Tag Archives: politics

Outreach: Not Just a Tactic But a Mindset

Future Hope, , , ,

Six weeks into the Trump presidency it is important to recognize that the rapidly growing MAGA resistance movement is turning out big numbers of people in the streets, beginning to engage in strategic nonviolent direct action, having an impact on Democratic members of Congress, and so far winning most of the court cases brought against the Trumpfascists. There are good reasons for us to feel stronger and steadier than we were on January 20th, unsure and afraid of what was going to be attempted by Trump/MAGA.

There’s no question that as Spring arrives this burgeoning resistance movement will continue to build and grow, and that is grounds for hope. But there is another area of work for this movement that cannot be forgotten and that must increasingly be integrated into all of our other tactics: OUTREACH.

Here is how I wrote about this a month ago: “It is not enough for us to do all of the above with only those who are already critical of Trump (half or a little more of the country, likely to grow as the MAGA policies do their damage). We need to do outreach to and with these many tens of millions, for sure, but we also need to look for opportunities or make specific organizing plans to interact with Trump voters, including in rural areas, and voters who didn’t vote because they’re turned off to both parties.”

I know from personal experience doing canvassing to defeat Trump last fall in eastern Pennsylvania that many of these folks have strong feelings, for example, about the dominance of the US economy by billionaires and the growing class divide. Another example is the opposition among many conservative landowners to oil, gas and CO2 pipeline companies being allowed by governments to use eminent domain to take their land. And there are other examples.

Here’s one very small example of what we need to do: Last week I was in the town of Pearisburg in southwest Virginia to support young people who had taken direct action to try to stop the MVP pipeline over the past year and a half. 12 of them were facing court trials that day over charges that could have led to years in jail; fortunately, none of that happened. At one point, outside a packed courtroom of supporters, a man in a truck stopped by a group of us who couldn’t get into the courtroom and were hanging out in a parking lot behind the courthouse. As he got out of his truck he was wearing a “Trump 2024” hat. A couple of us told him loudly that he should leave, but others of us, me included, went up to him and started listening and then responding to what he was saying. The main thing he talked to us about at first was the EPA and how some of the things they were doing were actually negatively impacting the soil, which in a rural area is clearly an important issue.

As it turned out one of us was a soil expert, and she agreed with some of his criticisms. He may not have been expecting that. He ended up continuing to talk with us about this and other things for what seemed like almost an hour.

We need more of these kinds of interactions. Local resistance groups, for example, could begin to integrate door to door canvassing or street leafletting into their organizing plans. A petition on a relevant issue, like planned cuts in Medicaid or something related to local or state government, should be the issue on which to have these in-person discussions in neighborhoods known as ones where Trump did well on November 5th. This is work that white people who have an anti-racist consciousness, in particular, need to be doing, being willing to address that issue if and as it comes up in conversation.

If we’re going to make inroads into those working-class and middle-class communities that put Trump in office, door to door work can’t just happen when people are running for office.

Outreach must become not just a tactic but a mindset. We should welcome opportunities like the one some of us had in that Pearisburg, Virginia parking lot and look for how we can do more. This is immediate, strategic, absolutely essential work.

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.

Outreach: Not Just a Tactic But a Mindset

Future Hope, , ,

Six weeks into the Trump presidency it is important to recognize that the rapidly growing MAGA resistance movement is turning out big numbers of people in the streets, beginning to engage in strategic nonviolent direct action, having an impact on Democratic members of Congress, and so far winning most of the court cases brought against the Trumpfascists. There are good reasons for us to feel stronger and steadier than we were on January 20th, unsure and afraid of what was going to be attempted by Trump/MAGA.

There’s no question that as Spring arrives this burgeoning resistance movement will continue to build and grow, and that is grounds for hope. But there is another area of work for this movement that cannot be forgotten and that must increasingly be integrated into all of our other tactics: OUTREACH.

Here is how I wrote about this a month ago: “It is not enough for us to do all of the above with only those who are already critical of Trump (half or a little more of the country, likely to grow as the MAGA policies do their damage). We need to do outreach to and with these many tens of millions, for sure, but we also need to look for opportunities or make specific organizing plans to interact with Trump voters, including in rural areas, and voters who didn’t vote because they’re turned off to both parties.”

I know from personal experience doing canvassing to defeat Trump last fall in eastern Pennsylvania that many of these folks have strong feelings, for example, about the dominance of the US economy by billionaires and the growing class divide. Another example is the opposition among many conservative landowners to oil, gas and CO2 pipeline companies being allowed by governments to use eminent domain to take their land. And there are other examples.

Here’s one very small example of what we need to do: Last week I was in the town of Pearisburg in southwest Virginia to support young people who had taken direct action to try to stop the MVP pipeline over the past year and a half. 12 of them were facing court trials that day over charges that could have led to years in jail; fortunately, none of that happened. At one point, outside a packed courtroom of supporters, a man in a truck stopped by a group of us who couldn’t get into the courtroom and were hanging out in a parking lot behind the courthouse. As he got out of his truck he was wearing a “Trump 2024” hat. A couple of us told him loudly that he should leave, but others of us, me included, went up to him and started listening and then responding to what he was saying. The main thing he talked to us about at first was the EPA and how some of the things they were doing were actually negatively impacting the soil, which in a rural area is clearly an important issue.

As it turned out one of us was a soil expert, and she agreed with some of his criticisms. He may not have been expecting that. He ended up continuing to talk with us about this and other things for what seemed like almost an hour.

We need more of these kinds of interactions. Local resistance groups, for example, could begin to integrate door to door canvassing or street leafletting into their organizing plans. A petition on a relevant issue, like planned cuts in Medicaid or something related to local or state government, should be the issue on which to have these in-person discussions in neighborhoods known as ones where Trump did well on November 5th. This is work that white people who have an anti-racist consciousness, in particular, need to be doing, being willing to address that issue if and as it comes up in conversation.

If we’re going to make inroads into those working-class and middle-class communities that put Trump in office, door to door work can’t just happen when people are running for office.

Outreach must become not just a tactic but a mindset. We should welcome opportunities like the one some of us had in that Pearisburg, Virginia parking lot and look for how we can do more. This is immediate, strategic, absolutely essential work.

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.

Gaza and Ukraine: Trump’s Waterloo?

Future Hope, , , ,

Why did Trump defeat Harris on November 5th? There are lots of reasons but there’s no question a primary one was the Gaza/Israel war. Or, to be more precise, it was the Biden Administration’s refusal to stop providing Israel the weapons used to devastate Gaza.

There’s little doubt in my mind that this position more than any other issue led to millions of eligible voters who were anti-Trump not voting at all. A Council on Foreign Relations story in December reported that “Kamala Harris won 75,999,166 votes or 48.3 percent of the votes cast. That was 6,285,500 fewer popular votes than Biden won in 2020.” If the Democratic turnout had been the same as for Biden, it is likely that Harris would have won.

It’s now two weeks since Trump called for the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza. It’s two days after he attacked Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” with “4 percent” support among Ukrainians and blamed him for Putin’s military invasion three years ago. And yesterday, one month after Trump took office, three reputable polls—Quinnipiac, Gallup and Reuters—have Trump’s approval ratings at an average of 44.5% and his disapproval ratings at 50%. This should be setting off alarm bells among Republicans. This has to be one of the steepest and most rapid drops in support over the first month of a Presidency ever in US history.

Clearly, what Trump did to Zelenskyy and Ukraine two days ago in the interests of Putin had nothing to do with these three poll results, but what that means is that Trump is almost certain to keep going down in the polls in coming weeks. Between all of the other anti-democratic, heinous and damaging Trump/Musk actions on so many other fronts, which will continue, and the widespread outrage over Trump’s cozying up to Netanyahu/Israeli fascists and Putin/Russia and lies about Zelenskyy/Ukraine, I think it is it likely that Trump/MAGA’s ultimate downfall will be ascribed in part, probably a large part, to his outrageous positions on Gaza/Palestine and Ukraine.

Trump’s overt attacks two days ago on Ukraine’s elected president Zelenskky have stirred up a hornet’s nest of open criticism of Trump by Republican Senators and people like Mike Pence and Nikki Haley. Piled on top of the growing, national grassroots movement of progressive opposition and some Democratic Party criticism and actions, these are very significant political developments. And again: all just in Trump’s first month.

It is so important that the visible demonstrative actions in the streets keep happening and building. Without people coming out within the first two weeks of Trump taking office our situation would be much more dire than it is. It has been inspiring to take part in and experience this upsurge in the depths of winter, not a usual time for tens of thousands of people all over the country taking action, and again and again, on any issue. This is, indeed, a winter of our discontent on a massive scale, but we’re not being “summer soldiers.” We’re braving the elements, overcoming our deep dismay and expressing our anger in effective ways, and because that is happening Trump is hemorrhaging political support.

The spring is ordinarily the time when progressive activism manifests itself in outdoors actions. Let’s keep on building, organizing and outreaching to make this spring the time when the tens of thousands becomes hundreds of thousands and Trump’s poll numbers keep plummeting. This is the prerequisite to more and more victories over the MAGA’s as their destructive extremism leads growing numbers of Republican voters and elected officials to raise their voices and turn away from madman Trump.

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.

Tom Paine and Presidents’ Day

Future Hope, , , ,

The organizers of the pro-democracy actions last week on February 5, all around the country in all 50 states, have issued a call for actions this coming Monday, February 17, President’s Day. This day is mainly about remembering the USA’s first President, George Washington, as well as Abraham Lincoln. Washington was a slaveholder; Lincoln, of course, defeated, temporarily, the system of African enslavement in the South.

By coincidence this morning I was reminded about one of the original American revolutionaries who fought with Washington for independence from England, Tom Paine. It might be of value for those organizing the Monday actions to reference what he had to say in his book, Common Sense, about kings, or Presidents who act like kings:

“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any.”  p. 15, Dover Thrift Editions

Washington was a supporter of slavery. He also took part in wars against Indigenous nations to take their land for the benefit of European settlers, as did Lincoln in the 1830’s. Paine, in contrast, evolved into an abolitionist and came to appreciate Indigenous nations for their organic connections to the natural world and democratic decision-making processes. All personified this contradiction at the heart of the United States: a very imperfect union, at birth, but one which, over time, with Lincoln playing an important role as far as African enslavement, rejected much of that racist past and began the expansion of democratic rights and freedoms which have continued up until the 21st century.

Trump and MAGA want to role back as many of those rights as they can.

It is rare, from my experience, that the name Tom Paine is voiced among those in 21st century USA who see themselves as progressives or revolutionaries. I understand why this is the case, but I think there are very good reasons why we should be raising up his name as we continue to build our growing 21st century movement of movements for racial, gender, social and environmental justice, for a Green New Deal for low-income and working class people, for Medicare for All, for equity and equality for women, all people of color and lgbtq+ people, for “liberty and justice for all.”

“Citizen Tom Paine” is a book about Paine by Howard Fast published 70 years ago. It’s not a biography of Paine; it’s a work of historical fiction. But it presents much of the truth about the man, from his very real personal weaknesses and worts to his brilliance as a writer, speaker and organizer, his commitment to the cause of overthrowing British tyranny, “a way for children to smile, some freedom, some liberty, and hope for the future, men with rights, decent courts, decent laws, men not afraid of poverty and women not afraid of childbirth.” (p. 77)

Paine saw himself as a revolutionist. This was his life’s work. In a fictional exchange with fellow revolutionist and doctor Benjamin Rush, in a discussion about revolution, Rush articulates what was historically new about what was happening in the American colonies in the 1770’s: “The strength of many is revolution, but curiously enough mankind has gone through several thousand years of slavery without realizing that fact. But here we have a nation of armed men who know how to use their arms; we have a Protestant tradition of discussion as opposed to autocracy; we have some notion of the dignity of man [mainly white men]. . . but now we must learn technique, we must learn it well. . .Six months ago you were rolled in the dirt [assaulted] because people knew what you were writing; two weeks ago a man in New York was almost tarred and feathered because he planned to publish an answer to [Paine’s] Common Sense. That’s not morality; that’s strength, the same kind of strength the tyrants used, only a thousand times more powerful. Now we must learn how to use that strength, how to control it. We need leaders, a program, a purpose, but above all we need revolutionists.” (pps. 116-117)

Paine was a particular kind of writer, one who was immersed in the cause of independence, on the front lines of deadly battles, spending time in the bitter winter encampments of the nascent continental army, organizing, encouraging men to stick with it, inspiring them and pointing out how important what they were doing was. “This was all Paine had ever thought of or dreamed of, the common men of the world marching together, shoulder to shoulder, guns in their hands, love in their hearts.” (p. 124)

Fast paints a picture of Paine writing the first issue of The Crisis, a newspaper published by him during the war to present facts and strengthen morale: “The men gathered around him. They read as he wrote: ‘These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. . . If there be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. . . Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and repulse it.” (p. 145)

That’s a good last line, relevant for us right now 250 years later in the winter of 2025. Let the city and the country come forth to meet and repulse our common danger, this decade’s King George III and the reactionary MAGA movement under him. It’s just common sense.

 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.

Strategy and Tactics for the Burgeoning Resistance

Future Hope, , , ,

The wide mix of acts of resistance over the past week have made it clear that there is and will be widespread resistance to the Trump/MAGA regressive, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and pro-billionaire plans, There have been actions in the streets in DC and all over the country. Congressional Democrats are speaking up, filibustering and organizing town meetings. Numerous creative social media postings have helped to keep up people’s morale. Rachel Maddow on MSNBC five nights a week is playing an important role as have other TV/podcast/written reports and commentaries. And there have been a number of federal court filings, a few of which have already led to positive, initial judicial decisions.

Here are my thoughts on an overall strategy and the tactics we should be prioritizing as we keep building the mass US resistance movement which has burst into public view during the first week of February.

Strategy: On a national level we are on the defensive; that has to be our starting point. We can win some victories over the next two years, even some big ones, at local and state levels, but it’s unrealistic to expect we can make major advances at the federal level given Trump/MAGA/billionaire dominance of the executive and congressional branches of government and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Our overall strategy must be one of making as many advances as we can on local and state levels while preventing as much damage as possible to the primary MAGA targets: US democracy, human and civil rights, including internationally, organized labor and programs that benefit low- and moderate-income working people, and the natural environment on which all life depends.

Tactics: I see five areas where we as a movement of movements need to be focused during these difficult years: street heat–local/state/federal government—courts—media and publicity—outreach.

Street heat: This is essential. Visibility is needed to strengthen morale and attract others to our resistance movement. Well-organized and/or big demonstrations can also have an impact on elected officials, judges and masses of people, including some who voted for Trump. Some people will be challenged, appreciative or moved to consider the issue(s) being addressed because of street heat and demonstrative actions.

Local/state/federal government: I’m very close to people who are big on calling or emailing elected officials at all levels of government to urge them to do the right thing. Honestly, this isn’t the form of action that I’m really into. However, the Associated Press reported a few days ago that there have been so many calls to Congress that phone systems in individual offices are overwhelmed. WE NEED TO KEEP THIS UP. Just as mass demos/street heat have an impact, there are numerous examples over the years of massive calls to Congress preventing or advancing legislation and motivating Senators and House members to be more outspoken about the immediate issue. This pressure is undoubtedly primarily responsible for Senate and House Democrats stepping it up both in word and action (filibuster, organizing town meetings) this past week.

I’ve put on my calendar for the month of February making at least three calls each day to my Senators and House rep, practicing what I’m preaching.

Courts: Without a judicial system which is charged with upholding the US Constitution (which includes the Bill of Rights and amendments prohibiting slavery, etc.), our chances for winning victories on the way to ultimately isolating and overcoming the MAGA’s would be much less. And that’s still true with the 6-3 dominance of conservatives, not all of them MAGA conservatives, however, on the Supreme Court.

Court cases usually take time, often a lot of it. When you are out of power and on the defensive legislatively and dealing with executive orders, this is helpful. Federal district court and court of appeals rulings are often good ones on many issues. These decisions can have political impacts, strengthen support for the positions our progressive movements are taking. And when the legal and extra-legal repression comes down from the Trumpists and MAGA, as it inevitably will, the courts are critical.

Media and publicity: Elon Musk may have his X, Fox News is what it is, and there are many other ways that the ultra-rightists can connect with each other and try to confuse masses of people about what is true and false, but there’s no question that we have our own ways to communicate and spread the truth. And there are non-electronic ways to communicate, like by mass in-person leafletting, draping banners over major highways or wheat-pasting posters, or doing multi-day or multi-week walks along the side of well-traveled roads and through towns and cities. Groups can organize community teach-ins and public meetings in churches, civic centers, universities, etc. Where there is a will to get out the word, there are definitely ways.

Outreach:  Finally, it is not enough for us to do all of the above with only those who are already critical of Trump (half or a little more of the country, likely to grow as the MAGA policies do their damage). We need to do outreach to and with these many tens of millions, for sure, but we also need to look for opportunities or make specific organizing plans to interact with Trump voters, including in rural areas, and voters who didn’t vote because they’re turned off to both parties. I know from personal experience doing canvassing to defeat Trump last fall in eastern Pennsylvania that many of these folks have strong feelings, for example, about the dominance of the US economy by billionaires and the growing class divide. Another example is the opposition among many conservative landowners to oil, gas and CO2 pipeline companies being allowed by governments to use eminent domain to take their land. And there are other examples.

White male progressives have a particular responsibility to look for ways to have these discussions and interactions. Serious anti-racist/sexist/heterosexist practice must include a willingness/commitment to do this work. In my Burglar for Peace book I wrote about it this way: “It is critical that whites organizing whites take up the economic, health care, education or other issues impacting predominantly white communities, to show that they are concerned about all forms of inequality and want a just society for everyone. A good organizer knows that you need to start with people where they are, make connections on the basis of issues, experiences or other things held in common. As those connections are made, as people get to know and respect the organizer, they are more willing to listen and think about constructive criticism from her/him or ideas other than those they are ordinarily exposed to.” (p. 192)

Our situation is in no way hopeless. Trump is being called out publicly, like in a Wall Street Journal editorial last week, as “dumb,” which he is. His Canada and Mexico tariff proposals were pulled back one day after he made them, not exactly a way of leading that inspires confidence among followers. His insane proposal standing next to Netanyahu to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians was met with open disbelief by numerous Republican Senators. He will continue to say and do things like this for as long as he is President, and it will probably get worse as his advanced age combined with his other mental problems weaken his “governing” facilities going forward.

The independent and progressive movement of movements can give the leadership needed to win this battle. Si, se puede!

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 Limits of Tyrants

Future Hope, , , ,

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
-Frederick Douglass, August 3, 1857, in Canandaigua, NY

65 years ago today, on February 1, 1960, the first student sit-in at lunch counters throughout the segregated South began in downtown Greensboro at a Woolworth’s store. Young people literally put their bodies on the line, and were beaten and jailed for doing so, to demand an end to racist laws and daily practices prohibiting Black people from using public and private facilities solely because of the color of their skin.

This action sparked similar actions throughout the South, the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the emergence of a national mass movement against segregation and racism. Four years later, in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed in Congress, followed the next year by the Voting Rights Act.

I’m pretty certain that there were very few people before that sit-in who thought that within five years the South’s racist, essentially fascist, way of life going back almost a century could be successfully overcome, legally, although, of course, it took many years and constant struggle for those laws to finally bring about a civil rights revolution. Despite some weakening of those laws over the last decade or so, they are still, legally and culturally, largely in effect.

After two weeks of the Trump Presidency it is clear that he and the MAGA movement have every intention of using their power to roll back not just decades of the gains of the civil rights movement but of all movements defending and advancing human rights, labor rights, women’s rights, lgbtq+ rights, democracy and social, economic and environmental justice. This is a tyrannical regime.

Resistance to it has already taken place, beginning with the hundreds of thousands of people who demonstrated in over 300 localities on January 18th. It has continued through the work in communities all over the country helping immigrants at risk of deportation learning their rights and getting organized to defend them. It happened this week when 23 states successfully challenged Trump’s effort to prevent the disbursement of literally trillions of dollars allocated by Congress and signed into law by Biden. The American Federation of Government Employees has called for a massive demonstration in DC on February 11th against the Trumpists’ efforts to get rid of professional civil service workers. And there are many other ways that, on issue after issue, our US resistance movement has refused to bend to the would-be dictator.

What about demonstrations and nonviolent direct action? There have been some voices raised to the effect that, under a Trumpist regime, these are not as important, or are risky, compared to under a Democratic regime.

There’s some validity to the critique. Successful organizing involves much more than demonstrative, visible action: one-on-one conversations with community members or co-workers; calls, emails, texts or meetings with those with some power to correct wrongs or advance positive change; legal action; meetings to come to agreement internally within a group or with coalition partners about strategy and tactics; writing and videoing and taking pictures and circulating them as widely as possible; testifying before government bodies to oppose or support a particular policy or decisions; conscious development of healthy internal organizational cultures which support all those involved; and more.

But absent visible and public actions, as large and/or as creatively risk-taking as possible, victories will be much harder to come by. Here’s how I wrote about this in my 21st Century Revolution book:

“No revolution of any kind has happened without the manifestation of people’s anger at oppression or abuse via public marches, demonstrations, strikes (including hunger strikes) and civil disobedience to express their strong feelings and to spread the word to others about their resistance. Oppressed people need to see that there are others who feel the same way and are willing to take action to change things. Elected officials, even those who are supportive, need to appreciate the strength of people’s feelings via seeing it in action. And clearly, the target(s) of the public demonstrations need to see both sizeable numbers of people involved and the urgency and intensity of their feelings.”

In Frederick Douglass’ Canandaigua speech in 1857 he also said something that is not as widely quoted as the “limits of tyrants” quote at the beginning of this article but is just as important:

“People may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppression and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.”

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.

Panama, Greenland, Palestine, Ukraine: What About National Self-Determination?

Future Hope, , , ,

Ever since Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine I’ve been thinking about the issue of the right of nations to self-determination. I’ve done so because some on the Left, since that war began, have been essentially defending the Putin government’s invasion. They have done so on the grounds that Russia had legitimate fears of the NATO military alliance which, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, has been steadily growing as East European governments formerly within the USSR orbit have joined it.

I agree that this is a real issue. It is understandable that Russia would fear a Ukraine which joined NATO given that it is right next to Russia. It’s why President John Kennedy took action in 1961 when Soviet missiles were detected by US intelligence agencies in Cuba, 90 miles from the state of Florida.

But what Russia’s military has done to Ukraine since its invasion almost three years ago, with at least 50,000 soldiers killed and upwards of 350,000 wounded, massive damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure and over 12,000 civilians killed, cannot be justified as in any way a proportionate response to NATO’s maneuverings. It has also been devastating for Russian soldiers forced to fight, with roughly twice the number of casualties as Ukraine.

Ukraine has the right to national self-determination. So do Palestinians. So do Panama and Greenland.

There are some who oppose US military support of Ukraine because they are pacifists who oppose all war. This is understandable, though as a person committed to nonviolence but not a pacifist, it is hard to see how pacifist tactics in the face of Russia’s overt attempt three years ago to take over Ukraine could have prevented that takeover.

The others on the Left who have been explicitly or implicitly supportive of Russia’s invasion have generally done so because, for them, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Their enemy, and mine too, is a United States government which has a military budget approaching a trillion dollars a year, with 700 military bases in 100 countries around the world. For comparison, Russia has 35 military bases outside of Russia, most of them in former USSR countries, and China has five.

Since the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, that far-flung military has been a key part of US efforts to prevent popular movements from gaining power when those movements are attempting to create governments primarily about the raising up of the living standards of their people, no longer under the thumb of US and European mega-corporations. These movements have in the past and continue today to fight for the right of oppressed nations to throw off that oppression and to determine for themselves what form of government they want.

The Palestine/Israel reality is more complex, but the bottom line is that Israel’s continued and escalating occupation of the West Bank and its dominance over “open air prison” and now devastated Gaza is clearly a blatant and now-genocidal violation of the Palestinian right to self-determination. This is recognized by the vast majority of the world’s nations.

And Panama and Greenland? Would-be dictator Trump’s potentially serious efforts to dominate them on behalf of the economic interests of him and his billionaire oligarch buddies would be laughable if he hadn’t already shown his disregard for anything other than what benefits him and his class.

US imperialism beyond the land which is now the continental United States, the 48 states, began about 125 years ago with the “Spanish-American war.” The US forcibly took control of Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines away from imperial Spain. In response a broadly-based Anti-Imperialist League was formed which included people like Mark Twain and Samuel Gompers. Though it didn’t prevent the beginnings of US imperialism, it is important that it existed if only to remind those of us living today that this is also part of US history.

A progressive, mass-based, growing Left, our movement of movements, must stand with people around the world fighting for justice and their right to decide what form of democratic government they want. Only a worldwide movement for justice, democracy and a healthy natural environment can defeat the corporatists and neo-fascists who will literally devastate human societies and ecosystems worldwide if not removed from power.

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.

Dr. ML King: Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community?

Future Hope, , , ,

In the organizing meetings over the last two months leading up to and at yesterday’s positive March of Resistance in Newark, NJ, endorsed by 308 organizations, African American leaders of this multi-racial, multi-issue effort have spoken often about the importance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last book: Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community?

The demonstration in Newark yesterday was one of over 300 local actions around the country interconnected by the Women’s March/People’s March. Many tens of thousands of people altogether, possibly 100,000 or more, made it very clear that there is a grassroots based, multi-issue, popular movement of resistance coming out of the blocks ready to fight in an organized way against the Trump/MAGA efforts to take this country back decades. We Won’t Go Back!

60 years after Dr. King wrote this book, we are truly faced with the same question: chaos or community?

This is a piece of work that has a great deal to say to those of us who want a world where justice, peaceful settling of conflicts, and protection of and connection with the natural environment are foundational principles.

I have gone through this book, for the third time over the last couple of years, and pulled out what I consider to be some, by no means all, of Dr. King’s words that seem most appropriate to our reality today. In the order that they come up in the book, here they are:

“The hard cold facts today indicate that the hope of the people of color in the world may well rest on the American Negro and his ability to reform the structure of racist imperialism from within and thereby turn the technology and wealth of the West to the task of liberating the world from want.”  page 59

“We will be greatly misled if we feel that the problem will work itself out. Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting. If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.”  page 136

“The only answer to the delay, double-dealing, tokenism and racism that we still confront is through mass nonviolent action and the ballot. Our course of action must lie neither in passively relying on persuasion nor in actively succumbing to violent rebellion, but in a higher synthesis that reconciles the truths of these two opposites.”  page 137

“These must be supplemented by a continuing job of organization. To produce change, people must be organized to work together in units of power. . . [We must] engage in the task of organizing people into permanent groups to protect their own interests and produce change in their behalf.”  page 139

“The future of the deep structural changes we seek will not be found in the decaying political machines. It lies in new alliances of Negroes, Puerto Ricans, labor, liberals, certain church and middle-class elements. . . A true alliance is based upon some self-interest of each component group and a common interest into which they merge. Each of them must have a goal from which it benefits and none must have an outlook in basic conflict with the others.”  page 159

“We need organizations that are permeated with mutual trust, incorruptibility and militancy. Without this spirit we may have the numbers but they will add up to zero. We need organizations that are responsible, efficient and alert.”   page 169

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing’-oriented society to a ‘person’-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. . . Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism and militarism.”  pages 196, 197, 200 and 201

On his 96th birthday, long live the spirit and wisdom of this truly great human being and revolutionary, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.

270+ “No to Trump” Actions on January 18

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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.

Trump’s Second Big Defeat

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Almost exactly a month ago President-Elect Trump suffered his first major political defeat when Ultra-MAGA Congressman Matt Gaetz withdrew his name after Trump nominated him to be US Attorney-General. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell’s opposition to that nomination was a primary reason Gaetz had to do this. In a column I wrote then, I said:

“Would-be dictators actually become dictators in part because they are able to project strength and virility, making it much easier to impose their will on anybody they determine is standing in their way. But as Republican Senator Mitch McConnell surprisingly revealed, Trump’s victory clearly has its limits. When it is Republican Senators, not Democrats, not progressives, not leftists, who are the ones standing up to him, that has positive political impacts.”

Just two days ago we saw the same thing, with two differences: it was 38 Republican House members who rejected Trump’s ultimatum for them to vote for a piece of legislation he considered important; and Trump looked weak as obscenely rich billionaire Elon Musk first made that demand, after which Trump followed.

Could it be that Trump’s age and infirmities are catching up with him? Has he been thrown off his game? Or is it, maybe, that Trump’s primary reason for running for office was not necessarily to be a dictatorial President (though he’d clearly like it to be) but because only by winning would he be certain that he avoid trials and prison time for his criminal activities?

Is it possible that as problematic as it is that this vile human being is the most powerful person in the USA, his second four year term in the White House is going to be primarily another time of political chaos?

One reason this is likely is the fact that Trump will take office as the President with the lowest poll numbers of any newly-elected President going back decades. Five national polls since December 5 measuring how people feel about Trump in this transitional period before taking office have him at an average 51% rating. The numbers for Biden four years ago were in the high 50s. This guy in no way has a popular mandate.

Other reasons include: the very visible divisions within the Republican Party in the House; the nearly even number of Democratic House members as Republicans; and Senate Republicans seven votes short of the 60 they need for anything that isn’t budget related or confirmations of executive and judicial appointments.

Will all of this scale back the amount of damage Trump and the MAGA’s can do?

Damage there will be, without question. On many fronts—climate, immigrant rights, health care, social security, education, housing, labor rights, voting and civil rights, abortion and womens’ rights, transgender rights, and more—the progressive and liberal forces who almost got Kamala Harris elected will have our hands very full. That reality could be mitigated somewhat with big victories for Democrats (and progressive independents?) in the House and Senate in November of 2026, but until at least then we need to do all we can to defend the many gains we have made in the USA since the CIO uprising of workers in the 1930s.

Lots of tactics are needed to mount those defenses, but there’s one that, right now, needs to take priority: as massive as possible a showing in the streets of opposition to the Trump/MAGA agenda. This is why the Women’s March January 18th in Washington, DC, as well as the many other local demonstrations happening on that date, are so important. Personally, I’m very involved in organizing a Black-led “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. March of Resistance” in Newark, NJ. Many thousands are expected, with almost 200 organizational endorsers as of this writing.

It is critical that the mass media and social media narrative about Trump’s inauguration on January 20th not be one which makes it seem like our progressive movements of movements has been cowed, silenced, seriously set back. We haven’t been, I know it from my observations and interactions since November 5, and we need to make that visible from the git-go of this next four-year period of oppression and righteous resistance.

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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