Category: Political Reform

I’ve been talking with friends, family and colleagues, circling around the same question: What can we do?

I was reminded that in any sort of social change effort or contentious politics, different tactics are not only inevitable, but necessary. At some point, there will be critical moments when we need to coordinate and effectively rally around a particular initiative. But we can take different paths that are true to ourselves, relevant to our environments.

Below are various ideas that my friends, family and colleagues have shared and discussed.

Demonstrate in show of solidarity: Follow the example of our youth and protest as a sign of solidarity with those most vulnerable: immigrant, hispanic, black, Muslim, women, LGBTQI communities and peoples, or as a commitment to something you believe in, such as climate action. Join protests on inauguration day and especially the day following with the Women’s March on Washington.

Advocate: Be loud and clear that we won’t tolerate messages of hate; use social media, traditional media; talk with friends, family, colleagues. Make it clear that this isn’t our America, that we are not a country that will tolerate and endorse such expressions of hate, racism, sexism, xenophobia, Islamophobia. Whatever path we choose, including holding to personal principles of love and compassion, we need a principled and unwavering message that Trump’s inciting of hatred and belittling of our citizens and our democracy is intolerable, will not be accommodated, will not become our new norm. One way to do this is by reducing ignorance that breeds prejudice. Some helpful resources: Muslim Americans fact check; information on immigrants and, from IRC, on refugees.

Volunteer: There are infinite opportunities to volunteer with nonprofit organizations. One idea: support those communities who are most vulnerable, such finding ways to engage with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The International Rescue Committee has a great volunteer program to support refugees navigate their new lives here in the U.S., which will be increasingly difficult in this climate, as well as this guide on other ways to get involved.

In the longer-term, funding for social welfare programs is going to be retracted. You can volunteer for (or donate to) homeless shelters, food pantries, educational programs (see if there are tutoring programs through your local schools or local nonprofits), health clinics, affordable housing programs, youth programs. Contact your local Sierra Club chapter and ask how you can help.

Donate: Nonprofit organizations are going to need as much unrestricted funding as possible to do their work.

Consider donating to civil liberties and social justice organizations like ACLU, NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Centre, Brennan Center; and nonprofit journalism organizations like The Centre for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica, and public information networks like NPR.

Health and especially women’s health and reproductive rights organizations like Planned Parenthood will need our support as will the Guttmacher Institute and the Center for Reproductive Rights, which are great resources of information. There are lots of great women’s equality and women’s rights organizations, too, like Emerge (America or your home state).

Environmental organizations and advances on climate change, including federally funded research for climate change, are going to take a huge hit under this administration, especially with a climate denier appointed to lead the EPA. Donate to The Sierra Club; among other great work, the Environmental Law Program has gained a ton of traction around pushing to reduce the coal industry. Other great organizations: The Nature Conservancy, Environment America (or Environment Washington, California, etc), EarthJustice, EarthAction, 350.org.

A list of more pro-women, pro-immigrant, pro-earth organizations can be found here.

Vote with your money: More and more companies are responding to bad publicity, and/or proactively taking measures to improve their environmental and social impacts. In fact, more and more companies are committed to clean energy and their motivations go beyond state regulation, as expressed by leading companies who fear that abandoning the Paris Climate deal will jeopardize “American prosperity.” In a statement targeting a future Trump administration, 365 companies and major investors emphasized their “deep commitment to addressing climate change.”

Support businesses devoted to clean energy. Support businesses committed to their social and environmental impact. Support businesses who have made clear statements against civil rights violations and discrimination. And pressure others to follow suit, by avoiding their products, divesting in irresponsible companies, and telling others to do so; join campaigns to increase corporate transparency and accountability.

Engage in local and state politics: State initiatives, for example, can help to tackle climate change even in absence of a committed federal government. California, for example, has led the way ahead of federal actions. In my home state of Washington, we can look to how to improve prop 732 and re-submit a proposition to reduce our reliance on coal. Be proactive and find other areas that will need local tax dollars and support for your community and state’s needs by mobilizing or initiating ballot measures.

Prepare for 2016 and 2018: Voting rights have been on the upswing from where they were in the aftermath of the Tea Party surge in 2010. Still, they’re far from where they should be. Find ways to support voter registration, host a voter registration drive, and make more noise about efforts to disenfranchise voters. The Brennan Center is a great source of information.

Seek out ways to participate in local politics; hold our elected officials and the Democratic Party accountable; make clear your voice, your ideas. 

Listen and learn: Deep down I do believe that if we are to move forward, we have to learn from this election and recognize how disaffected so many people feel. This is not to say that expressions of hatred should be accommodated or tolerated in any way, but if we continue to isolate ourselves from one another, if Liberals continue to flee from conservative places and from conversations with conservatives, we’re only going to be further divided, and further mobilize the Tea Party-to-Trump phenomenon. We have to find ways to communicate and be open to learning about some of the grievances and perspectives of others. And we have to find ways to engage so that we can effectively communicate our own grievances about why electing Trump is so damaging, and emboldens intolerance, bigotry and hatred, even if that wasn’t the personal views or motivations of all who voted for him.

Finally, share more ideas and mobilize!

This morning I listened as my husband grew tearful, recounting how our 5 year-old neighbor, with a Hispanic father, was drawn to tears himself last night over the election.

Like so many people around the country, and world, I feel a mix of emotions, mostly from sadness to anger. And then no emotion at all. Just stunned. But I’m trying to harness the words of a dear friend: “redouble love.” The way to navigate this storm, at least at a personal level, is with love and compassion.

While I know that sexism, racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and ignorance played an alarming role in yesterday’s decision, I also sense that largely what drove people to the polls is frustration and disappointment with our political system. When I see it that way, it’s less a message of hate, and I have more compassion for my fellow citizens, for indeed we need to find ways to improve our systems and political equality.

Regardless, the way to absorb and rebound is to emanate love. Not to give up in seeking solutions around poverty; economic, racial, and gender inequality; educational opportunity; equity in health care; green energy and climate change; our justice and criminal system; and a more equitable and just political system. We still have some politicians who will fight for these issues. We are also a country of nearly 2 million nonprofits. We are a country of tens of millions of people dedicated to these issues. If we focus on redoubling our efforts of love and compassion, justice and equality, yesterday’s display of red with Trump at the helm seems at least a little less harrowing.

This is painful and it will be for a long time, but I want you to remember this. Our campaign was never about one person or even one election. It was about the country we love and about building an America that’s hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted… I still believe as deeply as I ever have that if we stand together and work together with respect for our differences, strength in our convictions and love for this nation, our best days are still ahead of us.

On several occasions, I’ve offhandedly mentioned to friends that I wanted to write an article on the 10 things Donald Trump and Zimbabwe’s dictator, President Robert Mugabe have in common; the similarities between them seemed striking right off the bat.

When Vox’s article on authoritarianism came out in March 2016, it reinforced and more articulately framed this notion of Trump, The Dictator, preying on and drumming up frenzied and fearful subjects who respond to authoritarianism.

As I finally sat down to put some words on paper, I found, and perhaps not too surprisingly, that my envisioned article had essentially already been written. A 2003 Atlantic article on Zimbabwean President Mugabe criticized his dictatorship by framing 10 ‘how-to’ steps to destroy a nation. Not surprising, moreover, they were nearly perfect parallels to the 10 notable features of Donald Trump and his campaign scribbled in my notes.

(And then I also learned that I’m really not original, but also clearly not off-base; Trevor Noah brilliantly covered the very same topic on The Daily Show nearly a year ago.)

To begin, though, some background on authoritarianism. The Vox authors, and the social scientists they cite, refer to authoritarianism as a “psychological profile of individual voters… thought to express much deeper fears than the rest of the electorate, to seek the imposition of order where they perceive dangerous change, and to desire a strong leader who will defeat those fears with force.” The dictatorship style of Trump, they offer, explains the unexplainable in his rise to the Republican nomination, and presumably what continues to carry him in the presidential polls.

Indeed, Trump, like Mugabe, incites and instills fear – think only of his reference to Mexicans as rapists and his out of context exaggeration of crime rates – and uses punitive rhetoric to rally his fan-base: Build the wall! Make them pay for it! Ban all Muslims! Trump, also like Mugabe, is so far lost in his own hubris and narcissism that he is impervious to criticism to the extent that when provoked, he just doubles down on his fear-invoking, punitive rhetoric to defend his absurd ideology, only to make him look stronger in the eyes of his authoritarian followers.

So if the political scientists are right, and I think they might be, that this isn’t uniquely a Trump phenomenon, but rather a broader phenomenon across individuals and societies, it’s no wonder that 2016 Trump lines up so neatly with 2003 Mugabe (and no wonder he has formed such an odd admiration for Putin!).

Mugabe // Trump (following from Atlantic’s 2003 article)

1. “Destroy the engine of productivity” // Build a wall with the border of Mexico and undermine a relationship with the country that accounts for $584 billion in imports, our 3^rd largest trading partner.

2. “Bury the truth” // PolitiFact qualifies only 4% of Trump’s statements as “true” compared to 53% as outright false, to complete exaggeration (18%).

3. “Crush dissent” // While Trump has not wielded the same sort of power as Mugabe, who has been in power nearly 40 years now, he has already demonstrated his willingness to incite violence, encouraging his campaign followers to punch and evict protestors, sending the opposition “out on a stretcher.” Even Mugabe didn’t begin with such furor (far from it, actually).

4. “Legislate the impossible” // Again, Trump has yet to see the inside of the Oval Office, but his tendency is to spout off one absent, unrealistic idea after another that could never amount to any real policy or legislation.

5. “Teach hate” // Trump propagates hate: towards Hispanics, Muslims, women, Democrats, our allied countries…

6. “Scare off foreigners” // Trump burst onto the scenes on a platform of xenophobia: Build a wall! Evict all Muslims! Mexicans are rapists!

7. “Invade a neighbor” // Insult and offend our neighbor, Mexico; and our allies, NATO

Tenants #8, 9: “Ignore a deadly enemy” (HIV in the case of Zimbabwe) and “commit genocide” // While I am confident and hopeful that genocide is not where this country is headed, even with Trump at the helm, issues of poverty, economic inequality, racial inequality and racial tensions, issues that Trump shows no promise of effectively addressing and would likely only exacerbate, do directly and substantially threaten marginalized people in this country, and threaten the stability and future of the country as a whole.

10. “Blame the imperialists” // Trump blames everyone else, for everything, and takes no responsibility whatsoever for his own actions

Just to paint a clearer, or rather, starker, picture, when Mugabe took power, the country had one of the fastest growing economies in Africa; it now has the distinction of having one of the fastest shrinking economies and inflation has plagued the country. Poverty, crime, food insecurity and threats to civil liberties have risen with Mugabe’s consolidation of power and increased tendencies towards authoritarianism.

In short, it’s not a direction we should aspire to.

So where’s my sense of optimism?

As Mugabe so clearly demonstrates, the stakes are too high for any of us to remain onlookers during this year’s election. We all have a civic duty to ensure that fear does not rule us, and that exclusion does not define us. We have an opportunity, in whatever ways we can, to alleviate our families’, our friends’, our neighbors’, our communities’, our fellow citizens’ fears. And we can demonstrate through our own tolerance, compassion, and inclusion that we are not a country that will be swept away by intolerance, dispassion and exclusion.