Mourning the Loss of Public Service Media

It’s 1950 and my family has become TV owners. A console with a little black and white screen faces the couch in our tiny den, where every day we kids watch shows that seem utterly ridiculous now. But then Captain Kangaroo, Howdy Doody, The Mickey Mouse Club and Superman held our attention just like soap operas did for adults. 

We were too old to visit Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood , which was launched in 1968, although we caught glimpses of it. (I loved the character Lady Elaine).  It was a dramatic change from the silly children’s shows, thanks to Fred Rogers, and  National Educational Television (NET), which later became PBS. To this day, Mr. Rogers’ show is recognized as the forerunner to educational programming for kids that proved to be hugely beneficial to children’s development, as Sesame Street does still, adored by children and many adults.

Following PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was established in an act of Congress. Its mission, along with that of PBS, was to provide quality programming often overlooked by commercial broadcasters. It focused on education, history, culture, nature, science, public affairs, and children's content. PBS has been going strong all these years, and the thought of losing it is painful.

Thanks to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed, NPR was created by the CPB and went on air in 1971 with coverage of a Senate committee hearing on the Vietnam War. It went on to programs like Morning Edition and All Things Considered which became extraordinarily popular. As NPR grew, it reached  across the country via nationwide satellite distribution which eventually opened up bureaus around the world. It has continued for decades as it provides quality news and cultural programming along with serving as a public service to rural communities.[1]

In July the Trump administration declared that it was ending funding for CPB, which funds PBS and NPR. The Senate passed the measure supporting that goal immediately. Followers of public broadcasting, editors, and journalists were stunned, and deeply troubled, at the thought that over a billion dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress for two years, would disappear.

They realized immediately, on the heels of the disastrous floods in several parts of the country, that people who rely on public broadcasting for emergency information in rural areas could be in grave danger.  Editors feared that they could be taken off the air at a moment’s notice. Listeners panicked when they couldn’t turn on their TVs or radios for lack of electricity.  Consumers were outraged, both at the practical consequences of such a move as they realized that they were watching “freedom of the press being eroded in plain sight,” as Edward Helmore, a Guardian writer, put it in a July essay, noting that “The US media is now in a deep crisis similar to the creeping autocracy in places like Hungary and other repressive regimes.”

New York University journalism professor Adam Peneberg adds that “journalist are scared. They’re afraid of a president who would gladly crush dissent, rewrite the rules and laws, and weaponize power to punish his critics.” He asks them to “imagines a world in which your mailbox is filled with death threats, your home address is leaked online, and fake 911 calls send armed police to your door.”

In a piece called “How Will the Fourth Estate Approach Trump’s Second Term” published in January, Peneberg quotes a colleague, James Devitt. “Trump’s war on media, calling journalists ‘the enemy of the people” isn’t new. Presidents have long bristled at being held accountable.” Devitt goes on to wonder if current and future challenges to the free press could prove existential. It seems to me that we’re already there, and yes, it's frightening.

According to the German Marshall Fund of the United States, in 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

That quote speaks to the vital function of public media as well as independent journalism, both of which are the foundational cornerstones of democracy.  

While the media environment is constantly changing as is the public’s diminishing trust in media sources, that trust has not waned when it comes to PBS, NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Most of us still rely on their dedication to accurate, independent, fair and transparent news, sound political discourse, and factual information as well as entertainment, and exposure to cultural issues.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Freedom of the press is a precious privilege that no country can forego. … The Fourth Estate is definitely a power, but to misuse that power is criminal.”

I hope we can realize that we too are a powerful force; one that uses our power to ensure that truth, integrity, decency, and a democratic society prevail. The time to use that power is now.

 Author Note: CPB has announced that it will be shuting down at the end of the year.

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

[1] Informationon on PBS, CPB, NPR in paras 1-2 gleaned from AI.

SCOTUS Ignores the Law and Trades Compassion for Cruelty

Only three of them remain. They are women with integrity, refined intellect, a belief in human rights and a deep knowledge of the law. Now they mourn the betrayal of six colleagues on the Supreme Court who fail to respect the oaths they took to protect and preserve a 250-year-old document upon which our country was founded.  

One of those women is Justice Sonia Sotomayor who recently wrote, “The Government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law…free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard. … By rewarding lawlessness, the Court once again undermines the foundational principles of [ the Constitution].”

Another is Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who added to Justice Sotomayor’s statement regarding the migrant crisis. “The government’s so-called ‘urgency’ about gaining this access [to due process] is the mere fact it cannot be bothered to wait for the litigation process to play out before proceeding as it wishes. Once again, this court dons its emergency responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them.”

 Along with Justice Elena Kagan, these women have spoken judicial truth to power.

As blogger Thom Hartmann wrote, “The American people got a taste of authoritarianism wrapped in judicial robes” when in June the Court allowed the Trump administration to deport masses of immigrants to random countries from which there is no hope of return. “The Government made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law … By rewarding lawlessness, the Court again undermines [a] foundational principle.”  … “The decision means that a future president with dictatorial ambitions could cite this ruling to round up political dissidents, journalists, or whistleblowers and ship them off” -- to places that feel like Hell without due process – which was the law of the land before this administration.

Shame on the Supreme Court for dealing a death blow to democracy by handing the would-be-king his crown.  How are we to understand such cruelty and judicial prejudice in the Supreme Court as it destroys the rule of law, the Constitution, human rights, and the essential elements of democracy?

As all of this was happening SCOTUS limited the ability of federal judges to pause Mr. Trump’s executive orders (largely written by Stephen Miller). It considered ending birthright citizenship, which violates the 14th Amendment guarantee of such citizenship, stating that anyone born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction is a citizen. The Court sycophants pleased the president who gleefully exclaimed that “Our country should be very proud of the Supreme Court.” This issue may be revisited in the fall.

Other SCOTUS decisions have reduced the ability of lower courts to keep the White house in check.  Now everything is at stake, from shutting down Planned Parenthood to Medicaid and SNAP cuts that can’t be challenged legally while the entire judicial system breaks down. That’s how dictatorships take hold and never let go.

All of this was foreshadowed when the ACLU challenged the power of the president in the Supreme Court last year after the Court ruled that President Trump is immune from criminal liability for a set of “core” acts and decisions, including his attempt to use the Justice Department to obstruct the results of  the election.

As ACLU pointed out in its argument against that ruling, SCOTUS left to the lower courts a good deal of the work required to determine which acts and decisions were or would be immune and which would not. That opened the door for the president, or others who follow, to engage in criminal acts free of accountability. The ACLU quickly cited the Constitution’s principle that no one is above the law in the United States, including the president.  The Court found that when the president acts as an individual s/he is not immune, but it held that presidents have immunity for their official actions, even when undertaken for personal ends and criminal purposes.

 A document called “How Do Dictators Destroy Judicial Independence,” written last year by several legal scholars, underscores how dictators consolidate power to control every facet of governance.  “Dictators often target the judiciary as a key institution to manipulate. The independence of the judiciary is a cornerstone of any democratic system, serving as a check on executive power and ensuring that laws are applied fairly and impartially. Dictators see an independent judiciary as a threat and potential obstacle to their ambitions. By systematically dismantling judicial independence, they transform the courts into tools of repression, allowing them to suppress opposition, evade accountability, and entrench their rule.”

As Adam Liptak noted in a New York Times essay last month, the three women justices cited here wrote a 19-page dissent to the Court’s use of the “Emergence Docket” applied to recent Court decisions, in which they stated that, “The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve but either way the threat to our constitution’s separation of power is grave.”

The betrayals of SCOTUS with respect to the Constitution, and the future, are clear. The abandonment of fundamental rulings and rights that made this country unique is a terrible, heartbreaking blow that demands reform. Dare we hope for that reform in time to preserve our way of life?

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

Art and Travel: Jouneying to New Places and Possibilities

Summer always reminds me of the sheer joy of traveling whether to new places, or to nearby venues or even back to favorite spots.

All my life I have disagreed with Henry David Thoreau who thought it wasn’t “worthwhile to [travel] around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.” The joy of travel has been in my blood since I was a child when our family summer vacation was a trip to visit our Canadian family. Our favorite stops included the gorges in Ithaca, the Thousand Islands, and Niagara Falls, especially when they were lit up with rainbow colors at night.  Each of these places were natural works of art, although at the time I didn’t think of it that way.  They were simply beautiful.

Later I realized that Mark Twain, was right. Travel is “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” He suggested that it “would be well if an excursion could be got up every year and regularly inaugurated.” I agreed wholeheartedly so in my early twenties I took my first solo trip to Europe eager to explore the world.

In Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum I was awed by paintings that reflected the country’s history and culture in vivid portraits and painted landscapes that brought to life the homes and people of a country I knew little about. London’s National Gallery introduced me to England’s history and the people who experienced it via exquisite art, while Paris offered an endless array of gorgeous art and sculpture. In Florence, I marveled at Michelangelo’s David and contemplated perfection in his veined hands.

It wasn’t only museums that educated me as I traveled for work and pleasure. Sometimes I saw a landscape that Anzel Adams might have photographed. Other times it was a place that became a living museum, introducing me to the culture and traditions of a country.  In Portugal wall tiles were beautiful works of art.  I visited a small Peruvian village reknown for its hand-woven tapestries. Guatemalan women wore their beautiful weaving and embroidery, and South African beaded works were worn or displayed in gift shops. 

One day in France my husband and I stopped in a gallery in the ancient town of Vesely. The owner told us that his father had sculpted an extraordinary exhibit in a park we’d seen. Hand-carved wooden figures, called The Slaughter of the Innocents, commemorated the French deaths of WWII.  He lives in Auxerre,” his son told us, next to the Cathedral.  Auxerre was our next stop and that is how we came to meet Francois Brochet, whose powerful work was moving. An elegant man with the hands of a sculptor, I loved the soulfulness of his art.  Before we parted Francois escorted us to his garden to reveal more sculptures. Pointing at the blue sky above the hedgerow, the cathedral loomed. “You see,” he said, “I don’t need to go far for inspiration. It is here in my backyard.” 

Another travel event occurred in the northern region of Romania called Bucovina, which once belonged to Ukraine, where my grandparents had emigrated from to escape early 20th century pogroms. Bucovina is known for its painted monasteries. Bible stories are painted inside and out because 15th century peasants weren’t allowed inside churches. We were staying in a host home and in the morning their English-speaking daughter took us to the village. The little houses were painted in various colors and horse-drawn carts clopped across the cobblestone streets making their way among outdoor markets. It was a live portrait full of history, culture and village life.

 An elderly woman emerged from the fog wearing a babushka, apron, and big black shoes. She looked like my grandmother whom I’d never met but had seen in pictures. I suddenly burst into tears. Here I was in what could have been the shtetl where my ancestors lived and my mother was born. So began a pilgrimage connecting me to my parents’  birthplace, for the woman in the village was our host family’s grandmother. Suddenly we too were family, eating Romanian mamalika in the kitchen, enjoying photos, and listening to stories of dictator Ceausescu time.  Our parting was emotional. I had visited somewhere I’d never imagined and experienced a living portrait of painted monasteries, village landscapes, and a family whose home might have been my ancestors.

Museums share stories that help us understand other cultures, often while providing historical context that informs our worldview, but nothing compares to the living art all around us, especially as we explore and experience new places and people.  I have been blessed to travel on every continent and each new place offers a new palate, a new picture, and a new perspective. As I grow older, I embrace those opportunities and memories.

I can’t imagine having missed it all.  Nor can I imagine how Henry David Thoreau, and others like him, consider it useless.  To my mind, Hans Christian Andersen said it best and most succinctly: "To travel is to live."

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Author note: This essay is adapted from one that appeared in Artscope Magazine, May 2025.

Elayne Clift travels from Brattleboro, Vt.  Her book “Around the World in 50 Years: Travel Tales of a Not So Innocent Abroad” was published by Braughler Books in 2019.

Baby Bribery: The Height of Hypocrisy

Remember the political phrase some years ago endorsed by Republicans who called themselves “the moral majority” while critics’ responded that they were neither? Or the Democratic crie de coeur that Republicans only cared about children from conception to birth?  Well, the time has come to recall those responses.

It’s clear that the Trump administration is embracing a pronatalist position taken straight out of the Hitler playbook. Adolf rewarded women who birthed lots of Aryan children, and Donald is now embracing the idea of incentivizing women to have at least six children.

At the same time as the president blathers on about “traditional family values,” he’s on a diabolical mission to convince women to have more babies – at least six of them. If they meet that goal (and what woman would want to?) he would reward them with a $5,000 “baby bonus” – get this – reserve some scholarships for mothers who are married with children.  But wait a minute: What mother of six would have the time or energy required in the marketplace, the academy, corporations, factories, farms or elsewhere other than the kitchen and laundry room. To top off this amazing offer, he would also give them “motherhood metals.”  Who could resist that?

To support baby making he would also bump up financial support for more IVF because he claims to be the “fertilization president” and the “king of IVF.”  This delusion at the same time that women are going to jail for miscarriage and dying from lack of pre-natal and birthing care.

The fact is that laws relating to miscarriage in many states have proliferated since Roe v. Wade was overturned, despite the statistic that about 30 to 50 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. That’s a lot of women who are at risk of criminal prosecution.

The hypocrisy doesn’t stop there. The faux IVF maven and his gang of goons are simultaneously slashing every program that helps children and their families, including cuts to maternal and child health programs, the Head Start program for low-income families, childcare support, paid maternity leave, and daycare, as well as Medicaid. It’s relatively easy to increase the fertility rate, but where does protecting our progeny fit into this Draconian plan?

So much for family values. In March the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut $500 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program and cut more than $1 billion from two programs that help food banks and school meal programs, including $660 million for schoolchildren because, they said, it was “nonessential.” Hundreds of school systems and food banks are not facing rising food prices along with food insecurity, according to a .Stateline report.

As the 19th century clergyman, Frederick William Robertson, said, “There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy: Hypocrisy, fraud and tyranny. “

This White House fits that sentiment along with being amazingly inept in making moral decisions, understanding connections or caring about them, as it continues its insane tyranny over safety nets and vital resources.  Schools, for example, are taking a big hit when it comes to government support for all the babies it wants to see born.  Fewer financial resources for schools, from early education programs through higher education, impact how those babies will grow and develop in the best possible ways.

Minnesota based Walden University, which specializes in programs related to education, cites the results of fewer resources available to schools, especially those with ill-funded school budgets. Students in these schools don’t perform as well as they could because schools can’t buy updated textbooks in a variety of fields, and updated educational technology takes a hard hit when funds are cut, along with art supplies, extracurricular activities, and transportation. Larger classrooms stand to see dozens of students with one teacher, making individualized assistance unlikely.

As educator John Dewey noted, “Education is Life Itself.”  Would that this administration realized that and valued our children enough to act like grownups in the room.  

In the health sector, the impact of Medicaid cuts on children is alarming. They can lead to fewer providers, longer waiting times, and limited access to essential services, especially for special- needs children. Support services like school-based programs or important in-home care will be curtailed, and rural communities will be hit hard by cuts that lead to health disparities. Children with disabilities will suffer reduced interventions and therapies, which will compromise their physical development and mental health. These cuts are grounded in the fact that children are often overlooked in budget debates because they have no political voice.

As Nelson Mandela said, “History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday life of children.”  And history will also judge this administration for its hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny along with its lack of compassion, humanity, and lack of morality.

As for bribes for babies, I wouldn’t start making any motherhood medals. 

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

The Machinations Just Won't Quit

Lately, I’ve been worried about some new steps the Trump administration has in mind. There’s the gigantic Trojan horse airplane that the president is excited about. And the threat of millions of Americans losing Medicaid coverage as lawmakers consider changing the health care insurance program that benefits more than 70 million people nationwide, according to a Newsweek Report.

Republicans on the committee that oversees Medicaid had contemplated $800 billion in spending cuts, which largely affected Medicaid, so that the administration could increase tax breaks for the rich. The Congressional Budget Office estimated at the time that the bill could result in over 10 million people losing some coverage and more than seven million going without any insurance. Those most affected by Medicaid cuts include low-income individuals and families, the elderly, disabled, and immigrants. Amazingly, Republicans in Congress have argued for even larger cuts.

The original bill required that able-bodied adults work or volunteer for many hours a week. In a moment of generosity, the proposed bill would exempt pregnant women or anyone with a proven short-term hardship. There would also be new co-pays for those earning over a certain threshold. Medicaid recipients who make around $32,000 a year for a family of four would be required to pay $35 for some services.  That could mean a difficult decision when it’s time to buy groceries or your kids’ meds.

I’m also worried about a House bill that wants the Treasury Secretary to designate any nonprofit he choices a “terrorist supporting organization” without justification. Such nonprofit organizations would have their tax-exempt status removed without due process, according to the Americans Against Government Censorship.

As the AAGC notes, “no administration should be able to weaponize the government against their political opponents in a power grab [nor should] the federal government use its power to punish and attack any organization that stands in their way.”

In the first 100 days of his administration President Trump pursued an agenda aimed at silencing any organization that expressed views that were counter to his public policies. Churches, universities, government agencies and officials, law firms and media were subject to punishment because they spoke out against the administration’s agenda. The bullying of opponents was shocking, but it shouldn’t have been. It was all there, overtly or by inuendo in Project 2025.

There are close to two million nonprofit organizations based in the U.S. They include charities, private foundations and other types of NGOs that provide food assistance, medical care, disaster relief, educational resources, and more. If that law passes, every American would become vulnerable in a variety of ways should the multitude of programs, agencies, and funders of civil society and social justice organizations lose their tax-exempt status.

As the executive director of Americans Against Government Censorship, put it, “It’s a sad day in this country when organizations that provide critical services to their communities are under attack from their government.” It’s also a sad time when a slew of executive orders and Draconian laws devised by ignorant, selfish people make others in all walks of life feel fearful, humiliated, insecure, ill, anxious and hopeless. 

Then birthright citizenship showed up on political radar screens. On Day One of his current presidency, Donald Trump followed up on his pledge to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship. He signed an executive order that day. The problem is that only constitutional amendments, not executive orders or legislation, can change the Constitution.

According to the ACLU and other legal scholars the president’s order is clearly unconstitutional because it  violates the 14th Amendment, which states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” guaranteeing  that no politician can decide who among those born in our country is worthy of citizenship.

The issue loomed large recently when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments concerning Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship. The arguments weren’t about birthright citizenship per se. That issue in its entirety will be heard later. Instead, arguments were about the merits of the case with a focus on procedural questions. As MSNBC’s legal expert Lisa Rubin noted, the most significant moment in the hearing came when the Trump administration’s lawyer blew his case with an irrelevant statement to which Justice Amy Coney Barrett responded that it sounded like “a troubling sign of creeping authoritarianism.”

Now Attorney General Pam Bondi wants “subpoenas, court orders, and search warrants to compel” reporters to reveal information about their sources. She has said that the Justice Department “will not tolerate disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies.” The Draconian act would overrule the PRESS Act, which had bipartisan support pre-Trump. It would have codified protections against subpoenas for reporters’ records if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hadn’t let the proposed Act die, according to a recent post on The Intercept.

It's obvious that further threatening legislation lies ahead. It will be up to the courts, public vigilance and protests, and pleas to Congress to end the dangerous dysfunction we are experiencing if we are to avoid the authoritarianism that already looms large.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro Vermont.

A New Eugenics Wave: Trying to Make Disability and Disease Disappear

Back in the 1980s when I was a budding journalist publishing articles related to women and health while working as Program Director for the National Women’s Health Network, I had the privilege of interviewing Judy Heumann and her collaborator Ed Roberts. Judy was known by then as the Mother of the Disability Movement and Ed was called the Father of Independent Living.

Judy, who died in 2023, had contracted polio as a child who then spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.  She was denied the right to attend school because she was considered a fire hazard at the age of five. That was the seed that led to her life’s work. Determined to work with other disabled people, she helped found the Berkeley Center for Independent Living and the World Institute on Disability with Ed, who also had polio at the age of fourteen. It left him completely paralyzed and on a respirator for the rest of his life.  Undeterred, Ed fought to attend UC Berkeley, and ultimately became the first student to use a wheelchair there, let alone a respirator.

Their stories opened my mind to justice issues as no one else had. Together Judy and Ed changed the lives of all disabled people by helping to institute laws like the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), and much more. They weren’t afraid of shocking people, and they knew how to mobilize the media. In 1990 they led a demonstration in which thousands of activists abandoned their wheelchairs and mobility aids, many of them crawling up the eighty-three steps of the U.S. Capital building. The youngest one among them was eight years old.

A recent article in The Guardian noted that the day after Donald Trump was sworn for a second term was the day that the accessibility page and all assisted living content was removed from the White House website. Live interpretation (ASL) was removed from the White House and various federal agencies too.

Additionally, words like “diversity,” “women,” “accessibility” and “disability” were listed as reason to reject grant applications at the National Science Foundation, scaring other agencies and research institutions. That was followed by the order to dismantle the Department of Education, with over 1300 employees fired, and seven regional offices were closed. Special education and rehabilitation services along with the department’s office of civil rights were affected – after Linda McMahon, Trump’s Secretary of Education, promised that those programs would not be affected.

As the Guardian pointed out, early intervention programs and post-high school transition programs, including those that help with employment for disabled workers, are being slashed. They even went so far as to scrub the Special Olympics.  Services like speech, physical and occupational therapy have been cut. So were funds for ramps and braille materials, along with the idea of preferential seating and more. Some have called the treatment of disabled people “the canary in the coal mine.”  After all, Hitler started his elimination campaigns with disabled people. 

What’s happening here now smacks of Eugenics, which was first passed in the U.S. in 1907 in Indiana. Eugenics laws targeted disabled people in schools, institutions, and jails.  Sterilization was mandated for “criminals, idiots, rapists, and imbeciles” in the state. Another law passed that year called for compulsory sterilization for those with “heredity diseases, which included deafness, blindness, epilepsy, and a lot of other conditions. In 1930s Germany mandatory abortions were also required if a parent had one of the identified conditions.

In the U.S. it remains legal in at least 31 states and Washington, D.C. to forcibly sterilize people because of a 1927 SCOTUS decision that upheld sterilization in Virginia. That decision has never been overturned.

This is the stuff of nightmares, and horror stories. It’s a shameful piece of American history, and a frightening example of what can happen when dictators and oligarchs take over a country and massacre their laws, ignore their courts, and extort institutions of learning, law, and civil rights. It’s beyond Draconian and Dystopian.  It’s just plain evil.

Alongside these travesties it bears illuminating what is happening at the same time in the health sector.  An April post on Bluesky by someone named Josh Marshall made the case that “most of the country has little idea of what has happened at NIH or through it the entire ecosystem of biomedical research in the U.S.” Marshall reminds us that cancer research has been put back decades along with other research about treatments and cures for other illnesses that lead to disability or death.

“It’s real, and it’s happened so quickly that most of the country doesn’t know it yet [including] the biomedical research world outside of NIH. … The prospect of more lifesaving cures and treatments [is] bleak,” Marshall says. So is life for disabled or otherwise comprised Americans, including children, elders, and those with chronic illnesses or disease, all because of political extremism led by totally incompetent people with no relevant experience or an ounce of empathy.

The canaries in the coal mines are sounding alarms. We must stay alert and actively resist in whatever ways we can. Our lives and our loved ones depend on us.  As Dylan Thomas famously said, “Do not go gently into the night.  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Turbulent Times Redux

Some time ago I wrote a piece about my fear of flying.  It was after reading Erica Jong’s 1973 novel Fear of Flying, which had nothing to do with flying. But it had a bit in it about her own fear of flying that captured my anxiety.  Her description of trembling on takeoff mirrored mine.

Whenever I think about boarding a hunk of silver metal that weighs more than a large beluga whale that’s about to hurtle across the hopefully vacant sky, “my fingers (and toes) turn to ice,” she wrote. “My stomach leaps upward into my rib cage, the temperature in the tip of my nose drops to the same temperature in my fingers, and my heart and the engine correspond as we attempt to prove again that the laws of aerodynamics [will save us].”

My pre-flight anxiety is the worst. It starts the minute I book a flight. But I never give in to my fear of flying because I love to travel, and like most of us I try to believe that “it won’t happen to me.” 

But what’s been occurring in aviation recently has ratcheted up my anxiety big time, especially because I will be flying a few weeks after this writing, and again a few months after that.  It doesn’t help that both trips involve several flights, two of which are in very small planes, and two of which are transatlantic, which means there’s nowhere to land in an emergency unless you can make it to Iceland.

Now my anxiety is over the top because of all the recent accidents, one of which resulted in casualties, along with near-misses, mechanical failures, and the possibility of FAA being privatized while lots of air traffic controllers are being fired although there’s already a shortage of these experienced people who keep planes from crashing into each other.  (Experts have been saying for years that near-misses on runways are more common than the traveling public may realize.)

Then there’s the cluster of potential disasters taking place in aircraft cabins which appear to be increasing. Some chilling stories include a man who tried to stab a flight attendant on a cross-country flight and a flight attendant who had her nose broken by an unruly passenger. Cabin crews have reported other physical attacks as well as sexual harassment.

It’s also clear that climate change and global warming have played a part in increased episodes of severe turbulence. The research is clear: Earth’s warming is increasing the risks of dangerously bumpy flights. Last year thirty-six passengers on a flight to Hawaii were injured and a transatlantic flight had to make an emergency landing at Dulles International Airport in Virginia. Incidents like these are ratcheting up as the number of flights increases and the weather makes us all vulnerable to weather conditions.

I’ve probably flown hundreds of flights all over the world for work or pleasure and mostly things have been fine. But I’ve had some close calls. Flying over the Andes once the turbulence was so intense I wondered if I’d be forced to eat survivors as we waited for rescue. I also had a “close as it gets” landing in Honduras when two aircraft rounded a mountain simultaneously while trying to land.

Now I have a new thing to worry about.  I’m wondering if I’d be allowed back into the United States or whether I’d be handtied, held for hours (hopefully without my head being shaved) and disappeared into a place like El Salvador.  That’s because it’s no secret that I am a left-leaning journalist, an activist, and pro-Palestinian advocate. I’m also a feminist and liberal – words on the don’t use list.  My anxiety grows daily thanks to Donald and his sidekicks.  So does my husband’s, a green card holder.

When I’m rational I realize that air travel is statistically safer than getting in your car. I know that like cars, airplanes are, for most of us, a necessary part of modern life. Still, there is something that kicks in when I board an airplane, and the door is sealed by a gatekeeper on a terra firma ramp. As the engines rev, and safety instructions, which are pretty useless, are demonstrated, I think of Erica Jong, who admitted that “constant vigilance” was her motto. “I keep concentrating very hard, helping the pilot fly that 250 passenger !#+@!” she said.  These days I relate to that more than ever.

A comedian once captured my own aerophobia (a real word). It gives me something to laugh at when the going gets rough.  “"My fear of flying,” he shared, “starts as soon as I buckle myself in and then the guy up front mumbles a few unintelligible words then before I know it, I'm thrust into the back of my seat by acceleration that seems way too fast and the rest of the trip is an endless nightmare of turbulence, of near misses. And then the cabbie drops me off at the airport."

So, here's to all the newly fearful travelers as we buckle up. Long may we have smooth flights to our destinations and return trips home, safely, without incident, or white knuckles.

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Elayne Clift writes, and worries about flying, from Brattleboro, Vt. 

The Power and Promise of Resistance

It’s become clear that the time to act against political evil is now because this is an extraordinary moment in our history: We stand to lose the democracy we have taken for granted. Luckily, we are not new to resistance. We’ve done it before, and we’ve learned lessons from the past. But there are new lessons to be learned.

As Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard, points out, we have a history of resisting authoritarianism. Pro-independence colonists organized campaigns refusing to buy British goods and refused to abide by laws that required colonists to export raw materials to Britain. They defied other orders from Britain when they mounted the Boston Tea Party and undertook other  rebellious acts

More recently we have realized success by resisting modern travesties. The civil rights movement achieved desegregation with noncooperation campaigns like the Montgomery bus boycotts, lunch counter sit-ins, strikes, business boycotts, marches, demonstrations and the power of Martin Luther King Jr.’s oratory along with legal action. The women’s movement of the 1960s that continues today changed social norms and misogynist legislation, and organized resistance helped end the Vietnam War.

Lessons from the past are instructive. For example, Plato wrote that Socrates risked “all consequences in preference to becoming a partner in their iniquitous deeds.” Perhaps that inspired him to write The Republic in 380 BC in which he envisioned a just society in which “The best and most just of all rulers are those who are most reluctant to govern, while the worst and most unjust are those who are most eager. “

            Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata, a play in which the women of Athens occupied the Acropolis and went on a sex strike until the men agreed to make peace. Lysistrata stated that even if I was born a woman, don't hold it against me if I manage to suggest something better than what we've got now."

             Gandhi’s Quit India campaign, a unifying rallying cry for civil disobedience spread quickly and culminated in his 1930 Salt March which inspired the march on Washington in 1963 and the Selma to Montgomery march two years later. “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt”, King wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which included his famous statement that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

             There are many ways to resist, and literature, music, and art have played their part. A strong artistic protest against injustice occurred in the Baker Library at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH in the 1920s when Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco painted frescoes that depict the history of the American continent from the immigration of native peoples in prehistoric times to the arrival of the Europeans and their impact on native civilization.  Diego Rivera also used murals as a way to resist tyranny.  He called Orozco the conscience of his generation because of his intentional speaking out about things without fear of the consequences.  

            Music also rails against injustice. The Beatles, Arlo Guthrie, Helen Reddy, and many more recognized the importance of resistance through protest songs which still resonate today.

              American writers wrote books of resistance about political and social issues, mobilizing public opinion, advocating for the persecuted and marginalized, celebrating resisters, making space for direct action, aimed at a way forward. Protest literature made its mark with books like John Hersey's Hiroshima, a masterful anti-war book. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring woke people up to environmental issues, and James Baldwin’s essays in The Fire Next Time explored the American civil rights movement while Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee chronicled the violence of America's systemic destruction of Native America’s indigenous peoples and their culture.

            This cultural context is enlightening but as Erica Chenoweth points out “today’s political terrain calls for a more muscular movement strategy” centered on economic resistance given that our future elections are at risk. She agrees with other strategists that withholding labor and purchasing power along with strikes or slowdowns, are both effective methods of resistance.

I personally advocate for a national strike day, and a Project 2028 document (which needn’t be 900 pages long) that blasts Project 2025 and states specifically what new leadership would do to roll back Trump travesties and makes clear what antidotes will restore civil and human rights.

Another resistance tool for pressuring policy makers is employing a proven communication strategy aimed at raising awareness, increasing knowledge of what’s at stake, addressing attitudes, practices and beliefs and conveying a visionary, achievable future. Such a strategy calls for acting vs. reacting and focusing on “target audiences” by meeting them where they are and hearing what they say and think.

When stories are localized and opinion leaders and trusted change agents are in partnership with the media the results can be amazing.  I know because I worked internationally on a successful communication project that involved media advocacy methods vs. political public relations. It saved lives. Sadly, our politicians have not realized the potential and efficacy of well-researched and designed messages that rely on multiple ways to convey information and inspire action.

Add that to the mix and Erica Chenweth could be right. “Americans seem to be rediscovering the art, science, and potency of noncooperation, combined with a robust protest capacity and legal action, [that suggests] resistance against Trump’s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy, diversifying and probably just getting started.”

Let’s hope she’s right.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

The Price of Purges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, VT 

The Demise of Education is a Looming Catastrophe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Six Triple Eight and Rosie the Riveter Belong on the Mall

Six Triple Eight and Rosie the Riveter Belong on the Mall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Shock and Awe of Immigrant Deportations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Remembering the Gifts of Black Culture, Creativity and Science

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt

Welcome to the Gilded Age

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Health, Hunger, Housing: A Deadly Trifecta

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

From Chattel to Child to Red-cloaked Mother

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Beware the Return of Nuclear Power Planats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Elayne Clift writes and worries from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Taking Stock of Election Shock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taking Care of the Caretakers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kamala Harris is in Good Company as She Moves Forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[i] Sources:

Britannica, Wikipedia, UN Chronical,           

National Women’s History Museum,

Nobel Peace Prizes, Council of Women’s World Leader