The real "us against them": We must all come together to face economic predators

Once native people lived all across this land—18 million by many estimates. They had thriving towns, farms, cities, nations with laws and vast lands populated by ancient tribes.

The first Europeans to come may have been among the privileged and well-connected, sent by monarchs to claim land for their overlords. But more followed and these were mostly the poor--the workers, the landless, the desperate, those set outside the law. They worked on indenture or were beholden to company towns. And things went even worse for the native people, who died by genocide and disease. Then the overlords brought African people to this land, already in chains.

It is hard to sort out who was more victim and how many times. Often the greatest injustices were those perpetrated by some who were already victims themselves. When poor landless whites faced the choice between starvation labor in eastern factories or a desperate trek to occupy land where native people still lived, they were already caught in a trap. If they wanted a hope of living free at least for a few generations, the choice was to send the men on ahead to scout a piece of land, mark the corners and then travel back east to register their claim. Then they moved their families west in a migration so hard and dangerous that only sheer desperation could spur them to it. And the people already on the land often fought back.

Creative commons image of light snow over fall leaves in front of a rundown neighborhood view by James jordan via flickr.com

There were exceptions, of course. There were a few who crossed the cultural divide and joined forces—white and native together. And these often were the strongest of them, but they were rarely allowed anything but the margins of society. They were, after all, the greatest threat to the rulers of industry and commerce--people of the lower classes, joined across divides.

Today, most of the people who support Trump’s overtly racist regime are poor and marginalized themselves. The administration is seeking a second ethnic cleansing of our country, and those they call to do the dirty work (the deputized paramilitaries called “federal agents”) are those only somewhat less desperate--the people who were recently forced from steady middle-class jobs by the machinations of technology giants and international finance. They were never given much beyond a factory-work education, and all that talk of retraining them for new technologies was never serious. Instead, they’ll be used, at least temporarily, as masked agents to rip families apart, brutalize those with the “wrong” skin color, tear people from their homes and deport people to countries they have often never lived in at all.

I live in a scrappy, working-class neighborhood in a red town in a deep red county. There are known “meth houses” on nearly every block. But interspersed with them, side by side, there are the homes of struggling families, people who work full-time at Walmart and can’t afford food, people who work at the trailer plant or on the railroad or in timber. A few work for the schools or as social workers. Some are retired.

The better houses here are the ones with patchy, partly green lawns and a few flowers. The homes are low and weathered, but the people who are still trying have painted a bit of trim semi-recently or fixed a broken step. There are no easy places here—only the homes of those who have given up and of those who are still fighting for another day of survival.

And most of them support the regime of ethnic cleansing. They want someone to blame for their struggle because it’s obvious to everyone that it should not be this hard, that working full-time has to be enough to survive. There must, then, be someone stealing away our hopes.

Their myriad screens have an answer. It’s the foreigners, the immigrants, the furtive brown faces at windows in some of the rental homes on the edges of town, in the agricultural camps along back roads in the summer, in the back lots of construction-supply stores. “They are the problem.” They are “criminals” or just vaguely “illegal” to begin with. And most of my neighbors believe it.

I try to tell them the facts, the history, the way it’s always been. These quiet neighbors of ours are not illegal. Many are not even immigrants. Some have lived here since before white people came. Others have lived here for 30 years or for a few generations. Many have no other home. But most importantly, they are like us, just struggling to survive. They work for less, take less, exist on less even than we do. And it’s all because of the same thing—the tyrants of industry and commerce, slightly changed in their methods from 200 or 400 years past, but essentially the same, and in an eerie number of cases, they have the same family names, passed down by wealth and privilege.

When, on occasion, my neighbors allow me to explain this, their eyes drift across the tracks, to the nicer houses across town, the tall windows and gabled rooves, the pretty yards with plentiful water and old trees. These, they nod, are the rich. But it’s hard for them to believe that these people are the enemy. They are the doctors who helped their old parents, the lawyers who settled their divorce, the professors who taught the lucky few who went to college and the people who work in the offices. They know them far more than they know those furtive shifters, and so they return to their original belief quickly enough.

I cross the tracks nearly every day, to go to the little health-food shop, the farmers’ market, the bank, the doctor’s office or some other errand. Most of my neighbors drive over the tracks in battered sedans and belching pick-ups. I walk, the gray wind whipping my coat around my knees, because I cannot drive and have no vehicle. And nearly every day, a train stops on the tracks, carrying our timber off to distant cities, carrying away the trailers from the plant, carrying back crates and crates of things sold to us down at Walmart and the other big stores, and more than anything carrying all the goods of America from city to city, merely passing through our mountains. The trains block the road for a good 30 minutes and I stand in the icy wind of winter or the scorching heat of summer.

And when I can wait no longer or when I must get to a doctor’s appointment if I don’t want to lose my place in a waiting game of many months, I call a friend to give me a ride. He drives a red 4Runner and he lives in one of those bigger, nicer houses on the other side of the tracks. He can drive around the blocked railroad on the larger roads to get me. He’s a kindly older man, a friend of my mother’s, who has worked as an insurance appraiser all his life. Because of that, he can be certain that he has earned all he has--his comfortable house in the better part of town with a large yard and in-ground swimming pool and two vehicles in a two-car garage. He worked for what he has, and he looks at the broken-down houses of my neighborhood with benevolent disdain.

“They just need to work a little harder. They’ll see. It’s about effort.”

He too supports the ethnic cleansing, the tyrannical president and the billionaire rulers. “The rich pay the vast majority of taxes,” he tells me on our short drive.

He’s not wrong as far as the taxes go. The top 10 percent of income-earners in the US pay 70 percent of federal taxes. The top 50 percent of earners pay a whopping 97 percent of income taxes. That means half the country pays just three percent of the taxes.

“The whiners just think money grows on trees.” He looks out at the shabby gray houses and the barren streets.

But there he’s wrong. To be at the 50 percent mark of American incomes, one has to earn about $38,000 per year. That’s in a country where economists estimate a family needs at least $100,000 per year to obtain basic necessities, including housing and health security. Those in the lower 50 percent of incomes aren’t paying a lot in taxes because they are struggling just to survive.

But his underlying assumption--that those my neighbors see as wealthy are also struggling--is correct. People at the “top 10 percent” mark of incomes are not the super wealthy. They are upper-middle class with incomes over $250,000 per year. Certainly, that’s comfortable, but it isn’t outrageous or a guarantee that hardship will never strike again. And in fact, they are losing ground in this economy along with everyone else.

We are used to hearing economists complain that the average employee’s inflation-adjusted salary in the US has stagnated over the last 50 years, while the incomes of the wealthiest 1 percent have ballooned (by more than 400 percent, in fact). But what is less often said is that even the upper-middle class has lost ground in terms of their share of wealth over the past half century.

One major measure of the health and balance of an economy is the percentage of wealth owned by various economic classes. As astronomical incomes have flowed to the top 1 percent over the past few decades, the share of all the things of economic value in the US (savings, property, stocks, etc.) owned by the top 1 percent has increased from about 22 percent of US wealth in the late 1980’s to 31 percent today.

Given how much the poor and middle class have suffered in recent years, one might assume this is mainly because the very richest are exploiting those classes to gain wealth. But while that contributes, most of their gain came on the backs of what is called “the next 9,” the upper middle class people who are in the top 10 percent, but below the top 1 percent. That group owned 37 percent of US wealth in 1989 and now owns about 33 percent.

At the same time the cost of a college education is 7 times (700 percent) higher than it was 50 years ago, and the cost of a medium home is 20 times (2,000 percent) higher. These costs and most other real costs of living for middle and upper-middle-class families far outstrip the official “inflation rate” which is mainly based on the cost of minor consumer goods.

Although my neighbors on the other side of the tracks may think of the comfortable houses in my friend’s neighborhood as “the rich,” we are all actually in the same “not the top 1 percent” category. My friend is correct that he and his cohort pay tax rates between 26 and 37 percent. What he doesn’t realize is that the wealthiest individuals use a variety of tax loopholes (unrealized capital gains, long-term capital gains, off-shore accounts and things like the “buy, borrow, die” strategy) to avoid paying taxes. The very wealthiest people in our society pay as little as 3.4 percent of their incomes in taxes. Many of the top corporations pay nothing at all and instead receive massive government subsidies.

There is a gigantic monstrosity of an elephant in our national living room that very few of us are acknowledging. We are constantly reminded about the deep divide between red and blue, liberal and conservative, black and white, old and young, even men and women or some other dividing line. All the while, the real divide is 99 percent of the population versus a handful of economic predators.

While it’s possible that not everyone who has ever been in the top 1 percent is an economic predator--using unethical business practices, tax gimmicks, legalized bribery and massive disinformation campaigns to abuse, disenfranchise and exploit the rest of the nation--many have and they continue to.

My struggling, impoverished, Trump-voting neighbors should not be my enemies. Immigrants as well as well-rooted Americans of all colors and speaking various languages have done us no harm and should be natural allies. Even my friend from across the tracks and his more comfortable neighbors have more in common with us than they do with the predators that exploit and divide us.

If we could just realize this and stand firmly against economic exploitation and the legalized bribery that controls our political system, we would all benefit. There is no zero-sum game among us. We all gain if we take down the predators. We all lose if we don’t.

Why aren't the kids protesting fascism?

Despite the parched season of early fall, my university campus is a peaceful landscape of intersecting concrete paths, heavily watered lawns, and juicy deciduous trees nearly hiding the facades of randomly designed college buildings—ranging from the traditional admin building that’s nearly a hundred years old to the self-consciously-modern art building. Above all this rise yellowish brown hills, the real world of drought and fire danger beyond the lush campus.

I walk at the end of a line of people holding signs. Each one bears the sub-title “Signs of Fascism” and a single symptom of the national disease—banned books, detention camps, intimidation of journalists, firing truth tellers, coerced loyalty, military deployed against the people, etc. Mine says “Government controlled by billionaires.” I’m last, not by plan but because I had to stop to talk to the campus security chief.

But I think my sign belongs either first or last. It’s the root, after all. Not just a sign but the ultimate cause, the reason that goes beyond any particular party or tyrant or social ill of the moment. I became aware of how our system is rigged to legalize bribery and hand the keys to the nation to the top one or two percent of wealth as a freshman undergraduate.

That was more than 30 years ago. I’ve been crying it from the rooftops in one way or another ever since. Not that it’s done any good.

Students wander past us, drifting between classes, mostly alone walking while looking at their phones, occasionally in small groups of two or three, talking loudly about “the game” or where to meet tonight. Mostly they won’t even look at our signs. Some peer cautiously, and then catching the drift, their eyes jerk down and away as if burned.

Maybe if they look away, the whole thing will disappear.

A few of us try to hand out fliers. I wave them at students who veer near me and speak to them only if I sense a bit of openness in their body language, a pause in their stride, a face turned toward me. A few take a leaflet and mutter, “Thank you.” Head down, hurrying on.

As we are heading back to the secluded corner where we started, I notice a somewhat larger group off to the side—four students together. They all seem to be looking vaguely toward us and even I can see that only one of them is white. The other three are various shades of brown. I don’t want to be pushy, especially not these days. They say the international students (most of the people of color in town are international students) are terrified, afraid to leave the campus even to get groceries. They might somewhat support our cause of crying out against the destruction of our democracy, but they have to protect themselves and being associated with us is unlikely to help.

But as our line passes near them, these four are still turned toward us, tentative in their stances, but not turning away. So, I take a few bold steps out of line. “Want a flier?”

The black guy, the largest of the group, takes one step toward me and reaches out a hand. “Thanks!”

I ensure he gets several to share as he makes a quick grab, and I’m encouraged by the genuine appreciation in his voice.

I’m a student again after all these years, but I’m clearly not like them. I’m not their age and I might as well have not been like them even when I was. I remember being a kid on a campus like this in my early twenties. No one wanted to hear it when I talked about the dangers to democracy, the drive toward militarism, Christian nationalism, the rhetoric of the far right against the poor, the disabled, minorities and immigrants, and so forth. It’s been the same all these decades. So, it’s no wonder young people are discouraged and checked out.

Still, I do have a sixteen-year-old daughter, a girl enjoying high school friends and obsessed with clothes and makeup. She’s rarely interested in politics of any kind and I don’t push her. She knows I go out to protest, and the best of my relationship with her dad consists of animated diatribes on the political situation on both sides of the north Atlantic. “Trump’s at it again! Unbelievable.” “Putin’s taken another step closer to World War Three.”

But today, she wants to talk while she puts her makeup on and to tell me about what she’s learned on the internet. It’s all about Charlie Kirk and “the greatest tragedy in history.” I nod along and make sympathetic noises as she describes his three-year-old daughter rushing toward the stage to get to her daddy when Kirk was shot. It’s a terrible image. No wonder my daughter is deeply affected.

She tells me how Kirk’s wife, Erika Kirk, “should be a saint because she forgives the bad people who killed him, even though they hate America and hate God.” I am starting to get concerned. Wait a minute! This is Erika Kirk, who is taking over the white supremacist TurningPointUSA organization. And it’s my brown, foreign born daughter saying it.

I take a breath and remember to ask questions, to help her think things through rather than forcing “facts” on her. “Are you sure. How do you know that’s true?” I ask.

“It is true. Trump even said that he would never forgive his enemies, that he hates people who are against him and wants them dead. He said he’s not as good and pure as Erika. That’s how you know it’s true.”

This little speech is more than my daughter has ever said about politics. Ever. And I’m now deeply concerned. She’s basing her idea of what is “true” on the fact that Trump says he doesn’t forgive people but Erika does.

I continue to try to talk it through with her. The fact that Trump hates his enemies proves nothing about Erika Kirk. I talk to my daughter about the racist ideology Charlie Kirk espoused and the actions of Turning Point members, attacking people like her—for not being white and for being born in another country. I send her videos of Kirk’s racist statements about women of color lacking the “brain processing power” to be successful in professional careers or academics, which he said proved they were taking opportunities “from a white person.” I send her videos showing how Trump directly lies and contradicts himself.

She says, none of that really matters. The only thing she needs to know is that “Charlie Kirk was a man of God and a good person.” I don’t argue with her on that. I don’t know Charlie Kirk’s relationship with God and I’m not in the business of saying who’s a good person or not. I’m only trying to help my kid differentiate reality from illusion.

She never watches the videos I send. She won’t even look. A few days later, I look up articles about the assassination. It turns out Charlie Kirk’s three-year-old, his other child and his wife were not present when he was shot. The little girl did not run to him after the single shot was fired. People started saying it after watching a video of the child running to him on a different stage, indoors, at a completely different event.

But my daughter has been brainwashed by the emotional, illusory image of that child running to him in the outdoor crowd amid a hail of bullets.

And this I realize is not just happening to my teenager. This is what is happening to young people across the whole country, on our local college campus and around the world. Their entire understanding of the world is being formed by influencer videos, Trump speeches and counter-factual social media memes.

There are exceptions of course. Social media will send you down whichever rabbit hole you happen to show interest in. There are healthier paths that some stumble upon. There are even extreme left-wing delusions out there, though the right-wing manipulation complex is vastly larger and more pushy online.

But this does explain to me why the majority of those protesting the rise of fascism in the United States are people over forty, many actually over sixty. We aren’t really any better at differentiating fact from fantasy or navigating the online world. But maybe we are online less in general and we take our information from established media and long-trusted sources, which—while not perfect—are less likely to support completely fabricated “alternative facts.”

More importantly, our first impressions of the world were not formed in this virtual reality saturated with propaganda. The fact that today’s young people are steeped in that easily manipulated online world is one of the most terrifying things I’ve seen in the past year. And that, as you know, is a high bar.

10 tips on fighting fascism in rural areas and small towns

Image of people holding signs including “wake up and smell the fascism” - photo by arie farnam

“Democracy is under attack!”

“What do we do?”

“Stand up! Fight back!”

The words ricochet across a key intersection in our small town, in the streets I remember from childhood.

I probably know half the people clustered on the four corners and lining the main street to the center of town. Now they’re carrying signs and flags, yelling about fascism and detention camps. Their voices have a sharp, exhausted edge. This isn’t the first protest against the authoritarian power grab. It’s just about the tenth major rally to be held locally.

I’ve been in huge demonstrations in distant cities before, but I never imagined we’d have to do it here. Or that we could. This is a deep red county. Seventy-six percent of the county voted for Donald Trump (at least out of those who voted). This isn’t the kind of place you expect radical progressive protests.

But I’ve always known--better than most analysts in the cities--that the remainder of the people in these rural places are strikingly progressive. The divide between the staunch conservative rural base of the GOP and our progressive community of environmentalists, old and new hippies, rural academics, public workers and members of minority groups is sharp and steep.

When the threat of fascism became explicit, our rural towns rose with respectable numbers. In the spring we had as many as 500 at some of our protests, in a town of 12,000. But now we can barely raise 150, even on a holiday.

Some of the other organizers murmur with worry. What is it we’re doing wrong?

Recently, we sent out a survey to people who had signed up to learn about future protests, trying to gauge what the community wants. One comment read, “Get more organizers with good ideas!”

We got a good laugh out of that one at one of the planning meetings. But it was laughter tinged with anxiety.

Yes, we have dozens of volunteers and we love each one of them. Every small thing people do for this effort to defend democracy is essential. Some handout fliers, some do safety patrol at protests, some set up the sound system, even those who can’t leave their homes call new volunteers or promote events on social media.

But… it’s organizers we need--people who will commit to be there, to do it long enough to hold things together, to communicate flexibly and rapidly, to figure out what needs to be done and to let the volunteers know what, where and how to do it.

Yes, “more organizers with good ideas” indeed.

We have a handful, some of the best organizers I’ve ever worked with. And in such a small town, that’s amazing. But we are stretched to our limits across multiple areas of need and none of us was bored and looking for something to do when all this started. We have hectic, busy lives, jobs, school, kids or even just several other organizations we’ve committed to.

We chuckle at comments that appear to assume we are just casually slapping something together in our “spare time,” or that organizing isn’t even a real “task” like handing out leaflets, that we’re just people “who like to talk a lot.” We laugh because what else can we do?

If you haven’t done community organizing, it is impossible to imagine how much time and energy it takes to organize unpaid volunteers to put on the simplest event. Someone has to find the people, determine what time and place works for the most people (a process that almost always entails several days of verbal back and forth), figure out what materials are needed, find out where to get them or who has them, ask people to bring them or figure out how to bring the materials one’s self, confirm with volunteers closer to the event, find replacements for the inevitable 1 in 4 volunteers who drops out or gets sick, troubleshoot technical issues, notify and negotiate with relevant authorities, communicate to participants, publicize, write social media posts and press releases (or find someone reliable to do it), and on and on and on.

And that is the most basic version possible. That’s a full-time job.

The other comment we get sometimes goes like this: “You guys are just making this unnecessarily complicated. We don’t need organizing. Just tell people when to come to a protest.”

And there are towns where that’s all that happens. Maybe there’s a group or an individual with enough social clout that they can just announce something within their network and all the people who want to know find out. But even that most basic version is more complicated than the people saying this think.

Tell people WHEN to come? When? How does one know what works for the community or when major national events are happening? Both take paying attention as well as talking to a lot of people. Not to mention that you still have to tell people WHERE to come and it’s rarely a simple choice.

But the most difficult part of that statement is “tell.” How do you “tell” people in a town of 12,000 with no independent media?

Social media? Ha! I have thousands of followers and only 17 people see my posts. Facebook makes sure of that. I’m supposed to “promote” the post by paying into their profits. That’s the point. Most people might be on social media for fun, but Meta sure isn’t. They intentionally make certain that those who need and want to get information like this will not get it, unless you either pay or have an extraordinarily well-coordinated effort.

And then there’s the fact that most of us are only on a couple social media platforms. And gaining enough followers to have a chance to “tell them” in one’s local town--on just one platform--requires a couple hours work per day. We have volunteers who do this. They work hard. The “just tell them” folks have no idea.

Then there is the fact that a large proportion of the population here doesn’t do social media at all. So, we have a small troupe of volunteers who put up posters. We have an organizer who tries to get our events listed on various community calendars. And that’s just the “tell them” part of the equation.

There is no way around it. Holding a protest worth its salt is hard.

And if you can get organized enough to have people meet at the same time and the same place, there are a whole host of issues ready to bite you in the butt. The people who say we’re “too organized” are referring to the fact that we have a donated sound system and an information table and safety volunteers and volunteers who collect the email addresses of those who want to know when the next protest will be. And you could get away with not having some of that, if you just wanted to do it once and have done with it.

But what is the point of protesting if you’re just going to do it once and go home? Are you just out there to yell and let off steam? (OK, fair. Maybe some are. And that’s valid too, in a way.)

But that was not hyperbole when I mentioned “fascism.” This isn’t the post to list all the reasons why we need to stand up to this regime—detention camps, mass deportations, criminalization of political opposition, book banning, silencing of independent media, intimidation of journalists, economic policies designed to wipe out the middle class while padding the pockets of the rich, rounding up and punishing the homeless, coverups of massive corruption and sexual abuse at the very highest levels, threats, forced loyalty oaths, and that’s barely getting started.

This isn’t a post on WHY we should protest, because if you’re reading it, I’m assuming you know that. It’s about HOW. About strategy and tactics and group dynamics.

If you agree that we’re facing an authoritarian erosion of democracy. If you’re even slightly ready to call it “fascism,” it is worth doing this right. One does not fight fascism by just telling people to come to a little protest and then going home. Or one better not. Because at best you’ll be ignored.

So, here are ten basics that everyone involved in protests—both participants and organizers--should know about grassroots, resistance-style organizing:

1.     Everyone is overstressed and overwhelmed. There are no “organizers with good ideas” except you and the person who got you involved and their friends and your friends. That’s it. We’re it. Too many people fall into thinking that your local organizers aren’t perfect, so it isn’t worth doing much until “the real organizers” show up. You know where that comes from? Accusations that progressive activists are paid actors. That’s the propaganda of the far-right creeping into our consciousness. No one is being paid. We’re all we’ve got.

2.     And yet, experience does help. There are people who have been organizing and resisting longer than others. Some have amassed some serious skills and strategy along the way. But the only way to really tell who has experience is to observe people working. How do they handle crisis? Do they know the steps to organizing an event? Can they handle a meeting with an agenda and still listen to the feeling of the moment? Pay attention to the advice of those who have been at this for a while. Listen to and value elders, even if they aren’t the fastest or the most visible at protests.

3.     As I showed above, what every group needs most are organizers. But organizers aren’t directors or authoritarians. Coordinators often get less personal say in how things go, not more. It’s a role that requires above all commitment. You don’t have to be there every day all day, but to be an effective organizer, you’ve got to be around most weeks and have at least a couple of days a week with some flexible time. People organize while working, parenting and handling full-time grad-school loads all the time. Most effective organizers aren’t people with “time on their hands,” likely because people with the capabilities to be an organizer aren’t capable of doing a lot of sitting around. That said, you don’t have to organize a big thing. Start with organizing a little thing—just the poster troupe or just the two-person team that calls back new volunteer recruits to get them onboarded or just the Instagram posting team. But if at all possible, don’t just volunteer. Organize.

4.     If you can’t organize, for whatever reason, volunteer. Be aware that finding an effective volunteer task for you is a serious challenge, even though there are five thousand things to do. It’s often harder to narrow down one particular activity, show you how to do it, let you know when to do it, make sure you have the materials to do it than it is to just do it. If possible, volunteer for what you’re already good at. If you are a writer, offer to write or edit communications for the organizers. If you like to hang out online, get on the social media team. If you like to hang out on the street, run or ride a bike, get on the postering team.

5.     Just about everyone who wants to protest wants protests to be big, with lots of people. The way you get lots of people is by having lots of active volunteers and multiple organizers. Other factors can play a role, like weather and the political climate, but these things are the most important pre-conditions. If you feel like your local protests aren’t big enough, get involved.

6.     But don’t despair if the size of protests still fluctuates. We all know that some people can protest on weekdays and some can only protest on weekends. Those who protest on weekdays may actually be less available on weekends. Which day and what time you hold a protest will matter, and it’s a careful balancing act. Your local demographics, whether or not most of the interested people in your area are older or younger will matter. Is it a college town or a bedroom community or a suburb with young families? Similar demographic issues will determine whether summer, fall or spring are the best seasons for protest. Numbers may fall in the summer, because family schedules are disrupted and it’s too dang hot.

7.     But the biggest factor is actually political climate. Big, shocking events will spark more interest in protest from large groups of people. It was relatively easy to raise large protest crowds in the early months of 2025. Now, exhaustion, resignation and despair are setting in for too many people. Does that mean we hang up our protest signs and just accept fascism? Hell no. Every single resistance movement in history has had to deal with similar pressures. It’s very rarely a sprint and almost always a marathon. A big part of being in the resistance is bringing other people back in, talking them through the despair, apathy and resignation, and sticking it out when too many have given up.

8.     Big protests will come again. Just wait. Well, actually, please don’t just wait. That’s a figure of speech. Get organized and get ready, because big crowds will come at moments of major crisis and shock. They will come when the stress is highest. And if organizers aren’t ready and the structures of resistance haven’t been built, those large protests will have to start over again from scratch. If, on the other hand, we’ve been organizing and building networks and working groups and a skilled volunteer base, the next time protests get bigger, they’ll have several times the impact and we’ll take a step up to more strategic action.

9.     The most important thing to build in the meantime are relationships within resistance networks. We build relationships by working together, learning one another’s strengths and weaknesses, and communicating well. Not everyone is going to do things the way you would. In fact, most won’t. Let people do their work the way they want or need to, as long as it gets done. Practice patience, tolerance and inclusion. We preach these values as progressives in our politics. They matter most in organizing. Stop and think very carefully before criticizing the work of others involved in the work of resistance. Are they truly doing something that’s going to harm or endanger someone? Or is it just not how you’d do it? Can you live with it and still do your part? When in doubt, don’t criticize. Remember how hard organizing is. Often there is no perfect decision an organizer can make, and they have to weigh your needs and wishes against the needs and wishes of other participants.

10.  But at the same time, of course, do keep aware and be watchful. If you’re involved with resistance work long enough, you will encounter those who are disrupting resistance work, either for attention or ego trips, or rarely, because they actually are working for the other side. As we develop relationships, we learn who we can trust on a deep level. I may know Suzy-Somebody is a committed organizer and wouldn’t give up my name under torture, but I may also know that she rarely comes to events on time and isn’t the best person to entrust with bringing the essential materials we all need to get started. Learn who you can trust and differentiate between trust of good intentions and awareness of strengths and weaknesses.

That’s just ten of the most crucial tips for community organizing for resistance. I’m doing the work, so I’m particularly overwhelmed this full moon. I apologize for any typos and wish you all strength and good luck.

“Unite to stop the fascist coup!”

“If not now when?”

“If not us, who?”

An expat and a refugee: The fellowship of dissent, exile and the defense of distant homelands

I first met Ahmad in March 2003 on a narrow street shining with rainwater in the deceptively unassuming castle district of Prague a few blocks from Saddam’s embassy.

He was wrapped in a gray raincoat and almost shockingly diminutive. I’d been told I was meeting the head of a local Iraqi dissident organization, and I expected someone a little more substantial. When he turned toward me, his face was one of those that stays handsome decades beyond youth, thin and well-angled, with wrinkles that enhance rather than detract. But I instantly felt his fear.

Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq, and a US invasion for the purpose of “regime change” was clearly imminent. Since Ahmad was willing to help antiwar Americans, I’d also kind of assumed he felt completely safe from Saddam’s regime here in Central Europe. It was another preconception I got wrong.

“I’ve lived here for 20 years, and I’ve never been this close to that embassy.” Ahmad’s first words to me were in flawless Czech with a slight Arabic accent that also enhanced rather than detracted from his words.

I instantly recalibrated my approach. This would take tact and empathy. Not that I’d been planning on not being empathetic. But I’d been expecting to get right into the plan and the politics. Ahmad plunged into the personal and the stuff I would have been afraid to bring up across the cultural divide.

Image of a prague street at night, cobblestones underfoot and ancient stone arches above a small group of people walking through the light from an open doorway - Creative commons image by david seibold of flickr.com

He’d been a young anti-Saddam resistance fighter back in the 1980s at a time when the US was backing Saddam’s regime. He wasn’t Muslim, he pointed out, but rather part of a small Aramaic minority. He’d barely survived when the resistance was pulverized and sent scattering across heavily armed borders. He’d lain in a ditch just a few feet from guys with machine guns who knew he was out there and who would get a bounty if they killed him. They just didn’t happen to look down, so he lived.

Eventually, he’d made it to Turkey and was given the choice of several Soviet-bloc countries where he could get asylum and start his life over--alone, without family or anything more than his technical school education. He had to go to the Soviet bloc because an enemy of Saddam was, at the time, an enemy of the United States.

He told me he chose Czechoslovakia because his resistance cell used to meet in a brewery started by a Czech expat who lived in Iraq for a while. That was all he had to go on. The Czechs have good beer.

Now, it was 2003, the Soviet Union had fallen, Czechoslovakia was no more, the Czechs were in NATO and the United States had changed their tune about Saddam. I could tell Ahmad’s take on the politics of the situation was at best “complicated.” I didn’t blame him. On that first day, we could at least agree that his family was stuck in Iraq and facing the “shock and awe” tactics of the US military and that was not okay. We also both agreed that Saddam really sucked, but that a foreign invasion wasn’t going to help the local political situation.

With that rudimentary sense of common ground, we started an alliance between Czech, American and international antiwar groups and the Iraqi refugees in Prague. There were not many places where antiwar groups had that kind of friendship with the Iraqis. I don’t know if all the Iraqi dissident groups listened and gave the benefit of the doubt to antiwar westerners the way Ahmad did, but I know for a fact that a lot of ultra-focused antiwar activists didn’t dial right down to empathy. Maybe that was why we were different.

We held a protest in front of the Iraqi Embassy that day and then marched to the US Embassy to register our opposition to war plans. We were saying no to war and to authoritarianism by both the US and Iraqi regimes. We were making clear that opposition to the war did not mean support for Saddam’s tyranny.

Later, there were long evenings in Prague wine cellars, where I’d sit next to Ahmad while Czech activists yelled across the table and haggled about which political parties should be allowed to show their symbols at our antiwar rallies. They all wanted Ahmad there. He was a great symbol, but he rarely got a word in with his quiet voice and unassuming stature.

In one such cellar, he finally asked me. “Why are you doing this?”

We’d been over his reasons quite a few times. But I’d just assumed he understood mine. I must have gaped at him a moment too long because he clarified, “At the rally, you said you aren’t a pacifist.”

I had said that in a speech, explaining why Americans abroad were against the war. I’d said that even if one believes some wars are just, this one surely was not. We had plenty of evidence that the “weapons of mass destruction” thing was overblown propaganda. I’d gone on about civilian casualties and soldiers coming home in body bags. But apparently this hadn’t satisfied Ahmad’s curiosity.

Fair enough. Why did I care? I didn’t have any relatives in the military or in harm’s way? Why was I spending all of my spare time organizing protests against this war? He also knew I wasn’t in any political party, given my stance in the Czech inter-party debates. It was a fair question.

“I’m fighting for my country, for our democracy,” I told him. “The underlying issue is that this war and everything that’s happened since 9/11 has changed my country—America. It’s turned it into a hateful state, a surveillance state and largely a police state. Our democracy was never perfect, but this war and the Patriot Act and the rest of it is threatening what democracy we have. Sure, I care about people in Iraq. I don’t want your people to die. That’s just wrong, and I’d do what I can to stop it in any country. But yes, the reason I’m so committed, the reason I’m doing this every day, all day, sacrificing everything else to it, is because I’m afraid for my country too. We probably won’t lose militarily. But we may well lose our democracy and our freedom in this war.”

He listened but didn’t say whether he agreed with me.

Ahmad and I marched side by side at the head of a lot of antiwar demonstrations over the next two years. And he never questioned me again. There were times when we trusted each other with dangerous situations. We stood up for each other whenever there was need. If the Czech Communists came after me, he’d have my back and they would back down in the face of his moral authority. If the international activists criticized him for giving complex answers and being glad when Saddam fell a few months into the war, I defended his right to have complicated interests.

A few months into the occupation, Ahmad’s brother was driving his car in Iraq and was shot and killed by American soldiers. They later admitted it was a case of mistaken identity. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He was just one more civilian killed with impunity. Ahmad called me in tears. I couldn’t believe I was one of the first people he told about this.

I was shaken by my own complicated emotions. It was terrible. I felt guilty, complicit and as if he’d have every reason to hate me as an American. At the same time, I was honored that he called me, and I overwhelmingly admired his sense of fairness and forgiveness in the midst of grief.

We got through that moment. And eventually the protests died down though the endless war dragged on, and Americans and Iraqis continued to die in senseless, unnecessary and brutal ways. Once Ahmad brought his wife and daughter to my home for a potluck. But I could feel him pulling away. I worried that I reminded him of very painful things. I invited him to events, but he rarely accepted. Eventually, we drifted apart for 20 years.

The other day, a notification popped up on my Facebook, a request from an account with a non-Latin alphabet. I hit the “delete” button before I even had a chance to register it. Then, a second later, I realized the script hadn’t been Hindi or Chinese, like a lot of spam, but Arabic. And I can still sort of read Arabic, picking out letters like a first grader. So, I spent ten minutes struggling to undo my delete and get the notification back. Something, some intuition or the first letter, that tall straight Arabic letter A at the beginning of the name nagged at me.

And then, there he was, his full name and his photo--still the same ageless face, hardly seeming older at all, though by now he must be in his sixties. I sent him a friend request back and hoped against hope that he’d respond even though I’d deleted his request. We hadn’t had Facebook back in 2003-2005.

A few days later my phone rang with the weird electronic beeping that heralds an app call rather than a cell call. And there was Ahmad, my old friend. His voice was the same as always, comforting and kind with his lilting accent utterly unchanged. I’ve changed so much that I doubt he could conceive of my life now--half a world away in the US, going to graduate school and living by scavenging with two teenage kids and a broken marriage.

I was on deadline and didn’t really have the time, but we talked for over an hour anyway, sketching out twenty years for each other and mostly not talking politics.

I did ask him at one point, “Do you believe me now? This--what’s happening in the US—surely, you see it. This is what I was talking about. Some of us saw the warning signs back then. I’m still fighting the same war.”

He agreed, but seemed stumped for words of comfort, much the way I had been all those years ago when it was his family on the line.

Fighting fascism: Democracy doesn't come easy

The rallies and marches for democracy across the United States on April 5 were absolutely amazing!

Consider what it takes for 5.2 million people to gather in public places in crowds at the same time, and have almost no incidents of disruption. There were counterprotests and MAGA provocateurs specifically trying to incite trouble, both in big cities and in small towns like ours.

But in almost all cases the organizers of the rallies and marches calmed these situations, using hard-won, conflict-mitigation techniques that many of us have been practicing for decades. In just our little town in Eastern Oregon, we put together a team of eight people tasked with keeping our crowd of 300 people calm and avoiding engagement with counter protesters. We had another team of just four people discouraging people from crossing streets against the lights. This was hard work, but people in the crowd listened to us, and we pulled it off without any incidents or injuries.

Even here, there were MAGA supporters who turned out with open-carry guns and large trucks burning tires to try to intimidate or provoke conflict. One driver sped through a crowded intersection and put many people at risk, but because of our careful traffic group, no one was in the street when they weren’t supposed to be, so no one was hurt. Another time, a driver forced their way onto a crosswalk against the light, while people who had the right-of-way were crossing. Our people stayed calm.

If this happened in a tiny, rural town, I can only imagine what it was like in larger cities, like New York, where crowds filled major avenues for 20 blocks and the police were largely absent. It was all on volunteers to keep the cross streets flagged and avoid traffic accidents. This isn’t simple. It takes training, and it didn’t happen overnight. This took huge coordination and a ton of hard work by thousands of volunteers.

And we’re going to have to do it again and again. This is not even close to over. We’re standing on one of those knife-edges of history. The United States will go fully fascist or it won’t. Even if we are headed for an authoritarian period, will there be lively community resistance or an intimidated and lethargic populace too beaten down by economic blows to push back? Those are the questions of our times.

As a journalist, I got to witness pivotal moments like this for some other countries, seeing some countries get sucked into totalitarian regimes and seeing others gain health care, stronger democratic systems and better safeguards than we have in the US. I’ve known for decades that American democracy was under threat and that we are not immune to coups or authoritarian tactics.

anti-fascist protest - image by Arie farnam

The philosophy of American exceptionalism has been a problem when it comes to the US doing military things overseas that we wouldn’t want other countries doing. But it’s also a problem when Americans think we won’t ever have coups or wars or authoritarianism because we are the definition of democracy. We don’t have a special destiny to be the greatest democracy. We have to fight for our democracy like everybody else.

Europe and Canada do have better health care, stronger democratic systems, better safeguards and less inequality, largely because they have updated their laws to face modern threats to democracy, such as massive corporations, billionaires and AI engines that can manipulate what people see on the internet. If we want to have what they have, save our democracy, prevent full-blown fascism and take back our country, we must accept that we are not immune or destined to be a great democracy.

We are now in a historic struggle for democracy. It will necessarily have many facets. Economic boycotts that target companies complicit in authoritarianism and abuses of democracy and human rights are part of it. Organizing, running for office, showing up to talk to legislators, as well as calling and writing to politicians will play a role. There may come a time when we can muster a general strike, the type of thing that has brought an end to political coups in other countries.

But massive demonstrations are still the backbone of a pro-democracy resistance to authoritarianism. Public events like this “demonstrate” undeniably the numbers of people who are willing to make personal sacrifices and take risks to demand rights and democracy. They also form community bonds.

The mainstream media tends to downplay demonstrations as merely “a way to send a message” to leaders, as if they are nothing more than another form of calling your representatives. But public rallies and marches do more than send a message and the message they send is more than the one most people think they are sending. It isn’t just about telling politicians, “please do X, Y and Z and stop doing A, B and C.” Many people may say these things in the crowd and be quoted as such in newspapers. That’s good and important. But the greatest message being sent—the message that can’t be denied with lies and spin—is the level of commitment the population has to broad topics or issues.

Extinction Rebellion made a big deal out of a statistic about 3.5 percent of the population rising up and that concept has spread to other protest movements today. The idea is that historically there is no instance in which more than 3.5 percent of the population became highly activated against a regime or for a major change and change did NOT come. Some people have taken this to mean that a small minority of the population could force a change, even on a recalcitrant majority. But that isn’t really what the statistic means.

The 3.5 percent is an estimate of what percent of a population has to be willing to go out to public rallies and protests regularly, especially in the face of repression, especially if it is dangerous or costs them inconvenience or risk. It is not because that 3.5 percent can change things all on their own. It is what those gatherings “demonstrate” about the level of commitment and vehemence in the population.

The US population has overwhelmingly supported progressive policies for decades. A significant majority of Americans have supported gun control, universal health care, education, reproductive rights and all kinds of other progressive policies for as long as I can remember. Those policies have not become law because of the anti-majoritarian elements of the US electoral system (such as the electoral college, gerrymandering and "lobbying” aka legalized bribery) as well as because of the corporate sponsorship of the two major parties.

Despite majority opinion being significantly at odds with policy for decades, no shift has come for a wide variety of reasons—lack of awareness, media obfuscation, apathy and hopelessness, prominent among them.

In addition, the population may hold those majority opinions but many people may not hold them strongly enough. Political and social scientists look at what happens when popular commitment to something rises in a population. When people are willing to make sacrifices or take risks for a set of needs or beliefs, even less democratic systems (such as authoritarian coups) can be overcome. That’s what the 3.5 percent rule is about.

And we are well on our way to seeing 3.5 percent or more of the population become engaged. But it isn’t enough for that number of people to come to one demonstration. It will require a longer commitment. It will require sacrifice and risk, because that would mean that a large majority of the population agrees with those who are out demonstrating, not just sort of agrees, but agrees vehemently and that more and more people are willing to lay down personal stakes to make a change. That is when even a less-than-democratic regime will change, whether it wants to or not.

I talk to friends in democratic countries in Europe regularly online, and they are really worried about us. They often say I’d better get out while I can, as if the US is one of those destabilized countries I used to report from. But the reality is that Putin is threatening my second country, the Czech Republic. If Ukraine falls, Europe will be fighting for their lives as much as they did in World War II.

These are the times we are living in—wherever we are. We never wanted it to come to this, but we are facing an authoritarian epoch. There are people being disappeared off the streets in this country for no crime greater than participating in a peaceful protest. Legal immigrants or citizens can officially be rounded up without due process if anyone “suspects” they may be undocumented. There are states where some of my neighbors, who are citizens, have been declared illegal because of medical and gender differences. Our civil service is being gutted and replaced by racist loyalists.

We are facing the fight of our lives. 

Last week before the big protests, there was a swarm of messages on social media, claiming to be “urgent safety information” about the protests. But it was actually lists of people who shouldn’t protest because they’d be at risk. This included immigrants—who really are at increased risk and we should be getting out there doubly to stand up for them—but also saying people of color shouldn’t protest, children should never come to protests (even those that are family friendly and have kids’ activities), and that people with any kind of medical condition or older people shouldn’t come to protests.

It became clear that these posts actually weren’t trying to help. They were being spread by some progressive accounts but also by accounts that were usually pro-MAGA. They started to spread things about turning your phone completely off—not communicating with anyone. There are protest strategies for people involved in civil disobedience that entail not using the internet or not even bringing a phone during specific direct actions. But having crowds of people in the streets without a means of communication helps no one but those who want chaos and violence.

In the end, the protests were peaceful and calm across the nation, amazingly so given the numbers. We saw a microcosm of it in our small town, with a few counterprotestors, some people attempting to intimidate. But we were lucky all around, and online reactions showed that local hardliners seriously underestimated the potential of these protests. In Baker County, the next county over, there was a somewhat smaller protest but they had 50, mostly armed, counterprotestors show up, likely because there was an article in their local paper about the protest a few days before.

That tells me that we too will soon face a lot more reactionary response. There are paramilitary groups all over this country, but especially in rural “red” counties like ours, that would like nothing more than to cause disruption and violence at anti-Trump events. We have a lot of work ahead. And there will likely come a time when just protesting isn’t enough. A general strike is a very likely necessity down the road and civil disobedience that entails real risks and personal sacrifices will be necessary if we want real change.

But with these tools and with the level of commitment that is palpable among us, we do now have the ingredients for change, possibly for change that will do more than just reverse the most recent atrocities. We could see change that repairs much more and allows us to truly join the “prosperous and democratic nations” of the world, at last.

Peeing by the side of the road and rock-bottom moments

Are you overwhelmed? OK, dumb question. It’s more like, “What particular things are overwhelming you just now?”  

Whether it’s family troubles, work pressures, relationship tensions, social strain, the state of the employment market or one’s specific industry, hectic household horrors or the political situation, there are plenty of things barraging us with stress. But it’s interesting to note that while everyone is apparently stressed, some are more stressed than others. 

I came face to face with that recently, while doing some literary research about memoirs. I wrote a memoir some years ago and even got a wonderful literary agent to represent it. She had a successful Manhattan literary practice with some big-name clients, so I was thrilled to sign with her. The way literary agents work is that they help you polish your work and find a publisher, and then they take a 15 percent cut of whatever you make.

Image of peeing outdoors by the intrepid Jennifer Brandel of Flickr.com

In this case, my agent worked on my book for four months—suggesting helpful changes and shopping it to 42 publishers. She said they all responded positively, and some said it was a gripping, amazing manuscript. But they all turned it down with some comment along the lines of, “But this author is completely unknown. We can’t publish a memoir by someone without any public platform.” This included a dozen small presses.  

My agent and I sadly parted ways because she had to work for clients that she could help make money. She never charged me a cent for all that work.  

But she left me with a lot of frustration and a desire to understand the business, so I started reading memoirs—all different kinds of memoirs. There are definitely some good ones out there, though I have to admit that the quality of memoir writing has declined in the past 20 years, in my opinion. There used to be memoirs published simply based on the enjoyment a reader could gain from a skillfully crafted true story. But now, the vast majority of recent memoirs must have some sort of public hook—the author was a bit famous (or wealthy) or they (or their topic) was recently part of a major news story or they have some key expertise about a topic that is in the news or they know someone who is famous, in the news or very wealthy.

Part of my problem is obviously not being in the right place at the right time and not running in the correct circles. My daughter says all I have to do is move to Hollywood. But I also admit that my life is to full to drop everything and crank out a book based on current events in a couple of weeks. Two years ago, had I dropped everything and written about my experiences in Eastern Ukraine, I might have actually stood a chance, though a slim one since I am still officially “a nobody” to the industry. 

What does get a memoir published today is work claiming to be the words of various celebrities. A lot of it is ghost written by professionals and while it isn’t scintillating reading, it’s basically literate. The issue I have with most of the memoirs being published these days isn’t some severe problem with technical quality. It’s the banal focus on the details of celebrity life that repeat again and again in book after book.

I’m not even going to name names, because frankly, these books are so boring they blend together and I don’t want to go back and figure out which book it was by which wealth-born celebrity actress, but one stuck out to me as a quintessential example. A moderately well-known Hollywood actress was telling her life story, including her dreams of acting when she was a teenager in her movie-industry family.  

She described the stresses and perils of teenage angst and self-doubt, the meetings with industry leaders and the nail-biting suspense of waiting for the decisions of casting directors her parents introduced her to. She often spoke to the reader about how to boost one’s own confidence and the need to “just stick to it until you reach your dreams.” Because if she could get through all those trials and tribulations on her road to stardom, surely, anyone can.  

I’ll admit that I would never have gotten that far in this book—research project or no research project—except that I was deep cleaning my house and listening to the audiobook version. I needed something fairly brainless to listen to and the ghost writer did have a pleasantly lilting way with words. But right around the time I was scrubbing my bathtub and had my hands in soap and goo, the book reached its “climax” of plot and tension.  

The actress was involved in last minute negotiations for her first big role and that required driving somewhere that crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains by car. She described this as a perilous journey and went into depth about her stress and last-minute anxieties as they drove. Then she told the driver she needed to find a suitable restroom, and there was some vague discussion of the fact that there was no appropriate place anywhere within many miles. I didn’t really catch whether or not a gas station was unavailable or simply unthinkable.  

But in the end, with the literary fan-fare of high drama, the actress was forced to squat behind a bush and pee on the side of the road. She gushed that she was sure such a thing would never happen to her readers in their struggles for success and assured us that while it was difficult, she did eventually recover. I actually suffered through the rest of the book because I could not quite believe that was the actual plot peak. But it was.  

The plot peak whether in fiction or in a memoir is often the lowest point for the protagonist, rock bottom in terms of reaching a goal or the height of stress. I think about how many people may be experiencing a dark night of the soul this winter. There are families hiding from ICE raids, trying to distract fearful children, or scrambling to make ends meet, to get basic groceries.

There are mother’s grieving still-born or miscarried children who are facing either life-threatening hemorrhages without medical care or legal sanctions or both, on top of their grief. There are young people on the edge of discovering their inner identity who are terrified to share their budding realization with their friends, family, school or counselor because of the negative things they’ve heard about LGBTQ people and now the highest authorities in the land have declared open season on hate.

There are scientists, not just climatologists, battling suicidal ideation because of the devastating reality that everything they’ve meticulously documented over a lifetime career is being tossed in the garbage, and we’re all headed for dystopia-level catastrophe as a result. There are thousands of people who went into public service as a career out of an idealistic belief that a bit of a pay cut compared to the private sector is worth doing work with purpose and heart, who have been summarily dismissed from their jobs or their jobs have ceased to exist overnight.

In my own life, I’ve had a few rock bottom moments over the past several years, so I can’t say that this is the worst moment for me personally. But it is a time of decision making, a turning point that might end up in a memoir as a moment when things reached the breaking point. I’m facing decisions about what I’ll do after I graduate from my MFA program and realizing that if I want to stay in Eastern Oregon and live a life close to the natural environment on my family’s land, I’ll have to accept that a long-standing pattern of bullying and psychological abuse is going to be part of the package. The alternative is striking out on my own to try to forge a completely new career at fifty years old in an economy and literary market that has never been more hostile to independent people pulling themselves up by their creativity straps.

On top of that, I’m watching every structure put in place to level the playing field a bit for people with disabilities be eroded and/or threatened with obliteration. I still remember what it was like not to have health coverage in the United States before Obama, and I have the permanently messed up shoulder to show for it.

Last December, I had surgery on my right eye to preserve my residual vision and it went well, but it did take the spunk out of me for about two weeks. I had scheduled it so that the aftermath would come during the holiday break, so it didn’t interfere with my graduate program. I’ve been so thankful for Medicaid and the access to top eye specialists it’s given me in the last few years. 

The surgeon was gung ho to go to work on the left eye as well, but I asked him to hold off for a school break. But as it turned out, he’s all booked spring break. We were about to decide to postpone it to next fall, because summer isn’t a good season for eye surgeries in general. Then the temporary freeze of Medicaid payment portals hit and the goal of ending Medicaid for people like me was explicitly voiced. A judge has stalled it, so that we still have coverage for the moment, but there’s no telling for how long. I called the clinic back and they said they were already in the process of scheduling my surgery for the middle of spring term. I’ll just have to hope the medical coverage lasts that long and cope with surgery and the high intensity MFA program at the same time. Not a lot of options left. 

The day after that, I got a letter from the insurance company denying coverage for the specialized corneal bandage the doctor had used to shield my eye from excruciating pain after the operation in December. Because it’s a fairly specialized item, it could easily cost upwards of a thousand dollars, more than my monthly income. I’m fighting the decision, of course, but it’s indicative of the times that such a basic thing as a bandage after surgery gets denied and people get threatened with bills that would strip them of the basics of survival. And that’s with Medicaid more-or-less intact.  

The only place I can really breathe deeply these days is on that little bit of land at the north end of the Grande Ronde Valley where I visit every weekend. I take long walks, now with my guide dog Conway, in the pine and fir woods and across the winter-brown ridge tops. It’s a place I can get away from the pressures, the bad news of the world, and increasingly, what feels like surveillance.  

We’ve all heard the stories or experienced that moment where you open your browser or Facebook and get barraged with ads for something you just briefly mentioned to a family member—something fairly obscure and specific that you’ve never actually searched for. There is no doubt that apps are using computer and phone microphones as well as devices for Siri, Alexa and the like to listen in and target ad campaigns based on overheard conversations. At this point, I’ve come to expect it. It’s one of the things I love about the very sketchy cell signal and wifi out at my family’s place. You really can be off-line and out of the eye of AI for a while.

But until now the intrusions seemed restricted to things typed into a search bar, or at most, spoken out loud within range of a microphone. Recently, I had a bizarre experience that challenged this assumption. My sheets got some dirt on them and I decided it was time to wash the whole kit and kaboodle. I stripped the bed and the duvet covers and the pillowcases and threw it all in the washing machine. Then I opened Facebook to check on a couple of groups while I waited. And there was a string of six different ads for new sheets and new duvet covers. The ads continued for two days.

I usually don’t get ads for sheets and duvet covers. Given my search and Amazon shopping histories I get stuff about camping, dogs, keto diets and weirdly medieval-looking wardrobe options. Most of the clothing ads actually aren’t even real. When I’ve tried to connect to a shop through those ads I’ve been bounced into regular clothing retailers, without the retro, Renaissance fair chic. I don’t even search for that stuff, but I’m guessing it’s my very eclectic search history that cues it up.  

The thing is that I never get ads for boring household stuff like sheets and duvet covers but for two days after I stripped my bed, I did. I never mentioned the dirt on the bed or the washing or anything until after all of this went down. So, targeted ads are just be part of the surreal world we’re living in this year.

And I’m not sure the weirdness is only happening in cyberspace. As I was returning from my latest walk across the ridge, I stopped at a flat spot between the cabin where I usually sleep and my parents’ house to let Conway do his thing. It had been a brisk two-mile walk, but he’s a good guide dog and generally won’t pee or poop while we’re out on a trail, so I had to make a point of stopping before we got inside. And I remember that the leash slipped out of my hand and I had to stoop to pick it up.  

After that, I went into the house and helped my mom with a few things, ate lunch and packed up stuff ready to go back to town. Because the internet is so sketchy out there and I didn’t happen to need a flashlight or a magnifying glass or a text reader or a calendar or the weather or an audiobook or my address book or an old recipe or any of the myriad other things I use my phone for, I didn’t notice that it was gone. Thinking back, I know it was supposed to be in the front pocket of a cloth bag I’d been carrying on our long ramble across the ridge, and afterwards, I recalled that I had taken the thermos out of that bag and noticed that it was completely empty, but the absence of the phone that should still have been in there didn’t occur to me then.  

As we were getting in the car though, I ran out to the cabin to get one last thing and on the way back, I felt the sudden strong urge to pee, though I’d already been to the bathroom in the house. The actress who had a ghost writer write that memoir would likely have been utterly shocked, but I didn’t think twice about squatting down to pee outdoors on that little flat spot near the top of the driveway where nobody but the winter birds and deer could see.  

And while I was peeing, I looked at the ground about two feet in front of me, since that is as far as I can see with my eyes.

It took me a few moments to register what I was seeing because it made no sense. There was my phone with the nice brown leather case, lying on the muddy brown carpet of leaves. I wouldn’t have been able to see it had I been standing or had it been even a foot or two further from my face. I could only see it because I squatted down right in that spot to pee. And it was in a very deep signal hole, so I wouldn’t have been able to call it either.

It was right there where I had stopped to let Conway pee an hour earlier, where I had stooped down to get the dropped leash and no doubt upended my bag just enough for it to fall out.

Some will say the ads for sheets and duvet covers is coincidence and corporations aren’t “that bad” with surveillance—yet. And many might say that me finding my brown phone in a pile of brown leaves while legally blind without even looking for it is just freak chance. And maybe it is. But I hope there is some balance in this universe. If the one really is corporate interests trying to squeeze out every cent they can, let the latter be some ancestor or kindly fae or an old god, some spirit looking out for me, because we are sure going to need some spiritual allies.

Shards of meaning and splinters of spring

My thoughts have been far from the day-to-day this year.

My mind is in books, the stories of four brothers in the vortex of pain in my parents’ generation or the never-real, ideal world of a boy and a marten on Mount Hood. My hands are painting the gleaming fir of new garden-bed posts in the sunshine that is far too early.

Image of pumpkin ridge and mount emily in northeaster oregon in early spring with a lone hiker visible - by arie Farnam

My mind gnaws at the fact that the spring is too early, that we scarcely had any snow, that whole nations are becoming climate refugees. But for us locally it still isn’t too much of a problem. Even the forest fires have struck mercifully elsewhere. My hands are filling the washing machine and turning the dial. My feet are tramping through the kitchen.

My mind is drowning in dying languages and resurrected tongues, in Wall Kimmerer’s desperate struggle to learn Potawatami from the nine remaining fluent speakers, in the legacies of Czech students in the 19th century studying at the feet of country codgers, of Hebrew rekindled with such hope and of St. Patrick burning the last rare books written by Irish Druids. My hands are cutting spaghetti squash and cooking meatballs or dribbling a basketball with my teenage boy.

I’m always listening to some audiobook, always trying to run fast enough to get to something that matters, always writing something while resigned that the chances of an unknown writer getting published these days are minuscule, always trying to reach my kids through the addictive fog of social media and video games, always trying to figure out what really matters.

All this, while my body is going to medical appointments, weeding the garden beds, washing the dishes, organizing transportation for my son and doing physical therapy exercises. My mind is like a restless toddler but one with sophisticated taste.

On a good day, my mind is drawing plot lines and character arcs for two new novels, weaving snippets of poetry in for one character and plant lore in for another. My hands are making flash cards for students an ocean away. Even my mouth and my face are speaking through the computer screen, the same trusty lessons I’ve been teaching for twenty years. Or my fingers and eyes are working over a medical study manuscript, editing for grammar, while my mind is gibbering in helpless fury over the news.

Since January, I’ve been writing down the important things in a date book—not the garden preparations, the dishes or even the tutoring of students but the insights in the books I’ve read, the plot holes and their solutions, my kids’ struggles and tiny triumphs, the news and my various epiphanies. I want to be connected to the day to-day-world, but my mind needs this nourishment and stimulation the way a seedling needs water and sun.

It stretches toward the light in one direction and reaches roots through the soil the opposite way. It can’t help it. No matter where I’m planted, my mind is an unquiet and seeking thing. The only things that truly quiet it are mountains, big sky, trees and an unhindered wind. Meditation every morning settles it some but only temporarily.

This is one reason that I’m going to graduate school, starting this summer. But I also worry because I have a lot more responsibilities and duties and needs and distractions than I did the last time I was in school—twenty-five years ago. I did well in school because there was endless time. I read very slowly because of my wiggle, wobbly eyes, but that didn’t seem to matter when there was nothing else but studying and reading in my days. Now it will be different.

I’ll soon have assigned reading and critiques for my restless mind to dig into. And hopefully, that will be copasetic. But I think this restlessness is partly me and partly the times we’re living in. How can we live quiet contented lives in a world that threatens to self-destruct every twenty-four hours or so? How can we ignore the crises enough to live and give and nurture while also not losing our sense of soul? I am betting these questions are not mine alone.

Have I lost the fire?

An old acquaintance popped up recently telling me about demonstrations against the latest distant war and asking what I’m doing about it. There was a time when I would have been in the thick of it, full of hope, anger and the fire of passionate creativity.

I distinctly remember being twenty something and making pacts with a different friend to never let the fire of passionate activism, creativity and adventure go out. We swore to kick each other in the pants if the other ever wavered. But she’s gone, and I’m afraid I may have lost the fire.

What I didn’t know in my twenties was that soul-sucking, creativity-sapping hard times don’t always come in the form of tear gas, night sticks or bullets. As bad as those things are, there are things that will make you beg for something as easy to fight as a clear and distinct bad guy. And I’m not even talking about the inner demons of mental illness or the parasites of addiction. I managed to avoid those, though life has taught me a lot more compassion for others who didn’t slip the traps.

Image by Arie farnam - a porch railing holding pumpkins with candles inside portraying a pentacle and the word peace in different languages

I had freedom—just enough money to make my own choices and set my own course. I had transferable skills. I could go where I wanted and didn’t have to worry about the needs of others very much as I did. I mistook that privileged existence for deep caring about activism and great creative talent. It’s a common misconception.

Twenty years ago, I got sucked into the black hole of health problems which gave way to family responsibilities which led to worse health problems and much heavier family responsibilities. That’s what happened to my fire. It was buried under a mudslide and I’m still trying to find out if there are any smoldering embers left.

When I was in my late twenties, I gave up my last chances in newspaper journalism to lead antiwar protests. This isn’t something I’ve made a big deal about publicly. Potential employers wouldn’t see it as admirable, after all. I couldn’t stay in journalism and lead protests against the war in Iraq in a major international city at the same time. Journalists have codes of objectivity that preclude that sort of thing and no employers would allow it.

As a twenty-something, I don’t think I entirely thought through the potential consequences of that choice. I had a hot fire in me. I was watching the world explode with protest over a war based on lies, pushed by the questionably elected administration of my home country. It wasn’t happening in Prague yet, and the groups willing to try were marginalized and vulnerable to cheap attacks about supposedly being anti-American. I wasn’t just one more body in the streets for a protest. I was an American who also spoke the local language. Who could more credibly make the case that the protest was about human rights, rather than about being ideologically against the United States?

At that moment and in that place, there was a reasonable hope that I could make a real difference by joining and even leading the protests. The professional sacrifices felt worthwhile. Over the next two years, I was often cast into the role of negotiator between various factions. I had an acquaintance from my old political reporting who ran with the Czech Communist youth organization and friends in the staunchly anti-Communist student block. In a European capital city like ours, numbers of protesters mattered in terms of national policy and relations with the US. I worked to get both sides to come to events, while leaving their antagonistic or self-aggrandizing political banners at home.

Since my negotiating skills proved moderately handy and my rudimentary Arabic had once calmed a tense situation on the first day of our protests, I was also assigned as the negotiator for the Czech and international blocks in discussions with the local Iraqi dissident groups. That wasn’t easy, but it definitely gave me a sense of purpose and of my usefulness in the moment.

My primary counterpart on the Iraqi side was a guy named Ahmad. We worked together closely for months, and then his brother was killed by American soldiers in Iraq in a case of mistaken identity. The incident brought the war home to us. We swore it wouldn’t impact our budding friendship.

That was the last time I remember people losing their jobs or academic opportunities in the US over antiwar protests. Even though I had to make some sacrifices in my own career, I wasn’t directly fired or discriminated against for political reasons. But at the time, there were cases of suspension on college campuses as well as jobs or tenure lost in a variety of places because of people getting involved with antiwar protests.

Today the situation appears even more extreme, not just for people working in media but also in academia, law offices and even completely unrelated industries. I’ve lost track of the prominent journalists who’ve lost their jobs or been forced to resign. The pressure on college professors and students is intense, with even the entirely nonviolent Jewish Voice for Peace organization suspended at universities.

I can’t help but follow the news. People talk about shutting it out. I could just as well shut out thousands of people being killed in my own country or in my extended family. I don’t see the people under the bombs as foreign or as strangers “caught up in ancient enmity.” I’ve been too close. I have PaIestinian and lsraeli friends. I’ve also been in villages under shelling. I’ve had to hide huddled on the floor between the beds while renegade paramilitary forces out for revenge tore apart the neighborhood and bullets struck the gutters and wall just outside my window.

The news of the real world isn’t something I want to be able to shut out. But this time, there isn’t anything I know of that I can do that will matter. I’m in a small rural town where most people have very sparse information about what’s happening and have formed their opinions mainly based on the leaders they are used to listening to. And while the United States is involved in a significant way, another American speaking up about it in this case isn’t going to make a lick of difference, especially not out here in the sticks.

My heart goes out to those friends of mine who are personally affected. Every war is terrible. Innocent people always end up dying by violence, starvation or preventable illness. This war is even more heartbreaking than most to me because of the particularly intractable background and the fact that I know people on both sides of the conflict, none of whom have any realistic possibility of doing anything as individuals to help the innocent people being killed or to move toward peace. The Jewish people protesting the war in the US have the most chance of active agency at the moment, and they are doing admirable activism and often paying a heavy price for it.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, I spent the first few months volunteering to aid refugee evacuations because I had language and map-reading skills that were sorely needed. When Extinction Rebellion appeared to have a real shot at changing high-level European climate change policies, I dropped everything and was willing to get arrested and work with people who I didn’t always get along with to save lives. I wish there was a clear thing to do to make a difference right now. Even better, I yearn for a bad guy whose demise would actually be helpful.

Maybe it’s a symptom of growing up more than of the actual situation. I have realized my own futility. There is no way to win a war like this, and I have neither a useful identity nor any skills to put toward in the cause of peace or to aid the survival of individuals, even in a small way. But I did swear to hold onto the fire, and I wonder where the passion of my activism and creativity has gone.

I have a few little embers, barely glowing in the palm of my hand—the idea of going back to college and getting a master of fine arts degree. It may not help the world much, but it would give me a bit firmer ground on which to stand and from which to do useful and helpful things. But of course, this means entering the world of academia, and in my case, applying for scholarships, at a time when the silence required for career success is at odds with my conscience.

A recent ACLU open letter to colleges and universities across the United States criticized the penalizing and suppression of antiwar student groups during the scouring of Gaza, saying “It echoes America’s mistakes during the McCarthy era.” Students have lost competitive fellowships and job offers over peace-oriented social media posts. The only PaIestinian member of Congress was censured for words of heart-felt compassion for the victims of violence on both sides.

We all stand at the wall now in our own individual ways. We are forced to choose. Who will stand up, speak up, lose their voice, go to jail or lose opportunities as a result? Who will duck their head and hope to speak up more effectively another day? This is one of those times history will ask about.

I nurse my little embers. My fire is not burning brightly now. I’m barely hanging on. So, I change Ls to Is and Is to Ls to avoid the roving bots of censorship and academic blacklisting, I reach out privately to comfort grieving friends and I swallow back the hot words of protest.