Democracy Out Loud #440.1:The totally insane budget passed; now what?

It can serve to wake people up to what is actually happening, and increase our resolve.

Dear Friends,

Thank you for everything you did to try to block and/or create awareness around the deadly bill that passed the House yesterday. If you are feeling sadness, grief, rage, helplessness, or whatever, you are not alone. All of us who understand the meaning of this Congressional budget are feeling the same things.

Robert Reich wrote, “That such a regressive, dangerous, gargantuan, and unpopular piece of legislation could get through Congress shows how far Trump has dragged America into modern fascism.” Timothy Snyder wrote, “With the passage of Trump's death bill, we face the prospect of many great harms, including an archipelago of concentration camps across the United States.”

Most sobering of all is the realization that it was the Allies, including the US, who defeated the Nazi regime and liberated people from concentration camps during WW II. Now our own government has put its resources into the opposite plan, and nobody is coming to save us. We ourselves will have to continue to organize to save democracy, expand opposition to cruelty, and protect each other.

There is no time to lose because all those billions of dollars can now build the most sophisticated and largest law enforcement agency in history, complete with concentration camps and masked, brutal agents in masks who have a daily quota from Stephen Miller. Amy Goodman broke some of this down on Democracy Now! this week.

Sherrilyn Ifill wrote in her newsletter, “We must question our nation today precisely because our ability to openly question it in the coming days may be in peril. Every day that we still retain the right to speak, to protest, to demand, to refuse, to boycott, to march, to file suit, to argue – every day that we can still exercise those rights, we must exercise them.”

So, a couple of suggestions.

If you fly an American flag, fly it upside down.

On Sunday July 6 from 4 to 6 pm, if you are nearby you can join Triangle Bridges of Freedom; you can find out more and sign up at this link.

There are more protests in the next several days, detailed in Kathryn’s newsletter.

IMPORTANT: Indivisible is building on recent mass protests by launching One Million Rising, “a national effort to train one million people in the strategic logic and practice of non-cooperation, as well as the basics of community organizing and campaign design.” I am really excited about this; these are virtual meetings; you can sign up at this link for July 16, July 30, and August 13 from 8 pm to 9 pm. Spread the word about this. This is how we will build on our recent mass mobilizations.

Indivisible is a crucial resource right now. If you missed the mass call after the budget vote, you can view the recording at this link.

You can also take this survey about the work you are already doing to take the fight to sources of power outside Congress.

Andry, below, is gay. He was sent to CECOT in El Salvador for no apparent reason and has not been heard from since. Check out #DisappearedInAmerica and Abrego Garcia’s account about what happens to people in that prison. None of the men sent there had due process and only 22% had committed crimes, none of them serious. Let’s pressure our Senators and Representatives to bring them all home.

Our book group is meeting this Wednesday April 9 at 3:30 pm; if you need the zoom link email Marci at DemocracyOutLoud@gmail.com. Clinton Wright and I will co-lead this session. You don’t need to have read the book, which is “Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows.” In his book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Dr. Timothy Snyder lists in lesson #9 several books that he notes have particular implications for studying the advancement of evil, among them Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This is why we are reading this book. We in no way endorse the transphobic bigotry of its author.

Dr. Snyder spoke at the 2020 Harry Potter Conference about how literature helps us see evil in politics. You can view the video at this link or read the transcript here.

Everyone is welcome to join us this Tuesday July 8 or any Tuesday from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm for our regular virtual meeting. “Doors open” at 11 am, and we’d like you to come early if you are new so we can welcome you. If you need the zoom link, email Jewel at DemocracyOutLoud@gmail.com and tell her a bit about yourself.

Also email her if you would like to join our guided meditation every Thursday at 10 am. We could all use some grounding these days.

Please don’t let yourself get isolated or lost in news shows or social media. If we can attend to ourselves and each other with deep care, and understand that we are here at this particular time for a reason, new possibilities will open. We can become the human beings we want to be and help create the world we want to see.

love, Karen

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. - Frederick Douglass

“If America as we know it cannot be saved and we are truly in the abyss, what is the new America we can create when we emerge from this dark place? What is our vision for that new America? What must we do now to lay the foundation for its creation?” - Sherrilyn Ifill, Substack, July 4, 2025