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POLITY - a voice for action occupies a bit of a different space in the world of fierce, courageous people who are the front line of defense for the democracy we love.
It's written as a service to you: to educate, to inspire, to re-assure you that we have a path to defend this glorious democracy.
It's your tool to the most impactful information of the moment.
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Like you, the June 14 mass national protest heartened, energized and more deeply committed me to defending our country than ever before. Men over 100 years old defended us - yet again. Young families were front and center, protecting their children’s futures. At-risk workers, the backbone of our economic engine, showed up… and everyone in between.
The results exceeded everyone’s plan: over 12,000,000 people protested… that’s 3.5% of the U.S. population.
The steps we take in the next 6-12 months are critical.
It’s fair to say that whatever civics education we had as students was grossly inadequate. It may also be true that only historians could have recognized that our democratic republic was headed for the deep peril that had been looming all around.
It’s key right now to know that actively defending our country’s Constitution is our responsibility. Nothing but our best effort will save this great country.
Our republic was born as an idea, an aspiration, a promise of how women and men could build something valuable, equitable, sharable and fair for us all. An enormous challenge that people would have to work to fulfill.
Democracy isn’t self-actualizing. It requires alert awareness to treachery, the willingness to call out others’ traitorous actions, the willingness to protect others’ rights as we would our own, and the internalized acceptance that it’s ours to do.
I’d like to call your attention to two distinctly different aspects of where we are and what’s next:
Lori Corbet Mann is a brilliant cross-disciplinary thinker who in her own words is: “helping those who refuse to sleepwalk into authoritarianism stay grounded, clear-eyed, and ready.” Lori alerts us to the bigger, deeper and often, more sinister side of what is being thrust upon us. As examples:
Recent executive orders are attempting to “reshape American airspace for surveillance and control”, an alert to understand the “broader surveillance machinery being quietly assembled around us.” Lori lays out what we need to know about what’s being built so it can be dismantled.
In the same post, Lori alerts us to “the cloud” no longer being neutral. The web services we might think of us as work or personal conveniences are the literal structure for every hospital, police department, immigration office, public/private corporation, job search site, map, email service, advertising service, medical record, bank site, and every bit of personal information that exists about us. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google/Alphabet, Apple, Meta. “They operate the infrastructure of our daily lives.”
Please consider taking the immediate action I described in my previous post to minimize Big Tech’s surveillance of your activities.
The even darker side is Elon Musk’s Starlink, the global satellite network, Grok (an AI model he’s grooming to compete with national intelligence services) and Colossus, the world’s largest supercomputer. Peter Thiel’s Palantir is a data analytics company that builds surveillance software for governments, militaries and corporations. Thiel is deeply, openly authoritarian-aligned.
Lori also counsels us on the importance of rest as energy conservation - and integration. Rest gives the body and mind the opportunity to “process, absorb, heal and reweave” your activities, your learning. “Creativity deepens, memory consolidates, immune systems repair…”
She gives us the tools to remain healthy and focused on the things in our lives that support our work and those we love.
Deepak is an immigration reform advocate and until 2018 was the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Community Change in Washington, D.C.
In an opinion piece in The Guardian, Deepak digs very deeply to help us meet the moment in U.S. history that we’re facing, but in very unexpected ways.
“Most of us are no longer free.”
Deepak goes on to describe the various forms of “unfreedom”: those who feel it’s an exaggeration; those hiding from “its unnerving implications;” those who were not free before and recognized it as such.
For most of us, authoritarianism hasn’t snuffed out the pleasures we enjoy daily: meals out with friends, time in the park, travel at our leisure.
We see people now, however, being snatched from the street or from a university campus or from a federal building by masked men, and the disconnect is hard to process. Then we see National Guard troops and Marines repressing protests against the wishes of the Los Angeles mayor and the California governor. This isn’t who we are.
Deepak asks us: “When - if - you wake up to our shared condition of unfreedom, you face an existential choice. Do you act on what you know to be true, or do you hide?” Are prominent law firms, corporate titans, university presidents standing up, or are they hiding?
When we accept the duty we have to the Constitution, to our livelihoods, to our creative endeavors, to our families, to our own voice, we may start to accept our responsibility. But, here’s the real challenge as Deepak describes it: we must first discover our power.
This is where Deepak’s advice gives us pause. He tells us that the tools and techniques that have been used most effectively to thwart and dissolve authoritarianism are literally our inheritance. Labor organizers, abolitionists, anti-colonial and civil rights leaders… they created the tools.
“Black freedom struggle, this country’s leading democracy movement, has in turn inspired nearly every peaceful, people-powered movement around the world since. This is the lineage of strategic nonviolence to which we must return. These are the tools we must rediscover.”
Sue. Protest. Vote. We know the first three, and they’re working. We can see they’re working. The problem is that they’re insufficient to prevent years of authoritarian rule.
This is where the 6-12 month time frame comes into play. We must quickly remake ourselves for the era we live in. Thankfully, there is a booster-formula.
Disrupt. De-legitimize. Draw defectors.
In an interesting observation, Deepak reminds us that “the courts move in concert with public opinion - and are often pushed by people who take bold action.” Same-sex marriage rights in its day was a great example of highly effective action we can take. Public opinion moved Congress and the courts. How do you see public opinion changing on quality of life issues? Be a voice that contributes to the new narrative. Demand legislators take action. They’re listening.
Deepak tells the story of the Rev James Lawson, the key architect of the American civil rights movement. Dr Martin Luther King called Rev Lawson “the leading nonviolence theorist in the world.” Rev Lawson trained Rep John Lewis. A Methodist minister and student of Gandhi, Lawson mentored civil rights leaders and was the tactician behind key desegregation campaigns in the South: “If we wanted to succeed, he said, we would have to engage in nonviolent disruption at a scale big enough to force a moral and economic crisis that would bring about change.”
Rev Lawson understood nonviolence as a way of life, and he talked about love as a guiding principle. He also talked of building discipline as training for situations under pressure. Nonviolent disruption is an art and a science.
The strategy:
Sue: courts defend the Constitution and the laws of the land
Protest: vital in building confidence for those taking bold action
Vote: disenfranchisement of voters needs to be thwarted because we can’t count on the courts to protect their rights - even during the upcoming midterms
Disrupt: repeat successes such as Tesla and Target with Whole Foods, Amazon, Starlink and Home Depot
De-legitimize: stand up to every authoritarian attempt to trample the rule of law
Draw defectors: make it easy for those who have been afraid, to join
Please consider reading Deepak’s thoughtful, compelling and motivational opinion piece.
Town hall meetings, community groups, disability groups, protests: this is where we voice what we want, and we have the power. Embrace it. Use it.
Lori Corbet Mann: “May you be fierce, with a fire that refuses to be dimmed by fear. Go together. Go safely. You are not alone.”
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