resistance

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Retail Resistance
February 2, 2017
charles i. letbetter - retail resistance

Stores desperately try to prevent huge price increases

 

charles i. letbetter - retail resistance

The Short Version

Your favorite retail store has your back as every major retail trade group opposes the so-called Border Adjusted Tax proposed by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Retailers say the tax would result in price increases of 20% or more and could make many products completely unavailable to American consumers.

Avoiding Sticker Shock

Almost everything you buy, even if it comes with a “Made in America” label, has some parts of pieces imported from outside the United States. This division of manufacturing and labor has become standard operating procedure for almost every American-owned company. That practice is under attack, however, as the Republican members of Congress and the 45th president vow to use taxes as a means of encouraging domestic production.

Retailers, however, say the plan is severely flawed and would not only result in higher prices for consumers but would likely cost several thousand jobs across the country—the exact opposite effect from what Republicans claim the tax will do.

Complicating the whole matter is the fact that Republican leadership in Congress and the 45th president are not on the same page. While the Republican proposal would increase import taxes 10-15%. the president has been pushing an import tax as high as 35%. The president has also criticized the Republican plan as being too complicated.

The National Retail Federation, along with the American International Automobile Dealers Association, and the National Grocers Association have joined forces with smaller trade groups and independent retailers such as the LVMH luxury group to form Americans for Affordable Products. The purpose of the new group is to present a unified front in educating the public of the potentially negative results of the import tax as well as lobbying Congress on behalf of the retailers. They’re not waiting until a final bill is proposed. They want to stop any increased taxes before they ever get started.

Who all is involved? Everyone. Nike. Target. Wal-Mart. Best Buy. LVMH-owned brands Donna Karan, Fendi, Givenchy, and Kenzo. Dollar General. Pretty much every store you ever shop, regardless of whether you shop bargain basements or the luxury mall, is against the import tax being raised.

Why? Because even things as simple as pencils and toilet paper have production pieces that are imported. Any rise in the import tax not only results in higher prices for consumers but in many cases would result in layoffs of American employees. The end result would almost certainly be an economic tailspin resulting in a recession larger than that of 2008.

While almost everyone is in favor of increased domestic production of products, the consensus among those who actually produce and sell those products is that increased import taxes is not the way to achieve that goal.

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Resistance & Fallout
January 31, 2017
charles i. letbetter - resistance and fallout

The world begins to push back

 

charles i. letbetter - resistance and fallout

The Short Version

With the chaos and confusion caused by the ban on refugees, a number of people around the world are beginning to visibly and loudly push back against the ban and against the immigration policies of the 45th president’s administration. At the same time, the ban has also created a level of uncertainty caused global stock markets to decline.

A Little More Detail

By now, the chaos resulting from Friday’s presidential order banning the immigration of refugees as well as anyone traveling from seven predominantly Muslim countries is well known. We’ve all seen the pictures and the videos of protests that are ongoing at airports across the country. We’re angered by the firing of Sally Yates, the acting attorney general. But what is anyone doing about it?

A lot, actually. Let’s start with the Washington state attorney general, Bob Ferguson filing a lawsuit against the administration. “It’s my responsibility as attorney general to defend the rule of law, to uphold the Constitution on behalf of the people of this state. And that’s what we’re doing,” he said.

That lawsuit is likely to be enjoined by other state’s Attorneys General. This is a familiar move that was used frequently by Republican-dominated states during the Obama administration. It tends to be effective.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is providing cities in his state with the legislation templates they need in order to declare their cities as Sanctuary Cities in direct defiance of the President and the ban.

On Sunday, 17 Democratic attorneys general signed a letter vowing to “use all of the tools of our offices to fight this unconstitutional order.” One might think that all those would come from states where the president lost the electoral vote. That thinking would be wrong. The attorneys general from Iowa and Pennsylvania, which voted for the president, and Maine, where the vote was split, were among those signing the letter.

That level of resistance is important because states attorneys general tend to know the law at a rather detailed level that most of the rest of us don’t have. They can get down to the nitty-gritty of a matter and speak to legal documents in a legal way that actually has some impact.

They’re not the only ones pushing back hard, though. If the president thought he would have the support of the corporate community, he is wrong. CEOs who normally are quiet have been speaking up in defiance and condemning the ban. The following companies are among those who are actively taking steps to support their employees and speaking up in opposition:

  • Coca-Cola
  • Goldman Sachs
  • Apple
  • Microsoft
  • Google
  • Ford
  • GM
  • Lyft
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • Etsy
  • General Electric
  • Merk & Co.
  • Ikea
  • Starbucks

In some ways, the industrial sector’s push back may be stronger than that of the attorneys general because they can leverage their entire company’s workforce and capital should they decide to do so. While the means of resistance have, so far, been largely financial, such as Lyft donating to the American Civil Liberties Union or Starbucks hiring 10,000 refugees, should the ban continue to impact corporations in a negative manner, their response is likely to become stronger as well.

The ban isn’t doing good things for global markets, either. Not only did US markets close down yesterday in response to the ban, markets in India and Asia are both down this morning.

Oh, and did I mention that the ban received harsh condemnation from Britain’s members of Parliament yesterday, with several members taking to the floor to denounce the policy. Several are even going so far as proposing a state visit to the UK by the US president be canceled.

This is in addition to legal actions by the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center that were initiated yesterday.

Resistance against the ban is strong and the fallout looks to be severe. However, the administration is holding on to its out-of-touch views and illegal policies. This may well just be the beginning of a long battle.

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Design Your Own Dissent
January 22, 2017
charles i. letbetter - Design Your Own Dissent

Not every day is a march but every day can be dissent

charles i. letbetter - Design Your Own Dissent

I’ll admit, I was amazed yesterday. Over one million women showed up in cities around the world to protest the policies and rhetoric of the 45th president of the United States. What quite literally started as the frustrated rant of a grandmother in Hawaii grew to the largest global protest ever.

The Women’s March on Washington proved a number of things. One is that women care a lot more about issues than old white men realized. Another was that women can show up in record-setting numbers and still be peaceful. Unlike protests on Friday that resulted in 230 arrests, the District of Columbia’s homeland security director, Christopher Geldart said there were no arrests in relation to the Women’s March. Third, it proved that women are tireless when fired up. At 8:00 PM last night, long after the march was scheduled to end, there were still thousands of women marching, chanting, and waving their signs.

Most importantly, perhaps, yesterday’s protests proved that the single voice of dissent can make a tremendous difference. One might feel alone in their opinion at times, and there will always be someone who will try to tell you that you’re wrong, but when you speak up you might just find that millions of people around the world agree with you. Your voice and your opinion matters.

Now, the question is where do you go next? How do you continue your dissent in a manner that is both effective and appropriate? The energy from the Women’s March was terrific, but how does one keep that energy going when there is laundry to be done, meals to cook, pets to feed, chores to do,  and a career to chase? The true effectiveness of the Women’s March on Washington is not in the number of people who attended, but in the change it produces going forward. Dissent cannot be a one-day matter; it must be continual and persistent or it does no good at all.

Fortunately, we live in a time where we don’t necessarily have to march every day to make our dissent known and for it to be effective. We just happen to have some ideas.

Join A Group Of Like Minds

If you didn’t read yesterday’s article, Do You Really Care? then please put it on your list of things to do today. If you have not downloaded Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda, we strongly recommend doing so. Much of what I would put under this heading is covered in those two documents and I really don’t want to be overly redundant.

That being said, however, one of the most powerful forms of dissent is to organize. I’m not saying you have to be the leader. I’m not saying you have to have regular meetings. Having coffee with a couple of friends who feel the same as you can be effective, though. The power of being in a group, even if it’s small, is the support and encouragement and affirmation that comes from being with those who have the same concerns, share your worries, and are looking for their own voice. You help them, they help you, and the dissent grows stronger every time you get together.

The energy in the Women’s March on Washington is a good example how a group can be effective. Of those millions of people who marched, how many would have done the same thing if they knew they would be alone? Very few, I’m sure. A single protestor holding a sign doesn’t get much attention in D.C. A group, however, has the ability to make more of an impact. One person shared her rant with 40 people. Look what happened.

On a smaller scale, being part of a like-minded group gives you much of the same energy. Share what you’re doing as an act of dissent. Talk about the responses you get from members of Congress and others you encounter. Share your worries. Encourage your friends. I know this doesn’t sound like much, but revolutions grow out of a couple of people sitting around having coffee and a danish. Find someone. Get together.

Want to be part of something larger? Try the Women’s March 10 Actions for 100 Days.

Start A Dissent Blog

There are a lot of ways a person can speak up online, but a blog remains one of the most effective, even outside of social media. The reason is that social media is “in the moment.” People see what has been put there in the past two minutes, but have more difficulty finding material posted days, weeks, or months earlier. Blogs eliminate that problem. Blogging platforms do a great job of automatically indexing everything you create so that it’s there and retrievable at all times without too much fuss or bother.

Another great thing about blogs is that you don’t have to be a professional writer and you don’t have to attend to it every day. You can work your blog around your own schedule, in whatever manner you want, with content of your own choosing. There are no rules about what you can or cannot say or how you say it. Curse. Scream.  Whisper. You formulate the voice you want to express and then set it out there for the world to see.

How do you get started? We strongly recommend wordpress.com for most people. WordPress is a powerful publishing platform used by large sites such as the New York Times and the brand new Obama Foundation. A lot can be done with WordPress if one knows what they’re doing. However, most people don’t have that knowledge and, quite honestly, don’t want to be bothered with the time and expense of operating a full website. WordPress.com solves that problem. You can create your own blog there, on their servers, with very little effort and no expertise. You can make it large, you can keep it small, it’s all up to you.

From there, it’s just a matter of letting people know you’ve created something. Social media is good for that. Share your article with your friends. In fact, I’ll make you a promise: tag me with your dissent blog posts and we’ll share them as well. As we share each other’s content, the dissent grows and becomes more public. The power of a single voice becomes stronger.

We can help you with this one. Don’t be afraid to ask.

Hold Politicians Accountable

Let’s get real for a brief minute here. Politicians have never been the most honest group of people in the world. Whether they’re American or Mexican or French or Gambian, lying is something they all do extremely well. Our memories tend to be short on these matters, but misinformation coming out of the White House is almost a tradition. What has changed is that we can no longer afford to brush aside those lies and exaggerations. We can’t let the president or anyone else in the administration get away with deliberate and intentional lies about what they’re doing or the facts surrounding an issue.

Holding politicians accountable is a very powerful form of dissent right now because it’s not something we’ve done on a large scale before. Sure, there have been organizations such as Snopes that have cropped up in recent years, but to the extent that they don’t force their information onto a politician or anyone else, they need people like you and me to help spread the word. There are plenty of other sources as well. The Associated Press regularly fact-checks major speeches, whether by the president or anyone else who is getting national attention. Major newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post have huge archives with which they can check the accuracy of historical claims. The resources are there.

What has to happen, though, is that you and I have to be the ones to hold politicians feet to the fire both publicly and privately. Share fact-checking posts on social media. Confront your members of Congress with facts through email or letters. It is not enough that the information is being published, politicians need to know that you are paying attention. They count on the overload of information keeping you confused and uncertain of what they’re doing. One of the most powerful forms of dissent comes when you say, “Senator, I know you’re lying and I won’t tolerate it.”

Let ’em have it.

Use Social Media

Social media may be the most publicly accessible form of voicing one’s dissent there is. Generally free and open to everyone, the ways in which you can voice your dissent are innumerable. You can be as creative as you want, use almost any format you want, and address any issue you want. The world is open to hearing from you and the more unique you are in voicing your dissent the more powerful your voice can be.

There are, however, some caveats to this method. There are millions of people on social media, which means the volume of messages is heavy. There are a lot of things out there that don’t need to be repeated and are not deserving of the attention one has to be careful. Here are the guidelines we use for our own posts:

  1. Verify everything you can before sharing. We’ve gotten caught occasionally jumping the gun and posting something that wasn’t quite true. A couple of years ago, that was no big deal. Apologize, remove the post, and move on. Today, however, given the tremendous influx of fake and misleading news, we have to be ever diligent and double our efforts to make sure that what we share is accurate.
  2. Don’t be distracted by trolls. When you post something controversial or something that doesn’t sit well with some “friends,” comments are often made that start with phrases such as “Yeah, but what about …” or “That’s something a [derogatory name] would say,” in a deliberate attempt to diminish the impact of the post by pulling an argument away from the message. Don’t fall for it. When it happens, either delete the comment (you can do that) or block the person. Don’t take them on. Don’t argue with them.  That’s what they want. Remove them and continue.
  3. Use hashtags when they’re appropriate. I’ll admit, when hashtags first started becoming a thing, I didn’t like them. They seemed stupid and unnecessary. What I’ve learned over the past few years, though, is that they actually do serve a purpose, especially when one is talking about something topical and trending. People are much more likely to see what you’ve posted if it contains an appropriate hashtag such as #SpicerFacts or #WomensMarch.

Another issue that is extremely important in social media is sharing. Each of us has a rather limited audience that is a fraction of the total number of friends or followers we might have on any given platform.  When we share what each other has posted, we enlarge that audience and spread the message of dissent. The more we share, the broader the dissent becomes. Don’t be afraid. Share liberally and watch the dissent grow.

Visual Aids

A quieter but still effective form of dissent can come in the visual elements you wear or place around you. Now, let’s be a tiny bit careful here. Your workplace may have rules regarding the display of anything that might be considered political or controversial. Check if you are not sure of your employer’s policies. However, that being said, to the extent you can do so without getting fired, wearing buttons and t-shirts, posting signs and stickers that voice your dissent are very powerful. You don’t have to say a word for people to know where you stand. The more people see such forms of dissent, the more likely they are to join in the dissent, making it all the more powerful.

I’m personally of the opinion that the strongest visuals are those you make yourself, but then, I have tools to make them look good.  Not everyone has the time or motivation to create their own. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of places across the Internet that sell buttons and stickers. Cafe Press probably gives you more choices across a number of different products, from buttons to stickers to t-shirts and more.

There’s also the option of purchasing bulk buttons and stickers and distributing them to like-minded people. My personal preference is for buttons simply because my experience has been that people tend to put stickers in places where they’re not wanted and the stickers are difficult to remove. Buttons can be transferred from one piece of clothing to another and generally don’t tend to violate as many corporate dress policies.

Don’t Be Afraid To Be Extreme

To what extent you take your dissent may well depend on your lifestyle. Not everyone can be extreme in their dissent, but those who can shouldn’t be afraid to do so. I’ve already seen a couple of tattoos and at least one person has had “resist” cut into their hair on the side. Things such as car wraps are a little expensive for most of us, but are still an extreme form of dissent that is definitely going to get noticed (and make cause your insurance rates to go up).

Extreme can also come in the groups which one chooses to support. From Planned Parenthood to the ACLU to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are dozens of major organizations that are providing a voice of dissent. Each of these non-profits rely on donations. While they are happy to accept even the smallest amounts, an extreme donation from those who can reasonably do so can make a tremendous difference in voicing your dissent. Yes, it can be a bit scary, but it is worth it.

And Finally …

Don’t be afraid to inject some humor into your dissent. There’s plenty to be had and the effect of humor on dissent can be extremely powerful. Here are some examples we pulled from the #SpicerFacts stream on Twitter.

See? We can have fun and still make our point loud and clear.

How you design your dissent, the means and the methods which work best for you, is totally subjective. There are numerous options and choosing what is going to be effective depends largely on your lifestyle and level of comfort and passion. What’s most important is that we not let up in making our voice heard. Now. Tomorrow. Next week. Next year. Every time someone in this administration and this Congress attempts to infringe on someone’s rights, to deny equality to any group, to implement policies that are not in the best interest of the American people, we have to be there, loud and strong in our dissent.

We are just getting started. Together, we can resist.

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Current Issues  /  Long Read  /  News & Comment
Do You Really Care?
January 21, 2017
charles i. letbetter - do you really care

To care is to do something about the problem.

charles i. letbetter - do you really care

The Short Version

Over 65 million Americans did not vote for the person who is now the 45th president. They don’t like him. They disagree strongly with his rhetoric and proposed policies. So, millions of them are marching today in protest. We applaud and support those protests happening around the world. Yet, protesting is never enough. If we want to truly resist the new administration, we must take actions on a continual basis that reach not only through the halls of Congress, but to Wall Street and throughout corporate America as well. We cannot be silent and expect anything to change. If one truly cares about resisting, then one needs to take action.

Let’s Start With  What Was Missed

I saw a lot of people out yesterday between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM. I would know because I was one of them. I didn’t want to even be near a computer or a television or anything else that would remind me of the horrible act that was taking place in our nation’s capital. A fascist and would-be tyrant was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. As with any inauguration, the event was more spectacle than actual substance. Yet, that was enough to distract our attention.

Hardly anyone noticed that there was yet another school shooting yesterday. A 17-year-old student walked into West Liberty High School in West Liberty, Ohio, with a loaded shotgun and opened fire. The scene could have been horrible, but it wasn’t. The teen wasn’t actually aiming directly at anyone. One student was wounded, but staff and teachers responded quickly and had the shooter on the ground and restrained by the time police arrived. He’ll face a charge of felonious assault. The wounded child will recover.

Who cares? Five years ago, that event would have been enough to pre-empt just about anything else on television. At the very least, it would have been inserted into the constant news coverage every few minutes. It wasn’t.  Not all that long ago, a school shooting would have been on the front page of every newspaper in the country. This morning, however, it’s not even mentioned on the website of the Columbus Dispatch. It’s not there. There’s no statement from Ohio Governor John Kasich. Nothing.

How high does the body count have to be in a school shooting before anyone cares?

Other Things You Might Have Missed

The inauguration is a big deal, I’ll give you that. “The peaceful exchange of power,” stands starkly against the ongoing situation in Gambia where defeated president Jammeh is being reluctant to step down. Neighboring countries were ready to invade over that one. So yes, the fact that we change from one president to another without having a serious power struggle is rather impressive and something to be celebrated. Yet, do we dare exclude everything else going on while we do?

Here are just a few headlines that are being under-reported this morning:

It is naive to think that none of those things matter in the wake of the dangers the new president presents. These are the dangers the new president presents. His new policies threaten everything from education and emergency management response to terrorism and international aid. We live in a world where not only what one does matters, but what one doesn’t do as well. Why are there women marching in protest in other countries than our own? Because they are just as concerned as we are as to what could possibly happen.

A Global Perspective

Being a global power means that what we do as a country affects much more than our own population. The decisions being made in Washington affect billions of lives outside our own borders and every last one of this lives is just as important as your own. The Associated Press took a look at some international reactions to the inauguration speech and this is what they found:

  • People in Afghanistan are concerned we might leave them stranded, allowing the Taliban and other terrorists to take over the country again.
  • Mexicans found the speech “hyper-protectionist” and worry about the future of American investment in their country.
  • In Pakistan, clerics are deeply troubled by the president’s promise to eradicate Islamic terrorism, fearing peaceful Muslims could become targets.
  • Japanese people are worried that the president’s decision to exit the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership will negatively affect the economies of all other participating countries.
  • State-run papers in China are worried that trade issues with the US are inevitable given the president’s rhetoric.
  • South Korea is worried that the US might not help in fighting back North Korean aggression on their soil.
  • Indians are worried about immigration prospect and ties with US-based technology firms.
  • Vietnamese people were concerned about the degree of self-focus and protectionism.
  • Australians found the speech divisive and fear this is the new “normal” for the US president.

What I fear we fail to understand is that any one of those international concerns has the potential to create a global crisis. The global economy is shaky with many nations sitting on the brink of bankruptcy and/or default. The crash of banks in even the smallest country would create a ripple effect that brings down the entire economic house of cards upon everyone. There is no immunity.  To allow terrorism to go unchecked in Afghanistan leaves us vulnerable to another attack the size of  9/11 or larger, The US is a target where you and I are more in danger than is the president.

Through every major area of concern: education, energy, technology, science, medicine, trade, banking, poverty, business development, human rights, and defense, we must not only consider how we handle those matters domestically, but internationally. We cannot simply back out of long-term agreements and programs and expect that there not be dire consequences for everyone involved.

The Power Of Fear

For the past eight years, many conservatives, especially those extremists, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic, hate-filled people known as the Tea Party, have been afraid that President Obama was going to take their guns, install Sharia law, ship all their jobs overseas, declare martial law, and make Islam the national religion. Of course, none of that even came close to happening. There wasn’t a piece of legislation ever drafted nor an executive order ever written that proposed anything of the kind. Yet, because the power of their fear was so overwhelming, these people for whom logic fails to exist were able to not only overtake the Republican party, but elect a 70-year-old self-serving narcissist as president. When one looks at what they accomplished, one has to admit that the power of fear is pretty strong and extremely effective.

Now, those of us who are more liberal and forward in out thoughts are experiencing some fears of our own. What rights might we loose? What will happen to women’s health and a woman’s right to make choices for herself? What happens to healthcare for anyone who isn’t already a millionaire? What happens to marriage equality and the rights of LGBTQ people? What happens to renewable energy sources and reducing our dependency on fossil fuels? What happens to air quality? How do we respond to global warming? Will all our children be educated?

We probably have many more legitimate reasons to be afraid, but the challenge before us is whether we are able to harness the power of that fear or allow it to keep us silent. For most of our lives, we’ve been told to work within the system, that if we’ll just get out the vote and make sure people are informed that they’ll do the right thing. We tried that and we lost the election despite having a significant number more votes.

We can no longer count on anyone to “do the right thing.” T hat’s not saying no one will, but we simply cannot rely upon the good conscience of the American people to keep us out of harm’s way.  If we are going to avoid the outcomes we fear, we are going to have to take stronger, more decisive, and more inflammatory action than we ever have. We cannot continue to depend upon the same tactics and actions of the past. We have to do more and find new ways of doing them.

Do You Really Care

As I type this, over 200,000 women have descended upon Washington, D.C. to march in opposition to the new president’s policies. In cities around the world, millions more join them. The size of the protest is unprecedented. Yet, as much as I support them and applaud their efforts, I know that one march doesn’t change anything. If people go back to work on Monday morning and resume the same lives and level of activities as they’ve had before, our fears could very easily turn into reality.

We don’t have to accept this. We don’t have to let this happen. We don’t have to play by the rules because the person sitting in the oval office didn’t get there by playing by the rules and we can be sure he will continue to disregard them. As we saw in November, if we play by the rules against someone who cheats, we lose. We now have as president someone who has cheated the rules his entire life. To think for one second that he’s going to change his tactics now is pure folly. We can’t let this happen.

We don’t have to accept that a Republican-dominated Congress is going to do the president’s bidding.

We don’t have to accept that the Affordable Care Act is going to be repealed.

We don’t have to accept that the Department of Education is going to institutionalize segregation through voucher programs and charter schools.

We don’t have to accept drilling for oil on public lands.

We don’t have to accept young people having to work three and four jobs just to make ends meet.

We don’t have to accept having the highest maternal mortality rate in the industrialized world.

We don’t have to accept a complete disregard for ethics laws.

We don’t have to accept LGBTQ families living in fear.

We don’t have to accept the lies.

If we really care, and I mean from the bottom of our souls with a passion that burns as hot as we feel for our partners, then we can do more than resist. We can stop this wayward thinking, misaligned, out-of-touch Congress and administration from going through with their plans. We can stop the whole thing right in its tracks.

But you have to care.

A Little More Action, Please

The success of the Tea Party was not political as much as it was organizational. A few people made a lot of noise and that noise resulted in a lot of power. I fully believe, as a progressive feminist liberal, that there are more of us than there are of them. We just have to get off our asses and work as hard outside the system as well as we do on the inside.

There’s a wonderful guide assembled by former congressional aides called The Indivisible Guide. If you REALLY care, you’ll click the link and download that PDF document. And yes, I’ll know and I WILL be watching. I want to see some major downloads of that thing. These aides have studied what happened in Congress over the past eight years and turned that into a plan for resisting the agenda of the new administration. I stayed up late reading through it last night. Their strategy and logic is sound. I won’t bother repeating it all here. Just download the damn document and read it. Have friends read it. Print it out and pass it around if you need to.

Another thing we need to do is set aside any notion of tolerance. We cannot tolerate racism. We cannot tolerate bigotry. We cannot tolerate homophobia. We cannot tolerate xenophobia. Hate is not an opinion. Hate is an attitude. We can tolerate opinions, but there’s no reason to tolerate an attitude. I don’t take attitude from our children and I damn sure won’t take it from an adult. There is no tolerance for hate. Just drop the word altogether. We are not tolerant.

Neither can we afford to be patient. We have to act now, we have to act tomorrow, and we cannot simply wait until the next round of elections and then suddenly expect that we’re going to change anything. I’m sure you’ve heard people say, “Just give him a chance and see what happens.” Funny, the people saying that sure as hell didn’t give President Obama a chance, did they? The Tea Party started right in on the first day of his presidency vowing to fight him every step of the way and for eight solid years, that is exactly what they did. We have to not only match that effort, we have to surpass it. There is no patience, especially for a narcissistic fascist.

There should never be a day pass but what your elected officials are aware of your opinions on every issue you care about. Use some common sense. Don’t put everything in the same message and expect it to be read. One subject per message, but multiple messages a day. Keep it up. Don’t back off anything and should you be fortunate enough to encounter one of your members of Congress in person, be ready with a seven-second elevator pitch to let them know how you feel.

Accumulate others of like mind and encourage them to act as well. We know we are not alone, but too often we behave as though we’re  alone. Stop it. Organize, even you can only find two or three other people. Get together. Act together. Resist together.

We don’t have to accept a damn thing. We shouldn’t accept a damn thing. The 45th president of the United States was not elected by the majority, but through a manipulation of the system. We must resist. We must object. We must blockade.  We must stand. We must fight.

Resistance Begins At Home

One of the tactics the new president likes to use is how his tweets affect the stock market. He says he doesn’t like a company and their stocks drop dramatically. He’s a bully.

That trick works both ways, though. Again, there are more of us than there are of him. We have more purchasing power and can affect the markets and the economy in must stronger ways. When a corporation cozies up to or supports his policies, we have to hold that corporation responsible. We boycott their products if we can. We protest outside their offices. We harass and press upon their board members. We upset their day-to-day business. We have to let them know that there is a steep cost to be paid for supporting this president in any way, shape, or form.

For example, do you know who paid for the inauguration? Boeing, Chevron, Verizon, Coca-Cola, and AT&T. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, most of those companies helped fund the 2013 inauguration as well. However, the amount raised for this inauguration was more than the cost of the last two inaugurations combined. The companies need to be held accountable to the public, which means you and I have to stop supporting them.

Likewise, the pale blue Ralph Lauren suit worn by the first lady was beautiful, but if Lauren supports the president then we have to send a message not only to him but to every other designer who might consider working with the first family. We cannot even indirectly support his policies in even the smallest way.

Resistance means taking back control. Control of our local governments, our state governments, and our federal governments. Indiana voters need to stop and consider how that it was our governor, the man who is now vice president, who provided party legitimacy to the buffoon in the oval office. Had we eliminated him and not let him become governor, the outcome would have likely been much different. Because we did not pay attention to local and state-wide politics, Pence happened.

This Is Only The Beginning

I feel certain that the new administration thinks all the noise will begin to die down come Monday. Once the Republicans stop partying, surely we’ll no longer feel like crashing it.

If you really care about the issues you say you care about, if they really are important to you, your life, your friends’ lives, your families’ lives, you’ll prove the president wrong. Resist.

Resist strongly.

Resist continually.

Contact a member of Congress today. Introduce yourself. Let them know you’re holding them responsible for everything Congress does and doesn’t do. Then, continue resisting from there.

Thank you.

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