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

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. 

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

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. 

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. 

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.

Kamala Harris is in Good Company as She Moves Forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[i] Sources:

Britannica, Wikipedia, UN Chronical,           

National Women’s History Museum,

Nobel Peace Prizes, Council of Women’s World Leader

Coming to Grips with Violence in America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

J:accuse: A Response to Israel's War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Your Vote is Your Voice: It Matters More Than Ever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Were We the Lucky Ones?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

The Desperate Need for Prison Reform

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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It's Time to Confront Violence Against Women

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Time for Change is Now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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