Category: Bulletins & Lists

Politics Bulletin: 001

Inspired by my old friend, Charley Underwood who used to publish the Peace Calendar, instead of responding to the latest headline by forwarding every urgent message that I receive, I’m going to resist the temptation and collect information and action items and post them here. For now it’s my answer to managing information such that I’m not peppering my friends with ALERTS. I appreciate receiving such emails (please keep them coming) and have included some things from my inbox below. But when I realized that I was soothing myself with indiscriminately forwarding messages, I thought there should be a better way. This is what I’m trying for now.

This not a to-do list. It is my attempt to organize ideas and resources. I would also like it to be a reflection of what people have been doing, a reminder that we are not alone. To the extent that it’s relevant to current affairs, I will also include art and entertainment items. Mainly, I hope this will be useful to anyone who is looking for concrete ways to be one of the many stewards who will share whatever talent they have to help protect our democracy.

I welcome your thoughts about how to make it better.

Rebekah

Keep in Mind

Nothing is inevitable. We have a say in what happens next.

MN Governor Tim Walz and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke rally in Texas.

“I want to remind us all that the power is with the people. These are very dark days. These are very strange times in this country. We have a president who is pushing our democracy, the rule of law, the very Constitution itself up to the precipice. And I think we all must remember that we can push back.”

-Former Congressman, Beto O’Rourke

I like how Beto O’Rourke and the organization he founded, Powered by People, are focused on registering people to vote. I also appreciate leadership that models taking action.

What can we do?

Learn Something

  • Subscribe to Jim Hightower’s newsletter, Lowdown. Both paid and free subscriptions are available. TIP: To manage your inbox, try reserving a certain time in the week to look through your newsletters.
  • Listen to this podcast episode of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, D.C. Gutted. Grassroots Galvanized (58 min). It is also available on YouTube.
  • Discuss the above podcast episode (or another podcast, book, etc. of your choosing) with at least one other person. If you can, gather a few people in the same room and see what others think. “One-way communication” in which we listen to a podcast, watch a YouTube video or read something where ideas are promoted without any chance to raise questions or offer suggestions can be frustrating and dispiriting. The solution is to make it a habit (a rule?) to talk with each other about the news.
  • Sharon recommends subscribing to Joyce Vance on Substack. She says, “Joyce Vance is the best. A former US prosecutor and US attorney, she knows the ins and outs of what’s going on, and several times a week posts with enlightening but not overwhelming summaries of current events and what’s important, while staying optimistic and fair.”

If you’re in the Twin Cities…

  • Tuesday April 1, 8, 22, and 29th at 7:00 PM  – Storytelling for Social Change. A four session in-person / hands-on class on how stories can be used for community building and advocacy.  For more information see The American School of Storytelling.
  • Visit the Hennepin County History Museum, which was recently featured on KSTP. The collection of Heart of the Beast Theater puppets that is on display looks amazing! In 1983, the Circle of Water Circus used these huge constructions to raise awareness of the ecological distress of the river, with performers traveling down the Mississippi River from Minnesota to Louisiana.

Be Counted

  • Join the AFSCME UMN rally supporting students targeted by ICE at the University of Minnesota campus on Monday, March 31, 12 PM at 100 Church St SE, East Bank Campus, Minneapolis in front of Morrill Hall.
Join the AFSCME UMN rally supporting students targeted by ICE at the University of Minnesota campus on Monday, March 31, 12 PM at 100 Church St SE, East Bank Campus, Minneapolis in front of Morrill Hall.
  • My neighbor Jill writes: 
"Dear Friends, quick action item, please sign if you can. We need to keep hammering these F-heads until it hurts! I just signed the petition "To President Zelenskyy, From Embarrassed Americans" and wanted to ask if you could add your name too. This campaign means a lot to me and the more support we can get behind it, the better chance we have of succeeding... Thank you!"
  • My neighbor Mary Ann forwarded an idea to contact the president. As of this post, it is past March 15, the date suggested for this action. But if you are so moved to try it, here’s the info:
Dear Family and Friends,

Members of the church of a long time friend, along with people from many other groups, are sending postcards to Trump on March 15 to tell him how we feel about his policies. 

Our friend wrote, "Nothing vile, just the truth.  I said that the way he was treating people made me feel embarrassed to be American.  Spread the word!  We'd like Trump to get an avalanche of a million postcards. You can easily turn any greeting card into a postcard.

(Maybe) Every little bit counts!"

Would you also spread the word via your contacts?

Here's the address:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

Rise up!

Steve
Min: 13:47

Elias: "How [does DOGE] fit into or not fit into the constitutional structure? And...what can people do about it? People are worried that their data has been compromised..."

Raskin: "...the United States District Court for the District of Columbia rendered yet another victory for the forces of democracy and freedom. They found DOGE is in fact a federal agency, something that DOGE was resisting. And yet the federal district court... found that DOGE is a federal agency and is subject to federal law, specifically, The Freedom of Information Act. The last thing I did before I got on this call... I completed filling out a form... demanding of DOGE... in my neighborhood we call it the 'Dissing our Government Employees statute,' I was demanding... that they turn over to me all the data they have on me from the Social Security Department, from the Department of Education, college student loans, anything they would have from any federal department that they've assembled. I want to see it. And guess what? I've got a right to see it... I want to know whether they've made any changes to it. I have a right to determine whether everything in there is accurate... I also want to know whether it's been diverted and leaked out to any third-party source, whether it is Elon Musk's artificial intelligence program... or any other business. I have a right to know that. That's my data. And guess who else has that right? 340,000,000 Americans. And for the cost of a stamp, you can... say give me all this information."
  • My friend Santwana has been hosting gatherings that have been steadily growing. The group has been attending town hall meetings and organizing protests in Richfield, MN.
A protest in Richfield, MN

Be a Campaign Volunteer

This Tuesday, April 1, there is a special election for a supreme court justice in Wisconsin. Once again, Elon Musk is trying to subvert democracy and buy voters so that he can control the courts. This weekend is your last chance to be a campaign volunteer for Susan Crawford who is running against the MAGA candidate. You can “push back” against Musk and join a virtual phone bank to remind Wisconsin Democrats to vote on Tuesday, April 1.

For more information, see the Wisconsin Democratic Party. They could use some help this weekend making calls and knocking on doors. Also, Heather Cox Richardson discussed the urgency of this election with Ben Wikler, Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, on her YouTube channel.

Democracy Now: Can Elon Musk Buy Wisconsin?

Take Care of Yourself & Others

De-isolate & Connect

  • Call the friend you’ve been meaning to call.
  • Send a thank you note.
  • Volunteer at a food shelf or other organization where they are helping people who are being negatively impacted by illegal Republican policies and cuts.

Conserve Energy

  • Be selective about your news sources. Don’t let a 24-hour news cycle demoralize you. Do not reward bad actors with your clicks.
  • Limit social media. After reading More Than Words – How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI by John Warner, Brian was inspired to remove social media apps from his phone and to check his social media once a week. In the meantime, I’ve been mostly off of social media since before the pandemic. I’m considering joining Mastodon, which is an open-source federation of social media servers that operates much like what we’re used to, except no one owns it. At the very least, get off Shitter (everyone you were following moved over to BlueSky). Get off of InstaScam and Tic-Toxic. Stop feeding the beast.

This Made me Laugh

A sign in support of Ukraine.

Final Thoughts

There are lots of different ways to gather. The important thing is to find your people and to be with them. Before we can “speak truth to power,” we have to talk to each other.

Questions to Ponder

How much of your daily communication is “one-way?” How can you balance it with conversations in which you are a contributor as opposed to just a consumer?

Jim Hightower feels hopeful about the new National Democratic Party Chair, Ken Martin who is from Minnesota. He thinks it could be a good indication that the party is at least considering returning to its grassroots. At the moment, given that the Democrats are out of power, Martin is the top dog. What should be communicated to him from the grassroots?

Resources

5 Calls is a website that makes it easy to contact elected officials. My friend Santwana mentioned it in an email where she was encouraging people to advocate for a University of Minnesota student who has been detained by ICE.

Follow

If you want to follow this bulletin (as opposed to the following entire TP&AC blog, which you can do here), the RSS FEED is twopeopleandacat.com/category/politics/feed. If you need a newsreader to subscribe to RSS feeds, try Feedly.com. If you’d rather just get an email notifying you of posts of this political bulletin, send me your email address here. If you would like to submit an item for this bulletin or you have suggestions for how to make it more useful, you can reach me here.

Goals & Policies

  • Make an actionable political digest that inspires people to be stewards of our democracy, and to find a way to contribute to the effort that makes the most sense for any given individual.
  • Link to clean websites that are free and whenever possible do not bombard the user with ads.

What people are reading: 001

Book cover: This is Happiness by Niall Williams.

While she does not want to join one, my sister likes to know what her friends are reading in their book clubs. So, when I received a reminder that the Merriam Park Book Club would be discussing This Is Happiness by Niall Williams, it gave me an idea. I thought it might be fun to occasionally assemble a list of books based on the titles that come up in conversations.

From my neighborhood, Susan writes:

“I am currently reading a novel called Stacken (The Colony) by Swedish writer/songwriter-singer Annika Norlin. I am reading it in Swedish for an American Swedish Institute literature class. The online class is very similar to a book club only our discussions are in Swedish. (The reading isn’t too hard for me, but talking about the book in Swedish is a struggle.) The book was a bestseller in Sweden. It is about a burned out go-getter who flees to the northern forest where she encounters a group of people who, for various reasons, have dropped out of mainstream society. The book is weird but very engrossing. It was only recently translated into English.”

Meanwhile, Ann’s book club recently read The BeeKeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri. “It is about a family fleeing Syria during the civil war and trying to get to England as immigrant refugees. Very timely in general.”

Also timely, at the open coffee hour that we host most Saturday mornings, we learned that the young Jacob across the street just purchased George Orwell’s 1984. Apparently, he needed something to cleanse murder from his pallet as he also picked up Crime and Punishment. Upon hearing this, Ralph blurted “Dostoevsky!” The kid’s mother told him that reading it would “make him feel as though he had actually committed the crime and was now suffering through the punishment.” Not to be outdone by the 14-year-old, Ralph recommended Winston Churchill’s The Gathering Storm. It is part of a WWII series and pairs well with the headlines of the day.

At a recent political salon that we hosted, Joel mentioned Arlie Russell Hochschild’s works Stolen Pride and Strangers in their Own Land. Later he wrote: “The librarian in me needs to share these recommendations for understanding the current, angry electorate.” He suggested starting with Strangers in their Own Land.

Joel also shared news that Minnesota Senator John Marty’s father passed away at the age of 97. While I knew of Sen. Marty’s progressive politics, I did not realize that his father, Martin E. Marty, was a prominent religious scholar and, according the New York Times, a “staunch champion of pluralism.” Marty wrote such books as: The One and the Many – America’s Struggle for the Common Good and Modern American Religion, Volume 2, The Noise of Conflict, 1919-1941.

Brian says that More Than Words – How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI by John Warner was a highly energizing book. He liked how Warner “continuously puts human needs first without whining so much about how AI is an affront to this approach…” Knowing my hatred for “content,” he interrupted a YouTube video about toggle bolts to quote from the book:

“The biggest shift over the course of my life as a writer has been the transformation of writing into something known as ‘content’.  Content is anything that can be consumed by an audience via a platform. Content is stuff where the primary purpose is to draw an audience to feed them advertising. Lots of content on the internet is writing, but there is also content made of words that does not qualify as writing. The meaning, purpose, and quality of the content is immaterial, provided it can be monetized through clicks. There is no genuine communicative intent behind content… One of the most immediate and potentially damaging consequences of generative AI is its potential to drown us in content whose only purpose is to capture clicks to generate revenue through online advertising.”

In an age of market-worship, it can be easy for a humanitarian to feel like a dinosaur. So, it’s refreshing to stumble upon anything that affirms a sensibility that says that we’re more than what we can produce and that some of the best things in life are inefficient, and that our humanity is worth preserving.

As for the Williams book that sparked the idea for a post like this, Cheryl writes that This is Happiness is a gorgeous Irish novel with a strong recommendation by all in her book club. “It is lovely and dense and yummy and peaceful.” Next the group will be reading Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo. “God only knows how we come to our choices,” Cheryl writes. “But it’s always a lively conversation and we have stumbled on some beautiful books.”

Cheryl is herself a debut author. Her book Poised is a story set in 1990s Kentucky where “a naïve but spirited doctor, Shelly Riley, slogs through a two-year fellowship. Continually hampered by chauvinist mentors and exhausting training, she battles for the lives of her cancer patients… Cancer care isn’t funny, but people are…”

Tooting my own horn, Big Talk is a book of 42 Questions in which your friend circles can write in their answers. It tracks with my podcast, QuOTeD – The Question of the Day, in which I ask people one question and then assemble audio montages using their answers. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the answers that my neighbors have supplied in my copy of the book. I self-published it as a way to learn about that process.

If you choose to purchase any of these books, please consider supporting a local bookstore whenever possible. Or find them at your library. You can even check out digital books and audio books using a library app.

Roblyn 21XX – The Podcast

Can we make a podcast based on our neighborhood zine? I make a pilot episode to learn more about it.

Roblyn 21XX, Issue #7, January 17, 2021

Back in September, I started to dread winter. We anticipated feeling even more cramped inside our bubbles, as Dr. Fauci predicted a surge in coronavirus cases. Maybe we would get antsy and panic like a flock of ducks flushed out of the security of the brush. So, Brian and I started hosting Saturday coffees with the idea that by the time winter came, we would have established a routine where we could easily pop out of the house for a quick hello with the neighbors.

That was the plan. And it still is. But there would be no perfect record, as I had hoped. The single digits eventually forced a cancellation of our Saturday routine. More would follow. Though disappointing, the bitter cold gave me an idea. Or it might be more accurate to say that it brought an idea forward. Could we base a podcast on the neighborhood zine that we have been publishing since July? Would this offer some additional connections that might be valuable?

I was adamant that the zine itself should be printed and delivered to households. That’s why I began with what I alone could manage, which was essentially my block. Then a few people offered to print and deliver even more copies. It became the model. The zine would be as big as this volunteer pool would allow. And while we don’t quite cover it at present, I see the natural physical boundaries of the zine to be east of Cretin, west of Cleveland, north of Marshall and south of St. Anthony Avenues.

Though I love the e-newsletter that I produce for my podcast, QuOTeD, The Question of the Day, I was positive that the Roblyn 21XX zine shouldn’t be online. Part of what makes it cool is that you have to live here to get it. (Note: I have mailed hard copies upon request. Most notably my parents are subscribers.) However, I think a companion podcast to the zine is different. Yes, it is online. Yes, there is a screen. Yes there are links to click. But, a podcast like this could also be our private low powered radio station where there is a little more room, like a secret swimming hole before it is discovered by litterbugs. Plus, there is a warmth in hearing a voice. Maybe it can warm us up on those days when it’s too cold to do much else.

So, just as I did with that first issue of the Roblyn 21XX zine, I made a pilot episode of its companion podcast. This could be a one-and-done, a nice idea that doesn’t have legs. That would be fine. Or it might stick and become something even better. Either way, I enjoyed making this episode and hope that you enjoy it too.

Rebekah

Thank You