Trump loses again, as Biden is cleared
Frame Lab advises responding to the special council report of Biden’s classified documents investigation by pointing out that Biden was cleared while Trump is still facing indictments.
“The best way for the media to sell newspapers and clicks is to give Republicans what they want to hear, which drives liberals to hate reading, hate sharing, and even hate subscribing. By rebutting them, [we] spread and strengthen them. That’s how our brains work.”
“Consider the phrase “tax relief.” The world “relief” frames the word “tax” as an affliction or form of suffering. We generally need “relief” from things that are painful or unpleasant…Another example: Consider the phrase “forced birth.” It frames abortion bans with a negative word, “forced,” which frames abortion bans as aggressively stripping women of their freedom.” Moral Warfare 101: Frames and Your Brain, Frame Lab, February 5, 2024
“…when environmental issues are reframed in terms of the conservative value of purity – emphasizing the importance of keeping our forests, drinking water, and skies pure – conservatives are much more likely to support this cause.
The power of framing: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it
The Guardian, July 20, 2017
Climate change? Global warming?
“David Fenton, a longtime PR specialist for progressive causes…urges the climate community to speak of pollution – a word everyone gets – and to settle on the image of a ‘blanket of pollution trapping heat on Earth’. Every oil and gas emission makes that blanket thicker – and all that trapped heat helps cause floods and start fires, he says.” As heat records break, the climate movement has the right answers – but the words are all wrong The Guardian, July 14, 2023
“Much of politics is a struggle to define how certain key words are framed — words like ‘tax,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘rights’ and ‘truth.’
“If you oppose an issue, you must try to frame it in negative terms. If you support an issue, you must try to frame it positively.”
Cognitive scientist Dr. George Lakoff and journalist Gil Duran share their political messaging expertise at
Frame Lab on Substack.
Republican governors in 15 red states have refused to participate in this summer’s federal free lunch program, denying food to approximately 8 million kids.
Frame Lab advises responding without mentioning welfare states or calling Republicans scrooges. Say instead, “Tate Reeves [Republican Governor of Mississippi] doesn’t want these kids to succeed. He doesn’t want them to have the same freedom as his kids enjoy. This isn’t just about punishing poor kids for being poor. It’s about taking away their opportunities.”
AllSides helps you get the full picture.
AllSides is the standard for information integrity. By revealing bias and providing perspectives from all sides, we help people better understand the world — and each other.
We believe information integrity requires:
Information integrity is not only needed in news, but also in AI, businesses, schools, government, and throughout our daily lives.
AllSides’ information integrity technologies and services help people and organizations get out of manipulative, one-sided, and biased information systems wherever they might be — in technology, news, companies, government, classrooms and beyond — so we can all see the full picture, think for ourselves and make the best decisions.
With the information ecosystem being rewired at a rapid pace, we dedicate ourselves to trustworthy information by using an explicitly multipartisan, diverse team and providing the systems and technology to deliver information from a variety of different sources so people can think critically and act confidently.
by The Editorial Board (New York Times)
“Mr. Trump does not offer voters anything resembling a normal option of Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, big government or small. He confronts America with a far more fateful choice: between the continuance of the United States as a nation dedicated to “the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” and a man who has proudly shown open disdain for the law and the protections and ideals of the Constitution.”
Publisher: The New York Times
by PBS
With American democracy under threat, diplomat Dr. Richard Haass outlines ten habits to help citizens preserve democracy. Haass also explores real-life examples of Americans who are working towards strengthening democracy and renewing the spirit of a more informed and engaged citizenry. Premiered January 2, 2024 on PBS.
Harnessing Our Power to End (HOPE) Political Violence
Recommended by Bob B.
Here is the link to a 2024 data-driven guide for communities across the United States on how to organize to counter political violence and intimidation. Minneapolis has been using these techniques among others that were developed in 2020 in response to George Floyd’s murder to show how to build a “mutual aid culture” of caring and courage. There are lots of practical suggestions with context that Indivisible chapters and others can use.
Harnessing Our Power to End (HOPE) Political Violence is a guide for communities across the United States to organize to counter political violence.
It’s for people who recognize the dire stakes that political violence creates, and who want to work together nonviolently to protect our communities and uphold democracy.
The vast majority of people in the US – in cities and small towns, across party lines, and from all walks of life – oppose political violence. Together, we need to push back against those who want to silence our voices, who try to deny us our rights, and who aim to bully their way into political influence through intimidation and violence.
Changing the way the American Left engages in the public debate.
By Antonia Scatton
Recommended by Bob.
COURIER is a pro-democracy news network that builds a more informed, engaged, and representative America by reaching audiences where they are online with factual, values-driven news and analysis.
COURIER’s local newsrooms provide Americans with news centered on the people and policies affecting their lives. Our reporting is primarily produced for the social media platforms and online channels our audiences spend their time on, with an emphasis on video, graphics, and skimmable newsletters to inform and engage our audiences in the ways they consume information today.
Ad Fontes Media is a public benefit corporation based in Colorado. Being a public benefit corporation means we are a for-profit business with a stated public mission, which is to rate all the news to positively transform society.
Fundamentally, we want to help bring people together. Misleading, inaccurate, and highly polarizing media content has driven so many of us apart. This affects everything from our familial relationships to our ability to create legislative solutions to our biggest challenges.
Ad Fontes is Latin for “to the source,” because at the heart of what Ad Fontes Media does is look at the source—analyze the very content itself—to rate it.
What We Do? We Rate the News
The information landscape is vast and noisy. We’re here to help you sort through it by rating sources for reliability and bias. Obviously, people have lots of different thoughts about how reliable and biased various news sources are, so we do everything we can to earn your trust.
Rise Above US vs Them. Be a Builder
Recommended by: Bob B. – “Builders Movement, was launched by Starts With Us, and supported by Kind founder, Daniel Lubetsky.”
Our mission is to overcome “us vs. them” thinking and solve problems together. We equip people to uncover hidden common ground and build on it – with lasting solutions that reflect the will of the people.
Recommended by: Bob B. – “A nonprofit working to create large collaborative projects to promote consensus policies frameworks with details that could be enacted by Congress on the basis of broad acceptance within the country from Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.”
In a recent YouGov poll, 83% of citizens wanted lawmakers from both parties to make our package of 39 life-enhancing reforms “a priority.”
These reforms would significantly advance citizens’ long-thwarted aspirations for:
Greater economic opportunity and growth
Schools that enable kids to reach their potential
Effective & affordable healthcare
Curbing the national debt
Reliable, clean & affordable energy
Fairer, simpler tax code
Congress organized to resolve our differences
Among the reforms that voters across the spectrum support, all but two have been around for years.
Congress has enacted NONE
The reason: Lawmakers win reelection over 90% of the time by blaming the other party for our critical problems and offering sound bites as remedies.
To overcome these dysfunctions, the Grand Bargain includes three reforms that would reward lawmakers who make major progress on our long-term ills — while those who stood in the way would be likely to lose their seats.
Hear Vinay Orekondy from the Grand Bargain Project talk passionately about our project at EarthX 2025 as part of a Rotaract Club spotlight.
The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
by David Brooks
Recommended by Bob
Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, David Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.
Continue reading How to Know a Person
Notes on the State of America
by Heather Cox Richardson
Publisher: Penguin Random House
At a time when the very foundations of American democracy seem under threat, the lessons of the past offer a road map for navigating a moment of political crisis. In Democracy Awakening, acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson delves into the tumultuous journey of American democracy, tracing the roots of Donald Trump’s “authoritarian experiment” to the earliest days of the republic. She examines the historical forces that have led to the current political climate, showing how modern conservatism has preyed upon a disaffected population, weaponizing language and promoting false history to consolidate power.
With remarkable clarity and the same accessible voice that brings millions to her newsletter, Letters from an American, Richardson wrangles a chaotic news feed into a story that pivots effortlessly from the Founders to the abolitionists to Nixon to the January 6 insurrection. An essential read for anyone concerned about the state of America, Democracy Awakening is more than a history book; it’s a call to action. Richardson reminds us that democracy requires constant vigilance and participation from all of us, showing how we, as a nation, can take the lessons of the past to secure a more just and equitable future.
Heather Cox Richardson | Democracy Awakening
Historians are fond of saying that the past doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes.
To understand the present, we have to understand how we got here.
That’s where this newsletter comes in.
I’m a professor of American history. This is a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American.
These were the same questions a famous observer asked in a book of letters he published in 1782, the year before the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War.
Hector St. John de Crevecoeur called his book “Letters from an American Farmer.”
Like I say, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes.
An American Fight Against Fascism
By Rachel Maddow
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.
Continue reading Prequel
Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy
by Stuart Stevens
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Former chief Republican strategist, Lincoln Project adviser, and bestselling author of It Was All a Lie, Stuart Stevens offers an ominous warning that the GOP is dragging our country toward autocracy—and if we don’t wake up to the crisis in our system, 2024 may well be our last free and fair election.
INTERVIEW: Stuart Stevens talks to Brian Watt (KQED) at the Commonwealth Club
Trump in the White House, 2017-2021
by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
Publisher: Vintage
The Divider brings us into the Oval Office for countless scenes both tense and comical, revealing how close we got to nuclear war with North Korea, which cabinet members had a resignation pact, whether Trump asked Japan’s prime minister to nominate him for a Nobel Prize and much more. The book also explores the moral choices confronting those around Trump—how they justified working for a man they considered unfit for office, and where they drew their lines.
SWING LEFT PENINSULA created these engaging videos to help spread the word effectively that things are better when Democrats are in office AND to counter MAGA Republicans’ anti-democracy messages.
To Muffle the MAGAphone:
Why do conservatives fall for fake news? Is it just them, or are we all culpable? How did Americans become so susceptible to falling for disinformation? And what can we do about it??
by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Woodward and Costa interviewed more than 200 people at the center of the turmoil, resulting in more than 6,000 pages of transcripts—and a spellbinding and definitive portrait of a nation on the brink. This classic study of Washington takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with vivid, eyewitness accounts of what really happened.
Woodward and Costa on Washington Post Live
Communications consultant Anat Shenker-Osorio developed the 3V messaging framework. Effective 3V messages:
As linguist George Lakoff says, “People vote based on values, connection, authenticity, trust and identity” – not lists of policies and facts.
The Bay Area Coalition offers 3V statements on the critical issues of our time.
by Select Committee
“The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack has succeeded in bringing clarity and demonstrating with painstaking detail the fragility of our Democracy. Above all, the work of the Select Committee underscores that our democratic institutions are only as strong as the commitment of those who are entrusted with their care.
As the Select Committee concludes its work, their words must be a clarion call to all Americans: to vigilantly guard our Democracy and to give our vote only to those dutiful in their defense of our Constitution.”
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It
by Richard V. Reeves
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Recommended by: Bob B.
Even in moderate places like Ohio, gerrymandering has let unchecked Republicans pass extremist laws that could never make it through Congress.
by Jane Mayer
Even in moderate places like Ohio, gerrymandering has let unchecked Republicans pass extremist laws that could never make it through Congress.
Publisher: The Atlantic
Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission
By Mark Leibovich
Publisher: Penguin Press
Recommended by Cindi
“This is a really funny book.” Kara Swisher.
Mark Leibovich’s unflinching account of the moral rout of a major American political party, tracking the transformation of Rubio, Cruz, Graham, and their ilk into the administration’s chief enablers, and the swamp’s lesser lights into frantic chasers of the grift…isn’t another view from the Oval Office: it’s the view from the Trump Hotel.
A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell
by Tim Miller
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers
Recommended by: Cindi Sears
From ruminations on the mental jujitsu that allowed him as a gay man to justify becoming a hitman for homophobes, to astonishingly raw interviews with former colleagues who jumped on the Trump Train, Miller diagrams the flattering and delusional stories GOP operatives tell themselves so they can sleep at night. With a humorous touch he reveals Reince Priebus’ neediness, Sean Spicer’s desperation, Elise Stefanik and Chris Christie’s raw ambition, and his close friends’ submission to a MAGA psychosis.
Why We Did It is a vital, darkly satirical warning that all the narcissistic justifications that got us to this place still thrive within the Republican party, which means they will continue to make the same mistakes and political calculations that got us here, with disastrous consequences for the nation
Using the power of social networks and digital media, we motivate individual and collective action to advance resilient communities, just societies, and a healthy planet.
95% of young people are on social media.
Relationships, ideas, and images of our lives are shaped and shared on social media every day. In partnership with Feel Good Action, influencers are leading their followers to ACT.
The rise of Authoritarianism in the world we've made
by Bden Rhodes
Publisher: Random House
At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Ben Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression towards Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia, who was subsequently poisoned and imprisoned; he profiled Hong Kong protesters who saw their movement snuffed out by China under Xi Jinping; and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a fragile second chance.
Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out
by Amanda Ripley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Recommended by: Cindi, Bob & Linda
How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted
by Jeremy W. Peters
Publisher: Random House Publishing House
and How To Stop Them
by Barbara F. Walter
Publisher: Crown
Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy
by James Raskin
Publisher: Harper
Jamie Raskin in conversation at The National Arts Club
Newsletter
Publisher: Lincoln Square
When you join Lincoln Square, you are more than a passive consumer of content – You are a critical member of the Ferocious Opposition. We’ll provide you with the truth that you need and the tools to help spread the antidote to Trump, MAGA, Musk, and what once was a legitimate major political party in our country, the Republicans.
Lincoln Square founders introduce LSM here.
Lincoln Square is a collaborative effort with The Lincoln Project, America’s leading pro-democracy organization. It’s an ambitious effort to rethink how the media fights against autocracy, disinformation, and the flood of attacks on truth and our democracy. We don’t pull punches. We don’t cower in fear and hope Trump, Musk, and their minions don’t notice us and be spared their wrath.
We aren’t legacy media. We don’t have billionaire backers or corporate overlords directing what we can and cannot say.
Our mission is to expose, inspire, inform, lead, and connect — and give you the tools not just to fight back, but fight forward for the America we all deserve – not just the broligarchs and kleptocrats. We fight for the rights of all of us because it takes all of us for America to achieve her extraordinary potential. And we’re getting louder than ever with podcasts, live streaming, digital and social media, commentary, articles, town halls, public and virtual community gatherings, and strategy calls with people like Rick Wilson, Stuart Stevens, and Joe Trippi, who have led the biggest campaigns — and won.
“White women are the largest voting bloc in this country and will be for decades to come. They account for 38% of the national vote share and 43% of the vote share across Galvanize Action’s priority states. Within this voting bloc, we’ve identified 44,093,812 moderate women who are not ideologically entrenched, meaning they are open to new ideas and perspectives and movable on key issues such as reproductive freedom, healthcare, gender equity, climate, and the economy.”
Galvanize Action says, “We’ll share with you exactly how to create a message that meets people at their values and how to turn those into an effective ad. Our interactive worksheet will guide you through the process with prompts about your target audience and the issue you want to move them on. You’ll walk away with customized advice!”
The Final Act of the Trump Show
by Johnathan Karl
Publisher: Dutton
Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us
By: Brian Klaas
Publisher: Scribner
Recommended by: Bruce R.
Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are tyrants made or born? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the result of poorly designed systems or are they just bad people? If you were suddenly thrust into a position of power, would you be able to resist the temptation to line your pockets or seek revenge against your enemies?
To answer these questions, Corruptible draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world’s top leaders—from the noblest to the dirtiest—including presidents and philanthropists as well as rebels, cultists, and dictators. Some of the fascinating insights include: how facial appearance determines who we pick as leaders, why narcissists make more money, why some people don’t want power at all and others are drawn to it out of a psychopathic impulse, and why being the “beta” (second in command) may actually be the optimal place for health and well-being.
Corruptible also features a wealth of counterintuitive examples from history and social science: you’ll meet the worst bioterrorist in American history, hit the slopes with a ski instructor who once ruled Iraq, and learn why the inability of chimpanzees to play baseball is central to the development of human hierarchies.
The Freedom to Vote Act can halt this growing antidemocratic threat.
by Will Wilder, Derek Tisler, Wendy R. Weiser
Publisher: Brennan Center for Justice
Essentially this article addresses laws and proposed legislation enabling partisan interference in election administration as part of a broader “election sabotage” or “election subversion” campaign, a national push to enable partisans to distort democratic outcomes.
Fascism is a cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by immigrants, leftists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, women, in the face of what the fascist leader says is a takeover of the country’s media, cultural institutions, schools by these forces.
Fascist movements typically, though not invariably, rest on an urban/rural divide. The cities are where there’s decadence, where the elites congregate, where there’s immigrants, and where there’s criminality.
Each of these individuals alone is not in and of itself fascist, but you have to worry when they’re all grouped together, seeing the other as less than. Those moments are the times when societies need to worry about fascism.
A Wake-Up Call From Behind The Lines
by David Pepper
Publisher: St. Helena Press
Recommended by: Cindi Sears
Because these statehouses no longer operate as functioning democracies, these unknown politicians have all the incentive to keep doing greater damage, and can not be held accountable however extreme they get. This has driven steep declines in states like Ohio and others across the country. And collectively, it’s placed American democracy in its greatest peril since the dawn of the Jim Crow era.
But Pepper doesn’t stop there. He lays out a robust pro-democracy agenda outlining how everyone from elected officials to business leaders to everyday citizens can fight back.
Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century
by Fiona Hill
Publisher: Mariner Books
Fiona Hill grew up in a world of terminal decay. The last of the local mines had closed, businesses were shuttering, and despair was etched in the faces around her. Her father urged her to get out of their blighted corner of northern England: “There is nothing for you here, pet,” he said.
The coal-miner’s daughter managed to go further than he ever could have dreamed. She studied in Moscow and at Harvard, became an American citizen, and served three U.S. Presidents. But in the heartlands of both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. By the time she offered her brave testimony in the first impeachment inquiry of President Trump, Hill knew that the desperation of forgotten people was driving American politics over the brink—and that we were running out of time to save ourselves from Russia’s fate. In this powerful, deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned, and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy.
Mussolini to the Present
by Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Ruth Ben-Ghiat interviewed by Dean Peter Arnade at University of Hawai
The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
Recommended by: Linda and Cindi
Despotic leaders do not rule alone; they rely on political allies, bureaucrats, and media figures to pave their way and support their rule. The authoritarian and nationalist parties that have arisen within modern democracies offer new paths to wealth or power for their adherents.
The Ongoing Threat of Trump's Followers / Trump and His Followers
by John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer
Publisher: Melville House
John Dean interview on Democracy Now
Deb Lavoy is on a mission to eradicate disinformation. As a former software engineer and digital marketer, she recognized the established social media marketing techniques that disinformation perpetrators appropriating to manipulate us into believing falsehoods. This talk provides tips on recognizing these tricks and how to counter them. Deb Lavoy is on a mission to eradicate disinformation. Her experience in software engineering and marketing, gave her a unique perspective on the rise of disinformation in 2016: the perpetrators were maliciously appropriating tried and tested digital marketing techniques. Deb founded the nonprofit Reality Team in response.
Reality Team drowns out the lies perpetrated over social media with simply stated truths, and arms people with tools and information to join the fight. The organization builds campaigns that change the ratio of truthful to untruthful information on social media feeds and provides tools and techniques to make it easier to tell the difference.
Using Convergent Facilitation to Reach Breakthrough Collaborative Decisions
by Miki Kashtan
Miki introduces a novel decision-making process called Convergent Facilitation that builds trust from the beginning, surfaces concerns and addresses them, and turns conflicts into creative dilemmas that groups feel energized to solve together. This highly effective process has been used successfully around the world to resolve problems and teach people how to collaborate without sacrificing productivity.
Continue reading The Highest Common Denominator
by Robert Reich
Robert Reich’s is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration for which Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written 18 books, including
how America came together a century ago and how we can do it again
by Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
“An eminent political scientist’s brilliant synthesis of social and political trends over the past century that shows how we have gone from an individualistic society to a more communitarian society and then back again — and how we can use that experience to overcome once again the individualism that currently weakens our country”
We can’t go back to when things were “good.” But we can learn from when things ware “bad.” In the early 1900’s the Guilded Age of the robber barons, things were really bad for most US citizens; they feared for the end of democracy and the take-over by the oligarchs.
Interview: Robert Putnam Knows Why You’re Lonely
The 2023 Ithiel de Sola Pool Lecture by Robert D. Putnam
Sep 22, 2023
Join or Die — Trailer (2023)
The Documentary “Join or Die” (2023) is currently available on Netflix (2025-08-11)
America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation
by David French
Reestablishing national unity will require the bravery to commit ourselves to embracing qualities of kindness, decency, and grace towards those we disagree with ideologically. David French calls on all of us to demonstrate true tolerance so we can heal the American divide. If we want to remain united, we must learn to stand together again.
Continue reading Divided We Fall
A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control
by Steve Hassan
Publisher: Free Press
Dr. Steven Hassan’s presentation to Commonwealth Club of CA
How The Republican Party Became Donald Trump
by Stuart Stevens
Publisher: Knopf
Recommended by: Cindi S. and Steve G.
Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass.
This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP’s DNA, from Goldwater’s opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan’s welfare queens and states’ rights rhetoric. He gives an insider’s account of the rank hypocrisy of the party’s claims to embody “family values,” and shows how the party’s vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.
It Was All a Lie is not just an indictment of the Republican Party, but a candid and often lacerating mea culpa. Stevens is not asking for pity or forgiveness; he is simply telling us what he has seen firsthand. He helped to create the modern party that kneels before a morally bankrupt con man and now he wants nothing more than to see what it has become burned to the ground.
By Baratunde Thurston
Recommended by: Bob
Here are some sources of ideas from a podcast by Baratunde Thurston, which began in 2020 and has four seasons of episodes. The overall theme is encouraging thinking about “citizen” as a verb. The four
pillars for doing this are:
The four seasons of episodes (ranging from 11 to 16 episodes each season) consist of interviews with folks who are thinking about and demonstrating democracy-building activities. It’s a wonderful resource for ideas. They include international, national, statewide, and local leaders.
A Very Practical Guide
by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay
Publisher: Balance
by Ralph Ranalli
Publisher: Harvard Kennedy School
A short article by Ralph Ranalli published on the website of the Harvard Kennedy School in 2019, summarizing Erica Chenoweth’s work.
Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
by Timothy Snyder
Publisher: Crown
INTERVIEW: Listen to Professor Snyder discuss his book at Politics and Prose Bookstore
Frame Lab advises calling Trump a loser, a fraud, or a betrayer of trust. A dictator creates an image of power, whereas a loser is a label no strict father/wannabe dictator will admit.
Who We Are
A group of residents from San Mateo and neighboring communities who oppose Trump and his authoritarian policies. We are a peaceful people gathered for a common purpose of protecting our democracy, our Constitution, and our rule-of-law.
What We Do
Schedule and participate in actions such as protests, bannering over freeways, door-to-door canvassing, phone banking, and much more!
Since January 2017, more than 4,000 San Franciscans have united as Indivisible SF to march in the Women’s Marches, protest the Muslim Ban, meet regularly with our Members of Congress, and make thousands of phone calls to their offices to pressure them to do everything in their power to counter the policies and politics of Trumpism. There is much work in progress and many actions to come.
Members of Indivisible SF are defined by our action and find solidarity in our shared opposition to Trump and Trumpism. Each of us explicitly reserves our individual stances on specific issues for other forums as we believe resisting Trump is more important than any single issue. We adhere to a Code of Conduct that welcomes and respects everybody.
Members of Indivisible SF come from all kinds of backgrounds and political persuasions. Some of us are first-time activists and others have been at this for decades. We are citizens and non-citizens. Most importantly, we are all patriots that want the best for our country and are willing to work for it.
Recommended by Steve.
Democracy Forward uses the law to build collective power and advance a bold, vibrant democracy for all people.
Democracy Forward is a national legal organization that advances democracy and social progress through litigation, policy and public education, and regulatory engagement.
In towns and cities across America, we provide legal representation and expert counsel to the people and communities who make up the very fabric of American democracy — free of charge.
