Thank you for continuing to share these messages with your friends, if you are not already on our mailing list, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, A Path Forward to November 3, 2020, every two weeks, which means there will be a total of 100 missives before the Presidential election of 2020, in which our country will select a whole new course.
Well, at least you can appreciate Donald Trump’s sense of history, since his tax bill has revived the medieval practice of selling indulgences to the rich. It is an awful new law, revealing the emptiness of past Republican protests about deficits. Its underlying philosophy boils down to this - get while the getting is good. If you are Paul Ryan, it is an additional bonus that you have created new pressures on Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare spending.
Did any of us even need this new motivation? Our resistance was continuing to grow either way, spurred by the excellent results first in Virginia and now in Alabama. The electoral lessons in November and then in December couldn’t have been clearer. In those states, our enthusiasm and commitment and relentlessness increased registrations and promoted turnout. We swept away Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for Governor in Virginia even though he got 300,000 votes more than the Republican candidate from four years before. Because of the focus on getting people energized and getting them to the polls, the Democrat Ralph Northam got 600,000 more votes than the Democrat from four years before and won by a wide margin.
We could get used to this. What we are doing is working. The level of our own personal motivation matters, hugely. Certainly, one great force inspiring the resistance is Trump himself. He has insisted that a massive transfer of riches to the wealthy from funds we must borrow (for our children and grandchildren to pay back) is a middle-class tax cut. So, now that we know that he will say anything and do anything, we don’t have to worry about being distracted by some positive action Trump might take. But with or without Trump’s tweets and Trump’s headlines, we will grow our resistance every week and every month until November 6, 2018. There are scores of ways to accelerate. If we haven’t found local friends or associates to work with, groups linked to Indivisible, Swing Left, and several other national organizing efforts are everywhere.
There are years in American history that are critical to understanding who we are as a people. In 1776, ragtag revolutionaries declared our independence. In 1865, we ended a war amongst ourselves and the institution of slavery that begat that war. In 1963 we passed the Civil Rights Act, an indispensable but insufficient tool to fight discrimination, and in 1968 we lost Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy and almost unraveled as a nation.
Do we now understand that 2018 could be a year of that level of consequence? Don’t we know that we are a part of a great resurgence, an effort to restore the never fully realized promise of a great democratic experiment? Do we realize that we are on the verge of doing something unprecedented, something that will send a signal to the people of an entire planet?
How could those people of the world not be watching us now with trepidation, as our own United Nations Ambassador steps forth and insults the world? She says their country’s vote in the World’s General Assembly should be for sale to us? She says that the $26 billion we provide in foreign aid to make sure the hungry are fed and disease is eradicated is less important than this anti-democratic stance of a country that purports to be the greatest democracy of all?
And our own elected officials and our own news media fell silent. Either they were distracted by the tax bill or numbed by other daily offenses. It’s time for each of us to attend to these matters of our place in the world by doing these three things.
| 1) Become an Advocate for Nations Working Together | |
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The management of the United Nations has been fraught with problems for decades now. Paraphrasing the adage about democracy, the United Nations is the worst way for nations across the world to get together, except for all others. The U.N.’s Millennial Development Goals established by the world community in 2000 provided the grounding for extraordinary progress in poverty alleviation and disease eradication. The U.N. has provided the underlying structure that lead to the Paris Climate Accords. However limited its success has been in preventing conflict, it’s a place that the quest for peace finds a home. All nations use the United Nations to advance national self-interest and well as identify and pursue collective global interest. Unfortunately, the President of the United States has stressed the former all out of proportion to the latter. Since the United Nations was founded in 1948, there has been an organization for Americans to go to provide active support for the United Nations, sending a signal to the world that we intend to be a part of the world community. That’s the United Nations Association of the United States. You can utilize it as a way to support advocacy that can protect the U.N., educate yourself about what is happening in the world community, and learn ways to involve yourself in the international health and welfare agenda. UNA-US is a vigorous opponent of the U.N. budget cuts that Donald Trump and Nikki Haley have proposed. |
2) Get Behind the Bi-Partisan Consensus on Foreign Aid |
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During the debate in the U.N. General Assembly over the United States action recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, Nikki Haley said that she was “taking names” of nations who would “disrespect” the United States and that this vote would be remembered when the United States allocates foreign aid. If another nation had said anything of the sort, the United States would be outraged. Embarrassingly, we were lectured to by the far less democratic Turkey about our “blackmailing” behavior, and only nine countries voted with us --- Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo. In February, Republican Senators Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona successfully defended foreign aid as the exercise of “soft power” essential to America’s role in the world. Perhaps the bipartisan consensus in Congress that is against direct ties between the granting of aid and General Assembly votes will hold. We must help make it so. In the House, the relevant appropriations subcommittee is State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. Their views on the Haley threats will become much clearer by mid-January. Please call subcommittee chair Hal Rogers of Kentucky (Republican) and ranking minority member Nita Lowey of New York (Democrat) and indicate how much it matters to you that the Congress send a bi-partisan signal that aid will be protected from the administration’s disorderly conduct.
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3) Don’t Forget to Show Your Lack of Love For the Wall |
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Democrats and some Republicans have hopes of re-enacting DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) in some form as a part of a mid-January bi-partisan budget deal. Because of this excellent prospect we have a fresh risk that someone will think it is a good idea to give Donald Trump his wall as a part of the complex give and take of negotiations. This cannot be allowed. Donald Trump wants the wall because it sends a global signal, with levels of meaning going way beyond the significance of the structure itself. For exactly the same reason, we cannot accept the building of the wall. The wall would be an emblem for the world of the failing of America. If you haven’t communicated with your own members of Congress on this, you should do so in the next week. And, you should boost an unlikely player. The more high-quality advocacy organizations battling the wall, the better. The Sierra Club’s borderlands project is concentrating the environmental arguments against the wall, opening up an all new political front. This is the rationale: “Walls and barriers have already been constructed across more than 650 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. These barriers block wildlife migration, cause flooding, and damage pristine wild lands, including wildlife refuges, wilderness areas and national forests." Here is where to learn about and donate to the borderlands project. |
The New Year awaits. In Congress, the Senate has nearly exhausted the ways that they can use the rules of budget reconciliation to pass measures with 50 votes. Instead, the need for Trump and McConnell to get 60 votes will put Charles Schumer and Democratic leadership in play in all new ways. It will also provide some new chances for fresh, would-be presidential candidates who also happen to be Democratic Senators to put themselves forward, such as Cory Booker, Kamela Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and Chris Murphy. It’s a good discussion to start having. Let’s see who among these and others have the dreams, the staying power and the strength of character to help rebuild a democracy.
David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
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