Up A Creek

We are experiencing a reverse Robin Hood: the US government is stealing from the poor and middle class to give to the rich. They’re not just stealing money—including cutting our services AND imposing those gargantuan tariffs that are essentially taxes --but they’re stealing the rights and privileges of democracy that have been in place for 250 years, and reserving those rights and protections for billionaires.

The public is numb--because how do you remain alert to all the craziness? and that numbness is so dangerous because healthcare is evaporating, voting is in the process of becoming meaningless, dissent is progressively criminalized, and DOGE has already eliminated our right to privacy. The public might not feel the effects of all this before it’s too late. And for a bunch of incompetent officials, it’s so damned efficient.

Never has any president or cabinet or Congress done so much harm to so many people in so little time.

A nightmare scenario is developing for roundups, in the way they’re expanding. The new plan is to sweep the streets not only of immigrants, but now the homeless and the mentally ill. In Seattle a few days ago, ICE detained two people who work for Real Change, Seattle’s very successful organization that provides opportunities and empowerment for homeless people. So the police state is marching forward. Who’s next for mass arrests? LGBTQ people? Jews? Journalists? You?

And how about the right to vote? This week marked the sixtieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the law passed under Lyndon Johnson that newly protected the right to vote for many--mostly black folks, who had been prevented from voting by literacy tests, poll taxes, and other bureaucratic hurdles, and by harassment and intimidation. The 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawed all those tactics.

So August 6 this year was a sad sixtieth anniversary indeed, because we’re seeing new shenanigans to suppress the vote: there’s that plan in Texas for political redistricting; Pete Hegseth reposted a Christian nationalist named Doug Wilson who says women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. There’s also the MAGA plan to deny voting rights to legal immigrants; there are misinformation campaigns; and of course there will be the intimidation and bullying of voters and claims that it’s the Democrats that are rigging elections.

OUTRAGE OF THE WEEK! Our phrase of outrage this week is: “BIG BALLS OF FIRE, that’s OUTRAGEOUS!”

OUTRAGE #1. J.D. Vance went kayaking for his birthday. The Secret Service had the water level of the river raised to accommodate for the boats. No waste, fraud, or abuse there!

OUTRAGE #2. Someone put the Constitution on a diet! The Library of Congress website erased parts of Article 1 from its online US Constitution. The alarming disappearance includes sections that implement the powers of Congress, provide checks against the President, describe Congressional oversight of DC, and govern the military. Official word was that the disappearance of pieces of the Constitution was due to a coding glitch. Was this a rehearsal, a kind of test run?

OUTRAGE #3. Trump’s top policy advisor, devil’s spawn Stephen Miller, announced that the Administration is “actively looking at suspending habeas corpus, the constitutional right of people to challenge their detention by the government.”

OUTRAGE #4. Health secretary Bobby Kennedy Jr. is back on the list this week: he has canceled $500 million in grants to research mRNA vaccines, which are the best option for protecting Americans in the next pandemic.

OUTRAGE #5. NASA administrator Sean Duffy announced plans to build a nuclear reactor on the moon. What could go wrong?

OUTRAGE #6. A Republican congressman from Missouri has proposed a bill to rename the Kennedy Center the “Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts.” There are proposals to rename other stuff after our Führer. On the $100 bill, Trump may replace Benjamin Franklin.  Dulles Airport in Washington, DC, will become Trump International Airport. The idea to add Trump’s face to Mt. Rushmore is finding more widespread support, even though the stonemen and artists who would do the deed have reported that there is no room left up there.

So what can we do, what are we doing in Poulsbo? First, it is important for us to use public spaces while we can. Rallies and marches make a big impact on residents and visitors to our city. We are the face of resistance, and that is powerful. Aside from rallies, we know you are doing what you can, in imaginative and creative ways, to educate those around you and find ways to resist, and to contribute to causes you believe strongly in.  And in the last month, we are training people to be prepared to interrupt and/or document the kidnappings of immigrants—nonviolently and obeying the law.

Because if in the next weeks or months you see an ICE arrest taking place, you don’t have to slink away helplessly and feel sick.

Remember, your first call goes to 911, to report a kidnapping; the police are required to respond. Your second call goes to, the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, or WAISN, at 844-724-3737.   Document ICE’s actions to provide to WAISN; this is of immense value to the victims of ICE’s cruel and unconstitutional behavior.  

Organized groups of volunteers have been going to the parking lot outside of Home Depot, talking to customers, and distributing flyers with this important information about what to do when you’re a witness to ICE activity, so that like you, those shoppers can spread the news to people in their lives. One person our volunteers spoke with a couple of weeks ago turned out to be a property manager for an apartment house. She was very glad to get the flyers and planned to hold a meeting of the apartment residents and spread the vital information. So you inform one person and they inform five or ten more, who each inform five or ten more. It’s like good Covid--it spreads! Please join us and volunteer! Not only can we really help the people targeted by ICE, we’re helping ourselves get off the couch and feel useful and feel hope.

Finally, a note of inspiration. Yesterday Robert Reich received an email from a young man who was running out of hope and inspiration, who said, “While young people like me are committed to change, without a genuine seat at the table, we can do nothing better than bark like a dog beside the family dinner table.”   Reich’s email reply to him: “If you believe you can do nothing better than bark like a dog beside the family dinner table you don't know your power. Martin Luther King Jr., had no seat at the table. Jane Addams had no seat at the table. Rachel Carson had no seat at the table. Ralph Nader had no seat at the table. John Lewis had no seat at the table. They made their own seats. They built power. They gave hope and inspiration to others. They worked from the bottom up. They changed society. Go do it!”