I Love the Idea of America
I love the idea of America. But this is not America:
Kidnapping innocent mothers, fathers, teachers, students, and workers by unidentified masked men and whisking them away to detention centers or foreign prisons with no due process.
Targeting leaders of the political opposition for handcuffing and arrest as they simply perform their oversight responsibilities.
Attacking the ennobling concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Defunding university and government scientific funding that will set our health systems backwards by decades and impede vaccine readiness for all Americans.
Threatening law firms, universities and media with lawsuits unless they conform to the ruling political ideology.
Cutting aid to the sick, the hungry, and the elderly to fund tax breaks for the rich.
Appointing unqualified leaders whose focus often is not strengthening, but weakening the agencies they oversee.
Firing thousands of dedicated public servants for no reason whatsoever with no plan to continue their vital work for the people. Meanwhile, the president golfs and ignores the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
Absurdly threatening our allies in Canada and Greenland with annexation while our NATO allies fear we will not come to their aid if attacked, yet dictators are praised.
Cutting vital medical and food aid to nations in great need.
Cowering cowardly Congressional Republicans complicit and silent in the usurpation of their power by a power-hungry president.
This administration has not made America great again; it has made it weak, cruel, and ugly. I do not love that America.
But I have faith that the people of America, such as the millions who protested on No Kings Day against tyranny, will right our ship of state once again, as has been done in other dark times in our nation’s history. For I, and many others, still love the idea of America and its ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. With justice, intelligence and empathy, the America we love will prevail.
Steve Cickay, Newtown
What Is Civility When Defending Democracy?
I was on a scheduled call with a new ally who had been nudged by a national organization to build a coalition with other groups on the ground in Bucks County. And in the wake of the massive “No Kings” turnout, it was not at all surprising that this ally reached out to Indivisible Bucks County. But throughout the majority of the call, this ally kept leaning into how important it was to maintain civility in our interactions, and how important being bipartisan was for their organization’s legislative aims. Frankly, I was infuriated.
I did my best to maintain a professional front, so as to not have my own behavior reflect poorly on my own national organization. But I could not push down severe irritation at the promotion of the obsolete concepts of civility and bipartisanship in the midst of the political crisis we are all living through today. “Civility” is what people in power preach when they don’t want to address the actual issues of oppressed folks working to get what they want, and instead dismiss and demean the actions taken to create the urgency necessary to achieve goals.
“Bipartisanship” is dead and Republicans killed it. It is old-fashioned to the point of being dangerously naïve to think we can compromise with lawmakers who are undermining the very existence of democracy, who deny the results of past elections, who have actively supported insurrection and are even now twiddling their fingers in the face of a massive executive branch overreach. There are masked federal agents kidnapping people off the streets without warrants, and are tossing them to other countries without providing any due process. There is no conceivable way for people who hold true to the principles of human rights and democracy to compromise with those who have turned their backs on those fundamental values and are either tacitly or actively supporting such un-American activities that we see every day coming from our the federal government.
Republicans got America to where we are today not through “civility” and “bipartisanship”, but through…
smashing norms,
playing on the prejudices of their electorate, and
lying about who Democrats are/what they want to do.
You can’t be “bipartisan” when it means trying to find common ground with folks who use those tactics … just as “civility” is never going to succeed in response to those actions.
I’m not calling for violence, please know that. But we must harness our ability to create strategic conflict if we are going to find a path out of this mess. What is strategic conflict and what does it look like? It’s bird-dogging cowardly GOP lawmakers, to get them on the record either expressing their positions, or getting video of them running away to avoid having to make a comment on the record. You can learn more about bird-dogging from this excellent resource from Indivisible National: Bird-Dogging Guide: Get Them on The Record . And if you’d like to see bird-dogging in action, watch these two lovely activists from 2017, when the Affordable Care Act and protections for pre-existing conditions were on the chopping block, try to get Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick on the record.
Strategic conflict looks like the tactic of using mockery to damage a lawmaker’s popularity. A perfect example of this is the Ditch Fitz facebook presence, where the admin uses fun memes and silly graphics to point out the failures of Brian Fitzpatrick, and engages viewers by using humor to make the point. We at Indivisible try to do this as well, from time to time, but Ditch Fitz does it with style! Another example of this was the way our Indivisible allies with Indivisible Lambertville New Hope dressed up as vegetables to mock Dr. Oz for his ridiculous “crudite” comments in his PA Senate race.
Holding EVERY individual GOP politician accountable for the most fringe things anyone in their party has said or done is another way we use strategic conflict to forward our goals. That means that when Marjorie Taylor Greene blames ‘the jews’ for assassinating John F. Kennedy Jr., then we need people trying to get our Republican lawmakers to address her antisemitism. That means when Mitch McConnell says that people “will get over” losing their Medicaid, we need to call up all our lawmakers offices to see what they think about that. We need to write letters to the editor and social media posts about what they had to say to us. And all the better if we combine techniques! You can bird-dog to try and get lawmakers on the record about the worst statements and actions of their colleagues!
But above all, we MUST dismantle the perception that “civility” and “bipartisanship” are the highest goals of political activism. Those days are gone. In this new political environment, we have to put defending our democracy above those outdated concepts … Or else we’ll be left with a “civil form” of authoritarianism, and bipartisanship in support of fascism.
Kierstyn Zolfo, Yardley
