Category Archives: Future Hope

Casualties in the Fight for Democracy

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“Ultimately, what I have learned is that government repression can have a disruptive impact on our work, but we can turn a negative into a positive. The extent to which we can creatively, intelligently and fearlessly demonstrate the truth of what we are about when responding to what they are doing to us is the extent to which we will strengthen and build our movement.”

-from my 2020 book, Burglar for Peace: Lessons Learned in the Catholic Left’s Resistance to the Vietnam War

The murders of Rene Good and Alex Pretti by, in Joe Rogan’s words, “Gestapo”-like agents of ICE and Customs Border Protection is having huge political impacts. It’s so bad politically for the Trumpfascists that even Steven Miller has just put out a statement trying to put distance between him and the Pretti killing.

The Democratic Party in Congress is overwhelmingly unified as of right now in its efforts to force some changes in the way these agencies operate. That would not be happening to the degree and with the breadth that it is if not for these two murders.

But it’s not just the murders that are generating this response. It is the massive actions in the streets of Minneapolis/St. Paul, as well as elsewhere in solidarity. It is the organized, nonviolent, community-based efforts to make it hard for ICE/CBP to carry out their reign of terror without exposure and visible opposition via videos, whistles, horns and standing up for justice in the streets where they are trying to operate.

From all that I have seen, it is mainly white people who are in the streets. This makes sense given ICE/CBP’s use of racial profiling, stopping mainly Black and Brown people, in their search for undocumented immigrants. It is reasonable that many would want to limit their exposure to Trump’s agents of repression.

“Standing up for racial justice”—this is the name of an important national organization which, for years, has been working with white people to strengthen their anti-racist consciousness and willingness to take action against racism. This group and other predominantly white groups on local, state and national levels have been doing the same thing for a long time. The massive, multi-racial movement in response to the murder of George Floyd six years ago is another manifestation of what has been developing for many years throughout the country among progressive and decent white people at the grassroots.

This is a very good, very hopeful development.

Can we expect more people taking nonviolent solidarity actions in the streets to be physically attacked, arrested or killed? Yes. It is unrealistic to think otherwise given the depth of racism, patriarchal and militaristic ideas and practices among Trump supporters. But well-organized and disciplined activism and organizing can reduce those casualties.

A week after Trump was elected I wrote a column, Dealing With Government Repression, offering my ideas about how we could best deal with what we knew would be coming. I wrote this toward the beginning of it:

“There are a number of things which are essential to successful resistance to government repression. When I say ‘successful’ I don’t mean that there won’t be casualties on our side, people behind bars, some for months or years, or people physically attacked and injured or worse, or job losses or greater economic hardship. We need to accept that under a Trump/MAGA regime this is all likely.”

I went on to conclude with these words:

“It’s a drag that we’re on the defensive on a national level and will be for at least a couple years to come, but that’s where we are. There are so many issues that we won’t be able to move forward on nationally, the deepening climate emergency being a huge one. But in this time of testing we owe it to the best within us and to those coming after us to stand as strong and gentle and loving as we can as we go about our essential work and activism. Generations past have pointed the way for us, and generations to come are counting on us.”

So far, throughout the country, in inspiring and hopeful ways, we are rising up to our historic tasks. Our ancestors would be proud.

  Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

Hungering for Solar, and More

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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963, Letter from a Birmingham Jail

From January 5-7 I must have seen these words of Dr. King flash many hundreds of times. That happened because over those three days, from 7 am to 5 pm, I engaged in a 72-hour, water-only hunger strike across Broad Street from the Bloomfield, NJ high school. In front of the school was an electronic bulletin board that kept flashing four different messages, over and over. One was this quote with a picture of Dr. King

On the side of Broad St. where I was, behind me as I faced out, was the Board of Education offices for the townwide school district. That was the focus of my hunger strike. I took this action as the latest tactic of a 10-year effort by the Bloomfield Citizens Solar Campaign to get the schools and the town government to put solar panels on their roofs and parking lots.

I took this action because there is a July 4th deadline nationally for new renewable energy projects to have begun work to be eligible for 30% tax credits. There is immediacy for our town and for others around the country if we are to use this tax credit to advance the urgently-needed shift from fossil fuels to renewables and environmental justice.

Here is fuller description of this action as published in the local Patch publication:


Why did I consume only water and a little salt over a 72-hour period January 5-7? Why did I camp out on the sidewalk in front of the Board of Education building and across from the high school for 10 hours each of those days? What did it feel like to do it, and why did I undertake this particular form of action to press the Bloomfield Board of Education to finally take the necessary steps to have solar panels installed on school roofs and parking lots?

In a lot of ways this was a desperate act. The Bloomfield Citizens Solar Committee has been working to get the schools and the town to take solar seriously for 10 years, and so far there is nothing to show for it. After hiring Talva Energy three years ago to assess possibilities for solar, and after they told the town that solar canopies on the parking lot behind the Municipal Building and the parking lot across from the train station were both financially viable, as well as money savers for the town’s taxpayers, the township government has done nothing about this for close to a year.

But the focus of this hunger strike was the Board of Education. When a new BOE leadership with Kasey Dudley as President came in two years ago, things began to change. It took a  while, but by early November of 2025, two months ago, two proposals had been submitted by Talva Energy and Gabel Associates to organize a Request for Proposals process to find a reputable and responsible solar company to install solar on five roofs that Gabel Associates this past June said were viable for it.

In the meantime, there are federal tax credits for solar projects like this one that expire on July 4th of this year. In order to be eligible for those 30% tax credits, work has to have been begun by companies by then. So there is a time urgency here.

That is the major reason why I decided to not eat for 72 hours. The Board of Education is not doing the right thing. They are dragging their feet. It was either do something like this or just give up, and after 10 years that’s not going to happen for me and the other members of our group.

I’ve done hunger strikes before, some for weeks, but I’ve never done one at the age of 76 on a sidewalk three days in a row, sun-up to sundown, in the middle of the winter, temperatures from 26 degrees when it began to the mid-40’s when it ended.

When you don’t eat, the hardest time is at the very beginning. Your body is used to eating and when it’s not being fed, the stomach shrinks. If there are a lot of toxins and chemicals in your diet, you’ll get a headache and feel pretty bad as the body feeds on them first. After those are gone, then the body feeds on fat, and after that is gone, it feeds on muscle. I ended up losing about nine pounds over these three days.

Spiritually, when you are not eating for a cause you believe in, it can be positive, even if you are physically weaker. In this case being on the corner of Belleville and Broad for about 10 hours each day turned out to be both challenging and rewarding. Over the three days lots of people walking and in vehicles going by showed me their support by what they said to me or by horn honks or waves out the window. It was very noticeable to me how my spirits would be uplifted when these things happened, as they did many times.

But without question the best thing about this action was the interaction that I and others had with high school students. Each morning beginning at 7 am and each afternoon we passed out half-page leaflets on yellow paper (the sun!) to students, as well as teachers, and we estimate about 1,000 were taken by them. Another 300 were distributed to passersby.

Wednesday afternoon, as we were leafletting for the last time, three different people told us that the hunger strike and the issue of solar panels on the schools was being talked about. This was such a wonderful thing to hear.

We have been saying to the school board and town for all these years that one of the reasons to install solar is to give young people some hope that adults are finally taking action to address the climate crisis, the environmental destruction because of the burning of fossil fuels, that is so serious. For us older people, mainly elders, to be showing this in action via the hunger strike and the leafletting, knowing that for some of them this gives some hope for a decent future, gave me hope.

Mohandus Gandhi, Indian independence leader, engaged in many hunger strikes, and one of the things he said about them, which he called fasting, is that “fasting is the sincerest form of prayer.” I appreciate and agree with that. I continue to pray that, finally, the Bloomfield Board of Education, and the town government, will do the right thing.

 Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

The Significance of Last Weekend’s 1200 Local Actions

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The new year began on a very foreboding note. First was the Trump regime’s invasion of Venezuela to kidnap its President with the explicit purpose being to get control of its oil. Then, a few days later, came the killing of 37-year-old, mother of three Renee Nicole Good by ICE in Minneapolis, followed by Trump regime lies about it being her fault.

It was hard not to wonder if this year is going to be even worse than last year. But then, three days after Renee Good’s murder, seemingly out of nowhere, came the 1200 or so coordinated “ICE Must Go” actions this weekend in all 50 states with possibly a million or more people taking part.

That is a very big thing.

There were bigger and more extensive actions last year, the biggest being the October 18 No Kings actions participated in by about 7 million people in about 2600 localities. But that one was built over a period of several months. Last weekend’s actions had a lead time of literally three days.

Why is this so important?

Our resistance movement’s successes last year, combined with Trump regime incompetence and transparent connection to the billionaire corporatist class, led to a major decline in Trump’s popularity. A Gallup poll a month or so ago had him underwater politically by a 36% favorable to 60% unfavorable margin. Others didn’t, and don’t, have him doing that badly but all of them have him down by at least 10%. And on the electoral front, in a clear rejection of MAGA Republicanism, the Democrats won big all throughout the country in November 3 state and local elections.

In addition, there are growing cracks in the Republican/MAGA united front. Margaret Taylor Greene’s resignation from Congress and sharp critiques of Trump is one of the most significant, but there are more. 17 House Republicans just voted with Democrats to extend Obamacare subsidies for three years. Five Republican Senators voted with Democrats on the war powers issue. Just about every Republican in Congress voted for a full release of the Epstein files. The Trumpists are definitely in trouble.

But the Venezuela and ICE and other actions over the last two weeks make it clear that a key part of the backwards-looking regime’s plan for this year is to double down, to assert their power even more strongly, if they can. We have to be prepared for much more street action and much more pressure on House and Senate members to be resolute in their resistance as this happens.

That is why the nationwide mobilization and turning out of so many people last weekend, on three days notice, is so important. It shows that we are in “fighting shape,”  ready for action as needed. The loosely-connected resistance network of national, state and local groups that developed last year is likely going to have to do the same many more times, and now we know we can do it as necessary.

Think of it: a year from now Trump impeachment proceedings could be underway in the House of Representatives if our resistance movement keeps it up and keeps growing. Let’s make it happen!

 Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

July 4th and November 3rd

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It’s good to enter the new year with MAGA divided, Trump down in the polls and forced to pull the National Guard out of Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago, a huge win for the resistance in those cities, the Epstein issue still very much out there, and more. This is a very different New Year’s Day than the one in 2025 when many of us felt dread, anxiety and fear about what the new year was going to bring.

Without question many people have been hurt, many killed, because of Trump/MAGA domination of government. They have every intention of using that power to keep trying to turn our imperfect democracy into a Trump-run autocracy. The need for organized resistance on issue after issue, locally, statewide and nationally, is as great as it was a year ago. But this New Year’s Day we know that we can win victories against these macho bullies because we’ve already done so and learned along the way. And Trump and MAGA are struggling.

November 3rd is a decisive date this year. It’s when a new House of Representatives will be elected and 1/3 of US Senate seats will be contested. It is essential that Republican control of the House be ended, and it would be a very big deal if the same thing happened in the Senate. These victories will not end control of the White House by the Trumpists or control of the Supreme Court by a majority of conservatives, at least three of them essentially MAGA people, but it will be a major roadblock for them politically and legislatively.

As far as the Democratic Party, this year offers a big opportunity for the progressive wing to win more seats in the House and maybe the Senate, as well as on state and local levels. Perhaps at those lower levels some progressives running as independents will win, not just run to raise issues and get a small vote but actually win political office. That would be a good thing.

But from all that I can see the major action electorally will be within the Democratic Party. Building the strength of the progressive wing within it through support to progressives running in Democratic primaries is absolutely what’s needed in 2026. We need to defeat the efforts to impose 21st century fascism via Republican dominance in Washington, DC and that requires the Democratic Party to win at least the House of Representatives.

Another big day for us in the USA this year will be July 4th. Like November 3rd, it’s not just the date but the build-up to it. As happened in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus and his men being found in the Caribbean, this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence will be preceded by some nauseating rhetoric from the political Right and also too many liberals, acting as if widespread slavery for close to another century after 1776 and war against Indigenous nations into the late 1800’s, and continuing racism, was not that big a deal.

Progressives can’t do that. We have to recognize that the American revolution against British colonialism and the adoption of a Constitution which included the Bill of Rights was historic and important but it had this other side. We need to be forthright in saying that the USA we are defending and working for, one that is the only hope for forward progress and defeat of the billionaire class that is the enemy of humankind and all life forms on earth, is a multi-racial democracy with full rights for workers, women, people of color, lgbtq+ people and all people.

This is a critical ideological battle that we must win. Because of the historical significance of July 4th, 2026, we can make progress in that battle this year.

Finally, there is a smaller, if important, reason why July 4th is important for those of us who get it on the importance of action on the climate crisis and are working for as rapid a shift as possible off of coal, oil, gas and new nukes and onto a comprehensive wind, solar, battery storage and energy efficiency path. July 4th is the last day for renewable energy projects to have begun construction to be eligible for a 30% tax credit from the federal government.

The Trumpists tried in their “one big beautiful bill” last summer to completely eliminate all federal support for renewables, but there were enough Republican Senators who refused to vote for the bill unless that was changed to lead to a compromise leaving that support in place for one more year.

I’m very aware of this reality because in my hometown of Bloomfield, NJ, I and others have been working for years to get our school board and town government to put solar panels on their buildings and over parking lots. Right now we have a chance of getting the school board to move forward on this, to take the steps necessary to enable a solar company to begin work by July 4th. I’m actually going on a 72-hour, water-only hunger strike outside of the school board administrative building which is across the street from the high school, vigiling there for about 10 hours each day, next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to press them to do this. I explain more about my reasons for doing so in an interview conducted last week.

I hope other localities are working or will begin to work to take advantage of this concrete way to advance the shift from fossil fuels to renewables.

 Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

Two Flags Flying

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For the last month or so there have been two small flags flying prominently outside the front door my and my wife’s house. One is an American flag, the other the Palestinian flag.

In the 46 years that Jane and I have been married we’ve never done anything like this. We’ve had issue-oriented signs in our front yard, and we’ve had Bernie, renewable energy, peace and other bumper stickers on the back of our car, but we’ve never flown flags where we’ve lived.

We’re flying the Palestinian flag because for over two years, since the terrible October 7th Hamas attack on Israel and, afterwards, the hugely more terrible, genocidal attack on all of Gaza by the Netanyahu government, we have demonstrated almost every week in a nearby town calling for a ceasefire, an end to US military support of Israel and justice for the Palestinian people.

For those who know us, it isn’t a surprise that we’re doing this.

But flying the American flag? For a very long time we’ve not done so largely because, going back to the Vietnam War days, we have seen that it has been right-wingers and conservatives who primarily use that flag to advance often-racist and imperialist agendas. And it’s definitely the case that, historically, when the US has engaged in military campaigns against Indigenous nations or in overseas, imperialist military campaigns going back to 1898, the US flag has been there.

The US flag now flying outside our door was likely given to us by someone at the October 18 No Kings action which we helped to organize in our town, after we came back from our trip this summer to Montana to visit our grandson, son and daughter-in-law. We left home in mid-July and came back eight weeks later, in September.

We got to Montana by driving our all-electric, 2018 Chevrolet Bolt out and back, close to a 5,000 mile round trip. Here is how I described our reasons for doing so and what we learned from it in a past Future Hope column:

“One of the reasons we decided to travel this way was to experience very directly areas of the country we had never been to or not been to for a long time. We hoped all would go well mechanically, as well as our interactions with people along the way as we stopped to charge the car, camp or stay overnight in motels, eat in restaurants, get food and drink during rest stops and then, in southwest Montana, interact with others for the five weeks we were there.

“I returned with a lot more hope about this country than I had before this trip. In the 12 states we went through or spent time in, most of them “red” or “purple,” we saw and heard very few signs of much support for Trump and his authoritarian government. I would estimate that, in all those eight weeks and thousands of miles, we saw no more than a dozen Trump signs and even fewer Trump hats or t-shirts being worn. People overwhelmingly were polite to us, as we were to them. There was virtually no evidence from these very many brief encounters that the USA at the grassroots has become a nasty, brutish, mean place.

“I am sure that if we had gotten into ideological/political discussions with the people we interacted with, most of them of European descent, there would have been some disagreements and tensions, but my sense is that, even when that were true, there would have been some points of agreement to be found.”

It was a hopeful trip. And the election results over the past month in many parts of the country, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, California and elsewhere, all of which showed a definite and significant shift away from the Trumpists, confirmed what we experienced.

Indiana was one of the states we went through, one of the most conservative of the northern US states. 80% of the members of the Indiana state senate are Republicans. But just a few days ago half of those Republicans, 20 out of 50 Senators in total, voted down a Trump-pushed plan to gerrymander US Congressional districts so that all nine of them would end up having Republican US House members after the November elections. Politically, this was huge, the latest sign that more and more Trump supporters are alienated by this would-be dictator and are willing to stand up to him publicly.

There are lots of reasons to believe that, if we all keep working and organizing day after day, increasingly united, 2026 will be a huge year, a clear and powerful repudiation of the Trumpists and their billionaire enablers.

 Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

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Conditions are Ripe for a Resistance Counter- Offensive

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It’s been over ten long months that the forces of democracy have been on the defensive, doing our best to withstand the many and various assaults on us on issue after issue, but the tide is turning:

-Trump’s polling numbers keep going down, at 36% positive and 60% negative in the latest Gallup Poll;

-Four weeks after Democratic Party electoral victories all over the country on November 4, it’s possible as I write that, today, a Democrat running for Congress in a special election in Tennessee could win despite, in the 2024 election, the Republican candidate winning by a 22% margin of victory;

-Long-time MAGA leader Margaret Taylor Green is resigning from Congress and publicly criticizing Trump on health care, the Epstein issue and more, with the likelihood that other Republican House members will follow her lead;

-The Epstein sex trafficking crisis is not going away!

-Trump’s “Justice” Department’s indictments against James Comey and Letitia James have been thrown out by a US District Court judge;

-Congressional Republicans are on the defensive over what to do about the health care crisis, overall, with the specific problem of huge increases in premiums, doubling, tripling or more, for millions of people by the end of the year; this was one of the main reasons for Green’s resignation;

-And now comes the Caribbean motorboat revelations about Pete Hegseth giving the illegal order to “kill everybody” on those boats even if a boat has been destroyed and there are survivors. True to form, exposed as they have been, rats like Hegseth are deserting a sinking ship by trying to shift the blame to a career military admiral.

Remember that it was Joe McCarthy in the 1950’s attacking the US military that was the beginning of the end for his McCarthyite repressive campaign.

There are probably some on the political Left who would counsel that we allow all of this to keep unfolding and not “rock the sinking boat,” just let it take its course, but I don’t agree at all.

We should do just the opposite, consciously up our game, keep broadening out our resistance movement and make plans for 2026 to be the year that Trump and the MAGA’s are decisively defeated and the House and the Senate come under Democratic and progressive independent (Bernie, others) control. Like it or not, that has to be our north star for the next 11 months, as we keep up the resistance to ICE and Border Control raids and take action on all of the many other issues our peoples are dealing with.

That issue-oriented activity will strengthen the electoral campaigns of genuine progressives in the Democratic primaries running against corporatists or anti-Left centrists, as well as serious, tactically smart, progressive independent campaigns

It will be essential that we do what we did so effectively over this past year as far as taking it to the streets. We need national days of coordinated local actions, which began in 2025 on February 5 with the 50501 actions in just about every state capitol. Those actions kept building throughout the year up to the seven million of us coming out in 2,600 local actions in every state on the second No Kings day October 18.

January 19, 2026, one year after Trump took office and the federal Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, would be a very good day to initiate this continuing campaign of nationally coordinated street action.

2026 will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which offers us lots of possibilities.

We do need to be up front about the mixed reality of that historic revolution against British colonialism, the reality of European-American enslavement of Africans and violent theft of land lived on by indigenous nations for thousands of years. But it is a fact that the American Revolution helped to inspire anti-colonial and anti-monarchy revolutions in France, Haiti, South America and elsewhere. Indeed, when the Vietnamese revolutionaries in 1946 put forward their call for independence from French colonialism, they quoted the US Declaration of Independence.

We should have no illusions that the MAGA’s as a whole are going to see the light and stop with their repressive and regressive efforts, though there’s no question that some of them already are moving away from Trump and there are major internal rifts. This is another important fact about the crisis the Republicans and fascists are in.

As bad as 2025 has been, 2026 can be very different, if we all stay strong and keep consciously building the resistance movement in all its many different aspects. 2026 can  end up being a happy, a joyous, successful new year of popular, nonviolent uprising for justice, democracy, peace and defense of our threatened ecosystems.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

Energy Affordability+, Not Energy Dominance

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Two of the most significant dates in my life as a progressive activist and organizer are April 4, 1968 and August of 2003. The 1968 date is the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. His killing pushed me to finally do something about racial injustice and the Vietnam War rather than just reading and thinking about them.

August of 2003 was when there was a brutal heat wave in western Europe which led to 70,000 deaths, primarily of elders. This was my wakeup call as far as the climate crisis, leading to several months of book-reading to understand how bad things were, which led to a decision later that year to begin working on this issue. Ever since it has been at the top of my list as far as where I put my energies and time as an organizer: locally, statewide, regionally and nationally.

My primary focus on all those levels, since 2013, has been working and taking action to obstruct the buildout of fracked gas pipelines, gas compressor stations and Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) export terminals. That work quickly led me to learn about FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the most important federal agency that most US Americans have never heard of.

FERC is primarily the regulator of the US electrical grid. In 1977 when it was created by Congress, replacing the Federal Power Commission, it was also given the responsibility of regulating the methane gas industry, which in the 21st century has become primarily a fracked gas industry.

How have they “regulated” it? By giving the gas industry over 99% of the permits that they apply for to build new pipelines, compressor stations to push the gas along and import (in the past) and export (now) LNG terminals along US coastlines, primarily in Texas and Louisiana.

In 2020 a study done by the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, chaired by Representative Jamie Raskin, looked at FERC’s record between 2000 and 2020 and found that of the 1,027 applications to them by industry for permits, only six were denied. This is why the movement which has been fighting FERC and calling for it to be reformed, or replaced by a Federal Renewable Energy Commission, describes it as a rubber stamp agency.

For over 11 years a national organization, Beyond Extreme Energy, has been refusing to quit in its efforts to change this outrageous situation. For a while, from 2021 to 2023, under the leadership of then-FERC chairperson Richard Glick (no relation), actions were taken to make this happen. But when dirty-coal owner and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairperson Joe Manchin ratcheted up his support for coal, oil and gas in March of 2022 and, in collaboration with Republicans and a few other Democratic Senators, attacked Glick very openly, these efforts were seriously undercut.

Now comes Trump. On his first day as President, January 20th, he issued two Executive Orders to “streamline the permitting process for [fossil fuel] infrastructure projects” and declare a “national energy emergency.” The purpose: to set back the shift to solar and wind and accelerate new coal, oil and methane gas projects. FERC is central to this destructive plan.

Last month, on October 7th, FERC issued a “final rule” to severely reduce the ability of affected landowners, communities and environmental organizations to legally challenge methane gas infrastructure projects FERC approves. The reason given for doing so was to “encourage the orderly development of plentiful supplies of natural gas. . . particularly the development of data centers to advance artificial intelligence.”

But there’s more. Three weeks ago former Republican Senator Rick Santorum called for the DC Circuit Federal Court of Appeals to be removed as the place where court challenges to FERC permits are heard and decided. The headline blared, “DC Circuit Court is blocking America’s energy dominance.”

Why this extreme call to action?

Over the last five years this court has made a number of decisions upholding the need for FERC to take seriously the rights of landowners fighting eminent domain for corporate gain, environmental justice (ej) and other communities opposing proposed new polluting gas pipelines and infrastructure projects, and those groups defending the earth’s ecosystems challenged by global heating.

Over the last 11 years climate justice activists have demonstrated at a big majority of the monthly meetings of the five FERC commissioners who are the decision-makers. 200 or more people have been physically removed from the meetings for speaking out—there is no public comment period—and permanently banned from ever going to this meeting again. For the last year and a half, led by Beyond Extreme Energy, every single meeting has been met with action outside and some kind of inside action.

The latest was this past week when a small group of us dressed up in black judges robes to underline the importance of continuing court oversight of this now-Trump-dominated agency. We will do so again at their next meeting on December 18 and keep taking action to shine as bright a spotlight as we can on this increasingly more well known but still dangerous, extremely dangerous, threat to ej communities and the world’s ecosystems. It is one important front of the battle to prevent climate catastrophe and shift rapidly off fossil fuels to the wind, solar, battery storage and energy conservation that our children and grandchildren desperately need.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

Honor War and Anti-War Veterans

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Last year I attended a Veterans Day event in my town organized by the local town government. At the event I was asked by a local news reporter if I was a veteran. I responded, “I’m an anti-war veteran.”

This got me thinking: what about an anti-war veterans day, or an inclusion of them in Veterans Day events?

Who are some of the people who would be remembered? There are lots of us, but some of the most well-known would include:

-Jane Adams
-Ella Baker
-Rachel Corrie
-Dorothy Day
-Dave Dellinger
-Mohandus Gandhi
-Helen Keller
-Coretta Scott King
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
-Jeannette Rankin
-Ron Kovics
-Brian Willson
-Howard Zinn

Note that Kovics, Wilson and Zinn were both kinds of veterans. Kovics fought and lost his legs in the Vietnam War, Willson lost his as part of a peace action in the US, and Zinn fought in World War II.

There are several anti-war veterans organizations in the United States. The three which are most active are About Face: Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Today they and other groups have organized “No War on Our Cities” actions around the country.

There is power in a peace movement which links non-veterans and veterans. I first experienced this in the early 70’s after spending 11 months in prison for nonviolent acts of draft resistance as part of the Catholic Left. In early 1972, in connection with a trial in Harrisburg, Pa. of myself and other Catholic Left activists, the Harrisburg 8, I distinctly remember connecting with Vietnam vets in their combat fatigues taking part in demonstrations held in support of those of us on trial. They were small in number, but their open and visible participation had a very positive effect on me and many others.

It’s important for progressive organizers and activists to be open to connecting up and working with people who, on the surface, seem to be on the other side. Some of us don’t get this. For them, anyone in the military or the police is an enemy. But history, including recent history, shows that this isn’t true, that those carrying weapons on behalf of those in power, especially when it is unjust and abusive power, can be affected when spoken to or even nonviolently confronted about why what they are doing is wrong.

This is a critical point for us right now as we build upon the October 18th No Kings victory of 7 million people in the streets in every state, followed by the “tsunami” election defeats November 4th all over the country of the MAGA Trumpists.

As much as these huge victories have changed the country, its political dynamics and the resistance movement’s morale for the better, they almost certainly will lead to more illegal and repressive actions by a Trump regime hemorrhaging support. In the battle for the future of the USA, it will be important that those once Trump supporters, including police and military people, be encouraged to speak out and change sides and be supported by us when they do.

I am certain that the Vietnam War would not have ended when and the way it did if not for soldiers’ resistance within the US military to the war while in Vietnam, as well as the open resistance in the streets by veterans returning home. I think it’s similar today. As the Trumpists ratchet up their efforts to create 21st century fascism in the USA, defections by individuals who are being ordered to carry out those repressive activities will be an important component of our ultimate victory.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.


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Elections Reflections

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Yesterday’s election results are tremendously positive and hopeful for democratic socialists, progressives, liberals and just plain democracy lovers. The Trump regime was soundly defeated in important elections all across the country. The people made history!

I woke up this morning wanting to reflect on the issue of elections, not so much from the standpoint of winners and losers but as a cultural/political phenomenon, how important they are on both personal and societal levels.

As I’ve grown older I have been doing a lot of grassroots, person-to-person electoral work, door-knocking and talking to people for months leading up to and on election day. This year I did it exclusively in my town of Bloomfield, NJ, a small town of about 50,000 people, historically a white working-class suburb of Newark but now a very multi-racial, multi-cultural, mainly commuter town.

I saw many thousands of these sister/brother/sibling townspeople over the last five days at early voting and election day voting sites. I was outside on the street for about 30 hours observing and interacting with this beautiful mix of people of different colors, languages and ages, all taking part in the USA voting process, standing in line together, talking with one another, sometimes exchanging hugs and handshakes with those they knew. Some were MAGA supporters and others were very much on the opposite end of the political spectrum, but I didn’t see or hear of any major conflicts or fights as we all stood in line to vote or interacted on our way to and from the polls.

Then there were the parents bringing children, wonderful, energetic young children learning very experientally about democracy and election day, knowledge that will develop and deepen as long as this way, this special way of choosing government leaders, continues to be the USA norm.

There were the old and disabled making their way, some very slowly and carefully, to get into the voting site. I am always inspired as I see these folk putting themselves out because they clearly believe it is important for them to do so, important to take part in this ritual of democracy. Several people yesterday couldn’t walk, were in wheelchairs that had to be pushed by others. They were determined to get into that polling site and do their part on this one day to keep democracy alive and well.

As we know, the Trumpists want to destroy democracy, make the process of voting harder and harder especially for Black, Latino/a and Indigenous people, students and low-income people—the working-class majority. They want to take us back to the days before Black people had the right to vote in the South, before the Voting Rights Act. They want Brown and Black people to feel so afraid and intimidated by ICE and the Border Patrol and other agents of repression that they stay in their homes on election day.

I think they’re going to fail at that, overall. There are literally millions of us prepared to take risks to defend these sisters and brothers and to defend democracy. Over time, many of us understand that this democracy is in need of serious reform to become much more democratic through public financing of elections, ranked-choice voting, proportional representation and more.

In the meantime, as we work with the democracy we have, let’s draw strength from what happened yesterday, not just on the big, national macro level—Trump Must Go!—but on the very local levels where the US American people once again showed that we, the people, not the billionaires, not the fascists, not the would-be kings, ultimately are the ultimate deciders.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

The Supreme Court Is Not Above the Law Either

Future Hope, , , ,

“I think we can do a lot, if a critical mass of organizations steps forward and develops a plan to go public and visible calling out the undemocratic and dangerous reality of what the Supreme Court majority is doing, particularly these shadowy, opaque, undemocratic ‘emergency’ decisions. Just like we have had and will be having, on October 18, successful mass actions of millions in the streets around the country calling for No Kings, worker justice, women’s rights, climate justice, racial justice and more, it is time for such a nationally coordinated action sometime this fall focused on this issue.”

This is what I wrote in a column about a month ago about the Supreme Court. Now that the mass mobilization for October 18 is over, as will be the fall elections as of November 5, I think, at that time, there’s a need for a much closer look at what an activist strategy could be to call out the conservative/MAGA majority on the Supreme Court.

I am fully aware that it is very rare for progressives to do something like this. There is understandable concern that doing so could be seen as “inappropriate,” or “too risky,” or “bad strategy.” After all, in the US system of government, judges have a lot of power. To some extent they are seen as, and often are, above the fray of politics, something seen as often corrupt and dishonest by a lot of people, on the right, left and center.

Of course, “above the fray of politics” sure doesn’t apply to this usually-Trump-supporting Supreme Court.

Just in the last few months I have considered with others active in the climate movement whether we should publicly demonstrate calling for a key judicial body, not the Supreme Court, to do the right thing when it comes to a long-term campaign we are leading. We collectively decided it wasn’t the right thing to do.

But it’s different with this Supreme Court. First, there’s the fact that it was very much “politics” that is responsible for the 6-3 conservative majority. Two of the conservatives, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Conan Barrett, obtained their seats because of Republican Party political hypocrisy and raw power politics. Following Antonin Scalia’s death on February 13, 2016 and President Obama’s subsequent nomination of Merrick Garland to replace him, Senate Republicans refused to hold a hearing and vote on that nomination, saying it was too close to the upcoming Presidential election eight months later! This led to the seat being vacant for 14 months until Trump, in 2017, nominated Neil Gorsuch.

Conan Barrett was nominated only 40 days, not eight months, before the 2020 election to replace the deceased Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Republicans didn’t care then about it being “too close” to a Presidential election, and she was confirmed.

So what would be the objective of some kind of activist campaign, or even just a national day of action, focused on the Supreme Court?

One would be, for sure, to remind the country of how Gorsuch and Conan Barrett were nominated, the hypocrisy involved which has led to a court now “out of balance” when it comes to representing the differing views of US law as well as the reality of US public opinion.

Another would be to draw attention to proposals that have been made to address the fundamental unfairness of the present Supreme Court reality. The most broadly-supported proposal, the TRUST Act (Transparency and Responsibility in Upholding Standards in the Judiciary) was put forward this spring by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Hank Johnson. It is co-sponsored by 26 Senators and 10 House members.

When might a national day, or national week, of action happen? It’d be good if it happened soon, but there are plenty of current fights that need a lot of support, and then there are the holidays, so sometime in the new year seems more realistic.

How about this? March 8 and March 15 are the birthdays of two deceased but still important Supreme Court justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. on the 8th, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on March 15. March 8 is also International Women’s Day.

Ginsburg was the second woman in US history to serve on the Supreme Court, so there’s a definite connection there.

Here’s what the Wikipedia entry for Holmes summarizes as his main contributions legally: “Holmes is one of the most widely cited and influential Supreme Court justices in American history, noted for his long tenure on the Court and for his pithy opinions – particularly those on civil liberties and American constitutional democracy – and deference to the decisions of elected legislatures.” Wow, very timely for sure!

Just like Trump, the Supreme Court is not above the law!

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.