Democracy Out Loud #439: Hope
Building an alternative, within and among ourselves.
It’s hard to accept that this is happening, this nightmare of narcissistic billionaires controlling governments including our own, spinning an unspeakably evil budget, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and terror.
We can complain, sure, yet we can’t let it get to us. Maybe these evil empires will collapse, and maybe that is good. Meanwhile, what are we building? If we can increasingly lean into the genuine alternative to greed and delusion that is springing up within and around us, we can continue the long game, the one that will build a much better future.
The most important thing we can do right now is keep up the pressure on our Senators to vote NO on the proposed budget. The vote on this genocidal budget will likely come in the US Senate this week. It would mean the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in our history, increased ICE and DOD funding, and an exploding deficit, not to mention massive cuts in subsidized housing and SNAP. If you can’t get Senators Tillis and Budd in their Washington Offices, you may have better luck with Tillis’s office in Raleigh (919) 856-4630 and Budd’s office in Advance (336) 941-4470. I just got through to both. Or use the tool created by the Poor People’s Campaign. Or use 5Calls.org.
Rosemary sent this article about Senator Tillis, “Key GOP Senator Warns Medicaid Cuts Could Spell Disaster for Republicans.” In response, Senator McConnell reportedly said, “I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid. But they’ll get over it.” Please keep up the pressure. It’s working.
(Below, a flyer Senator Tillis reportedly distributed to his Senate colleagues this week.)
The longer they drag this thing out, the better chance we have of killing the whole damn budget proposal. Meanwhile, the Mayoral race in New York is a hopeful sign that being a “moderate Democrat” right now is not a winning strategy. I hope US Representatives and Senators are paying attention.
I am completely sure that there is hope we will get on the other side of this madness. Consider this: the population of the United States is 340,110,988. A total of 77,384,118 people voted for Trump, less than 23% of the total population and 32% of eligible voters. (Hitler won almost 44% of the vote in 1933.)
Already many Trump voters are unhappy with him. The chart below is from Simon Rosenberg’s Substack.
It is likely that huge protests against the Trump administration will continue as its incompetence and brutality continue to unfold. We can also expect an escalation of lies, gaslighting, cruelty, and violence. These are not normal times. Cliff sent this article, “What we are witnessing is not history rhyming, It’s plagiarism” about how the administration is modeling itself exactly after Hitler’s regime and specifically how Stephen Miller is modeling himself after Joseph Goebbels.
As you know, Democracy Out Loud is putting a lot of energy into the North Carolina General Assembly under the leadership of our Legislative Response Team. Mark and Calile and Mary gave public comment about the dastardly DEI bills at a committee meeting and other members of the team were there this week. The bad bills that Governor Cooper vetoed (immigration, guns) have not come up for a veto override vote yet; Republicans have until December 2026 to do that.
We are helping to raise money for the NC Progressive House Caucus. These people inspire us every time we sit in those galleries with their brilliant and brave arguments against terrible bills and in their calm proposals of helpful amendments which are inevitably instantly crushed by the Republican majority. This caucus has figured out that Republicans won 17 of the severely gerrymandered NC House districts by less than 10 percentage points, and running their own candidates would be a winning strategy. If we can flip a few of those districts, we can shift the balance of power in the North Carolina General Assembly. You can donate to them at this link.
Our guest this Tuesday July 1 will be US Representative Valerie Foushee, who represents North Carolina’s 4th district (Durham County, Orange County, and part of Chatham and Wake Counties). We meet every Tuesday on zoom from 11:30 am until 12:30 pm - “doors open” at 11 am and we ask that you come early if you are new so we can welcome you. Email Jewel at DemocracyOutLoud@gmail.com and tell her a bit about yourself if you need the zoom link.
Everyone is also welcome to come to our guided meditation every Thursday at 10 am at the same zoom link.
The increasingly desperate and fearful people in power will continue to escalate their madness. Meanwhile, we keep fighting for voting rights, for immigrants, for the earth, for democracy, for the struggling poor and working class, for diversity, equity, and inclusion, for our own freedom, and for each other. I believe that we will win.
love, Karen
“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts.
“The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing. The same royal consciousness that makes it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger. Thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” - Walter Brueggemann (1933 - 2025), The Prophetic Imagination
