space where you can express yourself openly just for balance. I'm practically allergic to shutting up so I need both.

injustice boycott sounds good but i've read some very pointed critiques of sean king, how close is he to the leadership of it? he's all over their FB page

He's involved in the organization and he's the public face, but it's unclear who exactly is involved because they're intentionally keeping a lid on the details. Watch the video I linked to yesterday for more info.

I'm not sure what the critiques of King are about but if the targets and the motive seem sound to me, I'm generally unconcerned with who's spearheading the endeavor.

I signed up but am waiting to see what the targeted companies are. I'm not very interested in nitpicking this or that person's exact righteousness unless it comes to my attention from a trusted source that they did something fucked up or their analysis is secretly terrible or something, I can't even really imagine an example right now. A boycott that keeps my resources out of the hands of companies who will use them for things I disagree with seems like a win-win regardless.

this was the article. that said, this injustice boycott seems really organized and thought-out so i am gonna participate probably when more details come out

http://www.complex.com/life/2016/01/shaun-king-black-lives-matter/

The announcement of their intended targets is supposed to be noon today.

As I see it, there are two parts to the criticism of Shaun King 1) He does seem quite disorganized, and keeps putting himself at the center of events and happenings. And while that's kinda good, he's a good writer and a smart thinker and a good promoter, he does seem to bite off more than he can chew. 2) He's a leftist black man, so every little misstep is magnified into enormous proportions. 99% of everything written about him is probably untrue. That does not mean he will be good at organizing a boycott, though...

Guess I'll post this here since a search turned up no results. Shaun King is spearheading an Injustice Boycott that starts Monday.

― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Friday, December 2, 2016 7:09 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post

I'm in

― El Tomboto, Friday, December 2, 2016 7:15 PM (three days ago)

and I'm out. Terrible targeting, no clear idea what specific policies I would be supporting, and not at all clear what exactly I'd be doing differently. Dumb on all the counts that boycotts are usually dumb, PLUS no details on what is going on other than a date in January.

We're screwed.

San Francisco and New York are two cities that are all but impossible to boycott for most of the people you've gotten the attention of. Profoundly, profoundly stupid.

poll the boycott list lol

For reference, I'm talking about this:

https://medium.com/@ShaunKing/today-we-launch-the-injustice-boycott-against-racial-injustice-police-brutality-in-standing-rock-b1bb18da1f4f#.upyjzpi9s

yeah ummmm 'boycott all businesses headquartered in NYC or SF' seems a bit nebulous

Especially for people who live there

starting with new york and san francisco, huh? that's... bold. particularly when the email comes from a new york daily news email account...

i see the justification for it. if you don't have justice in cities like new york and san francisco - and you don't - then how can one reasonably act in support of justice anywhere? shouldn't boycotts take place in the areas most affected by them? you know, the third city... boycotting standing rock is not going to make fuck-all difference to anybody, and we have to recognize this.

that said, the lack of a clearly defined end state for these boycotts is problematic. i get the feeling like king or whoever had planned for so long he didn't want to waste all that effort. the most important part of a boycott is _ending_ it; if it's nothing more than "fuck you forever" it's hard to expect meaningful results.

i also think that a key part of a successful boycott is _doing without_. i just don't see how simply re-balancing one's expenditures can accomplish much. so my question is, if i'm boycotting new york, if i'm boycotting san francisco - what am i _doing without_? what's my equivalent of getting up at five in the morning and walking to work for a year straight?

Everyone is trying to figure out what to do, but something not to? Tweet libelous lies about black women trying to make performative white wokeness work directly for Black women. Especially if your beef is that they once criticized Bernie Sanders. Sites like TheIntercept needs to cut ties with cyberbullies like Lee Fang.

― Frederik B, Sunday, December 4, 2016 7:41 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hardworking catholic bishops trying to make the desire of people to pay for indulgences work directly for catholic bishops

It's not all businesses headquartered in NYC or SF, but only those involved in police brutality and systematic racism, right? But, um, would probably have been a good idea to have a partial list up already...

I'm almost positively surprised because my suspicions were so low, but, this needs to become a lot better in the next 43 days for it to work at all.

It's not all businesses headquartered in NYC or SF, but only those involved in police brutality and systematic racism, right? But, um, would probably have been a good idea to have a partial list up already...

― Frederik B, Monday, December 5, 2016 12:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so glad that twitter activists will be refusing to shop at Joe Mook's Billyclub and Taser Emporium and "Heeeeeyy, I'm being Systematically Racist Here, Inc." and, uh, the policeman's ball.

s.clover, you can't seriously think black women play an equivalent part to what catholic bishops did in the indulgence system?

Like, you seem dumb as fuck, but clearly not even you are that dumb?

I tend to think the most important "activism" right now is actually rebuilding local and state democratic parties (or third parties like Working Families that will still support democrats when necessary). The only check on Trump's power will come from congress and from state governments.

Sorry, not "the only" check, but one of the most important checks.

yes i think they are exactly equivalent because i have never been introduced to the concept of an analogy

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyzkgfxVEAA0AIw.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cy3Oc-8WIAAzceP.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cy3Oc-8WIAAzceP.jpg

A Box of __________ Shipped to Your House Each Month

Everyone already commodifies activism, these people just try to make that work for black women especially. Go fuck yourself.

Why the fuck are you so angry at activist black women getting paid? What's wrong with you?

"for black women especially" -- by which they mean two black women in particular and nobody else.

i'm not angry this is funny to me actually

Guys, again, if you haven't, watch Shaun King's video about the boycott. It addresses some of your concerns. It's intentionally nebulous at this point because they only want to drop the where/how/when specifics of the boycotts just before they happen.

s.clover, why are you lying about it?

Can I please please please ask that we keep the squabbling to a minimum itt? I don't do much thread policing but I would personally prefer that this thread remain a repository for information and ideas and anecdotes and that we can avoid seeing this pop up in the clusterfuck summary thread. Thank you, sincerely.

i don't want to be armchair activism critic but the injustice boycott's self-comparisons to montgomery are imo confused or even disingenuous. that was a local, narrowly targeted, almost total, and extremely visible boycott, reinforced every night at mass meetings, supported by movement-organized alternative transportation, which was required because for many what was being boycotted was a necessity. w respect to the truth that the internet has since complicated the idea of "local" and the idea of a "meeting" i don't think you can expect anything like the results of the montgomery boycott from something this diffuse and general.

in fact i think comparing a virtuous change in one's consumption to getting up in the dark every morning to walk to work in deep winter while hoping nobody kills you for it is missing something. not just because They Endured More -- those sorts of comparisons not partic useful -- but because when there are that many actual bodies in the actual streets actually demonstrating their lack of dependence on their rulers i start to suspect some form of power is being exercised beyond the neatly economic. on the other hand, capitalism has assured me there's no better way to change the world than to buy a different soda.

don't mean to reject people's energy and action tho, by all means do this, do everything. and maybe when the secret plans are revealed i will feel differently. idk what those secret plans are gonna be tho besides some company names.

i support the woke of the month club as long as fred becomes a platinum member.

I tend to think the most important "activism" right now is actually rebuilding local and state democratic parties (or third parties like Working Families that will still support democrats when necessary). The only check on Trump's power will come from congress and from state governments.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive)

you're right that rebuilding local and state political organizations to defend human rights is one of the, if not the, most important thing people in general can do.

i think everybody has different skill sets, though, and not everybody can assist in every area. when i look at how the political system is run right now, you know, it's almost entirely populist. the local democratic party simply would not benefit from the support of a woefully uncharismatic wonk like me, because it already has the "benefit" of far too many of those. the best way to help the democratic party right now, for most of us, is to find the most charismatic person you know and persuade them to join up with the local party.

dlh, I would agree, but Shaun King wrote a bit about how much the boycott of North Carolina following the bathroom bill, and that does complicate the picture. This can of course work both ways - see: GamerGate - but a pointed, organized boycott could work if it was broad enough, and the news stories bad enough. We still don't have any particulars about the Injustice Boycott, which is bad in and of itself.

Old Lunch, I agree, and I've already asked s.clover to step away from the thread to self-copulate. I posted the tweet exactly for informational purposes, an example of social activism I find problematic as well, and a response that is nonetheless beyond the pale awful. Don't do this, and def don't do that.

xpost I walk by our local dem party office every day, and kinda feel like my personal skill set should be employed in making that place look like less of a depressive's nightmare. And maybe volunteer to park my ass behind the desk so that it doesn't perpetually look like they've given up completely.

I posted the tweet exactly for informational purposes, an example of social activism I find problematic as well, and a response that is nonetheless beyond the pale awful. Don't do this, and def don't do that.

this isn't "informational" it's prescriptive

One small thing I thought to do this weekend: I've been having a hell of a time finding information on formal and informal local government events (e.g. an upcoming meet and greet with the candidates being held at a church down the street and which, as far as I can tell, is only listed on the church's website), so I think I'm going to try to figure out who organizes this stuff so that I can keep in touch with them and maintain (or, if one exists already, help raise the profile of) a government-specific community calendar.

wins, this is a thread about activism. The idea that people might act on information is kinda baked into the premise...

One small thing I thought to do this weekend: I've been having a hell of a time finding information on formal and informal local government events (e.g. an upcoming meet and greet with the candidates being held at a church down the street and which, as far as I can tell, is only listed on the church's website), so I think I'm going to try to figure out who organizes this stuff so that I can keep in touch with them and maintain (or, if one exists already, help raise the profile of) a government-specific community calendar.

― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Monday, December 5, 2016 6:27 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This may not be the same thing but from experience I can tell you that the NYC City Council does stuff like this all the time--hold poorly publicized "public comment"-type meetings DURING THE WORK DAY when no one can come except other people who also work in politics/advocacy. If you suggest that they should hold them at night and advertise widely they look at you like you're crazy. I mean SURE, start going to things and see if you find them useful? You can learn a lot about different parties' agendas from sitting in a few strategic procedural mtgs.

I mean even if they're just theater, what you can tell is that the actual work is getting done somewhere else and that it benefits someone to have the theater continue, which gives you new avenues to explore.

Oh yeah and in relation to the electoral politics thread's mention of the Moral Mondays movement in NC, if you belong to a faith community, try to advance the idea of sponsoring a family or non-profit. Either with time, if it's service oriented like a food pantry or soup kitchen, or with member tithing/donations? In terms of reaching the people who can be swayed by red-state kinda BS, I figure totally righteous churches and faith-based groups that muscle up for justice can really move a lot of ppl with the presumed legitimacy of the church (or the Church, as it may be).

In the part of Brooklyn where I work a lot of churches do have food pantries or community closets for donated clothes, but afaict they don't publicize widely. Plus you have to go into a church to access the resource and a lot of the incoming community members are from other faiths so they just never find out that the pantries exist or are available to them. It's bullshit. Don't participate in bullshit.

Thinking about the Defund DAPL thing linked from the Injustice Boycott email. Honestly don't think I have the guts to pull all my savings out of JP Morgan Chase and find some other local bank that's not on the huge list of... well every major bank... but it seems like a good idea

I recommend local credit unions. recently (okay a couple years ago) got all our money out of the major banking system (including our home mortgage), which has been great.

I recommend local credit unions. recently (okay a couple years ago) got all our money out of the major banking system (including our home mortgage), which has been great.

― Οὖτις

yeah definitely recommend credit unions. honestly if all individuals pulled their money out of the banks they would do just fine because banks are really there for corporations, not for individuals, but that just reinforces the point that individuals should just go with credit unions.

http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/09/social-justice-activism-ableist/

every single one of those legitimate grievances would have been avoided if people weren't inconsiderate dicks. if you cut through the jargon it is really just a matter of narcissists excluding others. the way around this is surely to culturally stigmatise all narcissism? (increased visibility of disabled ppl would probably help too) [/ljsplaining]

I agree with louis. Framing all of this in terms of systemic oppression makes ordinary kindness suddenly tendentious and it's a dumb move

I have a hunch we will be witnessing a great many dumb moves in the activist department over the next couple of years

also, point 5 is sitting really badly with me :/

I'm assuming this is the thread that prompted the attempted online lynching of Fred B?

imago please explain why you have a problem with point 5? No sarcasm I want to know.

well obviously if people (esp non-hegemonic people) were being called out as 'oppressors' for innocently misusing terms then that's obviously horrific and dickish, but surely saying that academic language is the preserve of the privileged is in itself a form of othering? idk it just strikes me that so long as terms are explained, unpacked and respected then nobody's going to be left behind. this isn't the culture war that ought to be fought imo

Also lacking facility with this sort of obfuscating jargon is hardly a "disability."

yeah apologies to the author but it's hard to look at a sentence like Yet still it took me several years of intensive study to feel I had begun to master the nuances of concepts like cisheteropatriarchy. and not, like, roll your eyes a bit (not least because the concepts behind that word would take about three minutes to explain to an ordinary child)

guys the whole article is bad

I'm assuming this is the thread that prompted the attempted online lynching of Fred B?

― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), 6. december 2016 02:25 (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that was mostly caused by something being severely wrong with darragh.

That's a pretty ableist thing to say

HA!

I don't think that's funny.

Guy created a whole thread dedicated to calling me a c**t and saying I should be banned, with no reason given at all. There's something severely wrong with that, even if it's just that he's evil and hateful, and I'm not going to laugh about being treated like that. It's not ok, it's not funny.

I wasn't laughing at you Frederik, I know nothing of this ongoing beef, I just thought the article I posted was a little overbearing and enjoyed the usage of ableist.

xp

LOL maybe if you stopped being such a hostile dick to people at the drop of a hat, but at this rate I hope you hit 51 soon

seriously, go fuck yourself, stop posting, K3vin K OTM

you deserve to be mocked

(removes bookmark from thread)

It's not a 'beef' it's bullying.

Calling people c**t and f****t is not 'mocking'. Do you think I deserve that sleeve?

Ok darragh never said the latter.

I am not going to tell you not to be mad at deems but I don't think you really get where he is coming from. He was certainly mean to you but he's not a bigot

No, and I didn't say that. But I've been called that, and sleeve said I deserved what I'm getting. Do you think what darragh did was ok, treesh?

keep this act up and eventually everybody is going to agree with him

you're officially into the "paranoia is a self-fulfilling prophecy" part of the game

Do you agree with him, El T? Do you think it's okay that he called me a c**t?

Seriously, do anyone here have the guts to either a) say that what darragh did was unacceptable or b) that what he did was acceptable. There's no middle ground. Either it's ok to create a new thread to call me a c**t, or it isn't. I am PISSED that it happened, and that it's apparently probably something I just have to deal with going forward because a poster don't like what I writes, and this cowardice in saying if people are ok with it or not is pissing me off as well.

Seems acceptable to me, you're really annoying.

Like, you're both really strident in your opinions and unusually sensitive to criticism, not exactly a shocker that some people don't like you, and "ban x" threads are a time-honored tradition.

a horrible horrible tradition that has ruined lives

Lol

One thing to keep in mind is that in degenerate countries like England and Ireland the word c**t is used pretty loosely and is not necessarily considered offensive.

Like if an American used that word it would be a shocking slur but in the ban thread deems was basically just calling you an asshole

you're a top cunt, treesh

Post to Strategize About Future Threads to Start in the Event That This Thread Fails to Stop Trump

p sure deems was using it in the spirit in which it was originally intended imo just sayin

I've FP'd everyone who has posted to this thread, because in all the ways that matter, this is all of our faults.

It's a shame about Old Lunch and in orbit, I know they both were in the 40+ club

Lol. I look forward to be able to use all the slurs that doesn't mean anything bad in Denmark, Treesh.

it's weird that I have a memory that's got to be almost a decade old at this point, of SB carpet bombing, back when it was an SB and not an FP

Fp you because our resistance movement cannot afford to look backward

It's not a 'beef' it's bullying.

― Frederik B, Monday, December 5, 2016 9:24 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

u said "you seem dumb as fuck" to me and invited me to fuck myself. idk, do u think that was bullying?

tru healing starts from looking within

anyway guyz, good activism on this thread all around. kudos everyone!

snaps

classic leftist circular firing squad status achieved in only 2 days. SAD!

s.clover, that was an angry response to posts you sent at me. That was beef. You would know the difference between that and what darragh did, if you weren't dumb as fuck.

fred all defences lowered now

ilx has been around a lot longer than your chest hair. theres a legacy of ban x. theres a legacy of intellegent but snappy posting. theres a legacy of learning the place. theres a legacy of getting a bit of bounce in your online personality.

theres a strong legacy of balancing aggression, zinging, bullying, patronism, all that negative shit under whatever guise or slipped into the usual discourse, with humour or charm or interestingness or content or a million other ways to sugar the medicine, and you avoid all of the latter as far as i or a lot of us can see.

i dont hate you you silly fool but you need to look at your exchanges itt to realise that this is not how it works

ban x threads have been 90% tongue in cheek protest threads since ilx began. they were never going to ban you you daft sod.

fp is rare and you need only worry about it if you are one of the posters that simply has too much ego to adopt the fairly easy ilx norms and then marries it with enough rank unpleasantness to actively piss people off. nb i will be very disappointed in ilx if you are not fpd but hy all means carry on.

cunt is a rich and varied term. we have threads on it. lots of cunts on this board are some of my favourite cunts. some cunts on this board are total cunts. youre a wee cunt but youre not a total cunt. hope that helps.

race u to 51 ya cuntcha x

darragh, you're not funny, you're not charming and you're not interesting. There's no sugar to your aggressive bullying, and how the fuck couldn't you have figured out by now I intensely dislike it? It could have been funny but after Morbs got banned, it took on a different tone. Stay the fuck away from me, and stop pretending you own this place.

pwns it sometimes

own 1/51 of it, cunt

Goddamnit Fred. This constant whining about "being bullied" and pissing yr lamentations on nearly every single thread you stumble in is getting v v tiresome. FP deems and get over it already. That's how it's done.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/popeye/images/3/39/Picture_2.png/revision/latest?cb=20150104215207

"It's apparently probably something I just have to deal with going forward because a poster don't like what I writes!"

classic leftist circular firing squad status achieved in only 2 days. SAD!

― Οὖτις

and it only took one loudmouth drama queen!

i do think leftists in general underestimate the benefits of formal, hierarchial organization, on the grounds that it's "fascist" or something. stalinist purges something something look guys it's ok we are quite obviously incapable of establishing a gulag. if we're not willing or able to take concrete actions against disrupters (ignoring them is _not_ effective, thanks twenty years of terrible internet psychology), we're ceding control of the "movement" to the disrupters. this is not exclusively a left-wing circle jerk, this is exactly what happened to the internet as a whole.

back to what i was saying yesterday, i think that supporting people who are doing the right thing is as important, if not more important, than opposing the people who lack the strength to do the right thing. incentivizing. so for instance we've switched to buying kellogg's raisin bran instead of store brand, even though it's way more expensive, because kellogg's refuses to advertise on breitbart and is getting heat as a result. we're not the only ones talking boycotts, keep in mind.

^^ Agree. Possibly a good example of that is also the quite astounding surge in digital subscriptions for the NYT. I don't think all of those are simply because Trump has it in for them, but one would hope this comes from the desire for a p dece newspaper instead of all the noise out there.

new dn thanks rushomancy

:)

About to request mod privileges over here simply for the sake of banning people from this thread. Thanks to all who are keeping it posi and irie. Namaste.

Any of y'all have experience starting or running a nonprofit?

No but iirc to become a 501c3 you really need lawyers and accountants. It's a lot.

You need a lawyer and an accountant on retainer, you mean. I know people who have done it.

It's not *that* different from any other incorporated entity, i.e. garden club, HOA, etc

ilxor bell_labs offered on fb to help with the accountancy parts for startup NPOs. Generally though I think, ahhhh, some people are very quick to want to start one with their stamp on it rather than join an existing effort. It makes me wary.

it's apparently probably something I just have to deal with going forward because a poster don't like what I writes

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/The_Things_They_Carried.jpg

Y'all are a mess btw

I do know some stuff because my job involves indirectly working with nonprofits, but I was more curious about anecdotal experiences, if anybody has them to share.

I worked in the nonprofit sector for a while and in orbit is right. There are already too many nonprofits out there applying for the same grants. It's much more effective to find a local nonprofit that's established and had some success and work with them than to start from scratch.

i would use the new york times thing as really a textbook example of a stupid boycott. you voted for a party that has spent the last twenty years building an entire massive media ecosystem built pretty much specifically on opposition to the new york times approach to journalism, and you're telling me that you are _just now_ cancelling your subscription to the nyt? pull the other one.

which also leads to something i feel is worth reinforcing. on another thread somebody questioned whether the democratic party could find the "perfect candidate" to defeat trump, and we really don't need to be aiming for perfection here. trump is a terrible person and a terrible politician who everybody hates, and we shouldn't lose sight of this. there is ample room in this for us to fuck up and still come out okay.

i do think, yeah, we are all of us more willing to lead than we are to follow. particularly because we're in a period of time where there seems to be a leadership vacuum, because the old model of leadership advocated by the democratic party has pretty conclusively failed. okay, but we have to assume that said failure is as apparent to them as it is to us, and that they are in a better position to address that failure than those of us who have no experience whatsoever. we don't all need to reinvent the wheel at once. we do need to learn how to trust people we disagree with, which is going to be tough for us because a lot of us supported someone we disagreed with in november and it was an absolute catastrophic failure.

Could you take 5-10 minutes there, rushomancy, to sit and think for a bit about the various uses of 'us' in that paragraph, and who it usually means, and who it might mean, and who it might read as meaning?

And when you've reached your conclusions, could you post them on your blog and not here?

We need actual representative leadership from the top down. Someone who takes the reins to make sure shit gets done but who takes their direction from the people. I have no problem following someone who acts on input from others and is able to hear criticism.

I...don't think we're all talking about the same kind of thing? What you describe is a very specific kind of visible strong leader, which isn't always the right fit to get certain jobs done--AND it advantages that type of person and excludes others who aren't perceived in exactly that way. Chill. Go hang out with some community orgs and relax and listen and take it all in. See whose ideas get favored even when they aren't the loudest voice. Idk just...observe for a while.

Oh, yeah, I'm just floating ideas. I'm in no position to start a nonprofit or lead any kind of charge myself. My immediate longish short-term plan is just to defer to whoever needs me in whatever capacity they need me.

This is a really useful article on how protest helped unseat GOP governor Pat McCrory in NC, even in a year that a republican won the state at the presidential level.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/12/why-pat-mccrory-lost-and-what-it-means-in-trumps-america.html

The upshot: when politicians promote despicable legislation, do everything you can to draw attention to it, start early, and keep hammering. This especially works at the local and state level, e.g. if you live in a congressional district where your congressman supports slashing medicare or something like that.

thread is depressing.

Staying active or getting more active at the local and state level is paramount, especially since many/most of the biggest assholes in the GOP, from Ryan to Cruz, operate under the smug umbrella of promoting "states rights." Even Trump has been doing this, and he probably can't even name all 50 states. If more state governments and in particular governors go blue, that's probably the best bulwark against vindictive Republican moves at the federal level.

Yes, and it also develops the "bench" of candidates for future congress, senate and presidential runs.

Liked what Anil Dash wrote just after the election, so if you didn't see it already here it is again:

1. Show up, in your community.

Whether it’s issues like marriage equality, fighting climate change, or welcoming refugees and other immigrants, much of the progress we see starts at the local level, in our neighborhoods and cities and states. We’ll need to support and grow the organizations doing the work, and commit our time and energy to helping them accomplish their goals — simply donating our money will not be enough. There are a few key things to remember:

Organizations fighting for civil rights and social justice already exist in your community. Take the time, now, to research who is providing for essentials like food and water security, education, shelter, legal representation, and policy advocacy on behalf of people at risk.
Commit to showing up to help. We all have an overwhelming number of obligations to our lives, our families, our friends and to our work and careers. It’s hard to give up the one night a week we might spend hanging out, watching Netflix, but if that’s the night of the City Council meeting, or when your local elected official has a public hearing, it’s time to show up. Building real, sustainable infrastructure to protect those in need is a job that can’t only be done virtually, or remotely. We’ve got to show up.

Start fundraising, now. Once you’ve found the organizations doing the work in your community, commit what resources you can to supporting them, and begin helping them come up with ways to be sustainable over the long term. Local businesses are going to be key to providing necessary resources (whether that’s in-kind offerings or simply funding) and the time to capture their good intentions is right now while they’re still feeling the full weight of Trump’s win. If companies in your community say they want to do the right thing, give them the chance to.

2. Make stopping Trump a regular habit.

There are a few key steps we’ll all need to follow to prevent the gradual acceptance of Trump’s extreme and dangerous rhetoric.
Fight normalization in media. We’ll start to see the morning shows doing fluffy profiles of Melania and Ivanka almost immediately, along with “humanizing” articles and profiles of Trump following closely behind. These will be part of a concerted effort to make it seem as if Trump fits into a normal pattern of political practice in this country. We need to steadfastly, aggressively call out this threat by reminding media of his outrageous behavior and holding them accountable.

Build time into the schedule to undo Trump’s effects. We cannot stop the dangers of Trump’s presidency if we are reactive, only responding after he does something outrageous. We need to be proactive in preventing harm before it happens, and that requires a rhythm of civic participation, where we regularly do basic community-building acts like connecting with others around direct action or advocacy campaigns. Put it on your calendar, and pick 2 days a week where you set aside your lunch or forgo watching TV in the evening to contact elected officials, support candidates who will run for office, work with community organizations to support those in need, or simply talk to your friends and neighbors about the work that needs to be done.

If you can’t lead, then support those who do. Once President Obama’s term in office has ended, we’ll be blessed with getting back one of the most effective and respected community organizers who’s ever lived. But his work alone won’t be enough — we’ll need a thousand more leaders like him. Find the people in your community who are leading the charge, and ask them what they need. Nobody can do it alone, and not everybody has the time or interest to be the face in front of the crowd, but we can support those who do choose to stand up.

Pursue a strategy of containment as we make progress. There are a few narrow areas where Trump’s stated policies aren’t inherently destructive, such as his promise to rebuild American infrastructure. While we have to be hypervigilant for traditional inequities like redlining and destructive “urban renewal”, we can work to direct his efforts in such areas towards productive ends, so that the momentum and attention of Trump and his supporters is channeled toward the least dangerous goals possible. This strategy will also benefit from Trump’s illiteracy or incompetence in other areas of policy, which might draw him to focus on initiatives related to construction and infrastructure, where he is least weak. This doesn’t diminish his danger overall, but offers a possible productive outlet for what he’ll clearly see as a mandate to act.

3. Take care of yourself and others.

This is going to take years of work, and there will be other demoralizing moments along the way. We’ll get tired and afraid and exhausted, and when we’re not, we’ll have to help those around us who are.

But the work to be done in fighting Donald Trump is not unprecedented. All of us who are targets of his rhetorical attacks and his proposed policies can look back at history and see times when we’ve faced down similar threats—and won. It is only because progress has been made that we feel so gutted by this loss. And this is not, as some would say, the last gasp of old oppressions, it is simply another dark milestone in a fight against injustice that will never end.

Today, though, I’m ready to get to work, and I’m committed to this fight for as long as it takes. I owe it to my child, and to my family, and to yours. I hope you’ll join me. We’ve got work to do.

This is on my reading list right now:
https://www.versobooks.com/books/1991-crowds-and-party

Crowds_and_party-cover-max_221 more images
Crowds and Party
by Jodi Dean
How do mass protests become an organized activist collective?
Crowds and Party channels the energies of the riotous crowds who took to the streets in the past five years into an argument for the political party. Rejecting the emphasis on individuals and multitudes, Jodi Dean argues that we need to rethink the collective subject of politics. When crowds appear in spaces unauthorized by capital and the state—such as in the Occupy movement in New York, London and across the world—they create a gap of possibility. But too many on the Left remain stuck in this beautiful moment of promise—they argue for more of the same, further fragmenting issues and identities, rehearsing the last thirty years of left-wing defeat. In Crowds and Party, Dean argues that previous discussions of the party have missed its affective dimensions, the way it operates as a knot of unconscious processes and binds people together. Dean shows how we can see the party as an organization that can reinvigorate political practice.

That's really great, nashwan. Thanks for reposting.

I'm trying to be realistic about what I can do because a) I want to commit to contributing both time and money on an ongoing basis and b) that commitment means that I'm basically going from zero to sixty in terms of my actual civic/community involvement. But I'm intending to go 'live' immediately after the holidays. I have to make an actual budget (gasp) so I can figure out the total amount I have to play with, but I'm going to be splitting a monthly charitable contribution between 8-10 groups. I'm going to start regularly attending city council meetings, etc (I'm going to the aforementioned candidate meet and greet tomorrow night and then attending a launch event on Saturday for the city clerk candidate I mentioned in the race thread...already a pretty unprecedented level of involvement for me) and try to find a committee that seems like the best use of my energy. In terms of just community involvement, there are some ongoing after school tutoring opportunities starting at the beginning of the public schools' spring semester that I'm hoping to participate in. I think just mixing it up with people who are already engaged will give me a little more focus re: how best to serve.

And when you've reached your conclusions, could you post them on your blog and not here?

― Andrew Farrell

i don't have a blog, you're just going to have to complain about my pronoun usage here.

This is a really useful article on how protest helped unseat GOP governor Pat McCrory in NC, even in a year that a republican won the state at the presidential level.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/12/why-pat-mccrory-lost-and-what-it-means-in-trumps-america.html

The upshot: when politicians promote despicable legislation, do everything you can to draw attention to it, start early, and keep hammering. This especially works at the local and state level, e.g. if you live in a congressional district where your congressman supports slashing medicare or something like that.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive)

on the other hand we did the same sort of thing in indiana with pence and he's now vice president, so my recommendation is that if you live in indiana, you should strongly consider getting the fuck out.

And that also sounds good, man alive. It's always so disheartening to see people on the left who generally agree but get bound up in relatively petty squabbles. Nothing is ever going to change if we can't figure out how to resolve that.

if you live in indiana, you should strongly consider getting the fuck out.

― xiphoid beetlebum (rushomancy), Tuesday, December 6, 2016 9:37 AM (fifty-one seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Been trying to relate this sentiment to my family for ages.

And when you've reached your conclusions, could you post them on your blog and not here?

― Andrew Farrell

i don't have a blog, you're just going to have to complain about my pronoun usage here.

― xiphoid beetlebum (rushomancy)

for the record, i've been doing this since i was a child, and my parents would always ask me if i meant the royal we or the schiozphrenic we. which is just horribly ableist of them, but for anyone looking for guidance, bet on the schizophrenic we.

Listening to this, which is an informative? Dispiriting? Elucidating? interview with Mariame Kaba, who done a lot of organizing to end mass-incarceration, esp around Chicago

She talks about what to do now in the immediate short-term

http://deleteyouraccount.libsyn.com/get-your-people

Her work on prison abolition and anti-violence strategies is TOP NOTCH. <3 <3 <3 MK

Also seems relevant, a post-mortem on Occupy from the POV of one of the organizers, posted last year.

As the folks at Ayni’s Momentum trainings will tell you, all movements have a DNA, whether it’s intentional or not. When movements take off and decentralize, they spread whatever their original DNA is, and while it’s possible to adjust it as it goes, it’s sort of like swimming against a tide. Our DNA was a mixed bag. The title had the tactic (Occupy) and the target (Wall Street) baked into it, the 99% frame demonstrated some level of shared radical politics, and the assemblies represented a commitment (an obsession, perhaps) to direct democracy. But we didn’t have too much more than that. As Occupy grew and spread, its DNA evolved to its natural conclusions: On one hand, a real critique of capitalism, powerful mass-based direct action, a public display of democracy. On the other hand, an infatuation with public space, a confusion of tactic for strategy, a palpable disdain for people who weren’t radical, and fantasies about leaderlessness. And then there were the questions we had never answered at all, which were begging to be explained now that we were growing: How would this transform into something long-term? Who were we trying to move? What were we trying to win?

And that also sounds good, man alive. It's always so disheartening to see people on the left who generally agree but get bound up in relatively petty squabbles. Nothing is ever going to change if we can't figure out how to resolve that.

― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 6 December 2016 15:38 (four hours ago) Permalink

I really think we need to constantly emphasize the concept of "coalition." One segment is more hardcore socialist, one is more liberal-oriented, but they can both show up for a protest on a specific issue they agree on, they can both turn out for a candidate that's the best option at the moment, etc. Also there's activism and there's politics. Activism can be absolute and uncompromising on a single issue, politics is compromise. Fight for 15 says don't settle for less than 15. Maybe sometimes the political result is 12. The candidate that supports 12 is better than the candidate that supports no increase, when those are the only two options.

So it looks like Injustice Boycott has daily actions planned to send out to those who are on the mailing list (today's is calling for the termination of the officer who killed Eric Garner). It seems like a good strategy, keeping the cards close to the vest like this and surprising the protestees with what looks like spontaneous action. At least until the establishment gets wise and signs up for the e-blast.

this all seems very grandiose and delusional to me, a secret boycott where only the operatives know until the last minute! I guess we'll know soon enough if it's effective at all.

it's like a woke improv everywhere

excuse me... an even more woke improv everywhere

clarification: i have no opinion on this i just wanted to make a funny joke and tbrr in that respect i feel as though i have succeeded

When did it get so hard to provide positive feedback? I want to give my appreciation and support to Adult Swim for cancelling Million Dollar Extreme and somehow the default response is "how do I give them money". I'm not entirely convinced that they did what they did so I would give them money, but dropping a polite Emily Post-approved thank you note, in my experience, tends to get kind of lost when it's surrounded by 95 extremely explicit rape threats (I'm kind of assuming here based on what I see on Twitter).

That's a dumb default response. Why the hell shouldn't you give them money once they've corrected the action that would've prompted someone to withhold money from them?! The flipside of the boycott coin is positive reinforcement. Reward those who align themselves with your values. Or hold a stupid grudge, I guess, for all that achieves.

ok, fuck it, i just ordered the complete "boondocks" on dvd. would've grabbed "off the air" too except that's not out on dvd apparently.

a secret boycott where only the operatives know until the last minute!

I am not at all sure that this added fillip will add anything to the effectiveness of whatever boycotts are proposed. If the purpose were to deluge an entity with messages of protest, the element of surprise might help, although if it overloaded their servers it might also be construed as a rather sinister Denial of Service attack. However, this is being framed as boycott(s), not as a flood of protest messages, so I am at a loss how this advance secrecy could make any boycott more effective.

iow, a boycott can't be run like a flash mob. a real boycott requires months or years of patient effort.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/resisting-trump-from-inside-the-government

never heard about that, interesting.

http://www.resistsubmission.com/store/p2/BUY

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/resisting-trump-from-inside-the-government

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, December 6, 2016 10:22 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I just met him, but had no idea about this!

The Liberal O.C., a progressive blog, nicknamed him “the Controllernator.” Chiang’s resistance became a case study in how a bureaucracy stymies the requests of an executive who offends its professionalism and sense of mission. When General Dwight D. Eisenhower was preparing to take office, Harry Truman predicted, “Poor Ike—it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.”

There's a sci-fi series somewhere that posits that it's incredibly important to maintain complicated, inefficient bureaucracies, that if they become efficient it only destroys civilizations, and in which the reigning culture has a whole secret department like a CIA devoted to keeping their bureaucrats inefficient. (Is it Iain M. Banks' Culture series? I can't remember.)

I have a co-worker who is skeptical Trump and/or Ryan can do as much damage as they want because "it's like turning around a battleship." I'd certainly like to hope that's true, but shit, still pretty worried.

Chiang struck me as a really decent and smart guy. Don't know whether he can pull off a win against the celebrity-like competition, but I hope he stays in government.

There's a sci-fi series somewhere that posits that it's incredibly important to maintain complicated, inefficient bureaucracies, that if they become efficient it only destroys civilizations, and in which the reigning culture has a whole secret department like a CIA devoted to keeping their bureaucrats inefficient. (Is it Iain M. Banks' Culture series? I can't remember.)

In the US, at least at the federal level, this is called the Office of Management and Budget, and more specifically the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Not "Oh Ira" - OYRAH.

in orbit's series sounds like frank herbert's bureau of sabotage stories: whipping star, the dosadi experiment and a couple of short stories whose titles i don't recall -- their chief sabotage operative is caledl jorj x. mckie

YESSSS IT IS THUS

Fighting at the bureaucratic level isn't going to fix the belief system and framework that's led to what we have with Trump. This has been in the making for a long time now, a garden seeded and cultivated for decades. Obama was only like a half-step away from Trump. People act like this is a huge coup, but it's just slight forward movement in the same direction things have been going in.

People talk about Trump moving a battleship in a different direction, but it's really just charting the same course it's been set on. Hence why the media and political establishment are acting pretty damn OK about all of the things we're outraged about here. They were all complicit in this because Trump makes perfect sense in this system we've been living in. We're all products of it, too ... we can examine our own beliefs we've been raised in as Americans and we can see it in ourselves. Look in the mirror and we can see this system staring back at us; we look and Trump appears and gives us a wink.

To really change anything, imo, people have to attack this at the systemic level, each component of the system that has allowed this to happen. How that's possible I have no fucking idea... it sure isn't going to happen in one generation. It's taken at least two generations for this to come to fruition and it had incredible amounts of wealth, expertise, and power behind it.

The last time anyone made a dent they got gunned down and their skulls split open, and this was during a time when people had much higher thresholds for discomfort and lived in a more communal version of the country, and with even less concentrations of power that challenged their actions. I know this is a hot cynical take, and I welcome any hope to cool it off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmB3gVOceB0

I want to really encourage posts regarding the second half of this thread's title. For me, hearing what people are actually doing (even if it may seem like low-level drudgery or whatever to you) is both inspiring and motivating. Like, just knowing that people are doing stuff helps make stuff feel more doable.

I'm saying this stuff because I think it helps knowing the reality of the situation in order to develop strategies that are actually effective. Not that my take is even the right one necessarily, but that level of thinking is pretty much required to start doing anything. The situation looks a little bleak, obviously, considering where we're at right now, but that's just how things are. If you want to clean up a room full of dog shit, you have to look at it first.

I cannot emphasize enough that people need to spread awareness of NPVIC and pressure your state legislators and governor to enact it: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

thx Tombot

Old Lunch, so far my wife and I are:

- doing monthly ACLU and PP donations
- digital WaPo sub
- Nation sub
- calling our Congress reps, but they are solid blue so I feel like they're right there with us (Oregon)
- lots of petitions, who knows abt that
- I signed up for the Injustice Boycott but have not tried to wrap my head around it yet, we don't spend lots of money or travel

I imagine we'll need to get out into the streets and protest at some point as well

has anyone used the Buycott app?

as in orbit mentioned upthread, small donations to good organizations seems like a good way to go (if you can)

We have recurring donations for

ACLU
Southern Poverty Law Center
National Immigration Law Center
UNHCR
Planned Parenthood Foundation

Along with giving to two local food banks and the local affordable housing organization.

Time wise, gah. We have small people, including a pretty demanding special needsy guy. We have demanding jobs and our own personal limits. So we don't currently have as much time/energy to do hands-on volunteer stuff as we used to (and hope to have again in future). Personally, I admit I'm utterly exhausted at the end of every day just keeping up with normal life, so I'm not inclined to add to the stress with non-constructive "SHOULD I HAVE DONE MORE!?!?!?!?! SHOULD I BE DOING MORE?!?!?!?!" self-ass-kicking.

Also, my wife and I are both longtime activists with professional experience in the nonprofit world. When I was doing nonprofit work, I know that my organizations craved money and professional help vastly more than we craved volunteers. Much of the work to be done is the work of serious and trained professionals. This is not to diminish the contributions of well-meaning volunteers, but simply to put it in perspective. If someone shows up at a food bank willing to help, they can stock shelves. If someone shows up at a professionally run advocacy group, willing to stuff envelopes or whatever, it's actually not all that useful. I can spend my morning orienting you and telling you what to do. Or I can just use, y'know, MONEY to hire a mailing house to make it happen.

Yeah, beyond the itch I'm feeling to volunteer I'm starting to think I need to figure out a way to transition my frankensteined hodgepodge of skills into an actual nonprofit career. I'm growing increasingly frustrated about wasting my time and energy and halfway functional brain on a dumb bullshit job that doesn't mean a damn thing. And I don't have any dependents so a potential pay cut won't make that profound a dent on my life. You can contribute the money I don't have, Puffin, and I'll put in the legwork you don't have time for. Everybody does what they can and nobody has to kick themselves!

frankenstein hodgepodge can go a long way in a nonprofit, especially a smaller one. generally your job description is only part of what you end up doing

i'm going to work "frankensteined hodgepodge" into my next cover letter, thank you.

Wasn't he the bad guy in Mystery Men?

We have recurring donations for

ACLU
Southern Poverty Law Center
National Immigration Law Center
UNHCR
Planned Parenthood Foundation

This is great. I'd like to also put in mentions for the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Brennan Center, two really great and slightly less well known organizations that do a lot of important work on voting rights, among other things. Really important right now.

frankenstein hodgepodge can go a long way in a nonprofit, especially a smaller one. generally your job description is only part of what you end up doing

― global tetrahedron, Thursday, December 8, 2016 9:42 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hi, I know SQL and how to use an oxy-acetylene torch, what do you need me to do today?

hi i'm a squid who eats dough out of oxy-acetylene torches!

i just read about micro-volunteering the other day, seems like a good way to put specific skills to work while keeping your dayjob.

btw folks i'm partway into a smart, rousing book: This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty-first Century, by Mark & Paul Engler (2016 Nation Books). Looks carefully at the craft of nonviolent resistance, and the complicated relationship of "movement" vs "organization-building" activism.

Yeah, I'm starting that book, too.

Also what I've done: donate here and there. Went to local organizing/group chat meetings for everything from Matt Hern talking about his book on modern city planning and displacement at the local neighborhood business assoc to a friend's social justic reading group she started up.

I figure; we're still at the starting point for a lot of this so just showing up to meetings is the best we can do.

Not to diminish the more tangible/long-term effects protesting and organizing can and does have, but I was struck by a conversation a friend of mine had on her FB wall, where she mentioned she was going to one of the post-election protests, and her dad said "please be careful" or something to that effect. A day or two later, she replied with "thanks for the concern, but that was the safest I've felt all week." Just taking time to surround yourself with like-minded folks has value in and of itself as a coping/energizing move.

yeah, isolation is pretty much the worst thing right now and strength in numbers is the best

Fighting at the bureaucratic level isn't going to fix the belief system and framework that's led to what we have with Trump.

― larry appleton, Thursday, December 8, 2016 9:16 AM

i agree with a lot of what you're saying but i have a different interpretation of it. i agree that trump's presidency is the culmination of a lot of historical trends that have been going on for most of my adult life. i agree that many people, myself included, have in the past been complicit in these historical trends.

but i think what we have here is an opportunity to not be complicit, in a manner which was not practical or effective with gwb. since this is a convergence of a galaxy of occurrences, each of these occurrences can be opposed individually by those who are best positioned to do so. bureaucrats can obstruct implementation of executive orders. lawyers can sue. religious groups can do things like north carolina's "moral mondays". all of these things would absolutely be more effective if they were centrally coordinated, but certain types, though not all types, of uncoordinated opposition, or opposition which is coordinated at a very low level, can be effective.

systemic change is absolutely necessary, but nobody is in any position to implement systemic change. right now our only option is resistance, resistance in a fashion that can win immediate minor victories and gain public acceptance of our beliefs. honestly the stuff we need to do now is going to be the easy part.

yesterday we got a letter from our township democratic party talking about having a meeting for organization. my wife wanted to respond to them with a "too late, we're getting the hell out of dodge" reply (we are), but i looked at what they wanted and it's ten bucks. surely i can give them ten bucks and go to one of their meetings and _then_ get the hell out of dodge.

i just read about micro-volunteering the other day, seems like a good way to put specific skills to work while keeping your dayjob.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, December 8, 2016 10:57 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was this online, and if so do you have a link?

So far since the election I have:

Made a bunch of small donations to a number of minority-rights organizations
Set up a recurring monthly donation to Planned Parenthood of Ohio
Contacted PP's local volunteer coordinator (but haven't heard back yet)
Signed up to go with my wife to the Jan. 21 Women's March on Washington
Called and faxed Gov. Kasich's office over the execrable OH HB493

I want to do a lot more but barely know where to begin.

systemic change is absolutely necessary, but nobody is in any position to implement systemic change.

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status

If your state isn't already in red on that page then you I recommend you reach for the telephone

http://www.volunteermatch.org/

i haven't looked through the site myself. it was referred to in this article:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/jacob-colker-explorer-moments-web-based-micro-volunteering-matching-nonprofits-for-social-good/

systemic change is absolutely necessary, but nobody is in any position to implement systemic change.

i disagree. every single person is a participant in the system. every day we affect change. this isn't something that suddenly needs to happen, it's something that has been happening for a long time.

it is important to keep perspective on this. in the 60s leaders and organizers for hope were assassinated, alongside a contested war, 10+ years of national tragedies.

people didn't give up hope. look how far we have come. Obama. decriminalization of weed. gay marriage, with victories state-by-state during the Bush years. we didn't wait for someone to become president and fix everything. it was the daily nonviolent efforts from ordinary people that got us here. imagine what they could have accomplished in the 60s if they had the internet.

I already work on community events and beautification things with my block association, pay them my dues, support them with volunteer labor like working merch tables, doing kids' workshops, making food for gatherings, etc. I love my block/community, and working together on the fun stuff makes you strong and ready if you ever have to organize AGAINST something. If we ever have to mobilize, we can come together as ppl who know and trust each other, not as strangers.

I'm a dues-paying member of the Brooklyn Movement Center (http://brooklynmovementcenter.org/), and support with monthly donations and my time & strategic advice because they are my loves and everything they do is amazing. BMC = Black-led community organizing of Central Brooklyn around police accountability, food sovereignty (they're about to open an affordable members' co-op!), street harassment, educational justice, and more.

Donate $10 a month to Brooklyn Deep (http://brooklyndeep.org/category/podcast/), a citizen journalism platform that in particular puts out the monthly podcast "Third Rail" featuring Brooklyn residents on lots of issues.

For my job, I work in a school coordinating public-private and community-based programs that can benefit our families and students. This includes grant management & program coordination stuff, but in reality I'm doing the Parent Coordinator's job as well, so my time largely goes to family engagement instead of the corporate relationship-building that it should technically involve. I reach out to interested parents, put them on an advisory board, give them opportunities to take on projects to effect changes in the school community, and then either coordinate or carry out what they've proposed.

Our families are like 80% recent immigrants from all around the world, so there's a lot of cultural mixing and richness! I've been able to bring in free adult ESL, immigration legal assistance by special request, some health care services, boost our translation & interpretation efforts (laughable--we weren't doing ANYTHING even though like 80% of families couldn't understand any speeches or sent-home information), start supporting parents as interpreters, connecting them with social services, and generally trying to make them happy & secure so they can gradually build power as a block. It's exhausting!

I also drink a bottle of wine a day so I'm supporting some very nice vineyards somewhere in Spain and Italy I'm sure.

yeah, isolation is pretty much the worst thing right now and strength in numbers is the best

Fuuuuuuuuuuck yeah, completely agree on this.

Moods and panics and anxiety are sociogenic, right? We copy a lot of stuff from those around us, and I think can get real demoralized real fuggin' quick, depending on the tone of a message board or thread or chat room. Online space can connect, but it's the in-person stuff that can heal, shelter, and most importantly invigorate us.

I increasingly feel that the only point of mass street protests is collective therapy for the participants. their immediate political impact is basically nil.

in ages past huge crowds of people in the street could be interpreted by the powerful as imminent potential threats of violence but that's basically over.

Not for nothing, but I've finally switched from beer to rum or vodka consumed at like 50 ml or a jigger per large Tumblr of Diet 7up or A&W.

I think it's ultimately cheaper. Far less WeightWatchers points, I've found, at least.

the right/trump basically just want/need us all glued to our twitter feeds, alone, and feeling despondent

yeah definitely, and getting worked up and terrified over every little twitch

Bannon has made it pretty clear he wants to scare and confuse people.

I increasingly feel that the only point of mass street protests is collective therapy for the participants. their immediate political impact is basically nil.

You're not the only one. Micah White from Occupy just came out with a new book about this, and wrote a lot about it on his site. Dude moved to Nehalem, OR(about 90 miles W of Portland on the Coast) to run for mayor, figuring that you gotta start somewhere to get access to the lowest rungs of power.

Here he is talking about it on "This is Hell."

I increasingly feel that the only point of mass street protests is collective therapy for the participants. their immediate political impact is basically nil.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 8, 2016 2:03 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in ages past huge crowds of people in the street could be interpreted by the powerful as imminent potential threats of violence but that's basically over.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 8, 2016 2:05 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah not just due to nefarious machinations of the unreachable power elite, but because polarization (and the near-tie of the election) means that policymakers can always look out the window and say "eh, the opposite point of view would get just as many people marching; why should I do anything different because people are marching? It's always something with those people and they'll never be happy, so fuck them."

This is probably true and yet I will probably still do it. I remember being out on the national Mall on some very cold days in 2001-2008 without any hope that W. would look out the window and say, "oh, shit, guys wait - there's a nonflattering puppet of me; maybe I should reconsider!"

Where do you think polarization comes from? Did people, who share similar interests, all of a sudden decide to divide themselves because of unproveable bullshit?

These machinations aren't "nefarious", they're just business. I grew up with one of these people, propaganda guy in the military, did PR for energy companies. He published climate change denial material, and he didn't believe any of it, he just liked money and power, his employers hired him for that, and he had zero care whatsoever for human life. and I mean zero care, he had to maintain a fake persona to cover up his utter contempt for humanity just so people wouldn't throw him off a cliff. He was most certainly a blackhearted piece of shit, and if you could get inside his mind, it'd be like a Lovecraftian nightmare. This is some of the stuff you're up against.

It seems hard for people to understand that there are people out there who really, seriously do not give a flying shit for human beings the way normal people do, and they like money and power, and there's a lot of for the taking in the US. Don't think these Trump types will have mercy on you or our country, because it's not gonna happen, they'll turn us into a field of ashes if it somehow benefits them. The only thing that works, in my experience, is using power to screw around with their cost-benefit analysis somehow.

And what power do we, average peons, have nowadays? No fucking idea. Smart move to sort-of disempower us and take away our leverage as employees, as informed and educated citizens, as community members in solidarity, as having voices in the public sphere, and as consumers... almost like each aspect of our power leverage has been tampered with and taken away from us. And now here we are. Whether or not it's intentional, it's what things are like now, and it works.

Maybe I'm being too cynical here, I hope so.

These machinations aren't "nefarious", they're just business. I grew up with one of these people, propaganda guy in the military, did PR for energy companies. He published climate change denial material, and he didn't believe any of it, he just liked money and power, his employers hired him for that, and he had zero care whatsoever for human life. and I mean zero care, he had to maintain a fake persona to cover up his utter contempt for humanity just so people wouldn't throw him off a cliff. He was most certainly a blackhearted piece of shit, and if you could get inside his mind, it'd be like a Lovecraftian nightmare. This is some of the stuff you're up against.

― larry appleton

wait, you start off your paragraph saying that the machinations aren't "nefarious" and you end up describing the people who perpetrate them as a "Lovecraftian nightmare". i'm not sure i'm completely following you here, larry.

There is something to what Larry says -- money and power dictate. Money is a form of power, and when you lack that the alternative is organization. That's what unions are, that's what civil rights organizations are. Masses of people are a form of power too, when organized.

And yes, we have reached a somewhat dangerously atomized state, although the internet provides some opportunities for reorganization.

> wait, you start off your paragraph saying that the machinations aren't "nefarious" and you end up describing the people who perpetrate them as a "Lovecraftian nightmare". i'm not sure i'm completely following you here, larry.

What I meant with that is what's "nefarious" is subjective.

ftr record I still enthusiastically go to protests, because I find them therapeutic just like everyone else there does

I just don't hold any illusions about their tactical effectiveness

There is something to what Larry says -- money and power dictate. Money is a form of power, and when you lack that the alternative is organization. That's what unions are, that's what civil rights organizations are. Masses of people are a form of power too, when organized.

Yeah, this is where community and solidarity come in. But how can people be brought together when they're isolated and divided from each other, taught that everyone's competition or their enemy, and they get all of this information from outlets and leaders feeding them this bullshit?

How are these divisions bridged among people? How are people going to be "deprogrammed", so to speak? If not that, then maybe organize people who already share similar views into a well-coordinated and effective force of their own. What constitutes that I have no idea, but street protests wearing juggler's hats probably won't help.

The question here is: how do you become a danger?

the bullet or the ballot ennit

Yeah, the legitimacy of our country depends on representative government, and Trump and his crew are attacking *that* now openly, and it's been under attack for a long time now. Shit's deep.

Ok, but we still have it. How about getting people to turn out for non-presidential-year elections for starters.

I think you mean how about getting Democrats to turn out for midterm elections

Yeah, this is where community and solidarity come in. But how can people be brought together when they're isolated and divided from each other, taught that everyone's competition or their enemy, and they get all of this information from outlets and leaders feeding them this bullshit?

I already work on community events and beautification things with my block association, pay them my dues, support them with volunteer labor like working merch tables, doing kids' workshops, making food for gatherings, etc. I love my block/community, and working together on the fun stuff makes you strong and ready if you ever have to organize AGAINST something. If we ever have to mobilize, we can come together as ppl who know and trust each other, not as strangers.

That's true. So much of what we're saying here, a lot of people agree with it. There are a lot of people who are goodhearted, and civic minded, and think what's happening is total bullshit. It'd be great if there was some way to find them, recruit them, and organize them to action. Regular people who aren't politically active.

There are no media outlets or politicians who really talk about the points of view of these people (which include me), though. Bernie Sanders was the first I remember being anywhere even close to this, and he was shut out by the media, mocked on SNL, and is still getting trashed by the Democratic establishment. It has to come from somewhere.

xp

in orbit, what suburb/rural town is that? I'd love to see more of that happening.

xpost I think the regular people are becoming politically active. I personally have never borne witness to so many people who were previously content to be armchair liberals (myself included, sadly) and who are now like, no fuck this shit, it's time to do something.

^^^yeah this is my experience too. this has been something of a shock to the system. I think this is borne out in some ways by the anecdotal evidence of things like the ACLU currently having more money than they ever have in history.

That's promising. It'd be nice to organize people who agree with these things into a political/power force outside of the usual liberal/Democratic establishment, because those people have proven themselves to be very much against this. They don't seem to give much of a shit about what Trump's doing. If that's already happening, I'd like to know what it is.

People need to start talking to people again, I think... a campaign of outreach, human being to human being. But there has to be some kind-of banner, and system, and strategy to follow under. I don't know, I'm talking out of my ass here. I know the socialist parties are experiencing booms, but there's so much baggage with that stuff it makes me wary.

xp it's a little suburb called Brooklyn.

I don't know exactly what the solution to that is, but like...flyering, maybe? Activism fairs? Something along those lines? There are existing groups who want to build their numbers and newly-politicized people who are maybe not quite sure where to direct their energies. Maybe like a political Tinder where users swipe through until you find the local charity or political group that best suits them. It's that eternal problem of helping people bridge gaps to opportunities they aren't even aware of.

you mean something like this posted on this very thread

http://www.volunteermatch.org/

Yes, I mean like that very thing! (Sorry, I don't click on many links until I've left work because of our company's stupid internet restrictions.)

If that is what it sounds like it is, I'm gonna disseminate the hell out of it.

Bookmarked that site.

Maybe something that helps isn't even primarily political, but something like a social/service club movement, that adds community to where it doesn't exist. I live in the suburbs right now and it's depressing. Take what in orbit has in Brooklyn and try to replicate that elsewhere ... somehow. If people aren't spending time together talking to each other, then they're just going to get all of their information from TV and internet bullshit.

The USA is nowhere near organized enough or militant enough atm, but a general strike is an order of magnitude more effective than any boycotts or mass street demonstrations. This idea is worth filing away well to the back of one's mind for possible future reference.

ftr record I still enthusiastically go to protests, because I find them therapeutic just like everyone else there does

― Οὖτις

i don't really go to a lot because of my social phobia. i remember going to that jon stewart thing back in 2010, and that was pretty interesting to me because there's this thing where you get large enough groups of people together that things just start seeming really strange and kind of crazy. i don't know how to describe it, that sort of energy you get from a lot of people in one place, but it's pretty unstable and pretty scary.

on the other hand maybe that's just my social phobia. who knows?

Can we please not try to separate all this out from 2018? Whatever you think of the "Democrat/liberal establishment," I'm not aware of any other opposition party positioned to hand the GOP electoral defeats for local, state and national offices.

scale is a legitimate question. there are some forms of activity that will only work if they can be organized on a large scale. the implication i draw from that is that people should, as a matter of policy, seek to remain within existing law, for the simple expedient that it is extremely difficult to effectively organize mass-scale illegal activity. the kinds of things we read about in history books- wildcat strikes, the haymarket riot, the french saboteurs- my general impression is that these actions were not productive, were arguably even counterproductive.

sabotage and wildcat strikes would be great for the Trump admin

re: the democratic party- look, i think the tea party is a pretty good model to work from. if you want to start off nominally positioning yourself as "independent" and "grass-roots" like the tea party did, sure, but if the tea party could take over a party perceived as not sympathetic to their ideals, there is no reason whatsoever we couldn't do the same with the democratic party. the "moderate" democratic party is in just as much of a corner as all other "moderates" - they can't afford to spend much time denouncing anybody who opposes trump.

I'm all for primary'ing shitty Dems

The Tea Party movement had a small number of discrete items it cared about:
1. Get rid of that black president; barring that, stop him and his party at every turn - do not pass a budget, filibuster every appointment, filibuster every judicial nominee
2. Oh yeah that was pretty much it

They didn't give a shit about the stimulus package, they didn't give a shit about abortion rights, or even marriage equality - they hated that we elected a black man.

I'm all for emulating some of that single-mindedness but I thought our thing was that we care about issues.

We should just obstruct the bad things Trump does. If that ends up being everything so be it.

Yeah, every four years we get people who pointlessly prattle on about how no one represents them and we need a third party. I think these people just don't seem to get American electoral politics, let alone the situation we face.

You really only have two options other the Democratic Party as-is, the way I see it:
1) Tea-party style insurgency (berniecrats)
2) Third party that coalitions with the democrats in most elections (working families).

I think both are good models for progressive electoral politics. I also think we can't expect a progressive in every congressional district overnight.

But it's really, really fucking important for progressives to start caring more about local and state and off-year elections.

They didn't give a shit about the stimulus package, they didn't give a shit about abortion rights, or even marriage equality - they hated that we elected a black man.

I'm all for emulating some of that single-mindedness but I thought our thing was that we care about issues.

― El Tomboto, Thursday, December 8, 2016 5:55 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the current GOP congressional agenda makes clear that this is patently not true -- they have a radically anti-deficit and pro-privatization agenda that they're frothing to enact. They don't even care if it's popular! They're legit ideologues.

I mean the voters, dude. I don't mean the people they elected. Obviously the post-New Deal GOP has always had at least a couple of specific policy ideas, obliterating the New Deal being the main one, but that's not what the Tea Party used for fuel.

the Democratic Party as-is

I'm not sure what this is right now, either.

I mean the Democratic Party platform in 2016 won 2.6 million more votes, we should probably start by stealing from that, don't you think

I mean the Democratic Party platform in 2016 won 2.6 million more votes, we should probably start by stealing from that, don't you think

― El Tomboto, Thursday, December 8, 2016 3:08 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if we were in an alternative universe were the electoral college didn't exist.

they have a radically anti-deficit

lol wut the GOP loves deficits they are gonna run up insane deficits just like they always do

Yeah i feel like these people are literally robber barons looking to suck as much wealth out of the economy as they can and leave it a hollow shell with no civic institutions. At least thats the feeling behind the people who bankrolled this movement

that is their stated goal, it isn't a mystery

Paul ryan and ted cruz and them like to say they are fans of "fiscal responsibility"

A lot of republican voters definitely feel like unleashing the markets is a sober step toward a more prosperous, sustainable future and not a prescription for national and ecological suicide

It is the democrats constant shame that they are unable to effectively point out this transparent con to the voters

well the government just needs to be run like a business, you see

JIV, you missed my point

always love the like a business analogy, because that is what people want from government - to show up one day and find a FOR LEASE sign

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/12/women-marching-on-d-c-cant-access-lincoln-memorial.html

There’s been a long history of rallies taking place at the Lincoln Memorial in D.C., including civil rights and anti–Vietnam War protests. However, women marching on Washington the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration won’t get the same opportunity, as the National Parks Service has blocked access to the Lincoln Memorial.

The Guardian reports that the NPS, on behalf of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, filed a “massive omnibus blocking permit” to block off much of the National Mall, Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial for the inauguration. The permit secures these public spots for “days and weeks before and after” the January 20 event, which means the locations won’t be available for protests.

Shortly after the election, women across the country came together to organize a Women’s March on Washington for January 21. The march was set to be held at the Lincoln Memorial, and 136,000 women have already RSVP’d on Facebook. However, given the NPS’s decision to block access to the famous spot, the rally will have to find a different home. Cassady Fendlay, a spokesperson for the women’s march, told The Guardian that the group is in conversations with the police, and that they have secured another location nearby

As of today they have not yet announced the other location: https://www.womensmarch.com/

http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/11/sharpton-to-lead-mass-protest-in-dc-ahead-of-trumps-inauguration-107302

The Rev. Al Sharpton plans to lead a protest on the grounds of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 14, six days before before Donald Trump’s inauguration

I'm all for changing the electoral college, but it's worth remembering that even if we achieve that longshot, campaigning will change too, and the republicans will tweak their platform, strategy, and campaigning to appeal to more urban voters. Meanwhile, those extra 2.6 million popular votes are tiny droplets of water falling into a vast bottomless pit. So we'd better start figuring out how to swing those margins in the states that count like yesterday. Not to mention fucking STATE AND LOCAL ELECTIONS. The GOP is really close to being able to call a constitutional convention right now.

People shutting down their spending (as much as possible) in the next 6 months would freak out our overlords more than anything.

I agree

well maybe not the "more than anything" part, but yes to a spending freeze

They didn't give a shit about the stimulus package, they didn't give a shit about abortion rights, or even marriage equality - they hated that we elected a black man.

I'm all for emulating some of that single-mindedness but I thought our thing was that we care about issues.

― El Tomboto

if we're still committed to working within the system, we have to recognize the nature of the system as it is today. which is to say, we can and should assume that anybody who cares about the issues is already on our side, and that said coalition is not sufficient to govern effectively against this sort of opposition. furthermore people who do care about the issues are essentially shut out of power. to be able to do anything about the issues, we need the support of people who care less about the issues than they do about who looks better on tv.

personally i care less about issues than i do about values. having trump as president is a severe attack on pretty much all of the values i have. if he suddenly proposed to implement bernie sanders' program in its entirety, i would still oppose him, because he is not fit to hold the office he was elected to.

morbz otm. hit em where it hurts

Pulling it out of the banks wouldn't hurt, either. And if there was a way to broadcast to said overlords that the money you used to spend on 'stuff' is now being donated to, like, the ACLU, that'd be super.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS06eprlj2I

(of course, that's an easy suggestion for me to make, as my recent UK trip means i will wake up every morning til at least next summer knowing what my chacking balance is)

hmmm. "buy nothing ever" seems like a better tactic than "buy nothing day" (the "hey if we all jump up and down at the same time we can send the earth spinning out of its orbit" of economic protests), but i am not totally convinced of its effectiveness. first is that it's only effective for people who have disposable income, and a lot of us who are being mostly seriously hurt by the new order don't. cutting consumption and cutting production are both good ideas, but can they be implemented on a necessary scale to be effective?

XP, rusho, those are very good points, above. What would the short list of values be for a winning progressive coalition? (I am 100% sure I am the first person who has ever asked this)

three day weekend

free pony for everyone

(sorry, it's a good question that deserves serious answers, forgive me my moments of levity cuz I take them where I can find them)

what value would i suggest running on? i'd run on justice! not "social justice", which is perceived as being a code word for something else. just plain justice. let trump supporters go around badmouthing justice. be my guest.

because when i look at all the anger, a big chunk of it is people thinking they're being screwed out of something they deserve by people who are getting away with murder. which is, if you abstract it enough, true.

we want justice more than we want freedom, more than we want prosperity, more than we want peace. run on that.

some helpful thoughts here:

https://www.thenation.com/article/5-practical-principles-to-guide-our-work-under-trump/

I am curious if anyone knows the answer to this.
What is the Democratic party doing to assist people in voting-restricted areas to obtain government-issued ID? Is there a financial need here that donors could direct money to?

The answer is probably 'not enough', but I'd sure like to know, too. In all honesty, my mulling over the logistics of starting a nonprofit upthread was in direct relation to addressing that problem. It would be great to see an organization form with local chapters that could help people figure out exactly what hoops they need to jump through well ahead of the 2018 elections.

A certain B.H. O'Bama has telegraphed that voter access is the issue (or AN issue) he wishes to pursue in his forthcoming spare time.

I guess as individuals we can take it upon ourselves to familiarize ourselves with our own state voting laws prior to any GOTV efforts we undertake.

The Brennan Center xpost

http://www.brennancenter.org/

Brennan Center is great. I'd definitely say that if you are going to participate in any voter reg drives, being extra careful and meticulous is a good idea nowadays given the likelihood of the right looking for excuses to toss registrations and smear organizations.

Hey I have a dumb tech question: is there a way to build mirror sites of stuff like breitbart that lets you see the content without giving them a click?

I believe there's a general-use site/service that lets you do that for any site?

DoNotLink helps with that, don't they?

archive.is?

https://twitter.com/Apey/status/807305781984903168

https://www.thenation.com/article/5-practical-principles-to-guide-our-work-under-trump/

^

paywall'd

5 Practical Principles to Guide Our Work Under Trump

There is no overstating the fear and danger currently felt by activists. It is not melodramatic for people active in today’s social movements to prepare for massive government surveillance, along with court injunctions and fines aimed at bankrupting people and organizations. Protesters fear jail and repression for using their First Amendment rights. But what organizers and activists face as political actors will pale in comparison to the danger confronted by millions of people facing mass deportation, racist and religious attacks—with activists in these targeted groups facing the greatest risk.

As Trump and his billionaire allies jostle one another in their bids to extract riches from our failed economic system, they will succeed only in making the system more unsustainable. While this situation has sent a shock of anxiety through the body politic, growing instability will allow us to take aim not just at unjust social policies but at faltering economic ones as well.

We need to act morally, courageously, and strategically in pursuit of a clear progressive vision. It is not enough to define ourselves as the resistance. We have an opportunity, under incredibly difficult circumstances, to build a movement led by people of color, immigrants, and others targeted by the radical right, while at the same time organizing people of all races, to challenge the billionaires who increasingly control the economy and politics of this country and the world. Below, we lay out five principles in which to ground that crucial organizing:

1) The rise of a racist nationalist right wing is a global phenomenon.

Across the globe, the far right is growing. Viewing the rise of Trump as a distinctly American phenomenon leads to narrow analyses and technocratic solutions, i.e., “if just more people had voted.” Viewing the situation globally requires us to develop a deeper analysis of why the current economic/political system is failing around the globe and why the right has been more successful than the left at seizing on the growing discontent as evidenced by Brexit, the rise of the Marine Le Pen in France and the radical right throughout Europe. In Brazil, the right wing and their billionaire allies have used a “soft coup” to seize political and economic power. In Puerto Rico and in US cities like Detroit and Flint, “fiscal control boards” and emergency managers are being used to disenfranchise communities of color and put the very banks and financiers who bankrupted these communities in charge. Neoliberalism is failing for increasing numbers of people around the world, and its failure has created the conditions that has allowed the right wing to increase its power by targeting immigrants and people of color. Two seemingly contradictory things are happening at once: The right wing has captured the anger over its failures and the corporations, and the super-rich who benefited from neoliberalism are now offering themselves as the solution to the crisis they created.

2) Trumpism is a symptom, not the disease.

We shouldn’t exclusively focus on Trump, as if all would be well if he disappeared and returned full-time to Trump Tower. His appointments, a mix of Wall Street hedge-fund and private-equity types like Wilbur Ross and Steven Mnuchin and billionaire hard-right privatizers Betsy DeVos, along with traditional Republicans like Elaine Chao, who serves on the Wells Fargo board, are all part of the complete corporate capture of government. The people and corporations that pulled the strings from behind the scenes are now officially in charge. Even more dangerous than his appointments are the “respectable” people and corporations, many of whom initially opposed Trump’s policies but are now lining up to feed at the trough of tax subsidies and profit from the unrestrained destruction of the environment, while eliminating the few remaining legal and civil rights and protections people have.

3) Whom are we really fighting? Unaccountable financial and corporate elites are driving inequality and undermining democracy.

Call it what you want—financialization, neoliberalism, financialized capitalism, and regular old capitalism (and yes, we need better names) are all part of the word soup we use to try to explain the failure of the current economic order and the explosion in inequality that has led to fewer people controlling more of the globe’s wealth and political power. Understanding how billionaires and the financial elites are driving inequality and how they use race and structural racism to drive a wedge among the working class needs to be baked into the DNA of our analysis and actions. For example, billionaires peddle narratives about lazy black people mooching off the government in order to convince working-class white people to lower taxes and slash the public safety net, even though working-class white people are the primary beneficiaries of many social-welfare programs such as food stamps. As part of this, we need to demystify what is going on in the economy and develop tools that make the economy and how it works understandable.

4) Organizing against racism and immigrant bashing

The right wing scapegoats people of color and immigrants in order to divide and weaken the working class. This is central to how it justifies slashing public spending, giving greater power to corporations, and getting working-class whites to support policies that harm them economically. For example, because banks successfully painted the foreclosure crisis as a predominantly racialized crisis caused by federal laws that made it easier for poor black and brown folks to get mortgages, it made it significantly harder to build public support for effective large-scale foreclosure-prevention programs, even though the majority of homeowners facing foreclosure were actually white. We need to incorporate anti-racism into our core analysis, and we must center it in our strategies, tactics, and messaging in our work with communities of color and working-class white communities. Organizing white workers into a multiracial anti-racist movement is both a challenge and a necessity.

5) Unrelenting offense—no collaboration with Trump and his allies

The stakes are higher now than ever. Get The Nation in your inbox.

a strategy of caution and defense, focusing on limiting the damage that the Trump Administration can do, is destined to fail, as is any strategy operating under the illusion that we can work with Trump and his allies on issues like infrastructure. All defense needs to be married to offense. If we are defending immigrants from ICE and deportation, we must also target the private-prison investors who profit off immigrant-detention centers. When standing up to racist attacks on people of color, immigrants. and Muslims we must make Trump’s allies, who encourage and profit from these attacks, pay a personal and financial cost. We have the potential to drive fissures and division within the corporate world by holding them responsible for the most extreme views and actions of Trump.

Let’s get started by mapping and exposing the billionaires and corporations who support and will profit off of the Trump regime

We should identify the specific billionaires, corporations, hedge funds, and other firms that have aligned themselves with Trump, and expose how they plan to profit from his policies and actions. By exposing who they are, broadcasting their vulnerabilities and the details of their business holdings and operations, we can develop a road map of where we need to organize and focus action.

Organize the workers whose jobs they control: The hedge funds, private equity firms, and other corporate titans supporting Trump directly and indirectly employ millions of workers in factories, hotels, construction, retail, and other key sectors of the economy. Nothing will better expose the faux populism of these Trumpian billionaires than organizing the workers off whom they profit. Like Trump, they will viciously fight unionization and collective action. Nothing unites workers better than focusing on the people and entities that are responsible for declining standards of living. Organizing the workers whose jobs are controlled by the billionaire elites could take many forms, from traditional union organizing campaigns to militant minorities of workers taking action, to worker center–style campaigns.
Organize and move our money: Thirty trillion dollars in worker’s capital—the deferred wages and taxes with which union-negotiated public and private pension plans are financed—are invested in hedge funds and private-equity firms. These entities charge outrageous fees, produce mediocre returns, shut down factories, outsource work, and use their profits to fund right-wing anti-worker politicians who want to eliminate pension plans. It is the right time to put pressure on pension funds—in states where unions remain strong—to divest from the radical right and invest in creating good jobs. The first step in a new trade policy that benefits workers would be to stop pension funds from investing in firms that move work abroad, devastating both urban and rural communities.
Make them and their businesses toxic: When people rally and march to oppose right-wing racist attacks, support women’s right to choose, and defend the LGBTQ community, the businesses of Trump’s allies should be targets. Make them pay a political, personal, and economic price for their actions. We should be marching on, picketing, and sitting in at the offices and retail outlets of Trump’s allies. As increasing numbers of the “respectable” business community line up to support Trump, we need to make them pay a price by making their brands toxic. The work of OUR Walmart, the Immokalee Workers, and, most recently, the successful campaign to get Target to ban the box in Minnesota are all examples of public campaigns that won victories by making a brand or product toxic.
Funding organizing and resistance while under legal assault:The corporate right wing will try in every possible way to eliminate the financial assets of the labor and progressive movement. In addition to “right to work” legislation, court injunctions limiting First Amendment activity and picketing, will be used to try to limit protest activity and use fines and litigation costs to attempt to bankrupt organizations. We can learn a lesson from Trump, who set up multiple business entities that eventually went into bankruptcy while shielding his actual assets. Labor and those that finance progressive activity need to provide unrestricted funding to nimble independent groups that can lead to large-scale disruption, civil disobedience, and engage in other activities too risky for groups with significant assets. By doing this we can insulate assets of the broader labor and progressive movement, while supporting the activity necessary to defend immigrants and others from attack. If an organization is truly independent, and the groups that prefund it exercise no control over its activities, then they are not liable for its actions. Corporate America has specialized in creating multiple entities to limit liability—we must do the same.
When faced with crushing defeat, the progressive movement is incredibly adept at drawing the wrong lessons. We need to be clear about how we got here and about the role that structural racism and the neoliberal agenda championed by both parties played in contributing to the rise of Trumpism. Furthermore, our strategies and tactics must flow from that analysis. That means that, instead of seeking partnerships with major corporations or currying favor with billionaires (including the president-elect), we must directly and aggressively confront them and bring the crisis in our communities to their doorsteps. Donald Trump’s candidacy and election have unleashed a particular strain of white nationalism that seeks to make life in America unbearable for communities of color and immigrants. The challenge before us is to make life in Trump’s America unbearable for the newly enshrined and empowered billionaire class and their allies while offering a plan of action to win the country and world we want to create.

thank you

welcome! sorry about the formatting.

There is no overstating the fear and danger currently felt by activists. It is not melodramatic for people active in today’s social movements to prepare for massive government surveillance, along with court injunctions and fines aimed at bankrupting people and organizations. Protesters fear jail and repression for using their First Amendment rights. But what organizers and activists face as political actors will pale in comparison to the danger confronted by millions of people facing mass deportation, racist and religious attacks—with activists in these targeted groups facing the greatest risk.

damn it would suck if any of those things were to happen

I think the best way to promote social activism to Americans is that it'll enhance their social status/power/personal comfort somehow. In my experience Americans don't respond to arguments for empathy, understanding, care whatsoever. We're a heartless, cold-blooded, extremely selfish people with a taste for violence and sadism. So the way to handle this is to understand that American nature and work with it, as opposed to making arguments that make no sense in American culture.

Love, care, community, understanding, solidarity, those things mean nothing to Americans, really. Social status, power, material comfort, and extreme selfish gain are the primary motivators for most Americans; of course you can't say this on its face because nobody wants to admit it, but it's the truth in my travels through life.

larry can I ask what type of neighborhood you live in

Middle class suburban NYC metro

I'm just taking it from the marketing angle. Expecting the average American to make a significant personal sacrifice for the sole well-being of another person is totally insane. A lot of people in this country would rather lure in and torture the vulnerable for laughs than help other people for no gain of their own. There's a reason Trump is president, and our other option for president was a half-step away from Trump.

Until people face this shit, it's just gonna ... keep ... getting ... worse. That's how it is. Don't like to hear it, don't want to face it, then shit ain't gonna get better. The end.

our other option for president was a half-step away from Trump

okey dokey

Expecting the average American to make a significant personal sacrifice for the sole well-being of another person

This is not what activism is

xxp I think I'll just flag that post to make myself feel a bit less covered in marketing filth after reading it

It's just a current framework we're all stuck in right now. Look at the recent social justice movement we've had. It wasn't about "all men are created equal" or "content of a person's character", it was about gaining ethical and moral superiority and using it as a cudgel to beat up the deemed ethically and morally inferior. "Male tears", "white tears", etc. Trump and his crew are the lash back from that dynamic, and why that movement made no social gains whatsoever, and are now under the thumb of literal neo Nazis.

We've got this weird dominance/submission, superior/inferior, us/them dynamic going on and everyone's at each others' throats, or they're holed up in their compounds waiting things out. That's how things are, it's just the way our culture has gone.

Hillary Clinton's campaign was condescending as hell, and used people like Lena Dunham as their banner spokespeople, a woman who's an unashamed vocal racist and incestuous child predator from the cloistered upper classes. How is that any different than Trump? People saw no difference between Clinton and Trump, sat out the election, and it's easy to see why.

Whatever's going here, it runs deep, so these fires aren't going to be put out without an equal amount of deep reflection. Inside of this framework nothing's really going to get better.

OK, I thought I was as down on Dunham as anyone, but apparently not.

i don't particularly Dunham either but uhhh what?

Oh cool this argument again

it's coming back in clearance rack form

"uhhh what?" That's exactly what I'm talking about. Until "uhhh what?" turns to understanding, then we're stuck in Trump world, which has spanned much longer and and in many more dimensions than just Trump himself. This guy didn't appear out of nowhere, and what's happening now wouldn't be possible if things weren't already suited and primed for him, otherwise what he's doing wouldn't be possible without extreme conflict, like trying to bring two incompatible systems together. Beyond people grousing, that conflict, that inertia, isn't happening, it's all running smoothly as if everything works and fits together into a well-designed machine.

And we're all products of that system, each and every one of us, and it's not possible to step outside of it and change things until we make that deep self-examination. Apparently it's a joke to you all, so I don't have high hopes for things.

larry appleton's obsession with the lena dunham thing is well established on ILX iirc

Does that make what I said not exist? It's all public record right out there for anyone to read for themselves.

It's worth noting how you and others here are trying to will what I've said here into non-existence despite what it being easily confirmed as existing. If you can't face easily confirmed facts and their obvious relations to the problems you intend to fix, why even waste time or money trying to "help", it's not going to accomplish anything, and will probably do more harm than good. So you might as well just save yourselves the time and effort.

I've FP'd you already, phasers set to hard ignore

More pertinent is Erik Loomis' challenge to readers on LGM: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/12/do-something

This "Resist Hate RI" thing he went to sounds like a great idea. I wonder if there is value in creating a sort of support network for feds and affiliated scum in the DMV, people at different agencies who can let each other know what's being done and how to stand against unlawful expectations, collectively blow the whistle, etc. I will definitely feel better knowing others like me are in a network, meeting regularly and staying abreast of developments than just hoping I personally see stuff coming and have all my shit 100% together in the right place and time.

larry, either use this thread for what it's meant to be used for or take it elsewhere. There's plenty of space for cynical dread in other threads.

Seriously.

ban larry appleton

lol jk

or change dn to SINNICAL DRED (n otha thredz)

My invective was a little beer fueled before. http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/12/do-something The comments here are pretty promising. This is fertile ground to make some bigger changes to hopefully stem this virus from replicating.

That bullshit about Lena Dunham is the virus though - both in terms of its reprehensibility and its eternal nature - as long as there's someone who'd rather believe it than look it up, it'll endure.

Drink better beer!

Why do people keep making this thread unreadable?

look i know the formatting was wack

LOL @ Until "uhhh what?" turns to understanding

there's plenty of stuff you can do. there are plenty of options available. performative theorizing may be helpful for you but doesn't add much constructive to the conversation.

uhhh whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeureka!

This seems useful as a basic step-by-step guide to digital security. Better to shore up everything and lock it down now.

http://marchhare.io/March-hare-communication-security-guide.pdf

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DzOz3Y6D8g_MNXHNMJYAz1b41_cn535aU5UsN7Lj8X8/preview#heading=h.fwfuc1708kuz

http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2016/12/15/trumpism-and-expertise/

thank you

ditto!

Now a site/PDF:

https://www.indivisibleguide.com

I don't know if I'm being overly prissy about this, but I'm getting a little annoyed with the concept of phone calls to non-representative govt individuals as activism, i.e. either calling the congressperson or senator from a district/state you don't actually live in (and hence the person doesn't represent you), or calling, like, the DOJ or something, as though they have a request line on what to investigate or prosecute.

yea im not sure how effective it is, i don't really know. calling your own reps makes sense obv

some reps apparently have systems for tracking where calls/emails come from and ignore the ones from out of district. FWIW I also really hate the idea of calling some mortal enemy like Paul Ryan (unless he is in fact my own representative) to ask him to do anything. Feels like seeking the merciful protection of the czar or some shit.

Also, a thing I was thinking since I've been posting a lot about electoral politics in this thread: while I totally think everyone should vote and should at least minimally follow and participate in electoral politics, I certainly don't think they're the be all end all, and I think people who feel repulsed or not particularly drawn to it but are interested in other kinds of activism should do other kinds of activism, because that's all necessary too.

Went to 4 organizing meetings/social events/reading group things last week. Reminded me of the importance of doing so, b/c I hate the utterly defeated, demoralized, and most of all helpless tone I read either on other threads or on FB. Going outside and to a place where others are gathering who want to do something has an invigorating, therapeutic value that isn't really communicated online.

What makes it worse is the shrieky despair of very pampered Acela-corridor media/pundity-types who now feel completely at a loss and the need to spread their hyperbolic panic around thru their regular columns.

It's like there's no acknowledgement or realization that yeah, shit is pretty fucked up and horrific, but that it's been that way for others already for a long time and they still worked to get something done. Panic and helplessness are communicable, sociogenic things, and these fucks ain't helping at anything except validate everything Gore Vidal said about them being like courtiers at Versailles.

Oh man, that's such a perfect description.

Similarly their own political ineffectuality in this moment is just a continuation of their prior ineffectuality, except that before everything was fine for them so it didn't matter.

On the plus side, one of the working groups I was in focused on defense, both personal/physical/bodily defense and InfoSec. You had multiple people there who were MMA trainers who held thrice weekly self-defense classes trying to focus on at-risk populations, and a vet who wanted to teach basic street-level first aid to everyone she could. She had been an active-duty combat medic in Afghanistan.

Made me wonder about setting up a group and/or training module for the role of "street medic." Build a skill manual integrating what works that was learned from Greece, Egypt, Standing Rock, Oaxaca, Ferguson, etc along with transferable skills instilled from armed forces medical training. Localize into it every language possible.

Going outside and to a place where others are gathering who want to do something has an invigorating, therapeutic value that isn't really communicated online.

this is so true

Suffice it to say, I have very, very strong feelings about (learned) helplessness.

And it's always learned, isn't it

an invigorating, therapeutic value

You make it sound like this is a $5 massage you got in the basement of a Chinese restaurant.

your mom is a $5 massage I got in the basement of a Chinese restaurant

Yeah, you're right. What I'm saying here is this whole self-growth, self-fulfillment crap is the problem. Same deal with Occupy Wall Street, it was about self-expression more than self-sacrifice for the public good. F that noise. Sounds like those guys were doing good work, but this mindset takes me back to all the other ineffectual movements of the recent past.

But it comes down to using your phone and tablet and computer to communicate first just to agree on a time--social media is _real good_ at turning people out en masse--but then to shut the thing off and actually head there.

(Best to switch off your phone and leave it at home or in a faraday phone, tho, if you're going to a demo. Every smartphone has a tracking device built in by design.)

Yeah, you're right. What I'm saying here is this whole self-growth, self-fulfillment crap is the problem. Same deal with Occupy Wall Street, it was about self-expression more than self-sacrifice for the public good. F that noise. Sounds like those guys were doing good work, but this mindset takes me back to all the other ineffectual movements of the recent past.

― larry appleton, Monday, December 19, 2016 4:35 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

experienced organizer larry appleton weighs in

hey guys larry's here

larry, can you fuck off to the Mourning thread, at least

seriously

xxp

Damn straight, man alive. I've had a successful track record doing public interest work, with real people's lives made better against injustice, and it wasn't fun, it sucked. Nerve wracking and basically just a fight against depressing bullshit. Nothing toe-curling and luxurious about it, no personal therapeutic value, or glorious, it was draining and involved personal sacrifice.

If you're doing it for yourself, for therapy, for self-expression then what we'll get is another Occupy Wall Street. Whatever, don't listen to me, make the same mistakes over and over again, I don't care, I'm not even playing this game anymore.

you seem to have ... some issues

I regret that I have but one FP to give for my message board

Yeah, you're right. What I'm saying here is this whole self-growth, self-fulfillment crap is the problem. Same deal with Occupy Wall Street, it was about self-expression more than self-sacrifice for the public good. F that noise. Sounds like those guys were doing good work, but this mindset takes me back to all the other ineffectual movements of the recent past.

Well, I bring up the therapeutic value because it has a beneficial side-effect to actually meeting and doing something. i wanna throttle some commentators Bloom County-style just for the continued despair and this self-pitying victimization fetish. Yeah everybody had a shock or some trauma to some level, but continually to fixate on it offers no material benefit aside from justifying just sitting there.

And since there are countless of column inches needing to filled and 800-word blog posted filed by lunchtime, you have this horde of really comfortable yakking types just spewing out their fevered handwringing impulses because everybody else is doing it.

Of course, Horizontal structures/consensus/Occupy-style organizing have their own issues(in legion), but that's a different subject. What I'm talking about has only the high-visibility actions as only a fraction of what needs to be done, but it's high-viz which means cameras are there which we means we most easily remember only the really vivid public display aspects of this. We weren't there ourselves.

faraday phone

Correction: Faraday bag, rather.

Like this, maybe:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BY9H5H6/

Yeah, alright. The left/liberals have this problem with politics being about self-fulfillment and self-expression. "Wasn't that protest so much fun?!? We had hoola hoopers and bubble machines. It was great! Check out these costumes we wore!" I remember overhearing that around Occupy Wall Street.

So when I hear "therapeutic", I guess I'm hearing that. It's a mindset that's failed a thousand times before, and will fail a thousand times hereafter. This stuff should be putting a knot in your stomach, I don't see how it could be therapeutic at all.

larry has now clearly established for us that he has an outsized sense of his own superiority and he feels entitled to it. is that you, gabneb?

I have an outsized sense of seeing my ideas work in the real world.

We should all hasten to put our stomachs in knots, based on your experience, then?

It's about being prepared for hard, difficult work, not the release of personal tension. If your mind is set to self-fulfillment, therapeutic value, self-expression, then people will bail the minute things get difficult. If you prime people with a mind set of self-sacrifice for the greater good, people will be more willing to go further.

rephrase it two more times larry I don't think people understood what you were getting at

Eh, whatever, this the last time I'm going to post in this thread.

http://www.nataliedee.com/012506/maracas.jpg

Yeah, alright. The left/liberals have this problem with politics being about self-fulfillment and self-expression. "Wasn't that protest so much fun?!? We had hoola hoopers and bubble machines. It was great! Check out these costumes we wore!" I remember overhearing that around Occupy Wall Street.

― larry appleton, Monday, December 19, 2016 4:56 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i remember hearing "the cops beat up my friend and then arrested them and also i've been pissing in a mcdonalds bathroom twice a day for two weeks straight"

xps

Different approaches work for different people. If you are going to rely only upon those for whom the prospect of endless hard work and self-sacrifice is attractive, then you will find yourself with a very solid core of highly dedicated people, surrounded by a very large vacancy that was once occupied by somewhat less dedicated people who were only looking to help out.

street protests *are* basically therapy for their participants (as I've said here before), but they are not really politically effective action. However, therapy is valuable insofar as demoralized and atomized communities are not capable of more effective action. So it's not an either/or thing. So the scenario kind of goes: 1) whining on internet message board/facebook/blog/twitter, 2) showing up in person at an event or organizing meeting, to 3) executing effective action (getting people to vote, training, donating money, putting in hours doing grunt work, etc.)

there are lots of critiques of occupy, but accusing essentially the most sustained protest in the u.s. of the past decade at least of being for dilettantes who bailed when things got difficult (they were sleeping on concrete for months ffs) seems like... not a good one?

the Left should buck up and get into lobbying imo

My point in bringing up the emotional value was mainly as a response to the suicidally depressive tone affected by commentators and people who share their posts maybe a little too much. As happens on one's timeline and just maybe in a thread or two on here.

The great thing about protests is that you meet a lot of people, and you can organize stuff like teach-ins, and that stuff is really important for activists. I don't know if I could do things that I do without the education I received from study groups and teach-ins, organizing speaking events, etc.

I think a lot of people forget or are just unaware that Occupy birthed a historically amazing and innovate major disaster relief effort that outdid organizations like the Red Cross

But I guess it was a total failure because it didn't figure out how to depose Wall Street, lol massive fail, activists.

Also, veterans of the Women's Movement of the sixties and seventies might have a problem with the denigration of actions as "therapeutic" or "feel good" as if that is bad. The opposition is abusive, domineering. It's important to oppose those values by selling a vision of a different way to live. I mean, we went through all of this stuff with Vietnam. The values have to change, or we'll keep getting Trumps. We might even get something worse than Trump. People have to change, or we'll continue to have a violent, abusive culture putting these crap leaders in power. This didn't happen overnight.

Same deal with Occupy Wall Street, it was about self-expression more than self-sacrifice for the public good

lol why do u think this? are you a sentient Atlantic article?

also not sure what "self-sacrifice" has to do with anything? what do you think freedom of expression is about, or do you think you are supposed to sacrifice yourself before you get to express yourself.

Occupy is an easy target cos it's the only high-profile leftist protest anyone remember from the past 16 years. and in spite of being amorphous/goalless/leaderless helped create a world where a socialist got massive mainstream support.

the denigration of actions as "therapeutic" or "feel good" as if that is bad

but the second you use hoola hoopers all your points about income inequality are invalidated. /s

I'm wondering how entrenched this case is to North Florida's attitude on BLM, but check out the lone comment (and date of comment)

http://notinmyname.livejournal.com/14296.html

I think a lot of people forget or are just unaware that Occupy birthed a historically amazing and innovate major disaster relief effort that outdid organizations like the Red Cross

The opposition is abusive, domineering. It's important to oppose those values by selling a vision of a different way to live.

YO.

larry appleton, your posts itt have been more cynical and depressing than most of what I've read in the Mourning thread. Rein it in or split. Seriously.

I'm going to start volunteering with a local at-risk educational initiative once the new school semester starts. I'd like to tutor but I'll do it whatever they need me to do. It seems like a really great place. I don't realistically know how much more action I have in me at the moment, but being a positive force in the community feels like a good start.

In other BLM news, the Unitarian Universalist Church way out in Idaho Falls, ID, marched in the sub-freezing cold to show support this weekend.

http://www.localnews8.com/news/local-church-holds-black-lives-matter-march/221780032

kingfish on fire this afternoon, great points expressed very well.

i'm in deep blue western washington so ymmv but the organizing around the bernie campaign has morphed into an ongoing progressive network here that just took over the chairmanships of our local legislative district, and are also coordinating protests to keep a public restroom open 24hrs for the houseless here to use. lots of ordinary folks of all ages and plenty of small business owners are involved, it's a great thing to be a part of and is going a long way towards keeping me sane

I'll clarify what I'm talking about here, cuz I'm sure you all would love to hear it. What I'm just pointing out is the language here used is coming from a self-focused angle. "restoring my sanity" "therapeutic" "stress-relieving", it's always focused on the self, "how am I...". But that's never cut it with trying to help other people in the past. The last progressive movement made some gains after a lot of people stood up for each other and were willing to take bullets to the gut and get their skulls cracked open for themselves, their families, their neighbors, and for future generations. Either that or you appeal to the selfishness of the decision makers, and that also takes a lot of guts and strategy.

I doubt they were doing it for stress relief. "This organizational meeting was the perfect thing for my mental health, I feel so relieved." It's like, you're all about to get into a giant knife fight with people way more powerful and way more vicious than you, and I just think it's funny to consider it in these very pampered, very self-focused terms, when you're staring down some heavy shit with some very brutal and cunning people behind it who like their power, would like to keep it, and won't give it up unless you got something good to give them. You got millions of bucks over here?

The left has lost 100% completely and utterly. Totally decimated. Complete failure. Flushed down the toilet. Pack up the tents, it's over, folks. So that doesn't inspire some soul searching? Of course not, because that would go against the therapeutic value of all this, too stressful, too uncomfortable. Whatever, I'm sitting this shit out, I've seen how the sausage is made, and I'm good.

Yes, please do that, thanks. We'll let you know how your strawmen fare with their stress relief.

Those strawmen were direct quotes from people in this thread. I just don't think a lot of contemporary Americans even know the concept of how to sacrifice and make personal risks to help others for no gain of their own. It's like a foreign concept in this country. Netflix and the comfy chair, activism as a mental health day. I'd love it if people kept proving me wrong.

how are you helping

flag posting larry appleton is therapeutic

I grew up helping people. I've stood up to groups of bullies harassing kids, like one girl whose father had just died and they were tormenting her about it. I stood up to that shit at risk of getting the shit beaten out of me, and yes, I've gotten the crap kicked out of me for standing up for people.

I've sacrificed jobs and the strength of my career disobeying orders from supervisors to help people who were going to be sent to utter hell for no damn good reason, or standing up for people who were getting unfairly assaulted.

Story of my life is doing things like this. I've helped real people and I've gotten punched, beaten, fired, demoted, etc., for it. But it was worth it because I know how much life can suck, and I know what it's like when cowardly, soft-handed, pampered little shits are more concerned with their comfort than doing what needs to be done to help others.

So that's where some of my cynicism comes from, and I get those vibes when I hear these things talked about in such terms like "oh it was such a comfort for me to ..." blah blah blah. I know what that shit is, and I know it's no good.

Flag away, flag away. Whatever.

Eh, whatever, this the last time I'm going to post in this thread.

― larry appleton, Monday, December 19, 2016 4:06 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, sorry for derailing the circle jerk here. Definitely doesn't prove my point.

i get the sense you dont really like people, though

words are wind

I grew up helping people. I've stood up to groups of bullies harassing kids, like one girl whose father had just died and they were tormenting her about it. I stood up to that shit at risk of getting the shit beaten out of me, and yes, I've gotten the crap kicked out of me for standing up for people.

I've sacrificed jobs and the strength of my career disobeying orders from supervisors to help people who were going to be sent to utter hell for no damn good reason, or standing up for people who were getting unfairly assaulted.

Story of my life is doing things like this. I've helped real people and I've gotten punched, beaten, fired, demoted, etc., for it. But it was worth it because I know how much life can suck, and I know what it's like when cowardly, soft-handed, pampered little shits are more concerned with their comfort than doing what needs to be done to help others.

So that's where some of my cynicism comes from, and I get those vibes when I hear these things talked about in such terms like "oh it was such a comfort for me to ..." blah blah blah. I know what that shit is, and I know it's no good.

― larry appleton, Monday, December 19, 2016 9:35 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what is the point of this patronizing bullshit

like you're the only person who has ever sacrificed for someone else

this election is really bringing the worst out of everyone

yeah

Nah, it's bringing plenty of good out in plenty of people, as evidenced throughout this thread and in so much of the stuff I see people doing to counter the worst. But, while I'm not mad at larry for feeling what he's feeling or saying what he's saying, that is why I'm mad at him for constantly dragging those things into a space where we're huddled around a minute flicker of hope.

It's bringing out the douchemax in about 3 or 4 people as far as I can tell. Everyone else is getting a lot more interested in the universe beyond voting and that should be terrifying to status quo guardians; which probably explains mr. appleton's position more than any allegations of nihilism

I don't have to make another explainer post about what I meant, right? I mean, most of you got what I was aiming at?

"Sacrificing for someone else"...where I come from, people are working-class, they're not privileged white college kids from expensive universities. They are sacrificing FOR THEMSELVES. That's what puts me off this "altruism" bullshit. A lot of us are trying to save our own asses, trying to save our communities from neglect and deterioration that will certainly get worse under Trump. I don't have the time or resources to be "altruistic", I stopped going to church for a reason, don't need another controlling ideology in my life. There is plenty of shit where I live that needs doing and I get involved in it because my quality of life will improve.

The left has lost 100% completely and utterly. Totally decimated. Complete failure. Flushed down the toilet. Pack up the tents, it's over, folks. So that doesn't inspire some soul searching? Of course not, because that would go against the therapeutic value of all this, too stressful, too uncomfortable. Whatever, I'm sitting this shit out, I've seen how the sausage is made, and I'm good.

― larry appleton

larry, you're doing a pretty terrible job at "get the hell out of the way". this is the way, and you're standing there.

because christ on a crutch, performative defeatism is even more obnoxious than being performatively woke.

where I come from, people are working-class, they're not privileged white college kids from expensive universities. They are sacrificing FOR THEMSELVES.

^this otmfm

There is plenty of shit where I live that needs doing and I get involved in it because my quality of life will improve.

THE ABSOLUTE BASIC BUILDING BLOCK OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZING, RIGHT HERE. When people say "What will I get out of this?" the answer for frontline communities is "The quality or circumstances of my daily life will improve."

Eh, whatever, this the last time I'm going to post in this thread.

― larry appleton, Monday, December 19, 2016 4:06 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

larry lied, social activism threads died

TIL about the Truman Project.

https://truman.runforoffice.org/

http://trumanproject.org/home/

wait appleton isnt losted

hiya! I haven't been following this thread in detail but I know there are some good organisers and activists here - some British leftist journalist friends of mine are going to the US in January and looking to find out about and talk to people. If you are or you know anything important going on in NYC, Washington DC, Raleigh or Baltimore hit me up?

hmm pretty sure something's happening in DC in January but I just can't remember what it is

that is, presumably, why they're going

That seems kind of broad. What kinds of things? Protests? Meetings? I mean the resurgence of interest in DSA seems like maybe an interesting story.

as someone who started following/gave to DSA recently i've also started digging around various lefty forums and my god i'd sorta forgotten just how easily splintered we are over ideological purity

Has this been posted?

https://medium.com/@kaarenhaldeman/ten-pro-tips-on-how-to-survive-the-next-presidency-from-the-people-of-north-carolina-f6bb51c70624#.ydnniwrzd

just how easily splintered we are over ideological purity

Yeah, there are a lot of bad habits still around and evolving past them will be painful and stupid

That seems kind of broad. What kinds of things? Protests? Meetings? I mean the resurgence of interest in DSA seems like maybe an interesting story.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Thursday, December 22, 2016 5:07 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

grassroots organisations, movements, activist campaigns, seeds of protest. that sort of thing

"Purity" is a trigger word for me *ha-ha* It seems to me it's often employed when there are real, substantive differences at issue.

An acquaintance of mine wanted to find a resistance group to work with. They had trouble not over some idealized notion of radical purity but indeed real, substantive differences. Like: I believe Israel has serious moral problems and needs to fix itself; they believe Israel is a pariah, as oppressive as South Africa, and an artificial construct and that shouldn't even be on the map anyway. Later, Someone brought in a American flag that had QUEER written across it in glitter. Reportedly some were upset by the use of the flag because it stands for racism, slavery, and colonialism. There were some people who believed it was okay to reappropriate the symbol, take it back, and apply it to good purposes; others felt too oppressed by the flag's bloody history. I'm paraphrasing here for privacy but that's the gist of it.

All I can say is that I hope there are equally vociferous differences dividing the right.

There were some people who believed it was okay to reappropriate the symbol, take it back, and apply it to good purposes; others felt too oppressed by the flag's bloody history

it's not often the flag really does stand so neatly for the country

https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/12/21/draintheswamp-and-the-structure-of-power/

Chicago Review of Books says it will not cover any Simon & Schuster books in 2017 as a result of the Yiannopolous book deal:

https://twitter.com/bookschicago/status/814544045825474561

really? of all the shits who have gotten published? drama queens.

I have been hearing radio ads on a Baltimore rap/r'n'b station for this upcoming Al Sharpton sponsored Jan. 14th march in DC, but little to no mention elsewhere (especially compared to the attention the women's march the following weekend). Here's one article about it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/12/15/rev-al-sharpton-to-host-rally-ahead-of-inauguration-there-must-be-an-organized-resistance-movement/?utm_term=.1af659e91d7b

Rev. Al Sharpton will bring together prominent black activist groups for a rally ahead of Inauguration Day, setting the stage for what he says will be a full-force resistance from him and other black leaders during the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

The “We Shall Not be Moved” rally on Jan. 14 in Washington will focus on voting rights, criminal justice, healthcare and economic justice. Sharpton’s group, National Action Network, along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Urban League and Black Women’s Roundtable are hosting the event on the National Mall.

Bizarre that anybody still trusts/listens to sharpton but sure u go bro

whatever you do, keep it outside the caca Democratic Party

yes, teaming up with the KKK and the FSB is a much better option for real change. That's what you're doing, right Doctor?

The real resistance: sniping from the sidelines at people who give a shit, while constantly claiming that you actually care about stuff

oh i give a shit

it's too bad it doesnt matter

teaming up with the KKK

you're really an asshole, as ppl who barely know you are fully aware

Pot kettle! I have been able to string a coherent paragraph together from time to time, something that's consistently beyond your abilities

hey i know my limits

I like this bit on the problems with consensus decision-making on anything larger than a small group:

http://berkeleyjournal.org/2015/05/the-theology-of-consensus/

Which I think is going to be increasingly relevant as you get more and more people getting active whose last experience with any of this was Occupy, and so still have the unhelpful habits in place.

on the other hand some people whose last experience with any of this with occupy might now be allergic to consensus.

the process is v useful in places i think but you don't forget spending 5+ rainy hours failing to come to a decision on whether to a) allow traffic thru the major artery separating yr two occupied park blocks or b) take the police charge in the morning

Yeah, which gets mentioned in the piece. It's like an even worse version of Wilde's attributed quote of "socialism takes too many evenings."

Bizarre that anybody still trusts/listens to sharpton but sure u go bro

― Οὖτις, Saturday, December 31, 2016 2:15 AM (three days ago

I don't trust him but he has an audience. My point is Sharpton is reaching out via ads on Baltimore rap/r'n'b radio to an audience with a sizable amount of Black Americans for his upcoming rally on the 14th, while the Women's March on the 21st isn't doing as much to reach beyond its white women led leadership.

Should we have a thread for Chapo Trap House and the dirtbag left

the process is v useful in places i think but you don't forget spending 5+ rainy hours failing to come to a decision on whether to a) allow traffic thru the major artery separating yr two occupied park blocks or b) take the police charge in the morning

Yeah, the Portland camp had that weird aspect, didn't it, not just one park but trying to maintain the two.

And that stupid rain.

But it also consistently empowered cranks, malcontents, and even provocateurs to lay claim to a group’s attention and gum up the works, even when groups adopted modifications to strict consensus that allowed super-majorities to override blocks.

Consensus can easily be derailed by those acting in bad faith. But it’s also a process that is ill-equipped to deal with disagreements that arise from competing interests rather than simple differences of opinion.

This has been my experience too. I've been in meetings/strategy sessions where someone with dubious motivations can make everything about themselves and there's no rigor, no structure to tell them to have a seat. Esp if that person is a member of an already marginalized group, it's super dicey.

Should we have a thread for Chapo Trap House and the dirtbag left

Might as well, seeing as how it's going to pop up in the other threads increasingly

An acquaintance of mine wanted to find a resistance group to work with. They had trouble not over some idealized notion of radical purity but indeed real, substantive differences. Like: I believe Israel has serious moral problems and needs to fix itself; they believe Israel is a pariah, as oppressive as South Africa, and an artificial construct and that shouldn't even be on the map anyway. Later, Someone brought in a American flag that had QUEER written across it in glitter. Reportedly some were upset by the use of the flag because it stands for racism, slavery, and colonialism. There were some people who believed it was okay to reappropriate the symbol, take it back, and apply it to good purposes; others felt too oppressed by the flag's bloody history. I'm paraphrasing here for privacy but that's the gist of it.

― troops in djibouti (Ye Mad Puffin)

in my line of work we call that "scope creep"

always reread The Tyranny of Structurelessness

Yeah or "feature creep."

This has been my experience too. I've been in meetings/strategy sessions where someone with dubious motivations can make everything about themselves and there's no rigor, no structure to tell them to have a seat. Esp if that person is a member of an already marginalized group, it's super dicey.

Yeah, my gf's activist group falls prey to that too, where a couple rather zealous members go overboard in the otherwise valid desire to include victims or lived experience. Like there's a confusion between hearing the experience someone had with the problem or conditions you're working to improve, and foregrounding them as someone who would know best and should lead the group. As if direct experience automatically imparted deep wisdom on how to change it.

Freddie DeBoer will bring up the term "the politics of deference," which seems to apply, in the privileging of identity or victim-status over, say, actual content of argument.

Officials of the N.A.A.C.P. and its Alabama chapter occupied the Mr. Sessions’s office in Mobile, Ala., demanding that the senator withdraw his name from consideration to be the next attorney general.

NY Times typo in there

One thing anti-Trump activists need to prepare for is the apparent willingness of Trump to use violent force against any opposition. Given his cheerleading at his rallies in favor of his supporters beating up protestors and his supporters' consistent attitude that anyone who opposes trumpism is not a legitimate American, I think we can expect an atmosphere of violence and intimidation that only stiffens in the face of resistance, just as there were millions of Americans who vocally insisted that the students shot dead at Kent State "had it coming".

This kind of violent polarization was rampant in the 1960s and 70s and has only been about one inch below the surface of politics for the three and a half decades since then. Don't be shocked when it fully emerges, be prepared.

violent force against any opposition

the left is p used to this ime

ust as there were millions of Americans who vocally insisted that the students shot dead at Kent State "had it coming"

One of these being my own mother, who didn't exactly say it in these words, but voiced shockingly irritated sentiments about her fellow students getting straight murdered by the State, as she was a Kent State student teacher that year.

Without saying that anything identical to Trump has happened here before -- of course it hasn't -- people who think none of what we expect to see has, at least in the last 50 years, might wanna start with reading Nixonland.

and

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/04/trumps-policies-are-not-anathema-to-the-u-s-mainstream-but-an-uncomfortably-vivid-reflection-of-it/

i plugged jonathan schell's the time of illusion in the ilb reading thread a while back but should have brought it up in a pol thread or two, hardly my first trip to nixonland but it absolutely blew my mind and is v relevant imo

The Nixon men used the language of the theatre--"scenario," "script," "players," "orchestration"--to describe the way they ran the country, but perhaps the most apt analogy would be to the state of dreaming... A waking person confronts a world that is given, but a dreamer confronts a world that is of his own creation. He is the author not only of his own actions but of the world in which he acts. In him are united subject and object. It is he who arranges to be attacked from behind and he who jumps in surprise. The beast that chases after and the "I" who runs away are the products of a single mind. President Nixon, using the great powers of his office, organized his waking life on the same principle... The President was becoming the author of his own environment. He manufactured events and then he "responded" to them. He invented enemies and then he went to war against them. He gave the speeches and then he applauded them. He threw the rocks and then he ducked. He invented crises and then he made "great decisions" to resolve them. As for the rest of us, it became our fate to live for half a decade inside the head of a waking dreamer.

http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2017/01/04/the-anatomy-of-anti-trumpism-ten-thoughts-and-reconsiderations/

a bit more in line with other threads than this one but well formatted to serve as a check on impediments to activist impulses?

http://peterlevine.ws/?p=17892

the democrats and religious americans

I liked that Burke post.

he's good

he's good at taking over a thousand words to say five obvious things two times each?

professional educator

https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=788otalK

so yesterday was the day for voting for California Democratic Party delegates to the party's state convention - they vote on which ballot initiatives to support, endorsements, etc. Previously unaware of this entire process, I only found out about it because I follow my District's former Supervisor (David Campos) on Twitter. So I was all set to go over the union hall and vote for the Reform Dems slate of candidates (as opposed to the "Corporate Democrat" candidates, I guess) and there was not just a line out the door, there was literally a line all the way around the block and around the next block. In the rain and semi-freezing wind. Voting was for 2 1/2 hours at 2 locations in the city and this was one of 'em. I wasn't expecting such a turnout and had my kids with me so opted not to stand in line in the rain, especially since voting was only going to be open for another hour. So I ended up shirking my Democratic duty, but hoping all the people who were actually in line were die-hard Berniebros or whatever (which seems likely). Dunno how/when I would find out about results anyway...

:)

had my kids with me so opted not to stand in line in the rain

i knew it, you are actually anti-solidarity :)

haha don't tell lex

interesting - Reform Democrats prevailed, ultimately: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-Democrats-keep-up-the-internal-warfare-10846122.php

i find it very pleasant to put on my grumpy old man voice and complain to the polite intern who answers my GOP senator's phone about his spineless behavior

perhaps this is because i have actually become a grumpy old man

anyway, i do this every day, i recommend it

This is ingenious:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/amplifierfoundation/we-the-people-public-art-for-the-inauguration-and?ref=thanks_share

Eight years ago, the artist Shepard Fairey made the iconic image that captured a period of HOPE in America. Today we are in a very different moment, one that requires new images that reject the hate, fear, and open racism that were normalized during the 2016 presidential campaign. So on Inauguration Day, We the People will flood Washington, DC with NEW symbols of hope.

This art has been already been commissioned by the Amplifier Foundation. Some of the greatest activist artists working today, including Shepard, Ernesto Yerena, and Jessica Sabogal, have collaborated with photographers to create a series of images that capture the shared humanity of our diverse America.

Now the tricky part: printing and distributing these images on a massive scale in time for Inauguration.

Much of Washington will be locked down on Inauguration Day, and in some areas there will be severe restrictions on signs and banners. But we've figured out a hack. It's called the newspaper! On January 20th, if this campaign succeeds, we're going to take out full-page ads in the Washington Post with these images, so that people across the capitol and across the country will be able to carry them into the streets, hang them in windows, or paste them on walls.

Every dollar you put into this campaign will buy six ads printed and distributed for us.

Amplifier will also distribute these images as large placards throughout DC at Metro stops, out the back of moving vans, at drop spots to be announced in the coming week via our social media feeds, and, on January 19, as free downloads for you to print and share as you like.

And so on. Brilliant, subversive form of protest, imo.

https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/015/118/482/dfe05c277f6d784b0eae2c21c9a04958_original.png?w=680&fit=max&v=1484036228&auto=format&lossless=true&s=69efe5fac7f63bcb5edc3499782f1668

Awesome. Love the newspaper angle.

And they're ten times over their goal already. Pledged.

How much money would it take to supplement the income of the womens rights and climate change government employees whose salaries Congress is going to cut to $1 a year?

That would depend entirely on how many of them there might be.

You can't supplement their pay. It's against the law. You can probably figure out why.

We'd be bribing them to do their jobs and uphold the law of the land? Sinister!

Balloon Juice put up some list with like 40 items of to-dos for people planning to protest on Inauguration Day. I refuse to read it bcz prepper shit annoys me to no end.

Overheard some folks at brunch talking about prepping for Friday, buying up extra food etc. and I couldn't figure out if they were joking or not.

We need more of this:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/will-see-more-of-this

GOP only responds to angry town hall blitzes.

That Amplifier Foundation K$ project is now over $1million for an initial $60k request.

I went to my first meeting with a congressperson today, a friend organized a group of about ten of us from the neighborhood to arrange a meeting with an agenda and everything. Our congresswoman is awesome and totally on our side so it was more of a "what can we do, how can we stay in touch" kind of thing.

It was interesting talking to all the other urban professional types at the meeting both the good and the bad -- on one hand we have this really sharp, organized group of people ready to roll up their sleeves and do something. On the other hand I feel like there is so much focus on social media, "messaging," advertisements, etc. because that's our world. After the meeting in a discussion with a few of them I was talking about really building up the local parties with people on the ground even in deep red areas and I felt like I got blank stares.

yeah social media is such a weird hypereality that people have trouble conceiving of anything outside it as being effective or meaningful

some thoughts
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/15/books/lie-to-me-fiction-in-the-post-truth-era.html

From its beginning, the novel has tested the distinction between truth, fiction and lie; now the collapse of those distinctions has given us the age of Trump. We are entering a period in which the very idea of literature may come to seem a luxury, a distraction from political struggle. But the opposite is true: No matter how irrelevant hardheaded people may believe it to be, literature continually proves itself a sensitive instrument, a leading indicator of changes that will manifest themselves in society and culture. Today as always, the imagination is our best guide to what reality has in store.

THE MISTRESS
by Danielle Steel
The beautiful mistress of a Russian oligarch falls in love with an artist and yearns for freedom.
Buy

5 WEEKS ON THE LIST
A DOG'S PURPOSE
by W. Bruce Cameron
A canine narrator undergoes a series of reincarnations.
Buy

NEW THIS WEEK
BELOW THE BELT
by Stuart Woods
The New York lawyer Stone Barrington faces danger when he finds himself in possession of a retired C.I.A. agent’s explosive memoir.
Buy

33 WEEKS ON THE LIST
A MAN CALLED OVE
by Fredrik Backman
A curmudgeon's gruff exterior masks a generosity of spirit. Originally published in Sweden in 2014.
Buy

11 WEEKS ON THE LIST
THE WHISTLER
by John Grisham
A whistleblower alerts a Florida investigator to judicial corruption involving the Mob and Indian casinos.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/?_r=0

fight the power

#notallliterature

yeah social media is such a weird hypereality that people have trouble conceiving of anything outside it as being effective or meaningful

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, January 18, 2017 3:30 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I've been thinking about the potential power of actual printed matter in the social media age. Broadsides and pamphlets and newsletters, old school shit, posted on walls and handed out on street corners. Clearly the scope would be strictly local and I don't know how effective it would be but it seems like a way to circumvent the noisenoisenoise of a constantly-moving, impermanent social media landscape that operates at cross purposes with the slow and intentional consideration of ideas.

zines
my bandmate* made a first amendment-for-protesters FAQ booklet/zine/pamphlet/whatever and I have been leaving copies everywhere I go at work and sometimes on the train/elsewhere
i've seen people pick them up and say "what's this?" (not knowing that i am the person who put it there) and i tell them and they almost always take it with them

*also a civil rights lawyer

I'm very much a print-era creature. I went to journalism school and made my living as a print journalist for 20 years. I subscribe to several newsletters and magazines as well as a printed daily newspaper. My grandfather was a newspaper publisher. My grandmother, my mother, both of my sisters, and my wife were/are print journalists.

But if I see somebody on a street corner passing out pamphlets, I become extremely interested in the sidewalk and my hands become fused in my pockets.

fwiw i don't stand around and pass them out. i guess what i am doing is leaving pieces of paper everywhere but it's important to know our constitutional rights so

they are neatly folded and totally legible
written in easily comprehensible language and without flourish
no images, just info

LL, your tactic is pretty much exactly what I was thinking of utilizing myself. Take the 'individual trying to give me something and probably wanting something in return and who I'm going to use all of my avoidance skills on right now' out of the equation altogether. Because god knows I'm personally allergic as hell to the Clipboard Brigade.

Since Paul Ryan has shut down his phone and fax, a friend is suggesting that he be swamped with postcards at home.

Am I bad for thinking that writing to him is a total waste of time and energy?

I spoke to a nice Cuban lady at Rubio's local office on Tuesday.

I take small pleasure in knowing that the inundation of voice mail, fax machines, and email inboxes has had some effect on the Senate's posture, especially in stiffening the spine of Dems.

OTM

I realize this sentiment may seem quaint and naive in these times, but I don't like the idea of people writing/faxing/calling representatives that are not their own. Those channels of communication are really there for people who live in the district to reach their own representatives. That's why they're called representatives.

However everyone should bother the hell out of their own reps/senators, even if they're already perceived as being on the right side of an issue.

doesnt apply to Speaker of the House and other leadership tho surely

xp

(doesn't necessarily -- i still think civil disobedience and lying on the gears of the machine are gonna work best this time)

I cant wait til Trump becomes the first President to be banned from Twitter

Morbz otm guys in leadership positions are different from the rank n file

fair

http://contemporarycondition.blogspot.com/2017/01/trump-putin-and-big-lie-scenario.html

johns hopkins political theorist william e connolly on the use of 'the big lie'

http://socialtextjournal.org/big-man/

laurent berlant

Made an appt to donate blood tomorrow. Will probably pick up some dollar-store rain ponchos and give them to houseless folks asking for spare change at intersections. Gotta contribute materially somehow; all the people handwringing online is bothering me, since I've been in bad anxiety-episodes ways before, and the way I learned to survive them is to change my immediate environment, and do something that tangibly reinforced my own ability to actively control something and contribute.

<3

ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org

http://isdonaldtrumpimpeachedyet.com/

uh my link is a real thing (which is apparently undergoing some heavy traffic at the moment)

mine will be a real thing in due time

Micah White from Occupy in the Guardian on the insufficiency of marching only:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/19/womens-march-washington-occupy-protest

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/trump-edelman-trust-crisis/513350/

results of a survey on trust in institutions of government, media, business, and ngos

Is Micah White from Occupy in any sense other than he wrote the original article in Adbusters?

So I attended the March in NYC and though it might not ultimately accomplish anything, it was comforting to know just how unsatisfied many people in this country are with our government.

It was also an amazingly positive experience--everyone was cordial and apologizing for bumping into other people.

Since Paul Ryan has shut down his phone and fax, a friend is suggesting that he be swamped with postcards at home.

Am I bad for thinking that writing to him is a total waste of time and energy?

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Thursday, January 19, 2017 10:47 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I spoke to a nice Cuban lady at Rubio's local office on Tuesday.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 19, 2017 10:52 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I take small pleasure in knowing that the inundation of voice mail, fax machines, and email inboxes has had some effect on the Senate's posture, especially in stiffening the spine of Dems.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 19, 2017 10:54 AM (two days ago)

it definitely seems like going after dems is more important than going after Rs. republicans don't care about/need our votes. dems do

Everybody needs votes.

Who else went to a march? I did.

I did.

I know I'm not American, but you guys vote by district, right? So, um, call your own congressperson and senators? Or am I missing something? Otherwise, can I call someone as well for you, and who should it be?

Was incredible in DC. Broke public transportation records.

Senators care. Unfortunately, 2018 will be structurally difficult for Dems, with 18 incumbents and only 2-3 main potential pickups.

Victory margin over Democratic opponent in 2012:

Nevada: Dean Heller 1.2%
Arizona: Jeff Flake 3.1%
Nebraska: Deb Fischer 15.6%
Texas: Ted Cruz 15.8%
Mississippi: Roger Wicker 16.6%
Tennessee: Bob Corker 34.5%
Utah: Orrin Hatch 35.3%
Wyoming: John Barrasso 75.7%

http://media.hotair.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CruzPoll2.jpg

There's 25 Dem or Independent (but votes with Dems, hi Bernie!) seats up for election, and only 8 Rep ones.

God someone should find the resources to destroy Ted Cruz

With all the debates for the DNC chairmanship, have they discussed this? Whether to play defense in the Midwest in 2018, or go after the states that they're trying to flip, Nevada, Arizona, Texas. Anyone who saw the debates?

Watchin OG Pete's Dragon w kids while my wife marches.

that'd be wonderful xxp

They should try to flip states imo. I haven't seen any reporting about this stuff tho

God someone should find the resources to destroy Ted Cruz

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby), Saturday, January 21, 2017 6:24 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It almost happened! Rumor had it post-convention that the Texas Republican Party were actively looking for a candidate to run against him, but it got called off once he fell in line with them to suck kiss Trump's choad ring. It's been speculated that Obama's HUD secretary Julian Castro (of San Antonio) may run against him for the Dems in '18.

Julian said he wasn't interested but his twin joaquin rep district 20) said he was looking into a run.

At our march, other marches, and other meetings, messaging has been strong: don't just stay involved, run for office!

my little town today:

https://scontent.fbos1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/16114430_181141899029504_4638326050725402989_n.jpg?oh=d4d9d2416518945376a6f2869906d06c&oe=5917C1C2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Z5s7T9WNs

I caught about half of the DC Women's March on stream. Most memorable bit was Ashley Judd reciting a poem by 19-year-old Nina Donovan of Tennessee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXSN-HHowhc

And Madonna was awful.

seen so many people all day on public transit going to/from protests. friends on instagram were posting photos from protests all over the states as well. very exciting!

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/01/100000_people_flock_to_portlan.html#incart_big-photo

Somewhere between 70-100K in Portland, pretty much more than the Obama campaign stop in May 2008

-- 150,000 showed up in Chicago - so many that organizers canceled the march portion for safety reasons.

-- "Well over" 100,000 people in New York marched past the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.

-- 100,000 seems to be the magic number: About that many in Seattle and more than 100,000 on the Boston Common and in Los Angeles.

-- More than 7,000 people in Eugene, 8,000 in Spokane and 5,000 in Boise.

NYPD told me 300,000 at around 2pm

I saw estimates of 2600 people in Moscow ID today, for a metro area of maybe 55,000 total. Two college towns so a disproportionate number of liberal academic types but still, it felt like a shitload of people.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/01/a-scene-from-the-d-c-womens-march.html

...Taking a quick break to recharge my phone, I witnessed something that gives me hope for America’s future.

As a woman with a Trump scarf on climbed into the backseat of a black Suburban — her driver standing by her side, eagerly waiting for her to sit down so he could close the door — she kept lunging out the vehicle to give her commentary on the scene around her. She was clearly disgusted by the marchers surrounding her car. At one point, the woman in the Suburban said to a passerby:

“If you people had jobs, you wouldn’t be out here doing this mess.”

As this happened, another woman walked by and, without pausing to look at the Chevrolet Suburbanite, said:

“Bitch, it’s Saturday.”

Today was a great day.

http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/156180409523/on-the-propriety-of-punching-nazis-an-faq

A Google Doc to track attendance estimates(with sources) in hundreds of American cities, and about 50 others.

US total between 3.6 - 4.5M, global total about 250K

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xa0iLqYKz8x9Yc_rfhtmSOJQ2EGgeUVjvV4A8LsIaxY/htmlview?sle=true#gid=0

A useful thing to do - google search "antifas"

The snippet that pops up is garbage. Click on feedback. Choose "this is wrong". Comment about the fact that it comes from a fascist/racist/alt-right site. Repeat until corrected.

US total between 3.6 - 4.5M, global total about 250K

Contrary to your new President's views, though, the US is a country in the world.

quibble quibble quibble.

Meanwhile, here's vid of the cops decided to start randomly pepperspray people in downtown Portland on Friday afternoon

https://www.facebook.com/RyanCCalhoun/posts/10154965126884116

Took some photos: https://www.instagram.com/quartz_city/

https://twitter.com/Cillyman/status/823046754123780097?s=09

friend of mine was up in Fairbanks, AK, and said that about 1000 ppl showed up in -20F weather

A useful thing to do - google search "antifas"

The snippet that pops up is garbage. Click on feedback. Choose "this is wrong". Comment about the fact that it comes from a fascist/racist/alt-right site. Repeat until corrected.

― Here, let me Danesplain that for you (jjjusten), Sunday, January 22, 2017 3:00 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this appears to have worked already!

global total about 250K

This seems low considering we had about 60k in Toronto alone

Talked to French reporters yesterday, asking about Le Pen. They shrugged her off and said she had no chance, and I said that's what they all say.

this was a big deal. maybe it's just that the media is reporting on this rather than ignoring it like the Iraq War protests but there was definitely an inspired energy in the air yesterday! we went to a movie matinee and there were folks inside wearing the pink hats and taking a break from protesting. i was looking through photos later and two of my friends got selfies while marching w John Lewis.

i'm curious about what PACs/organizations are worth donating to, in regards to either midterm elections, Trump watchdogs, etc....

This sounds like the renaissance of the protest song. Great tune.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Almaharel/status/822939393879146496

~8000 in honolulu :)

nyc march was, as noted amazingly chill. lots of great art.

Noted somewhere that in 2018, something like 33 senators, 14 governors and every rep is up for reelection. Start now!

Frederik here to point out that most seats are Dem seats up in the Senate

Yup. 8 seats held by Republicans. Also, as far as I can see there are 39 gubernatorial elections in 18? And two in 17, New Jersey and Virginia, and Dems should win them both. There's also state elections in New Jersey (though both chambers are held by Dems, and likely to stay that way) Virginia, and, hopefully, North Carolina. So plenty of things happening in November, and actually not that long until primaries.

This seems low considering we had about 60k in Toronto alone

True; the totals have been updated with 265k-300k in non-US cities

I was at the DC march. Inspiring how many people were there. Michael Moore encouraged everyone to run for office, and call your congresspeople everyday, while Angela Davis and others talked about what it's like out everywhere. Maxwell's falsetto on a Kate Bush song was dazzling too.

In the march portion,in addition to chanting "womens rights are human rights" and BLM chants, other chants included:

"We will not go away, welcome to your first day"

"You're orange, you're gross, you lost the popular vote"

"Do you know what Democracy looks like? This is what democracy looks like"

I had also heard that last one at a BLM protest in front of the White House last year.

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/s960x960/16251563_10212475040977451_1348626102276432692_o.jpg?oh=afdaab65fad5cfb07865c0b7345c48be&oe=59203E2E

http://kinfolkkollective.com/2017/01/19/not-your-mule-i-will-not-march-for-white-women/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

lol i think i saw another photo of that sign and a white dude was holding it

there are definitely points to be made. i liked seeing all the crowds for sure. it was awesome. i like seeing people get together for good against evil. but rad white grandma is always gonna make a bigger impression on people in a way that all the #occupy and #blacklivesmatter protests in the world can't match.

like this headline:

https://socialistworker.org/2017/01/23/he-made-america-protest-again

(and they do mention those recent movements way down in that article. but still. people have been actively engaged and fighting the good fight for years. the truth is you do need that vast white middle to make a big splash.)

Casting guilt on millions of people who come out to march in the street with you, if they don't show up for every other march you choose to participate in? Smart move!

The reality of the situation is that lots of people who are in no way progressive are scared as shit of Donald Trump and they are welcome in the streets as far as I'm concerned.

Not that they need my permission.

telling activists that they'd have more success convincing reasonable people if they'd just cool it a bit and moderate their tone is a tradition with a long, inglorious history

i'm not trying to start a fight or troll or whatever. just noticed a little bit of backlash from people of color on my facebook and thought i'd note it here. it's a race/class thing that is not exclusive to activism. but its also true that you are not going to hear TOO many people in the newspapers or wherever mention that white women have benefited from a racist system along with white men and that this upsets some people who are allergic to the white savior complex. that's all.

in general, any anti-trump protest is a good anti-trump protest.

let a hundred flowers take a crap on trump

x-post-- I have seen the same stuff as Scott; and noticed certain things at the DC march. I also agree with Scott's closing take on this.

There was a good twitter rant from a (white) woman who went to the march with a sign saying 'white women voted for Trump'. Which is true. https://twitter.com/i/moments/82338391737368576

agreed there is no bad criticsm of trump IMO. I mean I don't engage in all the Orange Overlord stuff but I have zero problem with people ridiculing him constantly.

lots of people who are in no way progressive are scared as shit of Donald Trump

The thing that blew my mind and gave me a sense of hope about this last weekend is the fact that my mom, dad, and sister all went out to the marches in their small towns in Michigan. They are all liberal in the general sense, but never pointedly or aggressively so, never really talk about politics in any meaningful way, and ours is not a family of activists or sign holders or demonstrators. Yet they went out in shitty cold weather and protested publicly for the first time in their lives. I find that incredibly moving and hope something good comes out of this.

i mentioned on that trump thread that i went to this. the only big thing i ever marched in. it was overwhelming. in a good way! i'm not really a people person. but i'm sure it spurred a lot of people on to do good stuff. supposedly 600,000+ people but probably forgotten by most unless they were there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4H86m5M8kU

It is a hallowed tradition in politics to horse trade, to say I will support your cause if you support mine. But these sorts of coalition tactics work best in structured politics, like within a legislature, or among well-organized blocs which have reliable and predictable resources that can be traded upon. They don't scale well to the kind of huge amorphous demonstration of the unorganized masses that we saw on Saturday.

That's a case where you send out a general call to action and cross your fingers that somebody shows up. You can't really orchestrate that kind of politics. All you can do is tack it to a very loose set of general sentiments, like anti-war, or anti-Trump, or black lives matter. To well-trained activists, a march like that is just the starting point for the real organizing toward effective action, kind of like generating a mass of marketing leads that have to be followed up vigorously to make the final sale.

Mass movements are hard. And slow. And produce lots of confusion and noise. But they are essential for any kind of social progress.

I believe social activism is key fighting Trump -- but more importantly, social media, and all broadcast and print media activism. Trump wins by being more dominant in media than anyone else. His other strength is (presumably) that he really does make good deals, at least for himself, and is a good businessperson.

If I wanted to take him down, the first step would be in demonstrating that I could manipulate media, and cast huge amounts of shade towards him and everything he stands for. That doesn't mean I organize campaigns to slander Donald Trump, and fill Twitter with a million reasons why he's bad. It means I am able to use media in a way that he can no longer use it himself to enforce and propagate his image. His image, in effect, needs to work against him. Thus far, it has not.

Secondly, I have to be at least as good a businessperson as he is. I have to make better deals. I have to show that my deals are bigger and better for America than his are, because that's the logic/morality he understands, and will thus surrender to. This probably means I have to be a very successful business person myself. At that point, Trump can no longer use his success as the literal gold standard for his image AND I can debunk and replace all of his deals with my own.

I was definitely surprised to learn of the participation of certain people in my extended family - first-time ever marchers etc.

yes, even George Will and Charles Krauthammer are scared as shit of Donald Trump

I would wager that the people who actually are good at business will be instrumental in ultimately unseating him once they've decisively ascertained that his presidency is bad for the business that they do. There are going to be some strange bedfellows in this crusade.

the media is endlessly fascinating with him. it is an exploitative love-hate thing on both sides but this is not very different from how reality stars have always been handled. anyways "taking him down" via media is a fanciful dream that was dramatically disproved on Nov 7th.

i understand the need to target him directly in protests, especially given that this is right after inauguration, but i don't think every social movement needs to be framed from now on in as an attack on Trump. let's not get distracted and make this all about him for the next 4 years. yes it will get the media's attention because anything about him gets their attention but imo we need social justice that works even in - especially in - Trumpland. im already getting sick of the ironic appropriations of his image, which is why i dig the new Fairey works, they re-center the power back to individual citizens.

I don't think think it was disproved at all. Trump was everywhere in the media. Whether or not I supported him, I got to hear everything he said, saw everything he did (in public). I even got a peek at what the Russians (maybe) know he did (wink wink). He dominated the media then, and continues to do so. Even his press secretary gets to be a superstar now. (Had it been my call, I'd have said to pass on Sean Spicer story, and let's put more money and column space into our investigating reporting, and ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS be ready to battle Trump and whoever he throws up first to intimidate us at press conferences)

part of me thinks that Trump (or at least his people) is throwing low hanging fruit to the media and to the late night comedy folks so he can sneak shit past without the focus being on it completely. "omg can't believe he's talking about his crowd size, lmao" etc

then again i think it is the kind of thing that can't be ignored either, these psychotic liars and con artists and sociopathic opportunists are running things now and should be called out.

now THERE's some activism i can get behind, amirite

http://www.avclub.com/article/craft-beer-has-become-true-protest-symbol-age-trum-248730

Ah, yes. That ominous rumbling noise heard all across the length and breadth of our fair continent is the sound of the craft brewing industry preparing to rise up like an unstoppable juggernaut to overthrow the patriarchy and set us all free.

New beers flowing out from our nation's breweries like a shower of gold...

Bah, tastes like warm piss.

In Russia, Warm Piss Drinks You!

how do you know what warm piss tastes like

Trump peed on me.

after this weekend i'm inclined to more and more think of 2016 in terms of gay marriage, 2008. this is something that looked and felt like a crushing defeat, but in actuality was a road bump. and i think a lot of the reason it was a road bump is because the response focused strongly on taking control of the media narrative. so i disagree with the notion that the media narrative is no longer a viable path to success.

People just started march chants in the airport. Everyone cheered.

i disagree with the notion that the media narrative is no longer a viable path to success

what is this success? control of the narrative? for how long? the news changes constantly. and everyone has been printing "Trump is bad" now. they have been doing that for months.

imo success should be rights visibility of marginalized voices, not media dominance, not more Trump, even if it is Anti-Trump.

picture a newspaper. it has a front page story. it can be an anti-Trump story. or it can be a pro-human rights story. i say the latter should be the default strategy.

picture a year. it has 365 days. it can print multiple things. i think it should.

sorry adam i agree w/ you but uh some days are going to be good to print a "trump is bad" story!!

oh yeah totally! and they will do that! they have interns search youtube for Fallout 4 hacking footage into stories about Russian spies. they are on the case.

there's a huge difference between printing stories that say "Trump will be a bad President, these are the things he will probably do" vs "Trump is a bad President, these are the things THAT HE JUST DID".

we're out of the speculation zone, and there are a lot more people on the fence that can be swayed about Trump than you think. if nobody points out these things and several organizations don't carry it, people won't know about it.

not even sure, as marcos suggested, why we're so zero sum game thinking about this, like - it's 2017, media organizations can write a new article every hour on their blog.

Today I was talking with whomever answered the phone at Duckworth's office, and I asked, since my two Senators and my rep are more or less in line with my views, what can I do? Should I ever bother calling? And they said yes, they really do like to get phone calls. And while she heavily implied she was not allowed to give me more specific advice when I asked what else I could do. she implied it couldn't hurt to call other senators and reps, too, even beyond my own geographic area. Lately I've been tempted to write actual letters, like an old fashioned crank.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/19837/womens-march-donald-trump-protest-radical-politics-socialism

https://5calls.org/

I couldn't get through to a bunch of people (in particular Feinstein, which is irritating) but did manage to reach a couple including Barasso and Carper about Pruitt at the EPA, which is foremost in my mind. Basically this is a good resource for hassling your reps + appropriate leadership/committee chairs.

thanks - I just made 3 calls (all voicemails but I left messages with the script in hand).

just started a letter writing (re: email) campaign today, mostly concentrated among Floridians.

this is something that looked and felt like a crushing defeat, but in actuality was a road bump.

The Prez may get a Supreme Court pick (or more) plus get to fill mny other lower level vacancies. Those appointed will be there for decades. This is thus worse than a road bump

yeah this has the potential to undo so many gains that will be hard to get back.

not to mention what it might do to future election cycles.

let's just hope he craps his pants one day and someone in the media finds out - 25th amendment article 4 baby

http://inthesetimes.com/article/19837/womens-march-donald-trump-protest-radical-politics-socialism

― THE SKURJ OF FAKE NEWS. (kingfish), Tuesday, January 24, 2017 7:07 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This piece is profoundly OTM.

called Feinstein's state offices (I forgot she had those) to bitch about her shitty-ass voting record, and in particular on her votes for this cabinet. Can't believe she's planning to run again, someone ought to primary her.

California uses open primaries so she'll almost definitely have a democratic opponent.

danesplaining

Or 'nonpartisan blanket primary' or 'jungle primary' it seems to be called. Anyways, you know what I mean, right?

No, explain it further

thru song pls