I’m writing with a small favor.

Since leaving guides.vote and returning to writing, I’ve shared most of my work through Substack.

As mentioned, I have a new edition of my political hope book, The Impossible Will Take a Little While coming out Oct 13. The earlier versions were national bestsellers, receiving rave reviews. I’ve completely updated the book, and it’s getting great initial responses. I can’t think of a more important time to talk about hope and persistence, given how critical it is to keep people acting for change despite all the bad news.

Social media will be a key part of my outreach. I’ll post interviews, excerpts, ideas from the book, and other commentary. But I need to broaden those networks. You can help by following me on one or two of the platforms you use.

Facebook
LinkedIn
Substack Notes (different from my main Substack)
Twitter/X
Bluesky

Every follow will help. And when the new edition comes out, if you can make an occasional comment, or like or share a post, it will introduce the book to more people who might otherwise never hear about it.

I know you’re overwhelmed with messages and requests, so would be genuinely grateful for whatever you can do.

Thanks so much,

Paul

P.S. You can preorder the new edition here and if you teach a relevant class, sign up for an exam copy or even .

Advance momentum is incredibly important for books, so I hope you can help in one or more of these ways:

• Preorder copies, and encourage your local book stores to order and display the book. You can do so directly through your favorite store (the most impactful option), or online at bookshop.org, which offers an alternative to Amazon and routes profits to local independent stores. Preorders build advance momentum both with stores and my publisher. Encourage local libraries to preorder as well.

• If you think you might teach the book, sign up to preorder an academic exam copy. As many of you know, it teaches wonderfully and I’ve just updated the classroom study questions. The current edition is available now, and if you have a relevant class or supervise a relevant program, you can preorder a free exam copy of the new one. If you think you could teach the book in fall, I can get even get you a preview if you fill out the order form and then email me.

• If you have contacts that might bring me in to speak, please reach out to them, or email me for information you can to pass on. I’d love to get some paid college dates, which would let me rent more lists to let faculty know about the book and order exam copies. I’d also like to get some talks in major cities at venues with built-in audiences or promotional networks, like congregations or major community lecture venues. I’m thinking of touring to New York, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and maybe some other cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Cleveland, Denver, or Dallas, as well as Seattle of course, and maybe Portland.

• If you personally know key media people or people who might promote the book through organizations, please pass on their contact info.

• You can also pre-order the book at a discounted bulk rate, for instance if you want to sustain the spirits of staff and volunteers at your organization, or if you’re a funder that wants to buy bulk copies for organizations you support. If you think of any other ways to get the book out, please let me know.

I look forward to giving you a resource to keep you and others going.

Paul

So hope you can help and if you’d like to check out the book more, here are summaries of the essays and of the many wonderful reviews.

After musician after musician pulled out from Trump’s “Freedom 250” concert, he was left with Lee Greenwood, an opera tenor, a couple of military bands, and Kash Patel’s girlfriend. The anthem that made Greenwood a star, “God Bless the USA,” was written in 1985 during the height of the Cold War. It begins with the specter of loss— “If tomorrow—all the things were gone, I’d worked for all my life/ And I had to start all over with my children and my wife.” Then the wounds disappear before they’re felt: “I’d thank my lucky stars to be living here today/ Because the flag still stands for freedom and they can’t take that away.”

Ronald Reagan made the song his campaign theme while launching a new age of American inequality by systematically busting unions and cutting taxes for the wealthiest. Trump calls it Greenwood treats layoffs and the resulting toll on ordinary lives as a mere inconvenience. As the refrain shifts from violins and a church organ to a military march, he repeats, “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free/ And I won’t forget the men who died who gave that right to me.”

Honoring those who died resonates powerfully. Those who risk taking bullets to defend our country deserve respect for their service and sacrifice. Yet this gives us no special grace over citizens of other lands. And doesn’t answer the question of whether or not it was necessary to put them in harms way to begin with. Because Greenwood says nothing about what freedom might demand of us, it becomes just an empty phrase, blessing all that our leaders may do, no matter how arrogant or destructive.

We were defending freedom in this view, when supporting dictators from Chile’s Augusto Pinochet to the Iranian Shah whose brutal rule laid the groundwork for the current theocracy and the war of choice that we hope has now finally ended. We’re supposedly defending freedom now as Trump cozies up to dictators like Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan, and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and while ICE agents grab innocent people off America’s streets. When Greenwood sings, “There ain’t no doubt I love this land. God Bless the USA,” he never suggests what qualities of justice would redeem the love he declaims.

Greenwood wrote the song after we invaded the 95,000-person country of Grenada, wanting to reflect “the spirit of America being proud.” Reagan made it his campaign theme, and Greenwood has been singing it at Republican rallies and conventions ever since. Trump calls it “the greatest hit of all time” and sold a “God Bless the USA Bible,” (printed in China) that contains the song. Because Greenwood says that just living in America makes us free, his version of patriotism gets reduced to signing a blank check for whatever our leaders choose to do. It’s a perfect match for this or any president who seeks to erase all limits on their power.

But Greenwood’s isn’t the sole patriotic ballad to choose from. The late Waylon Jennings’ “America” reached number six on the charts the year “God Bless the USA” first came out. Written by Sammy Johns, the song affirms connection to native soil, as Jennings repeats, “America, America,” slowly and tenderly as if to a woman he loves; then admits, softly, “You’ve become a habit to me.” But he also makes tough demands—recounting his own history as an Anglo yeoman “from down round Tennessee,” then continuing, “But my brothers/ Are all black and white/ Yellow too/ And the red man is right/ To expect a little from you/ Promise and then follow through/ America.”

In a similar vein, “America the Beautiful” writer Katherine Lee Bates celebrated “purple mountain majesties,” but actively opposed America’s imperial adventures, so added lines like “God mend thine every flaw/Confirm thy soul in self-control/Thy liberty in law!” Bruce Springsteen’s whole career has been about honoring the courage and dignity of ordinary Americans, from “The Promised Land” celebrating those with “dreams that break your heart,” to “The Rising’s” portrait of 9/11 firefighters, to the “Streets of Minneapolis” chorus, “Singing through the bloody mist, we’ll take our stand for this land.”

Hard as it is, we’re stronger for engaging the difficult questions about who we’ve been as a country and who we want to be. Patriotic ballads don’t have to be political manifestos. But the best celebrate our diverse and contradictory land and acknowledge that true greatness does not flow like automatic grace. Rather, it’s fulfilled through honoring common responsibility and connection.

With democracy profoundly threatened, we need true patriotism more than ever. We can choose a patriotism of blind adulation. Or we can embrace the songs that demand the most of us.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, with 300,000 copies in print between them and a new edition of The Impossible out in October. See paulloeb.org An earlier version appeared in The Fulcrum.

The funds claim their action is necessary because, according to the administration, it constituted fraud for SPLC to have paid hate group informants. But federal and state law enforcement agencies have known about the infiltrations for years, using information they provided to help secure indictments and convictions. So the charges are spurious. Fidelity justified its actions by citing a policy of pausing DAF giving if an organization “is being investigated for alleged illegal activities…such as terrorism, money laundering, hate crimes or fraud,” or if “state and federal agencies” are investigating a charitable organization. Schwab’s fund quietly removed SPLC from its list of eligible nonprofits, and a representative read me similar boilerplate, saying the fund was deciding on next steps.

The danger is far larger than the SPLC case. The listed criteria would let federal or state authorities cripple any nonprofit they choose, simply by launching an investigation. The organization doesn’t have to be convicted, or even indicted. They just have to be investigated, which makes this a perfect way to target political opponents. The administration has already issued a memorandum promising investigations of groups that promote “anti-fascism,” “anti-Christianity,” or “hostility” toward “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” It’s threatened Wikipedia, the Vera Institute for Justice and the governmental watchdog Citizens for Responsibility in Ethics in Washington, not to mention major universities. All the federal government, or even a state government, would need to do to launch a DAF freeze is to open an official public investigation. And these major DAFs would then block the targeted organization from receiving funding.

The implications aren’t confined to the Trump administration. Under this precedent, Democrats holding power could do the same to disfavored nonprofits. Just launching an investigation would cut off a significant part of a targeted organization’s money flow. The defunding or banning of targeted NGOs is exactly what Vladimir Putin did in Russia, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. It’s a classic way to eliminate opposition and consolidate power. And the anticipatory compliance of Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab is the exact kind of response that empowers would-be dictatorships, whatever their politics.

If a nonprofit is convicted of fraud or money laundering, it’s of course legitimate to remove or suspend their 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. But SPLC has neither been tried nor convicted, so the DAFs are letting a hostile administration’s mere accusation of wrongdoing become an excuse to block funding. The $326 billion of money that DAFs hold is part of the lifeblood of nonprofits. The actions of these DAFs directly undermine democracy by excluding a group the administration has targeted and potentially denying funding to other targeted groups. That’s true whatever you think of SPLC.

If there’s a nonprofit that could weather this, it’s SPLC, with its $786 million endowment. I don’t give to them because I think other groups are more impactful for the money they spend. But if the Trump administration and its enablers can do this to SPLC, they can do it to far smaller and more vulnerable nonprofits. For instance, they could target nonpartisan voter engagement groups, drying up funding (including pledged contributions) at the point when these groups need it the most to engage citizens in democracy. Damaging attacks on nonprofit funding also don’t have to come from the federal Department of Justice. Under Fidelity’s criteria, attacks could come from state governments as well, with potential targets including either conservative or liberal groups depending on which party runs a particular state.

But ordinary citizens have the power to change this. The campaigns that got ABC to reinstate Jimmy Kimmel offer a model. This issue has less visibility, but for the nonprofits it could affect is equally critical. If we have money in a DAF, our calls or emails could well make the difference. Schwab told me that they’d been deluged with critical responses. But even if we don’t have a DAF, nearly 60% of us have retirement or other investment accounts, with most housed at the major affiliated brokerages. So we can reach out as well, threatening to switch our investments to brokerages that don’t empower authoritarian initiatives, like TIAA-CREF (at least for now Merrill Lynch/Bank of America is still putting through grants as well, although Bank of America has been problematic on climate), and, if we have DAF’s, transfer them to ones that haven’t banned SPLC contributions, like Amalgamated Bank, Impact Assets, or Daffy A group of socially responsible investment advisors have created a sign-on letter. New York’s historic Riverside Church just divested $12 million from Vanguard. The donor activists behind freeyourdaf.org offer cut and paste templates to send to the companies involved as does leavefidelity.com. The goal is to echo what people did in the Kimmel situation when they boycotted the channels, advertisers, and theme park properties of national ABC/Disney and local Sinclair and Nextstar stations. People also protested in front of affiliated ABC stations—something they could do at the headquarters of the relevant brokerage houses. While DAFs are technically separate entities, they share investment management, administration, and the parent brand, which offers them as an incentive for clients. So we’re far from powerless.

The job of the brokerage houses is not to police client giving. Their affiliated DAFs need to allow donations to all legitimate nonprofits, whether or not the Trump administration—or any administration—agrees with what they do.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, with 300,000 copies in print between them and a new edition of The Impossible coming out in October. He spent 13 years running nonprofits he founded.

Link the Save Act to the History of American Voter Suppression

Donald Trump asked Republicans to pass the SAVE Act “for Jesus.” He’d have been better calling out George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. The debate has focused on the bill’s many dangerous aspects, and the next steps to trying to pass it are unclear. But the SAVE Act builds on voter suppression that Republicans have been carrying out for the past 25 years. The Democrats need to talk about this history, because whether or not this bill passes, there will be others like it to come.

The bill attacks voting rights in multiple ways:

· It requires a passport, birth certificate, or a handful of other documents to register and vote, excluding student IDs, most driver’s licenses, and tribal IDs lacking an expiration date. More than 21 million Americans lack ready access to these documents, with Black, Latino, and Asian citizens three times more likely to not have them.

· It eliminates most in-person voter registration drives, since election officials would need original proof of citizenship and groups can’t submit proof on people’s behalf. It also severely disrupts or limits online and mail registration.

· It mandates voter purges every 30 days, allowing people to be mistakenly thrown off the voter rolls right before elections.

· It gives access to state voter files to an administration eager to manipulate or evade laws to consolidate power.

The SAVE Act didn’t just emerge, but builds on a long and problematic history.

In the 2000 presidential election, Florida, under governor Jeb Bush, threw 12,000 largely African American voters off the rolls by falsely charging them with being former felons, who Jim Crow-era laws prohibited from voting. This set the stage for a Republican-appointed Supreme Court to tip the state to Jeb’s brother, George W. Bush, by 537 votes. Over 960,000 Florida former felons remain without a vote, including 12% of all African American potential voters, because the governor and legislature undermined a successful 2018 initiative that was supposed to give them back their rights.

President Bush benefitted from disenfranchisement again in 2004. Ohio Secretary of State and Bush campaign co-chair Kenneth Blackwell purged 300,000 largely African American voters from the rolls in cities like Cleveland and Columbus, including one in four Cleveland voters, without which, he probably would have lost the state and therefore the Presidency. Blackwell also tried to reject thousands of registrations because they were on the wrong weight of paper and allowed each county, whatever its size, just a single early-voting station, leaving the state’s major cities with five-hour lines.

In 2013, a Republican-appointed Supreme Court overturned major sections of the Voting Rights Act that made it harder for states with histories of discrimination to limit voting rights. Immediately afterward, Southern states began passing newly restrictive laws. North Carolina, for instance, passed a new voter ID law invalidating student IDs, public employee IDs, and photo IDs issued by public assis­tance agencies (while allowing gun permits); shortened the early voting window; banned same-day registra­tion during early voting; and prohibited paid voter registration drives. It also prohibited extending voting hours in the event of long lines, eliminated the right to cast a provisional ballot if you end up at the wrong precinct, and ended a highly successful high school registration program. Local election officials also began removing on-campus voting stations, relocating them sometimes miles away. A federal Appeals Court overturned much of the law, saying it had targeted African Americans with “almost surgical precision.”

Other states once deterred by the Voting Rights Act including Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama passed similar laws to limit acceptable ID. Alabama’s excluded Social Security cards, birth certificates, Medicaid or Medicare cards, and Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards. More than half a million voters were removed from Georgia’s rolls in 2017, including over 100,000 who simply hadn’t voted in recent elections or responded to a mailed notice. These laws and others similar created voting rate gaps of up to 24 points between white voters and voters of color, ones that didn’t exist before the new laws.

The rationale was to prevent voter fraud. But a five-year Bush administration crackdown convicted just eighty-six people of voter fraud nationwide, most of whom had simply made mistakes regarding their eligibility. The Save Act focuses on non-citizens voting, but even Project 2025 creator The Heritage Foundation found just 68 proven cases going back as far as the 1980s. While the most dedicated voters will find ways to register and vote, voter suppression laws are like adding hurdles to a running track. Top athletes can still surmount them. If you’re just a bit less skilled or dedicated, you’re likely to give up and if you place enough hurdles, you’ll knock out the majority of those targeted.

So yes, let’s warn of the SAVE Act’s specific destructive consequences. But let’s also talk about the anti-democratic history on which it builds, because this probably won’t be the last Republican attempt to deter the vote.

Paul Loeb’s books on citizen activism, like Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, have over 350,000 copies in print, with a new edition of The Impossible coming out this fall. See paulloeb.org. This piece ran on Raw Story

PS—One immediate race where you can make a difference is Virginia’s April 21 vote on a redistricting initiative that would balance out the extreme gerrymandering that Republican legislatures in states like Florida, Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina have initiated by following California’s lead and temporarily gerrymandering Virginia in favor of the Democrats. A group supported by $2.5 million from right wing billionaire Peter Thiel has opposed the initiative in a blatantly misleading campaign of mailing post cards to black voters that used Jim Crow-era images implying that an initiative strongly supported by the NAACP and other civil rights groups is anti-civil rights, and that initiative supporters like Barack Obama and Governor Abigail Spanberger actually oppose it. The excellent group Center for Common Ground has a nice backgrounder, where you can also donate, and also lets you sign up for volunteer phone banks and postcard-writing campaigns.

The armband idea comes from the October 15, 1969 Vietnam Moratorium. They didn’t call it a strike but it was a similar day of marches, walkouts, teach-ins, and other activities that gave as many ways as possible to participate. Two million participated in the day’s marches, but far more in other activities. New York City’s Council endorsed it. Milwaukee held a funeral procession. Small towns rang church bells ring to commemorate the dead. The Moratorium took place while Nixon was threatening North Vietnam with nuclear weapons and although Nixon said at the time the protests made no difference to him, he later revealed that the breadth of support led him to back off from the threat.

I was in high school in Los Angeles. I wore my black armband to school and my after-school job at a drugstore. My manager told me to take it off. I resisted as politely as I could. As I recall, he finally backed down. Another friend wore his armband at his high school in a mill town north of Seattle. In both cases, the armbands got people talking and thinking. They gave an additional way to participate for those who couldn’t join the walkouts. They reinforced anti-war solidarity. U.S. soldiers in Vietnam even wore armbands as a way of joining the protests, following a full-page NY Times ad signed by 1,366 active service members.

So why not include a call for armbands as part of the May Day strike? It’s true that some people might use them as a substitute for visibly leaving jobs or schools. But if the goal of the movement is to engage people as broadly as possible, as well as to demonstrate power, then the armbands can offer additional options and bringing the day of protests into more places. They’re an alternative for retired people who don’t have jobs to walk out of. They’re one more antidote to powerlessness, allowing people to participate step by step. It seems important to add them as part of the day’s organizing.

One last thought on color. Black works, because we’re mourning the potential loss of democracy, as well as the deaths in the war Trump started. But the other colors have their strengths as well. One option could be letting people choose—green for the environment, blue for climate change, rainbow for LGBT. I might exclude red just because although it makes sense for the socialist roots of May Day, I think it’s important for anti-Trump resistance to be as broad as possible and national events to speak to more conservative people. Maybe even use small American flags as armbands, to really emphasize that those challenging Trump are the true patriots.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, with 300,000 copies in print between them. See Paulloeb.org.

The same could happen this year in California, where eight Democrats are running for governor, and like Washington, no ranked choice in the primary. All three Democrats running to succeed a highly-respected Washington State treasurer were smart and capable, with strong endorsements and relevant experience. I remember my own struggle to decide between them. But when they and the two Republicans all split nearly evenly, the November election ended up being Republican vs Republican even though the Democrats drew more total votes.

The reverse happened in 2022, in California’s solidly Republican 4th State Senate district. Six Republican candidates split 59 percent of the vote. But because there were only two Democrats running, two Democrats faced off in November.

In the California governor’s race, Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco are even or ahead of leading Democrats in recent polls, despite combining for less than a third of the vote. In a recent Los Angeles Times poll, former Fox News host Hilton is at 17% Riverside County Sheriff Bianco at 16%, Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell and former Congresswoman Katie Porter both at 13%, and progressive philanthropist and former hedge fund head Tom Steyer at 10%. Former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra follows at 5%, and former LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Jose mayor and tech industry favorite Matt Mahan at 4%. Former state controller Betty Yee and former state Superintendent of Public Education Tony Thurmond draw 1%, with the rest undecided.

With candidates this tightly packed, it’s easy to see how the Democrats could divide the vote just enough to make the Republicans the sole candidates on the November ballot, even though both are strong Trump supporters in a state where Trump has just 28% support.

Were these Arnold Schwarzenegger Republicans, the stakes would be different. But both Hilton and Bianco are full MAGA Republicans, who would make it far more difficult for the largest state in the country to resist the administration’s programs and policies. California Democrats can’t take those risks.

The dilemma comes from a flawed top-two primary where everyone runs simultaneously. Ranked choice voting is vastly more democratic, encouraging candidates to run positive campaigns and collaborate with competitors who share their values, while entirely eliminating the division or spoiler effects. Even traditional partisan primaries avoid the possibility of a majority party being excluded from the November ballot. But because California’s current system passed as a constitutional amendment (backed by major Republican donor Charles Munger Jr.), the legislature would need a two thirds majority to place it on the ballot for potential repeal, and can’t do so in time for the 2026 elections.

It makes the situation harder that this is such a highly qualified Democratic group, as was true with the Washington State Treasurer candidates. So it’s up to them and to the voters to solve the situation. State Democratic chair Rusty Hicks has encouraged lower-polling candidates to drop out so they wouldn’t be on the ballot. But only one did before the filing deadline. Hicks is now commissioning a series of six polls to show where voters stand and pressure lower-polling Democrats to leave the race, even as he says there’s a bit more time for them to try to make the case and raise their standings.

If California is to avoid risking a Republican governor, most of the lower-polling candidates will need to do this well before ballots arrive at the beginning of May, for the June 2 primary. And voters, donors, and endorsers will need to heed the standings to make sure this happens. Given Washington State’s lesson, the first step is recognizing the danger.

Paul Loeb’s books on citizen activism, like Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, have over 350,000 copies in print, with a new edition of The Impossible coming out this Sept. See paulloeb.org. This piece ran earlier at Raw Story.

Last Sunday, I cheered on the Seahawks as they defeated the Rams to advance to the Super Bowl. But it felt strange watching football right after ICE officers killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and the Trump administration tried to stop Minnesota police from even investigating. The administration has been attacking democracy in every other way they can, including ripping plaques about Black history from national monuments. But football and conscience can be united—if the Seahawks, Patriots and other NFL players join the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) in stepping up and speaking out.

The Seahawks don’t duck hard football conversations. I’m thinking of Nick Emmanwori talking to Riq Woolen after Woolen’s taunting penalty risked costing the Seahawks the game, and Julian Love then putting an arm around Woolen’s shoulder, saying “I love you, and you’re going to win the game for us.” Emmanwori talked of “a true brotherhood, where we can talk to anybody in any type of way or any type of message.”

So how about talking to the nation when all eyes will be on the Super Bowl, by stating that it’s not OK for unaccountable government agents to shoot people at their whim? How about inviting the Patriots and the NFL Players Association to do the same? Players could link arms, bow their heads, and join together in a moment of silence for Pretti and Good. They could hold a pre-game press conference or speak out leading up to the game. They could wear armbands or ribbons, add messages to their practice jerseys, or otherwise display phrases like Choose Justice or Defend Democracy. They could act with dignity while acknowledging the crisis.

They don’t even have to invent their own statement, just embrace that of the NBPA: “Players can no longer remain silent. Now more than ever, we must defend the right to freedom of speech and stand in solidarity with the people in Minnesota protesting and risking their lives to demand justice…. We refuse to let the flames of division threaten the civil liberties that are meant to protect us all.”

Since our own Brandi Carlile is singing America the Beautiful before the initial kickoff, she can also raise these issues, by mentioning the song’s original context: Its writer, Katherine Lee Bates, opposed America’s imperial bullying, so included lines like God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

Social change is never linear, but statements by athletes have mattered time and again. Jackie Robinson helped pave the ground for the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Tennis great Arthur Ashe pressured South Africa to end apartheid. Our newly elected Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans is inspired by her grandfather, Lee Evans, who protested racial injustice as a gold medalist at the 1968 Olympics. During the Legion of Boom days, Seahawks like Richard Sherman, Doug Baldwin and Michael Bennett courageously called for Americans to confront police killings.

Would speaking out be a risk? Maybe, because the NFL prizes money over justice, and the owners did their best to blackball Colin Kaepernick as a warning. But as Nelson Mandela has said, courage is “not the absence of fear but the triumph over it,” and the more people who speak out, the harder it is to come after them. In Alex Pretti’s words, spoken at memorial for a veteran he cared for as a nurse, we have to “remember that freedom isn’t free. We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it and even sacrifice for it.”

In this period of national crisis, our actions now will shape whether we still have a real democracy in the years to come, or a hollowed-out shell. I hope the Seahawks I cheer for will rise to the occasion.

Paul Loeb’s books on citizen activism, like Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, have over 350,000 copies in print, with a new edition of The Impossible coming out this Sept. This ran in the Seattle Times

After sweeping the Golden Globes and other awards, One Battle After Another has 13 Oscar nominations. Given the film’s clear relevance, if it does end up a winner, those who created it will probably do more than thank their agents, publicists, partners, and pets. They’ll likely talk about the times we’re living in, as every creative artist or public figure should, given the stakes. We hope they’ll present the film as a cautionary tale, not an endorsement of violent resistance.

It’s easy to see why One Battle has been so successful. It’s gripping, funny, and wonderfully acted. It’s a satire of political madness, left and right. But parts of it also feel real in ways that most movie satires or political thrillers don’t. Although it was completed before Donald Trump’s reelection, its images of vicious immigration raids and out-of-control police now echo America’s daily reality.

When the film played in theaters, audiences cheered for those fighting the forces trampling human dignity. But emulating the movie’s violent resisters would be a trap, confirming the justifications President Trump and his enablers give for brutalizing ordinary Americans and shredding the law.

In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio’s lead character is part The Dude (complete with ratty bathrobe), and part follower of the 1960’s-era radical group, the Weathermen. But one of us, Mark, cofounded the Weathermen after helping lead successful student protests at Columbia—and now sees the group’s embrace of violence as a destructive trap.

I remember the moral rage I felt when I realized how many innocent Vietnamese we were killing every day. Along with millions of others, young and old, I joined the anti-war movement under the banner “Bring the troops home now!” That powerful movement was fundamentally nonviolent.

But then, having helped organize increasingly powerful protests, some of us grew impatient, fueled by anger, guilt, machismo, revolutionary delusions, and the need to prove ourselves true to the cause. We convinced ourselves that only “revolutionary violence” would stop the greater violence of the war. Calling ourselves the Weathermen, we began fighting the cops sent to control our protests. We adopted a new slogan, “Bring the war home!” Eventually, some in the group escalated to planting bombs in government buildings. Our heroic actions, we thought, would wake even more people up.

The results, instead, were disastrous. Many people left the movement because of our violence and that of others who emulated us. Because of all the patient and nonviolent organizing, public opinion gradually turned against the war. But it also turned against “the radical students,” who Richard Nixon made a prime scapegoat. In doing so, those of us who embraced “revolutionary” violence played into every aspect of the fear that Nixon and his administration worked to exploit and severely damaged the movement we’d once helped build and expand. This in turn helped Nixon prolong the war, even as the broader movement eventually forced withdrawal.

That history shapes how we both see the present moment. Now, as in the movie, Trump and his regime are violently attacking immigrants and those who support them. They label even nonviolent resistance as “terrorist.” Given the brutality, it’s tempting to respond with violence. But think of the political boost Trump got from the assassination attempts, or how he and his allies weaponized the killing of Charlie Kirk—even though both were perpetrated by lone and disconnected individuals. Global research shows that violent movements lose when facing dictators and would-be dictators, while nonviolent ones have far greater chances of winning. Nonviolence takes discipline and persistence, but we’ve seen exactly that from the courageous citizens who’ve nonviolently resisted masked men taking their neighbors in cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles. And that resistance has helped shift American public sentiment.

Let’s reject revolutionary mythologizing and hope that the creators and stars of One Battle make clear that what authoritarians fear most is disciplined nonviolence, not out of control rage.

Mark Rudd was a founder of the Weathermen, spent seven years underground, and then became an organizer and community college math instructor in Albuquerque, NM. He’s the author of Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen. Paul Rogat Loeb was kicked out of Stanford University for nonviolent anti-war activism, and is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, whose third edition is coming out in September. This piece first appeared in Raw Story.

But the money the Tesla board just handed Musk isn’t guaranteed. He has to meet goals like delivering 20 million Tesla vehicles and dramatically increasing Tesla’s stock price. Ordinary citizens can prevent that, but we need to take our efforts to another level.

The global Tesla Takedown campaign has spearheaded the challenges to Musk with protests at showrooms and charging stations. So signs, chants, music, inflatable animals, and a clear message that driving a Tesla means supporting all that Trump and Musk have done. They brought people out who’d never participated before and, as people have followed their lead globally, helped:

· Drop European Tesla sales nearly 40% in a year.

· Drop US sales 19% from two years ago, despite lowering prices and margins.

· Despite EV sales increasing overall, drive Tesla’s US share to an eight-year low,.

· Led Cybertrucks to sell just 16,000 trucks in the US through September, despite Musk saying they’d sell 250,000 and having his other companies buy them.

· Drop Tesla’s stock price to 71% from its January high, before rebounding in part due to third quarter sales, when people grabbed EV’s of all kinds to buy them before Trump’s tax bill ended the $7,500 tax credits.

The campaign did lose some momentum after DOGE and Musk left the White House and feuded with Trump. Musk became less visible and maybe seemed less toxic. But he just joined fellow tech lords at a lavish White House dinner for Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman, though I’m not sure if they were offered bone saws. And he’s continued promoting ultra-right wing parties globally, like the German Alternative für Deutschland, while his Grokipedia praises White Supremacists and French Grok promotes Holocaust denial. That doesn’t count the estimated 400,000 children and 200,000 adults who’ve already died from DOGE’s US AID cuts. Whether Musk gains or loses power remains hugely consequential.

The Tesla showroom protests remain a powerful way for citizens everywhere to push back against Musk and Trump. But they need to put more energy engaging America’s 2 million existing Tesla drivers as allies, by asking them to display anti-Musk stickers, magnets, or vinyl decals. Without them, Teslas on the street function as de facto brand advertisements. People see the cars. It’s the EV brand people have heard of most and if their owners seem content driving them. It makes their presence uncontroversial, so why not consider them if you’re thinking about an EV.

But when Teslas display anti-Elon statements, this changes the message. “I BOUGHT THIS BEFORE ELON WENT CRAZY,” they say. “HERE FOR THE CLIMATE, NOT ELON.” “ANTI-ELON TESLA CLUB.” “FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS BUY NEW TESLAS.”

The stickers proclaim clearly that their drivers bought the cars to help address climate change, not to promote would-be dictators. When most bought their cars, Musk really was an environmental hero, particularly after Tesla also bought the leading rooftop solar installer Solar City. (I couldn’t afford a Tesla, but I bought a Tesla bond for a retirement account). The bumper stickers, magnets and decals make clear that the drivers won’t buy a Tesla again, and neither should others. They become rolling advertisements against purchasing the car.

Tesla Takedown has sometimes linked to particularly clever stickers. But their prime push for existing Tesla owners is to pressure them to sell their cars to undercut new sales. That’s fine when it happens. But especially with Trump killing EV credits, switching to a new equivalent EV, like replacing any car, is costly. Like $5,000-10,000 costly, despite all the great new EVs on the market Most Tesla owners won’t switch just to make the political point, and that cuts them off as potential participants in the campaign. The bumper sticker approach invites them in.

If the anti-Tesla campaign and its volunteers want to enlist more existing Tesla owners, they could:

· Highlight links to inexpensive stickers, magnets, and decals that anti-Tesla activists could send to or give to friends with Teslas. They can even ask vendors to add Tesla Takedown QR codes.

• Post template letters and emails that people can send friends and neighbors who own Teslas. Or, where legal, put them under Tesla windshields.

• Publicize alternatives. We bought a Chevy Bolt for $20,000 after the $7,500 tax credits that Musk has now helped kill, and it’s been great.

·Press companies and municipalities to cancel Tesla fleet orders, boycott Starlink, support alternatives to Tesla high speed charging stations, and to have their pension funds divest from the company. The latter might also ell pay off financially—even Peter Thiel just sold three quarters of his holdings.

The campaign is pushing on those more institutional demands, but the more existing Tesla owners they can bring in, the more impact they’ll have. If we want to limit Elon’s destructive power, the Tesla owners can play a key role

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in Challenging Times: and The Impossible Will Take a Little While Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times:, with nearly 300,000 in print between them. From Raw Story.



PS—Totally unrelated (except in the very biggest picture) I just saw one of the couple best literary events I’ve ever been to in my entire life, and it’s available on streaming. It was globally renowned author Salman Rushdie, in conversation with Tessa Hulls, who won the Pulitzer for her nonfiction graphic novel Feeding Ghosts, about the legacy of her grandmother and mother fleeing China after Mao took over. Tessa took an utterly unconventional approach, asking questions mixed with drawings she’d mapped out beforehand and projected on a screen and laptop for Rushdie to read. At one point Tessa gave him the fork in the road choice (mapped out graphically) between a regular interview and one that would get wild and might jump the shark. Rushdie picked the wild one, and it was an amazingly funny, thought-provoking meditation on writing, life, politics, place, religion, Maus, Calvin & Hobbs, almost anything you could imagine. They’re streaming it through midnight PST on Dec 10 and you can buy a streaming ticket from event sponsor Seattle Arts and lectures and watch. If you do, go to their link, scroll down to the bottom, select Pay What You Can, and then pay the $7 minimum, which is way cheaper than a Tesla. It was really a unique event.

1. Schumer inspires no one. With Trump destroying lives and institutions daily, Democrats need leaders who can make the consequences of Republican choices clear and present credible alternatives. Schumer’s words are leaden and responses timid. His idea of resistance is sending a “very strong letter” to Trump. One press release had a 35-word title. Effective political leaders don’t always have the full gift of prophetic voice, but Schumer’s so far from this, it conditions people to expect nothing.

2. He doesn’t get modern communication. Schumer has a built-in advantage on social media because of his position representing the party. But combining every major platform, he has 4 million followers, mostly on Twitter/X, vs 32 million for Bernie Sanders, 31 million for AOC, 18 million for Elizabeth Warren, and 8 million for Gavin Newsom. AOC built her following with just six years in Congress and no special position. At this point, South Park has done more to oppose Trump and break apart his coalition, and it isn’t close.

3. He’s an old-looking, old-talking, and old-thinking 74, staring down, with faltering energy. That’s a combination particularly toxic to young voters, a key constituency that the Democrats must continue regaining. The betrayal young voters felt from the constant assurances that Joe Biden was fine continues to damage the party, and Schumer is the most visible symbol of leadership past its prime. Yes young voters embrace Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren continue to be a powerful voice in her 70s. But Schumer is the leading visible symbol of the party, and has none of their vitality, directness, and genuineness.

4. He’s turned his back on the future. He wouldn’t endorse Zohan Mamdani for New York City Mayor after Mamdani won the Democratic nomination by engaging precisely the kinds of voters the Democrats need to win back. That’s a massive indictment of Schumer’s distance from the party’s base and from the energy that could help drive its revival.

5. Schumer is isolated from critical feedback. Democrats who’ve strongly spoken out against Trump have taken every opportunity to meet and engage the public, whatever wing of the party they represent, Schumer has withdrawn, afraid of the blowback, even canceling his book tour.

6. Schumer lacks the strategic and tactical skills to meet the unprecedented challenges of the moment. Nancy Pelosi led the way on every piece of key legislation the Democrats have passed and held every faction of her caucus together (yet still knew when to step down). Whether the Democrats were in the majority or minority, Schumer has never really led. In terms of challenging Trump’s profoundly destructive actions, other Democratic officials and grassroots activists have had to step forward on their own, even though it was Schumer’s responsibility to plan a coordinated response. The budget fight cave in is just the latest setback, one built in part on his failure to act last spring.

7. Schumer is also fundamentally compromised on critical issues, in ways that validate every stereotype of Democrats as barely better than the Republicans:

a. Regaining the support of working-class Americans of all ages is key for the party. But Schumer’s role as longtime Wall Street champion, and massive fundraising from financial interests makes him a terrible symbol to address America’s runaway inequality.

b. Schumer is one of four sitting Democratic senators who voted for the war in Iraq, a mistake that cost the Democrats and the country dearly and gave Trump the opening to run (falsely) as an antiwar candidate.

c. Schumer continued to support every Israeli action in Gaza, while just 8% of Democrats and 19% of all younger voters supported Israel’s horror show. This summer he smiled for a photo with Netanyahu and opposed any limitations on aid, while kids were dying trying to get food. By linking the Democrats with Netanyahu’s war, Schumer drove voters away in 2024 and continues to do so, even with the ceasefire.

It’s tempting to say, “Schumer is terrible, but we’re stuck with him,” something I’ve heard too often, although at least 10 Congressional representatives have said it’s time for him to step down. People worry about fracturing the Democratic coalition in a time when united resistance to Trump is critical. But inertia in a time of crisis, even an existential one, is never an excuse.
Pretty much any Democratic Senator would be an improvement except those who caved on the shutdown, though it would help if they were younger, more dynamic, better at communicating, and yes less compromised. And that they could hold together the Democratic coalition like Pelosi did consistently and Schumer has not.

Since we don’t have a Lincoln to simply replace ineffective generals, it will take organizational and grassroots pressure to get Schumer to step down. Indivisible has just launched a campaign asking people to pressure their democratic Senators to vote him out. Other groups should promote it as well. If we can succeed in replacing Schumer, that very fact can began to change the image of the party toward one willing to grapple with the kind of vision for the future it needs to fight for.

Paul Rogat Loeb is author of Soul of a Citizen, The Impossible Will take a Little While, and three other books on social change, totaling 350,000 copies in print. This also ran in Raw Story.

Will the Oct 18 No Kings protests equal or surpass the 5 million who marched last June? Trump’s poll numbers keep dropping with his escalating attacks on democracy. People are hungrier than ever for ways to act and resist. And the huge Jimmy Kimmel victory should create resistance momentum. But when I look at the major national days of protest since the original No Kings, I see organizing and communications breakdowns that make their impact less than it could have been. And we want them to be as large and broad as possible.

One problem is Trump opponents relying too much on self-organizing. Groups or individuals use tools like the Mobilize maps to call a demonstration, post time and location, and then assume people will show up: If you build it, they will come. But this can replace the hard work of building coalitions, engaging people to participate, and directly coordinating efforts.

It’s also hard to know which are the major events. For Oct 18, I went to the No Kings map that all the groups link to and punched in my Seattle zip code. It came up with two neighborhood events plus two more general ones with similar enough descriptions to be largely indistinguishable. Later I saw a utility pole flier for the one that had mentioned Indivisible peripherally, and discovered that the sponsors also included SEIU, Planned Parenthood, League of Women Voters, and three major state-wide activist organizations. That’s a major coalition. But when if first clicked to RSVP there was no way of knowing that. And even after the host group belatedly added a link to the larger list of sponsors, the only way I found that out was clicking the RSVP page again.

I then entered the zip codes for Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta. They all had just one main center-city event listed, plus suburban events, so that was less confusing. New York City had two in Manhattan and separate Brooklyn and Queens events. So again less confusion. But even if you clicked through, the main events all just said “volunteer organized,” giving no clue to the large coalitions organizing them. If people don’t know whether an event is organized by three random friends or a dozen major groups, it’s hard to know which to attend. Friends throughout the country have mentioned a similar confusion.

I suspect that’s one reason for the drop-off since the original No Kings events. Seattle’s No Kings demonstration had over 50,000 people. But since then, no Seattle demonstration has turned out more than a few thousand, and multiple events have divided attendance—we had three different Labor Day “Workers Over Billionaires” events.

The drop-off has happened with all the subsequent national protest days, important as they’ve been. No Kings Day had over 2,000 events, drawing over 100,000 in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, 50,000 or greater in a half dozen more, and at least 10,000 in 45 cities. Since then, we’ve seen coordinated protests for the anniversary of John Lewis’s death, for Labor Day, and for the Sun Day renewable energy events. The John Lewis anniversary had 1600 events and Labor Day and Sun Day each had hundreds. Their breadth has been powerful, reaching into communities nationwide. But the numbers have been significantly less than the original No Kings. From what I can find, Chicago Labor Day had 10,000 people, maybe a bit more. Austin had 5,000 people as part of a day of events challenging Texas redistricting. Others have had several thousand, although some have been highly creative, like a Portland Oregon Sun Day event that brought together 30 groups for a renewable energy festival and a parade across a downtown bridge that might have also had higher numbers. The original No Kings numbers were larger in part because the events were a counterpoint to Trump’s military parade, which helped with advance media coverage. But while I’m seeing all sorts of notices for the new No Kings, the necessary organizing since last June seems to have been more scattershot, with fewer fully engaged coalitions, and more reliant on the maps. When multiple competing events post without clear information on who is sponsoring them, it’s hard for people to know where to attend, or whether to attend at all. And when they list multiple recognizable sponsors then it makes it more likely for people to go, because it feels like you’re part of a movement where people are working together with power and momentum. It certainly felt that way at the first No Kings Day.

Lots of powerful resistance is going besides those major protests and rallies. More modest rallies in smaller suburbs and towns, and local neighborhoods, have underscored that opposition is everywhere—and for those the self-organized rallies can play a powerful role. Protests at Tesla dealerships, Sinclair TV stations, and challenges to ICE have made a difference even when the numbers are modest. People are getting out the vote for critical fall elections. Indivisible is doing mass nonviolence trainings. The Jimmy Kimmel campaign was an important victory as multiple groups sent out alerts, entertainers stood in solidarity, and ordinary people pressured local stations and advertisers, including attending local vigils.

But national protest days still play an important role for building a sense of common power and solidarity, inspiring local news coverage, and bringing people together for further action. If we want them as successful as possible, organizers need to do more to:

· Make clear which are the main events in their cities, so supporters can focus organizing attention, and participants know which to attend.

· Press Mobilize to add a field for endorsements and co-sponsors, where hosts could enter multiple organizations. When I corresponded with one of their staffers, she said it would take multiple groups requesting it for them to make it happen.

· If Mobilize doesn’t do that, highlight the larger potential rallies on other ways, including in the text on the Mobilize postings, so members know which ones to attend.

· Coordinate on the ground. Affiliates of the national groups need to be working with local labor, environmental, civil rights, social justice, and faith groups. And then asking members to text, call, and email their friends, so invitations come from trusted messengers.

· Post fliers or posters on lamp posts to complement digital outreach with a physical advance presence.

· Collect contacts at every event to plug random new participants into future efforts, for instance by using QR codes. Then work together continually, not just for major events.

Given the Trump regime’s threats to democracy, October 18 should be a key moment for pushing back and building further momentum. Our tools and approaches should serve this purpose as effectively as possible.



Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, with nearly 300,000 in print between them. Sign up for his Substack here.

How can we effectively push back on the Jimmy Kimmel suspension, and its far larger threats to free speech? After Kirk’s shooting, Kimmel posted “can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human.” And sent his family’s “love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.” But that didn’t seem to matter, because Kimmel also dared to point out that the Trump administration was using the assassination to score political points. Trump had already warned in July that Kimmel should be the next to be fired after Stephen Colbert. After Kimmel spoke out following the assassination, Trump FCC head Brendan Carr threatened to revoke the licenses of stations carrying Kimmel’s show. Nexstar and Sinclair then jumped in saying they wouldn’t air Kimmel’s episodes. And ABC/Disney caved. Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs would be proud.

Hearteningly, Americans are responding with appropriate outrage. The cancellation site of Disney + streaming service has reportedly crashed from people ending their subscriptions. Conservative-leaning comedians have spoken out. Common Cause has launched a Turn Off Disney campaign, FreePress.Net has started a call-in campaign, and Indivisible is engaging its members. Even Republican Senator Ted Cruz called it “unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”

The question is how to sustain the pushback, which means building the broadest possible coalition of fellow-citizens who are outraged, whether or not they love Kimmel’s jokes and stands. And how to coordinate as many organizations as possible working together to promote approaches like:

• Boycotting ABC/Disney, including theme parks, cruises, movies, and streaming and TV channels like Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu. Asking international groups to do the same.

• Boycotting local stations of ABC and NextStar and Sinclair. This could be particularly valuable given Sinclair’s longtime role demanding that their stations air their right wing segments and talking points (plus demanding Kimmel donate to Turning Point or Kirk’s family). Public protests at the affiliates give people ways to act within their own communities, pressuring them to carry Kimmel again. They can also spark general local coverage, along the lines of the Tesla Takedown campaigns.

• Targeting and pressuring station advertisers, both national and local. Local groups can publicly announce targets. People can find the advertisers by watching the local broadcasts. There’s also a crowdsourced map where people can take pictures of TV ads and then upload them with links to which advertiser and which station.

• Promoting all these actions on social media and in every other way. Hashtags circulating include #BoycottDisney, #CancelDisney and #CancelDisneyPlus, #CancelHulu,#BoycottSinclair and #IStandWithJimmyKimmel. Here’s a link to related cartoons.

Successful boycotts and corporate campaigns need coalitions that act together and persist. I’m hoping other groups will now coordinate with Freepress.net, Common Cause and Indivisible to do this, and coordinate on common platforms to direct people. For instance, someone launched a boycottdisneyabc.com site with some toolkits, templates, and an event calendar. But it’s not clear which, if any, groups are behind it or are using it, although Indivisible, has linked to it. When I went to a listed event at Seattle’s Sinclair affiliate, there were zero people there. Pushback takes both organization and individual action.

Kimmel isn’t the only voice that’s been targeted for failing to toe the line in the wake of Kirk’s murder. MSNBC fired Matthew Dowd and the Washington Post fired columnist Karen Attiah. But Kimmel’s firing is the one that’s outraged millions of Americans who aren’t political junkies, so the one that offers the best chance to act. Kimmel’s suspension presents both a challenge to democracy, and an opportunity to keep this country one where governments can’t just shut down people who disagree with them.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, with nearly 300,000 in print between them. Follow his Substack here.

If you work for an organization that would like to act on this, email or message me and I’ll do my best to connect you to groups I know are already engaged.

Those of us who want to stand with Ukraine can do more than just play the role of passive spectators. Imagine if Ukrainian Americans organized a nationally coordinated rallies—calling on Trump to support Ukraine, not Putin. These demonstrations should be led by Ukrainian Americans, whose families and futures are most directly affected. But they could also prominently engage other Eastern European communities—Polish, Latvian, Finnish, and others—whose homelands are also threatened by Russian aggression. And who recognize that Ukrainians are fighting both for them and for everyone who believes in democracy.

These communities bring powerful stories, deep networks, and shared stakes in the outcome. Demonstration organizers should invite them to speak, co-create messaging, and amplify the call across media and social platforms. Broader outreach—such as to the networks that mobilized an estimated 5 million people for No Kings Day—could expand the size and impact. But the core message should remain rooted in the voices of those on the front lines of this geopolitical struggle.

The slogans can be simple and direct: Don't Abandon Ukraine. Stand Against Putin. Stand with Ukraine and Democracy. The goal would be to pressure once-supportive Republicans to break their silence and restore at least baseline levels of aid. It would be about making the political cost of inaction too high to ignore.

These rallies would also send a message to Trump himself. He’s refused to authorize new U.S. support, alternately halted and resumed the delivery of previously committed air defense systems and artillery ammunition, and lamented Russia’s expulsion from the G8 for its 2014 Crimea seizure. Despite tough sounding words, he’s given Vladimir Putin far more leverage both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Ukraine may still prevail with courage, persistence, creativity, increased European support. But Trump’s general abandonment makes the Ukrainian situation far harder, even as the war-burdened Russian economy faces 20 percent interest rates, 10% inflation, and key labor shortages.

Could these rallies and marches make a difference? Absolutely Ukrainian and other Eastern European communities have historically leaned Republican, giving them unique leverage. When economic interests have pressured Trump, he’s reversed course on tariffs and on immigration raids targeting farmworkers and hotel workers. Nixon-era anti-Vietnam demonstrations helped halt bombing raids and accelerated troop withdrawals—even as Nixon claimed they had no affect.

There are no guarantees. But coordinated, visible action could help put Ukraine—and Trump’s enabling of Putin—back on the national radar. At the very least, it would give Ukrainians and their allies a way to speak out while the fate of their country hangs in the balance. Hope alone is not a strategy. But when people organize with a common voice they never know what they might achieve.

Paul Loeb is author of Soul of a Citizen, The Impossible Will take a Little While, and three other books on social change, totaling 350,000 copies in print. He’s written for the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Miami Herald, and AARP Bulletin.

Here’s the piece, which I appreciate your sharing.

Beyond Thoughts and Prayers: Climate Catastrophes as Teachable Moments

The deadly Texas floods have receded, leaving lost and shattered lives. Donald Trump tells us not to politicize the moment, with spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt calling the floods “an act of God,” meaning no one is responsible. But because the floods and the climate disasters that will follow them make the costs heart-wrenchingly visible, they give us the chance to talk about root causes and the choices we face. If we don’t have these conversations, these teachable moments will quickly fade.

Democratic pushback has focused mostly on cutbacks to the National Weather Service and FEMA, leaving critical offices understaffed and undermining the ability to plan. But the pushback has focused less on climate change, even as, the day before the floods, the Republicans paid for massive tax breaks for the wealthiest in part by slashing federal support for wind, solar, battery, and electric vehicles,, energy efficiency, and other investments that gave us a chance to join China and Europe in leading the technologies of the future. So we need to talk about the choices presented to us by this tragedy--and all the others that will come.

When Democrats have held power, they’ve raised these issues far too little. No American legislation did more to fight climate change than Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, but the new Republican bill mostly gutted it. And Biden was largely quiet in the face of a succession of epic climate disasters, from the fires that destroyed the Maui town of Lahaina and the Colorado town of Superior, to the North Carolina floods on the eve of the election. He did say Hurricane Ida highlighted the “climate crisis.” But the administration never created a sustained conversation. Kamala Harris also stayed mostly silent, and when climate was raised late in her single Presidential debate, she discussed it for only a minute and then moved on. So although the administration addressed the issue in groundbreaking ways, they did far too little to bring it to greater public salience. That led to it receding further in perceived urgency for a public that knows climate change is real but hasn’t made it a priority.

Imagine if Biden, Harris, or other key Democrats had gone to the sites of these disasters and not just offered compassion and government aid, but an honest discussion of our choices. At the least this would have underscored the stakes --and given voters a sense that the Democrats were fighting to address it.

Consider the campaigns to prevent gun violence. For years, those who wanted common-sense gun rules resisted “politicizing tragedy.” Mass shootings kept happening, but other than those most engaged, not enough people spoke out in their wake, because it felt unseemly. Finally, more started to, including political leaders. They told the stories and drew the connections. As the public began to hear them, support for addressing gun violence increased enough to pass the 2022 bipartisan gun safety bill in the wake of the Uvalde shootings.

Those who recognize that climate change is real and urgent no longer have the bully pulpit of the Presidency. Instead, climate information is scrubbed from government sites, including guidance on how to prepare for climate disasters, and scientists are fired for even daring to address the issue. But local and national Democratic leaders and engaged citizen groups can still speak out when disasters hit. We can mourn the lives lost and communities destroyed, while highlighting both the human costs, and the technologies that offer an alternative, with 96% of new global electricity demand being met last year by renewables, as they become more affordable than fossil fuels, complemented by batteries whose cost has dropped 95% in 15 years. We can demand accountability for all the recent cuts and demand that the investments be restored.

We can also use those moments to highlight fossil fuel companies that have bankrolled climate denial. This could mean nonviolent protests at their corporate offices that highlight the recent catastrophes. Or targeting banks that fuel fossil fuel investment. Or the gas stations of companies like Exxon/Mobil, whose scientists warned of climate change risk nearly 50 years ago, then saw the company bury their warnings and promote denial instead. It also means pressuring media to cover the crisis more robustly, including engaging conservative-leaning podcasters and influencers who shape so much of America’s current understanding, and who have started to question Trump’s immigration raids.

Drawing the links at the times when climate change’s invisible march becomes most manifest isn’t politicizing tragedy. It’s making clear that if we care about the lives that are lost, we need to prevent the tragedies to come.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, with nearly 300,000 in print between them. From The Fulcrum

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