Tag Archives: history

270+ “No to Trump” Actions on January 18

Future Hope, , , ,

With 10 days left to mobilize, it is clear that the People’s March, initiated by the Women’s March, is going to be a big deal throughout the country. At the People’s March website can be found 270 localities, as of right now, that are signed up to demonstrate on that day.

The biggest march will be in Washington, DC, and it is important that this one be big because that is where Trump will be inaugurated two days later. But the broad geographic sweep of this mobilization, combined with the many tens of thousands already signed up who will become hundreds of thousands, or more, on the 18th is also very important.

A strong national progressive resistance movement needs strong local organized networks, interconnected with one another and engaging periodically, as on January 18th, in coordinated actions which show both ourselves, progressives, and the country as a whole that WE HAVE NOT BEEN DEFEATED AND WE WILL RESIST.

What are the focuses of these actions? Here’s what can be found on the People’s March website:

“We all march for different reasons, but we march for the same cause, to defend our rights and our future.

“If you believe that decisions about your body should remain yours; that books belong in libraries, not on bonfires; that healthcare is a right, not a privilege for the wealthy; if you believe in the power of free speech and protest to sustain democracy; or if you want an economy that works for the people who power it—then this march is for you.”

Who are some of the groups putting this mobilization together? Here’s a partial list: Coalition of Labor Union Women, Democratic Socialists of America, Grassroots Global Justice, Movement for Black Lives, National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood Federation, Popular Democracy, Radical Elders, Right to the City, Rising Majority, Sierra Club and Stand Up for Racial Justice.

This mobilization has reminded me of the March to End Fossil Fuels on September 17th,  2023. The major action on that day was in New York City, where upwards of 70,000 people participated. This was after the main organizers of the march, concerned about overestimating and just a few days before it happened, were saying they expected at least 20-25,000. But the months of bringing hundreds of groups together and the day-to-day organizing on the part of thousands of organizers ended up with many more than that in NYC, and there were also, like January 18th, hundreds of localities where coordinated actions took place. Many hundreds of thousands took part altogether.

My personal involvement in this historic mobilization has been via work on a major action in Newark, NJ on the 18th: the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. March of Resistance. From a first meeting to discuss the idea of such a march in late November attended by reps of 23 New Jersey groups, there are now 260 organizations which have endorsed. Because of the leadership for this action coming out of the Black community, the fact of Trump’s inauguration happening on the same day as the federal holiday for Dr. King has been highlighted.

There is no better person to contrast what Trump and MAGA are all about and what this country and world really need than Dr. King.

As we’ve done our organizing we have remembered and raised up King’s focus in the last year of his life on what he called “the sickness of racism, poverty and militarism” in the United States. He understood clearly how deep-seated these destructive and interrelated ideologies and practices are within the USA, and they still are today.

In the spirit of Dr. King and the many other heroes and heroines of the struggle for justice in this country, let’s make January 18th the truly historic and empowering day that it clearly can be. 10 days left to mobilize.

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.

Indigenous Peoples Day, Some History

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I was very surprised a few days ago to see the local bank where I have an account displaying a sign outside the front door which referred to what they called, “Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day.” Although I wish the first two words had not been there, it is still a positive thing that they went public in this compromise kind of way.

There’s something personal to me about this day. I’m not Indigenous, am very much of European ancestry, but in 1992 at the time of the 500th anniversary, official celebrations in the US of Columbus’ arrival in the western hemisphere, I took part in a 42 day, water-only Fast for Justice and Peace in the Americas. It was initiated by Brian Willson, Scott Rutherford and Diane Fogliatti, and it went from September 1 to October 12.

The overall message of this action and the much broader movement out of which it emerged was that it was long past time to turn away from all that Christopher Columbus represents—racism, slavery, militarism, imperialism and ecological destruction—and commit ourselves to working for a next 500 years very different than the one experienced between 1492 and 1992. One specific demand was for Columbus Day to be replaced by Indigenous Peoples Day.

There was an Indigenous-led movement that had been taking action over many months in 1991-92 in support of this essential new direction for the USA and other countries in the Americas. The fast was inspired by that movement.

20 years before I had taken part in two long fasts/hunger strikes, one in 1971 for 33 days while in prison for draft resistance and another in 1972, a 40 day, water-only fast to end the war in Indochina.

When I heard about this initiative by Brian, Scott and Diane about a month before it was to begin, it struck a chord in me, and my life circumstances were such that I could join it. Then, toward the end of the fast, Diane Fogliatti came up with an idea for how to continue to build this movement: do an organized fast for 12 days, from October 1 to October 12, each year going forward. I ended up taking part in this, helping to lead a People’s Fast for Justice loose network which did so from 1993 to 2001. Our two demands were for Columbus Day to be renamed Indigenous Peoples Day and for political prisoner Leonard Peltier to be freed.

Doing some research for this column, I have learned that since 1992 there have been a growing number of localities and states which have officially recognized in some way the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples Day, including the states of Alaska, California, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. What a surprise!

And responding to this upsurge, in 2021 President Joe Biden signed a proclamation in support of Indigenous Peoples Day.

There’s an awful lot of reasons to be anxious or depressed right now, but it is a very positive thing, something for which to be thankful, that Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and elsewhere in the world continue to survive. Even more, they continue to give leadership in the existential battle to prevent cascading ecological and societal devastation and for a very different future in the years to come. La lucha continua!

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. More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

The Problems with Purism and Reformism (not reforms)

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Over 20 years ago I wrote one of these columns examining the issue of “purism” versus “pragmatism” when it comes to organizing for systemic and desperately needed change in this world. I wrote about two essential ingredients that are sometimes in conflict.

One essential is conscious political organization motivated by principles and a genuine desire and plan for improving the lives of the disenfranchised and downtrodden, ending militarism and war, and stopping and reversing environmental devastation. But this alone won’t bring about change.

As a once-great revolutionary once said, “the masses make history.” It is only when large numbers of people identify with a movement for fundamental change and support it, verbally or actively, that we have any hope of winning political power and transforming society. In the USA that means not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or even millions, but tens of millions of people.

Is this possible? Yes. One big example is the 15 million votes independent socialist Bernie Sanders got in 2016. Another is the NY Times report that 16-25 million people all over the country took demonstrative action in the spring of 2021 after George Floyd was murdered.

We need to go about our organizing work in a way which doesn’t undercut either, which avoids the temptation to be so committed to being principled that one becomes purist and narrow, on the one hand, or to be so committed to being with and interacting with “the masses” that problematic positions are taken and political relationships are built that end up deflecting energies into reformist and dead-end approaches to change. We need reforms, yes, but our broader objective must be to build upon successful struggles for major reforms in a way that leads to truly revolutionary, justice-grounded, social and economic transformation.

Purism versus reformism—the twin dangers of serious efforts to bring about the kind of change that is so, so needed today.

What can be done to lessen these dangers, to increase the possibilities that more of us will keep our eyes, minds and hearts on the prize?

One is the building of independent and progressive organizations that are truly democratic in the fullest sense of the term. As difficult as the process of democracy sometimes is, it is also a way to keep the group as a whole and the individuals within it centered on the stated objectives. Democratic process, sooner or later, frustrates individual power plays on the part of any person in leadership who lets power go to his/her/their head and who becomes either purist or reformist as a result. These things have happened much too much historically, but in this third decade of the 21st century, there is a growing consciousness of this danger increasingly expressed in how more and more of us are going about our organization-building.

Another necessity is an explicit commitment to the testing out of theories and ideas in practice and a process of constant evaluation based upon input from the people the ideas are being tried out on. If an independent candidate is running for office, for example, and has what they think is a great platform but the vote totals are very low, perhaps the problem is that the issues being addressed, or the way they’re being expressed, don’t connect with peoples’ understandings. Since just about any issue can be addressed from a progressive standpoint, a much better approach is to identify what the issues are to speak about because of day-to-day listening to and communicating with working-class people and people of the global majority.

The same with forms of direct action. It may feel good and righteous to some to stand up to the police during an action, but if that is done in a way which makes it easier for the government and the corporate-dominated press to call us violent, that will not generate sympathy for our cause among the wider public. Expressing our sense of urgency and anger is a good thing, if done wisely. Expressing it without political consideration of an action’s impacts is not a good thing.

Ultimately, our ability as a movement to navigate between the dangers of purism and reformism comes down to how each of us live our lives. Do we live in such a way that, on a day to day basis, we are in touch with working class people, regular folks, those in need of change? Do those of us who are white ensure that, in some way, we have regular communication and interaction with people of color so that we are constantly reminded about racism and its pernicious effects? Do we make time for meditation, allow our conscience to make itself heard over the daily demands on our time and energies? Do we interact with others in a way which prioritizes listening and objective consideration? Do we struggle to keep from responding defensively when others make constructive, or not so constructive, criticisms of us?

In the words of the late Rev. Paul Mayer, “What history is calling for is nothing less than the creation of a new human being. We must literally reinvent ourselves through the alchemy of the Spirit or perish. We are being divinely summoned to climb another rung on the evolutionary ladder, to another level of human consciousness.”

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