Democracy Out Loud #423.1 Town halls and mass protests

Here are some suggestions about what to read and what to do.

The best thing I read this week was NC Senator Graig Meyers’ newsletter, about the wonderful DOGE rally at the NCGA and much more. There is a discernible shift now. As the Administration moves more clearly into authoritarianism, the people are rising.

When you call Senators this week, make sure you mention the impact of the cuts to the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program on North Carolina food banks and farmers. Hunger was increasing in North Carolina even before these cuts, and Trump’s cuts mean 11 million less dollars for our food banks, much of it intended for local farmers. If you can, step up support food banks.

Mehdi Hasan did a good summary of recent national news, complete with links to the ones about which you can bear to read more. I appreciated Robert Reich’s much briefer summary of the situation we are in, and his hopeful take on it all.

Indivisible chapters are organizing town halls all over the country this week to help people come together and build power. I am especially excited about the one in Southern Pines this week organized by Moore County Indivisible and the Moore County NAACP. US Representative Richard Hudson (R-9) has told his fellow Republicans not to have town halls, but his constituents have found a way to make him hear the people even though he will not show up. You can get more information and sign up at this link. Check out his district (light blue on the map); it is huge and insanely gerrymandered. Spread the word to people who are represented by him, and show up if you can.

We had hoped to also organize a town hall for US Representative Brad Knott (R-13) but we had to postpone it because we couldn’t find enough of his constituents (green area on the above map). Please email us (democracyoutloud@gmail.com) if you live in this district and want to help. You can see who your Representative is (in both the US Congresss and in the North Carolina General Assembly) at this link.

There will be empty chair town halls for Thom Tillis in Greensboro on Monday March 17, in Cary Thursday March 20 at 6:30 pm, and Raleigh on Friday March 21.

For the record, we started out eight years ago protesting Senator Tillis on the street every week and demanding a town hall. Now he is saying he can’t have town halls because he is getting death threats. Let’s face it, the death threats come from the far right, not from us, and he was never planning to have a town hall, ever, anyway. Letters to the editor and op-eds are needed about this.

The New York Times (gift article) just did a long op-ed on Senator Tillis, “He has to shrink away from greatness: The poignant surrender of a Republican under Trump.” It is difficult to feel sorry for him. We see his hedging, but not his “greatness.”

It is true that legislators are facing increasing anger from all sides as people witness the accelerating destruction of our democracy and essential government services. Republican Representative Chuck Edwards was “relentlessly booed” at his town hall in Eastern North Carolina. Good for him for showing up.

The Free Mamoud Khalil rally in Raleigh (photo by Jenny Warburg, used by permission)

Timothy Snyder wrote a very sobering and very important article called, “The evil at your door: The deportation action as regime change.” He says that the language Trump is using “has a specific resonance, which, historically, has been used to change regime type. It is important that the rights of human beings were violated. It is important that the rule of law was ignored. It is important that the executive is trying to define reality. But beyond even the issues of right and wrong and reality and unreality is the issue of language and behavior. We must consider just how the words are selected and what they are meant to do to us. ‘Foreign’ means that they are not us. ‘Alien’ means that we should hate them. ‘Terrorist’ means that we should hate them enough to allow a state of exception, a suspension of normal practices, a change of regime. There is a long history of this, all around the world, including Hitler in 1933 and Stalin in 1934.” It is painful but important to read this whole article.

Trump’s speech at the Department of Justice made it clear that not only does Trump believe he is above the law, he believes that he IS the law. David Pepper’s explanation of what has recently happened related to the plans of Project 2025 is really helpful.

As we would expect, Joy-Ann Reid covers Senator Schumer’s vote on the Continuing Resolution (CR) with truth and fairness.

Protests aimed at Elon Musk continue at Tesla dealerships around the country (find one near you at #TeslaTakedown).

Below, some of our folks at the Tesla protest in Raleigh last week. (Photo by Marci)

NC Democrats are sponsoring a training at 6 pm on Monday March 17 on “How to influence your legislators.” You can get more information and sign up at this link.

The ACLU has compiled a very helpful document, Know Your Rights so we know exactly what we can legally do to protest under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

You can find and register at this link for any one of the protests that will happen in Washington DC and cities all over the country (below). If you can get to DC on April 5, go; otherwise check out the other places, which do not yet include Raleigh (hint). These are being planned by 5050.one, Indivisible, other organizations.

Sunrise did a beautiful narrated graphic about NC SB 261, the bill that raises energy prices for consumers and frees Duke Energy from reasonable climate control goals. It explains this fast-tracked bill and what you can do. It has already passed the NC Senate.

Coming up this week at the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) in committee are a lot of truly terrible bills. There are three simultaneous committee meetings on Tuesday at 1 pm all of which we would like to attend. They include NC H171 “Equality in State Agencies: Prohibition on DEI,” and NC H294 and NC H302, which would make Boards of Elections partisan in Jackson County and Pitt County respectively, as well as NC H318, “The Criminal Illegal Alien Enforcement Act.”

Everyone is invited to join us on our zoom call every Tuesday from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm. “Doors open” at 10:45 am and if you are new please come early so we can welcome you. Please write to Jewel at DemocracyOutLoud@gmail.com and tell us just a little bit about yourself if you need the zoom link.

Everyone is also welcome to our guided 7 Homecomings meditation every Thursday at 10 am. Jewel takes care of that mailing list, too, so write to her as above for the link.

The shift is happening on the whole planet, from systems of unsustainable cruelty and destruction to a culture of compassion and care. Our job is to find whatever way we can to join communities of care and lend our resources to make them stronger. If each of us can do our little bit, and that will be enough in time to tip the balance. Have faith.

love, Karen

“The very definition of authoritarianism is when the executive branch overwhelms, or politicizes or hinders from being independent the judiciary and the other branches of government….They’re going to take apart the DOJ as an independent body…and make it into something else….That something is a body that will protect the president and his cronies….” - Ruth Ben-Ghiat on MSNBC

(The Free Mamoud Khalil rally in Raleigh (photo by Jenny Warburg, used by permission)

“I was going to die, if not sooner than later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.

“What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.

“And, of course, I am afraid– you can hear it in my voice– because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, “tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside of you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth.”

“I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, “disappeared” or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

“Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.

“And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” - Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 1984