Book Review: “Rules for Resistance: Advice from Around the Globe for the Age of Trump”

I found this book on the shelves near the John Kasich book I posted about yesterday. The book is a series of essays published in 2017 and edited by David Cole, National Legal Director for the ACLU. The essays are grouped by region (Europe, The Middle East, Asia, Latin America) as well as a set of essays for journalists covering Trump, and the text of the original guide from the group Indivisible.

Each essay passes on ideas/anecdotes on specific authoritarian rulers in those regions. The ones about Silvio Berlusconi in Italy were most like Trump, but essays about Orban, Modi, and Putin were also instructive. There were two essays that I thought had the best advice for opposing Trump:

Luigi Zingales, in an op-ed for the New York Times in November 2016 (paywall, also mostly available in this Washington Examiner post), compares Trump and Berlusconi, showing many similarities. He points out that Hillary Clinton spent so much time explaining how bad Trump was that she did not often promote her own ideas, to make the positive case for voting for her. Also, the news media focused too much on Trump’s behavior. The only two politicians who beat Berlusconi did it by focusing on the issues, not Berlusconi’s character. From this, I would say that the Democratic Party is trying to point out the significant policy differences between Trump and Biden, but I think there is still too much focus on Trump’s character flaws. Also, the hope that the indictments against Trump would keep him out of the election have gone for naught, so he will have to be beaten at the ballot box.

Anne Applebaum wrote an article for the Washington Post (also available on her site) called “Advice from Europe for Anti-Trump Protesters”, in which she made some observations about elections in Poland in 2015 and 2016. A radical populist party was able to win with a minority of voters, and started to destroy democratic and state institutions. Poles took to the streets in huge demonstrations. Here is a summary of her reflections on the value of those protests (her sub-headings from the article):

Protest makes people feel better
Protest, if not carefully targeted, achieves little
Protests inspire conspiracy theorists
Politics matter more than protests
In a democracy, real change comes through politics, political parties and elections

I think her final two sentences sum up her advice well:

“Protesting might make you feel better, it might win a few battles, and it might attract attention. I’m sorry if you are angry at “the establishment”, but you need to work for it and within it if you want it to change.”
https://www.anneapplebaum.com/2016/11/16/advice-from-europe-for-anti-trump-protesters/

Book review: “It’s Up To Us” by John Kasich

The subtitle of this book is “Ten Little Ways We Can Bring About Big Change”. I stumbled across this while researching some other posts, and recently got it from the library. It draws on John Kasich’s career in public service (governor of Ohio, US presidential candidate, US House rep). The ten ways are as follows:

Start A Movement – Mentions the women’s suffragist movement, environmental issues (think Greta Thunberg) among others
Be The Change Where You Live – Look at what you can do in your neighborhood, your town or city
Be Prepared To Walk A Lonely Road – Being out in front of an issue can bring criticism, but accept that you might need to stand out from the crowd before you can find a way to convince others to stand beside you
Slow Down – Take time to stop, look and breathe
Bounce Back – After a setback, we need to be able to dust ourselves off and get back in the mix
Love Thy Neighbor – Work to lift people up, not tear people down
Get Out Of Your Silo – Take in other points of view and stay open to revisiting your own points of view
Put Yourself In Someone Else’s Shoes – Understand other people’s struggles
Spend Time Examining Your Eternal Destiny – Think about the footprints you are leaving behind
Know That You Are Made Special – Live each day in a way that lets your individuality shine through

I thought this was an uplifting book, if short on specifics, worth a read if you are thinking about activism.

Are we creating great things?

In 2017, I wrote a post with the title “We have great tools to create – are we creating great things?”. It was in reference to a Doc Searls liveblog post on a podcasting conference at Columbia University. My observation was that there are a lot of low-quality podcasts, but as time goes on, better ones will appear.

Since then, the availability and quality of tools has increased (blogging, podcasting, video, etc.). Ken Smith recently commented on the tools aspect by linking to a video by actor Jason Alexander on acting/screenwriting – that the tools needed for creating videos are available to everyone (Alexander finishes by saying “You can create a movie on your phone…”). Ken mentions that the same is true for active citizenship as well. I will follow up on this in a minute.

In a recent post, I listed the tools I needed to create a podcast in the car, and have other posts on how to add podcast cover art to a WordPress-hosted podcast, and simple instructions for using WordPress as a podcast hosting tool. The tools available for blogging are always increasing, as is the same for video production. So, since we have the tools part covered, are there some great things out there? Are there more great things that need to be created?

Two excellent instances of group efforts in a topic are the Election Law Blog and the Americans of Conscience Checklist. The first is a group blog following current events in election law and the politics of election law. The second is a group creating lists of bite-sized actions that people can take to promote progressive causes. Both sites use WordPress as their main platform.

Jeffrey Issac’s Democracy in Dark Times blog does an excellent job of addressing issues relating to Donald Trump. Recently, he has been covering the student protests at his university, Indiana University, and calling out bad behavior by the university administration and Indiana elected officials.

I have made efforts to document events such as the protests in Portland, Oregon in 2020, the Georgia Trump election interference trial, a podcast about the “tools for thought” space, a site documenting news on the “return to office” efforts in the American workforce, and a “link zettlekasten” capturing news on elections.

Dave Winer has called for “determination” in using tools and resources to pick up the slack for lack of coverage by the New York Times and other outlets. Ken Smith has called to start “the work of a generation” (I am assuming this is work to try to ensure that our democratic system continues). I recorded a podcast addressing these calls (punchline: take some action, do something, don’t just call for resistance/protest). I think that this quote from a more recent post of mine is a good way to wrap this up:

… I recently listened to a Radio Open Source podcast episode focusing on the life of Hannah Arendt, who lived under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in the 20th century. One line of her writing stood out to me: “We are free to change the world and start something new in it.”. I think that every podcast is a chance to change the world, and anyone is free to create one and send it out into the world.
https://andysylvester.com/2024/04/19/the-joy-of-podcasting/

As Ken Smith quoted Pete Buttigieg:

“Don’t wait. Start now.“
http://oldschool.scripting.com/ksmith3123@gmail.com/2024/04/20/123857.html#a124210

Checking on past electoral results in your precinct

In my previous post, I was able to locate the precinct number in my county in Oregon where I vote. My next exploration was to see the results for the 2022 and 2020 elections for races that I voted on. There is a site called OpenElections which works to collect raw data from elections across the United States. This data is stored on Github. The data is organized by state, so I was quickly able to find the folder/repo with results for Oregon. Next, I found the 2022 general election results and the 2020 general election results (both results were saved as CSV files). Here were the results for my precinct for both of those years for the major (Dem/Rep) candidates:

2022

State House Rep: Tracy Cramer (Rep) 523, Anthony Medina (Dem) 542
State Senate: Richard Walsh (Dem) 533, Kim Thatcher (Rep) 528
US House Rep: Andrea Salinas (Dem) 517, Mike Erickson (Rep) 511
US Senate: Jo Rae Perkins (Rep) 466, Ron Wyden (Dem) 564
Governor: Tina Kotek (Dem) 486, Betsy Johnson (Ind) 71, Christine Drazan (Rep) 508

2020

State House Rep: Teresa Alonso Leon (Dem) 660, Anna Kasachev (Rep) 525
State Senate: Not up for re-election
US House Rep: Amy Ryan Courser (Rep) 508, Kurt Schrader (Dem) 649
US Senate: Jo Rae Perkins (Rep) 503, Jeff Merkley (Dem) 669
US President: Donald Trump (Rep) 507, Joe Biden (Dem) 678

Overall, this precinct is pretty evenly split between Democratic and Republican voters, even though statewide Democrats hold majorities in the Oregon House and Senate, and all 5 statewide offices. In my opinion, based on the results of the 2022 governor’s race (Tina Kotek beat Christine Drazan by 67,000 votes out of 1,935,852 votes cast), Oregon is becoming more of a “purple” state than remaining a “blue” state.

Who represents you? (2024 edition)

Back in 2022, I wrote a post about looking for my electoral precinct and who represents me in Oregon. The original tool for “finding your legislator” has now moved to this URL. It allows the user to type in their address, then the tool displays the the Oregon House and Senate districts that cover this address. The other piece of information to find out is my voting precinct. Since Oregon votes by mail only, there are no physical precinct voting locations that could help guide this. I checked my voter registration online, but the web app did not display my voting precinct within my county (grrr!). I then checked the Marion County website and found a link to a GIS map of voting districts. I then scrolled around until I could see my address, and found the precinct via color coding (mine is 835). The state of Oregon also provides a dataset of all precincts in Oregon (downloaded the spreadsheet to take a look). My next post will try to use some of this information to look at past election results.

I have been following the Gaza student protests across the US, starting at Columbia University (AP timeline, FOX5NY TV timeline). As a graduate of the University of Texas, I have been saddened to see its students being harrassed and intimidated by local and state police, with the blessing of UT president Jay Hartzell and Texas governor Greg Abbott. More often than not, law enforcement is being used to stifle legitimate nonviolent protests. More coverage: Texas Monthly magazine, Texas Tribune, Daily Texan.

Book report: A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump

This book was published in the spring of 2020 and written by David Plouffe, campaign manager for Barack Obama, with the intent of helping to give ideas to individuals about what they could do to help beat Donald Trump in the 2020 election. The actual suggestions are pretty succinct, most of the book is anecdotes and examples from the Obama campaigns and the Hillary Clinton campaign. The following is a chapter by chapter summary.

Offense/Defense: Paint the contrast between Trump and the Democratic nominee focus on “gettable votes” (offense), combat lies, attacks and smears using social media (defense)

Create: Your video/song/paper/sign can help convince others, organize your own events, use your social media to get the word out

Hosting: Organize house parties, have events for volunteers

Battlegrounds: Go help in the battleground states if you possibly can, work phone banks, write letters

Money: Give money, let others know you gave money (to encourage/motivate them), hold fundraising events

The Campaign: Get out and work as a volunteer, and campaigns need to support their volunteers

Voting: Take people to the pools, support early voting, make sure everyone you know votes

Election Night: Be with friends

Okay people – now get to work!

Once again, it is up to us

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the presidential immunity appeal from Donald Trump this week (coverage from Election Law Blog, Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse, CNN takeaways, CNN live coverage, and The Bulwark). The outcome is uncertain, but appears to be headed for delaying the January 6th trial past the 2024 election. In 2022, I wrote a post on the theme of “it is up to us”, and this post can be considered a refrain. Several weeks ago, I wrote that our hopes for the courts to stop Donald Trump have been dashed. It is time for us to stand up to fight for our country. I just got a copy of “A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump” from the library today, looking to take some action soon. It is time to get started.

Can worker’s cooperatives be successful?

Hamilton Nolan/How Things Work: Interview with Erik Forman, labor activist, and creator of The Drivers Cooperative (via Tracy Durnell). Three points I found interesting were Erik’s comments about (1) businesses could be capitalized (started) for $200K-$300K in loans, (2) “… could we just start companies that are owned by workers from the start, and are therefore run by workers in their own interests, and return wealth to the community instead of extracting it?”, and (3) “The main barrier is access to capital. We can build businesses that generate profit, but because the business is worker-owned, it doesn’t fit in the normative forms that venture capital prefers, and there really isn’t a large supply of risk capital for initiatives that serve a social purpose. It’s kind of the entire problem of capitalism, right? Workers don’t have capital. Definitionally. Otherwise we would not be workers.”. I enjoyed the article, and thought about myself as a career worker. I think that most people want a job, not a business, that starting and running a business is too much work, they would rather be paid for their labor and not deal with the other aspects of business ownership. For people working in the tech industry (computers, aviation, whatever tech you want to look at), it seems to me that there may be opportunities at the low end (small businesses), but few examples of cooperative business with a large number of employees. Certainly something to think about….

Looking into protest songs

I have been looking into what protest songs/chants have been used in the past five to ten years. Researcher Noriko Manabe from Indiana University has a recent journal article and a set of posts on Medium collecting songs and chants from US protests since 2017:

Journal of Music and Politics: Chants of the Resistance: Flow, Memory, and Inclusivity

Medium: Collection of posts on chants and songs since 2017

Also, I found these links:

National Women’s History Museum: Brief overview of protest songs

The Commons Social Change Library: Listen and Watch to 40 years of Australian Blockading Songs