Welead OC PAC

Tonight, I’m putting on my Welead hat, an organization I founded while living in Southern California. We recruited and trained Progressive women Democrats to run for school boards and city councils. Since relocating back to Washington, DC last year, we shifted our focus to include mutual aid projects, especially following the election last year.

The holidays are about connection, joy, and making sure everyone in our communities feel the warmth of belonging. This year, Welead is partnering with families in Ward 8 to make sure 244 elementary school students have what every kid deserves—a quality winter coat to stay warm and one toy that brings a smile.

We’re raising $15,000 before the kids head out for the holiday break, and we’d love for you to be a part of this.

Why We’re Doing This

Ward 8 families are resilient, resourceful, and deeply committed to their children and community. Like the rest of us, they’re also navigating challenges. We want to stand alongside our neighbors saying, “We see you, we value you, and we’re in this together.”

Every family deserves to experience the joy of the season without financial stress. Every child deserves a coat that fits and a toy wrapped just for them. This is about dignity, celebration, and community care.

The Plan

Between now and December 18th, we’re working directly with school partners to ensure every item is chosen with care and delivered with respect.

This is grassroots mutual aid in action. No bureaucracy. No strings attached. Just people showing up for people.

How You’re Part of This

Your contribution—whatever feels right for you—helps us reach our goal. Whether you can give, share this message with others, or spread the word in your networks, you’re helping build the kind of community where everyone thrives.

Show Up for Ward 8 Families

The Spirit of It

This time of year reminds us what matters most: taking care of each other, celebrating together, and building a community where every family feels valued and supported.

When we invest in our community’s children, yting in all of our futures. When we show up for families during challenging times, we strengthen the fabric of our entire city.

Will you join us in making this happen?

Yes! Count me in!

We have just 12 days to reach $15,000. Every contribution moves us closer. Every share of this email extends our reach.

Let’s do this.

P.S. The December 18th deadline gives us time to purchase everything and coordinate with families before the holidays arrive. If you’ve been looking for a meaningful way to celebrate the season, this is it.

WeLead is building community power through mutual aid and grassroots organizing in Southeast DC. Questions? We’d love to hear from you—just reply.

Paid for by Welead OC PAC. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee. Contributions are not tax deductible for income tax purposes. FEC ID#: C00655993

The Eyes

Look into those eyes. What do you see? Look closely enough, you’ll see only three reflections—himself, money, and power.

They are not windows into a soul, but hollow caverns screaming with self-interest. He is morally cavernous, whose gaze echos nothing but egocentrism.

The President of the United States’ eyes reflect no empathy, no flicker of conscience, no warmth, kindness, compassion, joy or hope --- only the relentless reflection of his three obsessions: 1) himself, 2) money and 3) power. In that order. Every decision, every transaction, every betrayal of principle flows from this triad.

So when he sat in the Oval Office knee-to-knee next to a confirmed murderer, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a dictator who ordered and directed the dismemberment of a journalist with a bone saw, silencing others with bullets and reigning over a repressive government, Trump’s marvel did not falter. Human rights violations dissolved into currency, because in those eyes, human rights fuse into transactions.

Somehow, all is forgiven for the atrocities of 9/11, especially when Trump is being lavished with praise (“U.S. is the hottest country in the world”), and mounds of investments in his family’s cryptocurrency biz. Truth be told, our country IS the hottest for Trump, his family, the tech bros and billionaires. The rest of us struggle to afford food (which has become a luxury item), rent, gas and utilities. You know, the necessities.

And why not be a forgiving? Let’s let bygones be bygones because after all, according to the leader of the free world, “things happen,” so why dwell. Right? Not when there’s millions, billions and even trillions of dollars to be made between friends. After all, those deals aren’t going to quid-pro-quo themselves.

The breathtaking juxtaposition in Tuesday’s Oval office spectacle was Trump’s transactional gaze while sitting next to a brutal dictator. The man who would be King has crafted himself a throne made from the bones of the tortured and brutalized. Because in Trump’s eyes, atrocities are not tragedies. Human rights violations dissolve into currency. At that moment, his eyes revealed their truth: not vision, but vacancy. Not leadership but a ledger.

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The Triad

1) Himself

There is not a single solitary road in Trump’s mind that doesn’t lead directly back to him. His self-obsession is the sole gravitational center of his universe.

He expects undying loyalty because well, he deserves it. But that arc does not bend beyond himself. There are no guarantees, except one: at any given moment, he can snap, tap endlessly on his social media platform, blasting his latest prey with insults, and unmitigated shame. No rhyme. No reason except undoubtedly the unsuspecting victim has done something, big or small, to piss him off. He’s never been one to shy away from making himself look great at the expense of someone else.

Trump is impulsive. He has is no strategy. He operates on instinct, when for instance, he took a wrecking ball to the East Wing. He sought counsel from no one, did not follow any of the processes required when making changes to historic properties. He just did it because he wanted to and because he can.

He really has no formal policies, because he stands for nothing. All of this is chilling knowing he has command of the nuclear codes.

Trump has no capacity for the suffering of others, in large part because he has no capacity to understand their plight. He has never wanted or suffered for anything in his life. Ever. He is unable to conceive the anguish of tens of millions who truly struggle each and every day, despite a 40 plus hour work week but still unable to get ahead.

No matter, he will go on endlessly about his massive gilded ballroom, host lavish lunches and dinners at the “Rose Garden Club,” and extravagant themed parties at his private resort club in Palm Beach, Fl.

41 million people losing SNAP benefits during the shutdown? Trump believes the program is broken. He did nothing to restore the funding, despite an order from a judge. Instead he repealed the decision to the highest court in the land. Because Trump has never known hunger nor what it’s like to go to bed on an empty stomach.

He routinely verbally abuses women journalists who have the unmitigated nerve to either challenge him or, ask questions that offend him. In other words, he berates if they ask uncomfortable questions or, as we like to call it, doing their jobs.

Despite 5 deferments to avoid military service, he is obsessed with all things military, extrajudicially vaporizing supposed drug dealers in the middle of the Caribbean, brutalizing immigrants on U.S. soil, hobnobbing with the WW contingent, or his “peace through strength” campaign, is for nothing more than to make him look like the strongman he is not.

For Trump, people exist only insofar as they serve his reflection, because he is not a man of vision, but of reflection —- and the reflection is always himself.

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2) Money

Where to start?

Nothing says hollow moral cavern like Trump’s full vault of currency. Since taking office, January 20, 2025, Trump and his family have reportedly accumulated and stashed:

• $2.37 billion from cryptocurrency ventures and holdings

• $339.6 million from financial investments and foreign capital (e.g. Saudi, Emirati, Qatari funds into Kushner’s firm)

• $270.8 million from hospitality (Mar-a-Lago, Trump hotels)

• $116 million from media ventures (books, documentaries, licensing)

• $277.7 million from other sources:

  MAGA merchandise (hats, sneakers, watches, Bibles)

  Private jet gifted by Qatar

  Legal fees paid via PACs

Cash & Gifts Since Jan 2025: $1.8 Billion

• Includes realized crypto gains, foreign gifts, and direct payments to family ventures

Of course, these are only the things we know of because of legally required financial disclosures. We have no idea the grift and wealth he’s accumulating in the darkness of night.

So, say if you were to ask Trump directly, “are you better off today than you were a year ago?” His answer would be a resounding “YES.” Because of his position of power, all of this obscene financial accumulation has occurred.

His ill-conceived, destructive, income-busting tariffs he’s penned as “the most beautiful word in the dictionary,” have needlessly created economic hardship in this country and abroad. He created, as he is one to do, an illusion of an emergency, by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that grants a president broad authority during national emergencies. There is no emergency. Rather, these tariffs allow Trump to strong-arm, extort, bribe and threaten leaders and countries, bending them towards his will —- his financial will.

Want to lower the tariffs for your country? Why just show up with a Rolex Clock, a rare collector’s item, worth $25K and a 1-kilogram gold bar emblazoned with the presidential seal and “45” & “47”, worth $130K. Your kindness and generosity will get you a tariff reduction from 39% to 15%.

It is stunning, a man who spent the better part of his adult life conning the world to believe he was someone he was not and a reality show that branded him as something he never was —- a successful businessman. But now billionaires, tech bros, CEO’s and leaders around the world are sucking up to him, lavishing him with praise, piles of money and gifts. He acquices because money is just not wealth, it’s validation, proof of his dominance, the metric by which he measures worth.

Currency is his conscience.

Unless there’s a dollar sign attached to any and all transactions, he has no interest and will walk away. Because for Trump, money is not currency. It is oxygen. Without it, the cavern collapses.

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3) Power

Of course the two caverns (himself; money) meld into the third —- power, locking morality behind transaction; heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Trump brags he’s never had a drop to drink.· But power, the ultimate power of the presidency, is his crowning drug — not for responsibility, but for domination.

He loves nothing more than to have the Oval office filled to the brim with reporters and news outlets carrying any and all Oval office meetings. This is especially true when he’s hosting Heads of State or other dignitaries. He sits perched on his gaudy gold upholstered chair, in an ostentatious setting, dripping with Home Depot gold moldings, appliques and medallions, super-glued to the walls. This is where Trump draws his power, where he feels invincible. A place where, should someone like President Zelensky find himself, Trump feels perfectly confident to berate, humiliate, bully, shame and intimidate. In Trump’s eyes, he doesn’t view his actions as atrocities, he sees them as transactions.

His hollowness is not absence; it is appetite. And power is not stewardship; it is appetite. Appetite has no conscience.

In the end, the eyes tell the story. They do not reveal compassion, nor conviction, nor the weight of responsibility. They are not the focus of a leader, but the hollow stare of a man defined only by himself, money, and power. What should be windows to a soul are instead vaults of transaction, dark caverns where morality has long since collapsed. Look into them closely, and you will not find vision—you will hear only the echo of emptiness.

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At the end of July I posted about an ongoing project I'm working on --- Ageism, Women and Campaigns. Here it is.

Subsequently, I wrote two Substack pieces, inviting women Democrats, over the age of 50, to share their experiences. Link here:

Needless to say, the responses were overwhelming. The bottom line: we all recognize Ageism, Women and Campaigns is a systemic problem, not just within the political community as it turns out, but a pervasive issue spanning every profession.

A number of weeks ago a friend related a soul-crushing experience of a seasoned, well-accomplished woman, holding a proven track-record with a swath of successful campaigns on her resume. She was a strong candidate for a campaign operative position. More than qualified. She was passed over by someone much younger, less experienced with not even a scintilla of breadth of power and authority.

Hoping against hope campaigns and employers will change out of this current system any time soon, is whistling in the wind. It won’t happen. Not in our lifetime.

But we can become the Change Agents in this environment. We’ve done it before, we can do it again. After all, we built movements for decades, most of the time from whole cloth, gathered around our kitchen tables and living rooms creating coalitions.

Any change to the system rests in our hands.

So I am proposing the following for those interested:

Immediate Next Steps

Create a private space - Consider a private LinkedIn, Facebook group, Slack channel, or email list where we can connect directly with each other, building a network that becomes the foundation for action.

Define the scope - Are we focusing just on Democratic campaigns, or broader political work? Just consultants/operatives, or also including electeds, donors, board members?

Potential Action Areas

Economic leverage - We likely represent millions in combined billing, fundraising capacity, and network influence. That's real power.

Alternative structures - Create consulting cooperatives, advisory groups, or new organizations that explicitly value our experience.

We could also create a potential dual-track approach.

Track 1: Immediate Relief

• Job/contract sharing network among the group

• Referral system where members actively recommend each other

• "Gray hair, don't care" client list - campaigns/orgs that explicitly value experience

• Consulting collective that presents as a unified entity with depth of experience as the selling point

Track 2: System Change

• Coordinated pressure on major Democratic consulting firms, PACs, campaign organizations

• Public accountability campaigns (naming organizations with poor age diversity)

• Economic leverage - coordinated decisions about where to spend/donate/recommend spending

• Creating new organizations/structures that explicitly counter ageism

If any of the above appeals to your liking, time and bandwidth, send me a message.

Some additional thoughts:

I founded an organization while living in California - Welead OC. We train Progressive Women Democrats to run for local offices, work in campaigns and sharpen their activist/organizing skills. Since relocating back to Washington, DC, we’ve been working to expand beyond the California border. The three-day deep-dive training is free.

We have scheduled a Virtual training for this January — January 23rd thru January 25th. If you are a woman, a Democrat, over 50, have campaign experience (managing, fundraising, voter contact/field organizing, messaging, telling your story, social media/digital media, communications) we could use you to lead one of our training modules. Please reach out to me,

describing your experience. While at this very moment, there is no compensation involved (we’re working on that), our trainees would benefit tremendously, learning from seasoned, successful women who forged the path for today’s Progressive Women Democrats to successfully run for office.

Here is a copy of the Save-the-Date

In addition, the Thursday evening before the training begins, January 22nd, Welead OC will be hosting a Kick-Off event. We would like to feature women over 50 who have worked in campaigns. You deserve the recognition. If you live in the DC, MD or VA area, and would be interested in being featured during our Kick-Off on January 22nd, please send me message, providing your background and experience.

Here is a copy of the Save-the-Date, January 22, 2026 Kick-Off event.

Just some thoughts I'm throwing out there.

Let me know what you think!

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Photo Credit - Stephanie Keith/Reuters

It’s early Sunday morning. The sun is due to show its face shortly. With the exception of what remains of a few evening crickets and cooing morning doves, it is so very quiet.

I’m sitting on my deck, watching the steam rise from my second cup of coffee. I love early mornings —- it’s time that belongs only to me. It’s peaceful. Given the dangerous direction our country has turned in the last eight months, I’m wondering just how many more tranquil moments like this will continue, given the fragility of a country I am recognizing less and less with every step I take.

It is in this peaceful moment I find myself filled with fear, anxiety and both hope and despair. Eight months into this administration’s infiltration we need to stop calling Trump a “wanna be dictator,” and/or that we are “headed toward an authoritarian takeover.” Trump IS a dictator. What we are seeing now is a full-blown authoritarian push by Donald Trump. Is was a slow descent. It was a quick descent. But we are here and the question is are we going to allow it to happen. Can we survive?

A few examples from history, of democracies that can and did die:

• Russia: After initial democratic reforms in the 1990s, Russia shifted toward dictatorship under Vladimir Putin (1999–present) with the curtailment of opposition, judicial independence, and freedom of the press. The main causes include the centralization of power, suppression of rivals, and control of media.

• Venezuela: Venezuela’s democracy collapsed under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. Factors included economic collapse, discredited opposition, attacks on independent judiciary, and use of security forces to control dissent.

• Turkey: Under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey gradually moved from pluralism to authoritarian rule, marked by consolidation of power, constitutional changes, purges, and the stifling of media and opposition.

• Hungary: Under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán since 2010, Hungary experienced democratic backsliding through court-packing, media takeovers, suppression of opposition, and rule changes undermining electoral fairness.

• Belarus: Alexander Lukashenko has ruled as a dictator since 1994, systematically dismantling democratic mechanisms through election manipulation and repression.

• Nicaragua: Daniel Ortega shifted from democratic pluralism to autocratic control after 2007, eliminating checks and balances and persecuting rivals.

• Zimbabwe: Democracy unraveled under Robert Mugabe due to political violence, rigged elections, and economic collapse.

• Iran: After a brief democratic period, the Islamic Revolution established a theocratic dictatorship in 1979, driven by ideological purges and mass mobilization.

• Egypt: Following the Arab Spring, Egypt reverted to military-backed autocracy after a period of democratic activity.

• Sudan: Failed transitions and civil strife repeatedly undermined efforts at democratization.

The United States of America, in the not-too-distant future, could find itself on this list.

And yet, every day we carry on as if everything is normal or, if we wait long enough, will go away. It isn’t. In fact, it’s only getting worse. Ben Franklin’s challenge “it’s a republic, if you can keep it,” appears to be an even bigger challenge under Trump’s ever-tightening regime.

It’s only been a mere 237 days since Trump’s swearing in, January 20, 2025. In that time he has managed to systemically criticize independent journalism, strongarm and extort major media outlets and obsessively rant, in an effort to delegitimize/deplatform journalists and news coverage unfavorable to him or critical of his policies, as “fake news.” Every single day he outright lies with little if ever any pushback from journalists and reporters. Our freedom of speech is legitimately under attack.

He has engaged in non-stop bullying and unprecedented shakedowns of colleges and universities, threatening to withhold or withdraw federal funding if they do not bend to his dictatorial proclivities and mandates to eliminate DEI, conform to his ideological curriculum, deny applications of foreign students who he deems unfit as the “appropriate student,” and dictate hiring practices of faculty. Many who have faced his ire are private institutions of learning.

Pressure on educational and civil society institutions have weakened traditional checks on Trump’s executive power overreaches.

Smithsonian museums? Well, heed The Leader if you’re smart. History should not portray what in fact actually occurred. No. In his words, and to his thinking, way too much attention has been placed on the horrors of slavery. It wasn’t that bad, was it? So, entitled, privileged White men, at Trump’s direction, will go through the exhibits and approve displays they believe best represent our history.

Trump’s and MAGA’s use of increasingly divisive language, targeting political opponents and minority communities, especially in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, has intensified social polarization and contributed to full-blown “culture wars.” One need only to have spent some time on social media platforms this weekend to witness the full weight of the damage being done. Horrific.

There are, of course, Trump’s ridiculous tariffs, which have done nothing but wage economic unrest, causing undue harm on every day Americans who are now enduring price hikes on just about everything, including food, rent and electricity, with no end in sight, to say nothing of the economic chaos and uncertainty inflicted on our global partners and allies.

And every day incidents are reported of immigrants, here legally with green cards or going through the legal immigration process, are kidnapped off our streets by Trump’s masked militia, without warrants or any hint of due process, thrown into unmarked vehicles and disappeared to points unknown. No legal representation afforded these individuals. We are just to accept that, according to the word of Stephen Miller, the real president of the United States of America, and his cohort Kristi Noem, they are apprehending the worst-of-the-worst for deportation. No evidence to support. Just their word.

SCOTUS last week greenlit their operation, providing the a-okay to snatch anyone who is not White enough, not blonde enough, or blue-eyed enough, and take them into custody without so much as a legitimate reason to do so. This allows ICE, Homeland Security and Border Patrol to whisk individuals to privately run, inhumane, predatory detention facilities. No oversight. No accountability, unraveling our civil rights laws by decades. And we watch.

Never mind the militarized take-over of U.S. cities. Trump has weaponized the military against its own citizens on American soil. His big-time “crime prevention” efforts. His focus is on cities with Black mayors who preside over predominantly Black communities. Because as we all know, crimes are only committed by Black and Brown people and illegal aliens. There are better, far more productive ways to fight crime, which most cities he’s targeting and will target have employed, reducing their crime rate significantly. But he doesn’t want to hear that. He is, after all, the great White Crusader who will swoop in and save the people like he’s Super Man in a red cape. His method of imposing fear and intimidation will most certainly backfire. But maybe not in time.

In the last 237 days, Trump has signed over 200 Executive Orders, not one an enacted law. Because you see, he would have to go through Congress, a co-equal branch of government. But he won’t and he hasn’t. He has been exceedingly successful in castrating the GOP majority in both Houses to the point where there is zero resistance on their part. No matter how egregious his actions.

Then there are his tired and persistent claims about electoral fraud without substantial supporting evidence. His attempts to overturn election results, legal challenges to voting procedures, and the January 6th Capitol events have created unprecedented tensions around the electoral process. His obsession with losing power and control has led to yet another unfathomable move —-forcing red states to redraw their electoral maps, outside the census drawing parameters, to ensure, in his mind, more MAGA seats in the U.S. House. And of course, no resistance from his party.

Then there are his efforts, his administration and the architects of Project 2025, to install Trump loyalists, whether they hold the requisite qualifications, in key government positions. His abhorrence to adhere to traditional oversight mechanisms and challenges to judicial independence, only add to the fragility of our democracy and values, endangering our national security as well as every other facet of good government.

Ongoing questions about the intersection of Trump’s personal business interests and government decision-making, where he is enriching himself daily, have raised concerns about corruption and accountability that engender corrosive public trust. He has successfully removed any federal authority to challenge any and all of his personal financial transactions. It just simply is. He will continue to do whatever he wants to do. Ethically or morally questionable? So what.

We are in danger of becoming numb to all that follows authoritarianism. We carry on as if recent departures from “democratic norms” are simply temporary aberrations that will naturally correct themselves. If we continue to treat extraordinary events as ordinary, this may in fact be the erosion of our democracy. When we become customized and complacent to this insanity, the boundaries of Trump and his administration’s acceptable behavior will continue to expand.

The fragility of democracy. Understanding how institutions failed elsewhere could and should help us recognize our vulnerabilities. That is, if it’s not too late.

Well, early Sunday morning has turned to Sunday mid-morning.

I’m listening to beautiful music coming from nearby churches. Melodious voices in the early morning. Praying for a better today and a better tomorrow in this fragile republic known as the United States of America.

I hope you will consider subscribing to GirlUncensored. It’s free. If you would like to support my work with a paid subscription, I will be eternally grateful!

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I’m looking around at all the different people. There’s a group of men, sitting on the corner in folding chairs, jamming together, playing the most wonderful jazz.

Not far from them a group of neighbors barbecuing on a Weber. Aromatic smoke billowing from the metal grill. It’s hard to see what’s on the menu, but guessing some kind of beef and maybe some ribs. Corn-on-the-cobb?

And not far from them are people just hanging, also on folding chairs. Laughing and telling stories. And an intense game of chess.

GrubHub delivery flybikes zooming by, while a phalanx of deliverers waiting for orders.

There are sirens. Mostly fire trucks and a couple of ambulances. There’s the hustle and bustle of Washingtonians either headed home for the weekend or to some Friday night hotspot.

And just a few moments ago I looked up only to see a magnificent mural painted on the side of a massive building.

It’s calm. It’s lively. It’s peaceful.

Washington, DC.

I have listened to and read disparaging words about this city by the president, his administration, his MAGA base. They viciously malign the people as violent. To hear them speak, there is crime on every corner. Murderers and rapists everywhere. Miraculously, I was able to get from Point A to Point B today without getting mugged.

To hear them talk, there are homeless encampments everywhere, preventing even the most casual walker from passing through. And of course, graffiti sprayed on every building in the city.

The Nation’s Capitol is not without its flaws. Crime? Homeless? Graffiti? Yes. But no more than other metropolitan areas.

I shudder to my core when I hear the president threatening to “Federalize” DC. He can’t, legally, although that hasn’t stopped him these days. When he hurls threats like that I think to myself, if he dragged himself outside the White fortress he hides behind, and walked the neighborhoods he bemoans, or took a different mode than than the backseat of the Beast where he rides in luxury, he would see what I’m seeing tonight.

Just an ordinary Friday night in my magnificent Hood.

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Yesterday, I published a Substack piece about the invisible glass ceiling facing women over 50 in Democratic campaigns—how those who broke through gender barriers earlier in their careers now face a new form of discrimination that combines ageism with sexism in uniquely damaging ways. You can read it here.

The response has been overwhelming. My inbox has filled with messages from women saying "finally, someone is talking about this" and "I thought I was the only one experiencing this." It's clear that what I wrote about isn't just a theoretical problem—it's a lived reality for countless women across the Democratic political ecosystem.

Frankly, I heard from women outside of the Democratic political ecosystem —- turns out, the ageism/sexism epidemic isn’t particular to political campaigns.

But here's what I realized: while research and analysis can illuminate the scope of this issue, the real power lies in the stories of the women who've lived it. Your stories. Your experiences. Your insights about what it's actually like to navigate political careers as you age, and how the intersection of gender and age creates barriers that are often invisible to others but painfully real to those experiencing them.

I Want to Hear From You

If you're a woman over 50 who has worked in Democratic politics—whether as a consultant, campaign staffer, political operative, fundraiser, communications professional, field organizer, or in any other capacity—I want to hear about your experience.

I'm particularly interested in stories about:

The Subtle Shifts: When did you first notice that your age was becoming a factor in how you were perceived or treated? What were the early warning signs that things were changing?

Specific Incidents: Have you been passed over for roles you were qualified for? Excluded from meetings or decision-making processes? Had your ideas dismissed or attributed to others? Been offered roles that seemed to underutilize your experience?

The Language of Exclusion: What coded language have you encountered? How do people talk about "fresh perspectives," "new blood," or "dynamic leadership" in ways that seem to exclude women of your experience level?

Network Changes: How have your professional relationships evolved? Have you noticed changes in how younger colleagues interact with you? Have informal networks that once included you begun to exclude you?

Financial Impact: How has age-related discrimination affected your economic security? Have you had to accept lower-paying roles or face gaps in employment?

Intersectional Experiences: How does your experience vary based on other aspects of your identity—race, class, sexual orientation, geographic location, or area of political specialization?

Coping and Resistance: How have you navigated these challenges? What strategies have worked? What support systems have been helpful?

The Broader Picture: What do you think needs to change? What would make Democratic political organizations more inclusive of experienced women?

Why Your Story Matters

Individual experiences of discrimination often feel isolating. Women facing age-related bias may wonder if they're being overly sensitive, if they're imagining patterns that don't exist, or if their struggles are unique to their particular situation or personality.

But when we collect these stories together, patterns emerge. We can see how systemic discrimination operates, how it affects different women in different contexts, and what the cumulative impact looks like across the political ecosystem.

Your story also helps illuminate solutions. While structural reforms are important, they often emerge from understanding how discrimination actually manifests in day-to-day professional interactions. The women who've found ways to navigate or resist these barriers have insights that could help others facing similar challenges.

Perhaps most importantly, sharing these stories helps break the isolation that often accompanies age discrimination. When women realize they're not alone in these experiences, it can be both validating and empowering.

How to Share Your Story

You can reach me directly

or respond in the comments below. I'm also happy to set up phone conversations if you'd prefer to talk rather than write.

You can also respond, anonymously, by filling out this form and returning to me.

A few important notes about participating:

Confidentiality: I understand that sharing these experiences can feel risky, especially for women who are still actively seeking work in political campaigns. I'm happy to keep your identity completely confidential if you prefer. You can also choose to share some details publicly while keeping others private.

No story too small: Sometimes the most illuminating experiences are the small moments—the meeting where you weren't introduced with the same formality as male colleagues, the conversation where someone expressed surprise at your technological competence, the hiring process where you felt age was a factor even if it wasn't explicitly mentioned.

All experiences welcome: Whether you've faced dramatic instances of discrimination or subtle forms of exclusion, whether you've found ways to overcome barriers or are still struggling with them, whether you're currently working in campaigns or have stepped away from political work—all perspectives are valuable.

Your expertise matters: Many of you have not only experienced age discrimination but have also developed insights about how political organizations could do better. I'm interested in your recommendations and ideas for change, not just your experiences with problems.

What Happens Next

I'm planning to compile these stories into a follow-up piece that will illustrate the patterns and themes that emerge from your experiences. This won't be a simple collection of anecdotes, but rather an analysis that uses your stories to deepen our understanding of how gendered ageism operates in practice and what can be done about it.

I'm also hoping that this process will help build connections among women facing similar challenges. While I can't solve systemic discrimination through a Substack newsletter, I can help create awareness, build solidarity, and perhaps spark conversations that lead to meaningful change.

The Courage to Speak

I know that sharing these stories takes courage. Many of you are still actively working in political spaces and may worry about professional repercussions. Others may feel that focusing on age discrimination somehow undermines the progress that's been made on gender equality more broadly.

But here's what I've learned from the women who've already reached out: silence doesn't protect you from discrimination, and isolation doesn't solve the problem. The women who broke gender barriers in politics didn't do so by quietly accepting exclusion, and the women facing age barriers today won't overcome them by suffering in silence.

Your stories matter because they illuminate a problem that affects not just individual women, but the effectiveness of Democratic political organizations as a whole. When campaigns systematically exclude experienced women, they lose access to decades of strategic wisdom, institutional knowledge, and hard-won expertise.

Your stories matter because other women facing similar challenges need to know they're not alone, they're not imagining things, and they're not the problem.

Your stories matter because the next generation of women in politics needs to understand what barriers they may face as they age, so they can be better prepared to navigate and change these dynamics.

And your stories matter because change often begins with naming the problem clearly and specifically, with evidence that can't be dismissed or minimized.

A Personal Note

When I started researching this topic, I expected to find some evidence of age discrimination against women in political campaigns. What I didn't expect was the depth of pain, frustration, and isolation that so many women are experiencing. I didn't expect the number of incredibly accomplished women who described feeling invisible, irrelevant, or pushed aside just as they reached the peak of their expertise and capability.

This isn't just about individual career satisfaction, though that matters enormously. This is about a systematic waste of human capital that weakens Democratic political efforts at a time when every resource and every bit of expertise is desperately needed.

The women who are experiencing age discrimination today are the same women who fought to create opportunities for others throughout their careers. They mentored younger women, broke barriers, built institutions, and paved paths that others have followed. They deserve better than to see their own careers derailed by a new form of discrimination that combines the worst aspects of ageism and sexism.

But they also represent a powerful resource for understanding and addressing this problem. Their experiences, insights, and recommendations could help create political organizations that truly value experience and expertise regardless of age or gender.

The Conversation Starts Now

The comments below are open, my email inbox is ready, and I'm prepared to listen. Whether your story is one of struggle or success, whether you've found ways to overcome barriers or are still working to navigate them, whether you're currently in campaign work or have stepped away—I want to hear from you.

The conversation about gendered ageism in politics has been happening in whispered conversations and private messages for too long. It's time to bring it into the open, to name it clearly, and to work together on solutions that ensure all women can contribute fully to political leadership throughout their careers.

Your voice matters. Your experience matters. Your story matters.

I'm listening.

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Photo Credit: From CampaignAsia

How women who broke gender barriers in politics now face a new form of discrimination that threatens to erase decades of hard-won progress

The time has come to recognize that the glass ceiling in politics has not been shattered—it has simply moved higher, and it disproportionately affects women as they age. Breaking through this invisible barrier requires the same kind of systematic effort, cultural change, and institutional reform that previous generations used to address other forms of discrimination in political life. The women who broke the first barriers deserve nothing less than full inclusion and respect throughout their careers, and the Democratic Party's future effectiveness may well depend on ensuring they receive it.

As a Woman of a Certain Age, this issue is most near and dear to me as I have spent my entire professional career in the political arena. I have watched, over the last three election cycles, the outright dismissal of older women by Democratic campaigns and organizations, when in fact, they should be begging them to come on board.

This election cycle seems particularly brutal.

In the corridors of power where Democratic campaigns are born and executed, a troubling pattern has emerged. Women who spent decades breaking through the gender barriers that once defined American politics now find themselves facing a different kind of exclusion—one that combines the persistent effects of sexism with the growing specter of ageism. This intersection creates what researchers increasingly recognize as "gendered ageism," a phenomenon that systematically devalues experienced women at precisely the career stage when their male counterparts are viewed as wise, seasoned, and authoritative.

The women affected by this trend are not newcomers to political combat. They are the consultants who engineered breakthrough victories, the operatives who built the modern Democratic ground game, the strategists who navigated campaigns through crisis and triumph. Yet as they reach their peak years of experience and wisdom, many find themselves quietly pushed to the margins, their expertise dismissed, their contributions minimized, and their futures in the political arena increasingly uncertain.

The Never-Right Age Trap

Research consistently demonstrates that there is simply "never a right age" for a woman seeking leadership in American politics. This temporal impossibility creates a career-long gauntlet that men rarely navigate with the same intensity or consequences.

In their twenties and thirties, women entering Democratic campaigns face immediate credibility challenges. They are frequently mistaken for support staff, assumed to be less experienced than male peers of identical age, and must work significantly harder to be taken seriously in strategy meetings or client presentations. Young women often report being asked to take notes in meetings where they should be contributing ideas, or being introduced by their first names while male colleagues receive formal titles and full introductions.

The challenges evolve but never disappear as women advance. In their forties, the assumptions shift to concerns about family obligations and divided attention. Campaign organizations, notorious for their demanding schedules and total-commitment culture, often view women in this age bracket as potentially unreliable or less committed to the all-consuming nature of political work. The irony is profound: just as these women have developed the expertise and networks that make them most valuable, they encounter new barriers based on presumptions about their personal lives and priorities.

By their sixties, women who have survived and thrived through decades of political battles face perhaps the most insidious discrimination of all. Suddenly, their experience becomes a liability rather than an asset. They are seen as too close to retirement to merit significant investments in training or new opportunities. Their deep institutional knowledge is dismissed as outdated thinking, and their hard-won networks are viewed as relics of a bygone era rather than valuable resources.

This creates a devastating professional paradox: women spend the first half of their careers proving they belong in political leadership, only to spend the second half fighting to remain relevant and included in the very spaces they helped create and define.

The Marginalization of Experience

The systematic exclusion of older women from Democratic campaign leadership represents one of the most significant wastes of human capital in modern politics. These are women who have seen campaigns evolve from largely analog operations to sophisticated digital enterprises. They have navigated changing media landscapes, shifting voter demographics, and evolving campaign technologies. They possess institutional memory about what works, what fails, and why certain strategies succeed or backfire in specific contexts.

Yet this wealth of experience is increasingly discounted in favor of what campaign organizations characterize as "fresh thinking" or "new perspectives." The language used to describe ideal candidates for senior campaign roles—dynamic, innovative, energetic, cutting-edge—often serves as coded language for young, with the added implication that experience and wisdom are somehow incompatible with effectiveness.

The marginalization takes many forms. Experienced women consultants report being excluded from pitch meetings for major campaigns, with organizations opting instead for younger teams perceived as more "in touch" with contemporary voters. Others describe being offered peripheral roles that utilize only a fraction of their capabilities, effectively sidelining them from the strategic decision-making they are uniquely qualified to inform.

Perhaps most damaging is the gradual erosion of professional networks and opportunities. As younger operatives are elevated to positions of influence, they naturally tend to hire and recommend people from their own professional cohorts. The informal networks that drive much of campaign hiring begin to exclude older women, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of exclusion that becomes increasingly difficult to break.

Structural Barriers and Institutional Gatekeeping

The Democratic Party's commitment to diversity and inclusion has yielded significant progress in many areas, yet age-based discrimination against women remains largely unaddressed and often unacknowledged. The structural barriers that enable this discrimination are deeply embedded in campaign culture and political institutions.

Campaign organizations typically operate through informal hiring networks and personal recommendations rather than transparent, merit-based selection processes. This opacity allows unconscious bias to flourish, as decision-makers gravitate toward candidates who "feel" right for the role—a subjective assessment often influenced by ageist and sexist assumptions about who embodies leadership and competence.

The emphasis on "fresh faces" and "new blood" in campaign leadership, while often well-intentioned, can serve to systematically exclude women who have spent decades building expertise. The irony is particularly acute in Democratic campaigns, which frequently champion the value of experience when promoting older male candidates for elected office while simultaneously devaluing experience when it comes to the women who run those very campaigns.

Financial structures within campaign organizations also disadvantage older women disproportionately. Many campaign roles are structured as short-term contracts without benefits, a model that younger operatives may find exciting but that poses significant challenges for older workers who need health insurance and retirement security. The feast-or-famine nature of campaign work, while challenging for everyone, can be particularly devastating for women in their fifties and sixties who may have fewer options for alternative income sources.

The physical demands of campaign work—long hours, extensive travel, high-stress environments—are often used to justify age discrimination, despite little evidence that older women are less capable of handling these challenges than their younger or male counterparts. The assumption that physical stamina correlates directly with age, and that age correlates with effectiveness, pervades hiring decisions in ways that would be considered discriminatory in other industries.

The Evolution of Exclusion

The narratives that once kept women out of politics entirely have not disappeared; they have evolved to create new forms of exclusion targeted specifically at older women. Where previous generations of women fought against assumptions that they were unsuitable for leadership or unable to handle political pressure, today's older women face subtly different but equally damaging stereotypes.

The contemporary version of these biases suggests that older women are out of touch with modern voters, particularly younger demographics that campaigns increasingly prioritize. They are characterized as inflexible, unable to adapt to new technologies or campaign techniques, and overly attached to outdated strategies that may no longer be relevant in contemporary political environments.

These assumptions ignore the reality that many of the women facing age discrimination were the very innovators who developed the techniques and strategies now considered standard practice in Democratic campaigns. They were early adopters of voter database technology, pioneers in opposition research, architects of modern fundraising techniques, and developers of the sophisticated ground game operations that define successful Democratic campaigns.

The portrayal of older women as technological laggards is particularly unfair and inaccurate. Many have successfully adapted to multiple waves of technological change throughout their careers, demonstrating precisely the kind of flexibility and learning agility that campaigns claim to value. Yet the stereotype persists, creating barriers to opportunities that would allow them to demonstrate their continued relevance and capability.

The Confidence Crisis

The psychological impact of gendered ageism extends far beyond individual career consequences. Women who have spent decades building expertise and credibility find themselves questioning their own value and relevance in ways that can be deeply damaging to both mental health and professional effectiveness.

The internalization of ageist messages can create a vicious cycle. As older women encounter repeated signals that they are no longer valued or relevant, some begin to doubt their own capabilities and withdraw from competitive situations where they might face further rejection. This self-limiting behavior, while understandable as a protective mechanism, can inadvertently reinforce the very stereotypes that created the problem in the first place.

The confidence crisis is compounded by the lack of visible role models. Unlike other industries where older women have achieved and maintained prominent leadership positions, Democratic campaign organizations have few examples of women in their sixties or seventies who continue to play central strategic roles. This absence of representation makes it difficult for women facing age discrimination to envision pathways forward or to maintain confidence in their continued value to the political process.

The mental health implications are significant and largely unaddressed. Depression, anxiety, and feelings of professional worthlessness are common among women experiencing age-based discrimination, yet these psychological impacts receive little attention in discussions about campaign culture or political leadership development.

Economic Vulnerabilities

The financial implications of gendered ageism in Democratic campaigns extend far beyond individual career concerns to represent a significant economic justice issue. Women who built careers in politics during earlier decades often did so without the benefit of mentorship, sponsorship, or systematic support that might have helped them build more secure financial foundations.

Many older women in campaign work today began their careers at a time when few women held senior positions in political organizations. They lacked female role models who could provide guidance on career development, salary negotiation, or retirement planning. They often accepted lower compensation than male counterparts, both because pay equity was less emphasized and because they had fewer opportunities to understand their market value.

The project-based nature of much campaign work means that many experienced women lack the traditional retirement benefits available to those in more conventional career paths. When age discrimination begins to limit their opportunities, they may find themselves without adequate financial resources to weather extended periods of unemployment or underemployment.

This economic vulnerability creates additional pressure to accept roles that underutilize their skills or to remain in positions that may not align with their experience level simply to maintain income. The result is a workforce of highly qualified women who are economically compelled to accept professional marginalization, a dynamic that serves no one's interests effectively.

The Innovation Paradox

Perhaps the most counterproductive aspect of age discrimination against women in Democratic campaigns is how it wastes precisely the kind of innovative thinking and strategic wisdom that campaigns claim to seek. The characterization of older women as obstacles to innovation ignores the reality that true innovation often comes from the intersection of deep experience and fresh perspective.

Women who have navigated multiple campaign cycles possess irreplaceable knowledge about what strategies succeed under different conditions, how to manage various types of crises, and how to build coalition support across diverse constituencies. This institutional memory is not a barrier to innovation; it is the foundation upon which effective innovation must be built.

The dismissal of experienced women as "stuck in old ways" fails to recognize that the most effective campaign innovations often come from understanding why previous approaches succeeded or failed. Women who lived through the evolution of Democratic campaign strategy can provide crucial context for evaluating new ideas and techniques, helping to avoid repeating historical mistakes while building on proven successes.

Moreover, the assumption that innovation requires youth ignores substantial research showing that creativity and strategic thinking often peak later in careers, as individuals develop the confidence and perspective needed to challenge conventional wisdom effectively. The systematic exclusion of older women from campaign leadership may be eliminating precisely the voices most capable of generating breakthrough strategies and approaches.

Toward Systematic Solutions

Addressing gendered ageism in Democratic campaigns requires more than individual resilience or personal adaptation strategies. The systemic nature of the problem demands systematic solutions that address both cultural attitudes and structural barriers that enable discrimination to flourish.

Recognition of the problem represents a crucial first step. Campaign organizations must acknowledge that age discrimination against women is real, pervasive, and economically damaging to both individuals and the broader political enterprise. This recognition must extend beyond general statements of support for diversity to specific acknowledgment of how ageism intersects with sexism to create unique barriers for older women.

Structural reforms to hiring and promotion processes could significantly reduce opportunities for discrimination. Implementing transparent, criteria-based evaluation systems would help ensure that hiring decisions are based on qualifications and capabilities rather than subjective assessments that may be influenced by unconscious bias. Regular auditing of hiring patterns and outcomes could help identify when age discrimination is occurring and create accountability for addressing it.

Creating formal mentorship and sponsorship programs specifically designed to support older women could help counteract the network effects that contribute to their exclusion. These programs should not focus on "updating" older women's skills to match younger colleagues, but rather on leveraging their unique expertise while connecting them with opportunities that fully utilize their capabilities.

Professional organizations and women's groups within the Democratic political ecosystem have important roles to play in addressing this issue. By creating forums for discussing age discrimination, providing platforms for older women to share their expertise, and advocating for structural changes within campaign organizations, these groups can help shift both individual experiences and institutional practices.

Cultural Transformation

Ultimately, addressing gendered ageism in Democratic campaigns requires a fundamental shift in how political organizations think about experience, wisdom, and leadership capability. The current culture that equates youth with innovation and energy with effectiveness must evolve to recognize the value that comes with decades of strategic thinking and crisis management.

This cultural transformation must begin with language and representation. Campaign organizations should examine how they describe ideal candidates and team members, ensuring that coded language about youth and energy is not being used to exclude qualified older women. Leadership teams should include visible representation of older women in strategic roles, providing both practical expertise and symbolic evidence that age is not a barrier to continued contribution.

The narrative around political leadership must also evolve to recognize that different types of wisdom and perspective are valuable at different stages of campaigns and political movements. The energy and enthusiasm of younger operatives is indeed valuable, but so too is the strategic patience and institutional knowledge of older women who have navigated multiple political cycles.

Training programs for campaign managers and political leaders should include specific modules on recognizing and addressing age discrimination, particularly as it intersects with gender bias. These programs should help leaders understand how unconscious bias affects hiring and promotion decisions and provide tools for creating more inclusive organizational cultures.

The Path Forward

The women who broke gender barriers in Democratic politics deserve better than to see their careers ended by a new form of discrimination that combines age and gender bias in uniquely damaging ways. Their contributions to Democratic victories and progressive causes represent decades of expertise that political organizations can ill afford to waste.

Addressing gendered ageism requires recognizing it as both a civil rights issue and a practical political imperative. Campaign organizations that systematically exclude experienced women are not only perpetrating discrimination; they are also diminishing their own effectiveness by eliminating valuable perspectives and expertise from strategic decision-making processes.

The solution is not to lower expectations or create special accommodations for older women, but rather to ensure that evaluation and hiring processes are truly merit-based and free from the unconscious biases that currently disadvantage experienced women. This means creating transparent criteria for roles, implementing systematic evaluation processes, and regularly auditing outcomes to ensure that discrimination is not occurring.

It also means fundamentally changing how Democratic political organizations think about experience and expertise. Rather than viewing older women as obstacles to innovation or reminders of outdated approaches, campaigns should recognize them as repositories of institutional knowledge and strategic wisdom that can inform and improve contemporary political efforts.

The fight against gendered ageism in Democratic campaigns is ultimately about ensuring that the party's commitment to equality and inclusion extends to all women throughout their careers, not just during their younger years. It is about recognizing that breaking gender barriers is not a one-time achievement but an ongoing process that must be defended and extended across all stages of women's professional lives.

The women who pioneered paths for others in Democratic politics should not have to watch those paths narrow as they age. Instead, they should see their contributions valued, their expertise respected, and their continued participation welcomed as the valuable resource it represents. Only by addressing gendered ageism directly and systematically can Democratic organizations ensure that they are truly living up to their stated values of inclusion, equality, and respect for all individuals regardless of age or gender.

The stakes extend far beyond individual careers or personal fulfillment. In an era when political expertise and institutional knowledge are more valuable than ever, the systematic exclusion of experienced women represents a strategic weakness that Democratic organizations can no longer afford. The path forward requires acknowledgment, action, and a commitment to ensuring that all women can contribute fully to political leadership throughout their careers.

If you have a story, I want to hear from you! All responses will be kept confidential.

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Photo Credit: American Progress, by John Gast (1872)

About the painting American Progress

Since the November 2024 election, our lives have been ambushed, thrown into chaos, seemingly by surprise. But in reality, none of this was a surprise. The warning signs were there. We chose to look the other way. "It Can’t Happen Here" shines a spotlight on the quiet warnings we’ve ignored, revealing how the storm we dismissed now rages daily, its deeply seated unimaginable effect on our lives.

We flat-out discounted the never-ending rantings of a madman, Project 2025 and every MAGA ecosystem silo. The evil spewed was too dystopian, too far-fetched to ever happen here. This is the United States of America after all.

Six months into the Trump Administration, the United States of America is becoming unrecognizable. Not only can it happen here, it has and is.

The question is, what are we doing about it?

Images such as the one above, were commonplace when America was at war in other countries —- soldiers being deployed throughout the Middle East, specifically Iraq or Afghanistan —- in full military gear, uniforms camouflaged to blend in with the sands and brush of the deserts where war would be waged. And of course, outfitted to the teeth with weapons of war including long guns.

But what makes these images so absolutely chilling and horrifying today is that our government has sanctioned, given its blessing, to deploy masked, dark bespeckled Border Patrol/ICE agents and law enforcement officers unto American soil, in full military gear, confronting, attacking, slamming, beating, tasing, kidnapping disappearing and launching rubber bullets, tear gas and smoke grenades against its own, unarmed citizens. No identification. No warrants.

Our very own government has created a militarized militia, authorized not to keep its citizens safe, but rather to terrorize and bully entire communities, places of worship, places of business, childcare facilities, car washes, restaurants, eateries, food trucks, dairy farms, farmworkers, garment factories, construction sites and Home Depots —- controlled by and accountable only to the President of the United States.

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When you’ve been instructed by the White House Deputy Chief of Staff to abandon your search for gang members and those who have committed the most heinous of violent crimes, but rather, cast your net to reach a ridiculous quota of 3,000 black and brown-skinned people per day, it becomes impossible to produce warrants because they’re not pursuing a specific person, the nabbings are random —- 1) what you look like; 2) the language you speak and 3) where you work.

Those are not my words or opinions, but those of Border Czar, Tom Homan. In a July 13, 2025 interview with CNN’s State of the Union host Dana Bash, Homan said ICE officers “only need ‘reasonable suspicion’ —- not probable cause —- based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions” to briefly detain someone. With these as your parameters for ridding the country of the “worst of the worst,” you’re not conducting raids, you’re purging people based quite simply on the color of their skin.

If this were not the case, why then is ICE’s primary focus on immigrants who have say, overstayed their visas, worthy of deportation only from countries like Mexico, Central America, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, India, Haiti, Nicaragua, Brazil and a number of African countries, but not European immigrants overstaying their visas from places like Ireland, Scotland, England or Russia?

And yet, when Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan and Trump are questioned and confronted about their means justifying their ends, they look reporters straight in the eye and lie, spin, and deny what all of us are seeing with our own eyes and hearing with our own ears.

It will get worse. The bastardization of the judicial system, the abuse of power by law enforcement, legitimized by Trump and his administration ballooned 10-fold with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law. Tens of thousands more agents, thousands more detention camps, built in every state overseen by a nation-sized military budget. No oversight. No transparency. No accountability.

Almost no ink or air time has been devoted to the for-profit, no-bid contracts being awarded to MAGA donors from around the country, to construct for-profit detention camps for the hundreds of thousands immigrants awaiting their fate. All at taxpayer expense. No oversight. No transparency. No accountability.

And the gulags around the world? As American taxpayers, we are funding violent human rights abuses with the torture and rape of human beings, deported from our country, the overwhelming majority of whom, are being held without so much as a simple court hearing. More than 2/3rds have no criminal record and entered the country legally.

We’ve been here before, of course, as witnesses of these abominations against humanity, of human rights atrocities.

Nazi German, beginning in 1933.

Right here in the U.S. of A., our government launched the construction and activation of internment camps to detain Japanese Americans in 1942, by an Executive Order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, forcing the removal of Americans from the West Coast to “relocation centers.”

Japanese Americans’ internment was based 100% on racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and failure of political leadership. Most were second-generation —- U.S. citizens by birth. There was no evidence ever, of espionage or disloyalty.

And then President Eisenhower, responding to rising political pressure, executed a large-scale deportation program targeting Mexican immigrants in 1954 —- “Operation Wetback” (a little racial slur thrown into the title for effect). 750 federal agents were deployed primarily to California, Arizona and Texas to conduct mass raids in Latino communities, often with little regard for due process. Then as now, citizens and legal residents of Mexican descent were often swept up by mistake. It is estimated between 250,000 to 1.3 million were deported, many self-deporting due to fear and intimidation.

These taxpayer-funded, state-sanctioned militias are operating in secret. Members of Congress, whose job it is to provide oversight, are denied entry into these camps. In the off chance they are allowed, they are provided white washed tours and denied any access to the detainees.

Families, loved ones and legal representatives have no idea where their family member and/or client has been taken. There is no list detailing where they’re being held. There are no public records available of where taxpayer money is being spent and how. No oversight. No transparency. No accountability.

Those being held captive describe horrendous, inhumane living conditions —- crammed into chain link cages, insufficient/non-existent right to personal hygiene, no medical attention, one meal a day, sometimes with bugs, limited water, no change of clothes, no air conditioning under scorching heat, blazing lights left on 24 hours-a-day, no access to phone calls or legal representation, complete isolation to the outside world.

The Trump administration denies these allegations and will flippantly and callously respond—-“we didn’t create the Four Seasons.”

No one would argue that point. However, we, as a country, are complicit in the human rights abuses taking place every single day in these horrendous camps, housing human beings, black and brown-skinned human beings, who are being treated worse than animals.

We stand by. We watch.

Have we officially entered into the 21st Century’s version of Manifest Destiny?

Manifest Destiny, originally a 19th-century ideology justifying U.S. territorial expansion, is now happening in broad daylight and in plain sight, carried out as policy, by the Christofascist members of the Trump administration, giving their thumbs-up to the brutal treatment of black and brown immigrants.

The core ideology of Manifest Destiny centered around the belief that the United States was divinely ordained to expand its territory and spread its cultural, political, and social systems, inherently prioritizing a vision of America as white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, or in our present day, 21st Century version —- Evangelical.

In practice, Manifest Destiny led to the displacement, removal, and often brutalization of those labeled as “others” in the path of U.S. expansion.

As our government continues to beef up the use of militarized borders, mass deportations and high-profile raids, it’s impossible not to draw parallels between the 19th century version of Manifest Destiny and today’s modern-day expressions of the same logic that justified westward conquest: the belief that American identity and security are threatened by the “other” —- those menaces after all, that are black and brown.

And of course, this othering is only made worse with the inflammatory rhetoric of Trump, Miller, Homan and Noem, that our country is “under threat” —- it is not —- and in need of purging or protecting from non-white “illegal aliens,” drawing from the Manifest Destiny’s division of the country into those who belong and those who do not.

All of this is reinforced in political rhetoric, mainstream media, social media platforms and of course the MAGA ecosystem that immigration enforcement is critical in the defense of maintaining the historical purpose of the homeland —- dispelling, excluding, detaining and deporting people of color.

It is for all these reasons and more we will never see immigration reform. It would only undermine and defeat the purpose of the purge.

As human beings and citizens of this once great country, it is incumbent upon us to do all we can to dispel the myth of righteous expansion, built on the suffering and expulsion of all marginalized groups and that challenging that legacy is paramount to advancing racial justice.

Because if we don’t, WTF are we even doing.

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We are regressing.

We are entering month number 6 of this nightmare of an administration we are unable to awaken from and a new week of its aggressively indiscriminate, inhumane and brutal ICE raids/kidnappings spanning across our country.

I’ve been thinking about the Joan Osborne 1995 hit song —- “One of Us.”

“What if God was one of us. Just a slob like one of us. Just a stranger on a bus tryna make his way home?”

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not an organized religion kind of gal. I do, however, consider myself to be Christian and believe there is a power in the Universe that ties us all together. I care about my fellow human beings.

I’ve listened to Christian family and friends talk about God —-his goodness, his love. I’ve read, listened and watched countless pieces, by or on behalf of Christians, in particular, White Evangelical Christians —- using words and passages from the Bible which they claim serve as their daily life’s guiding light.

As has been explained to me by White Evangelicals, living “in the image of God” (Imago Dei) serves as both a foundational identity and a calling.

This then implies they typically draw from Scripture to describe how human beings —- uniquely created in God’s image —- are expected to reflect God’s character in how they live, relate and steward the world.

In other words —- Evangelicals believe that all humans, regardless of race, gender or ability have inherent dignity and worth (Genesis 1:27).

It then becomes a direct contradiction to the White Evangelical religious doctrine and the Scripture they quote, when MAGA, the majority of which are White Evangelicals, viciously pile on top of not only the undocumented, but immigrants as a whole, with dehumanizing and demeaning rhetoric. Instead, they should be strongly advocating for the humane treatment of our immigrant community. They’re not. They don’t.

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I was horrified throughout the 2024 election when tens of thousands collectively stood on their feet, cheering at the top of their lungs “Mass Deportation Now!” as a means to “Make America Strong Again!” It made me sad.

77 million people voted for an indefensible war being waged against entire communities.

Currently Non-White —- Black and Brown-skinned people — including women and children — regardless of immigration status, or criminal record —- not gang members, not murderers, not violent criminals, just ordinary folks, our neighbors, co-workers, fellow human beings —- are being treated worse than the most dangerous and violent currently in our prisons, who, unlike those now being dehumanized by law enforcement, received due process, were afforded court hearings and their legal representatives, family and friends know exactly where they are and can visit.

Trump’s promise on the campaign trail was to rid the country of the “worst-of-the-worst. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead we have masked/sunglassed ghouls, badgeless, plainclothes agents from ICE and U.S. Customs Border Protection (CBP), in unmarked cars, minus license plates, who are unable or unwilling to identify themselves and/or produce warrants and with no requirement to wear body cameras during enforcement actions, violently grabbing people en masse, off of streets, out of neighborhoods, out of homes, off of public transportation, out of cars, places of worship, courthouses, public schools, from lawn care jobs, from restaurants, from food trucks, from construction sites and shamelessly resorting to chasing farm workers through lettuce, corn, wheat and strawberry fields.

No transparency. No accountability.

Two-thirds of those targeted have committed no crimes. They're not statistics—they're human beings. The cashier at your grocery store. The family sitting next to you at church. The mom at a PTA meeting. All whose only transgression was the hope for something better.

They’re one of us.

Kidnapping and detaining our fellow human beings like animals, dumping them into overcrowded private detention centers with disgusting and inhumane conditions is horrifying, straight-up, in-your-face, racial profiling. Think Alligator Alcatraz.

All of this so Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, Trump and his administration can work overtime, demanding daily quotas in an effort to Make America White Again.

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None of this comes even close to aligning with Christian values. But it’s not about Christian values. It’s not about American values.

We should all, Christian and non-Christian, hang our heads in shame.

And so, I leave you with a few of the words from “One of Us”

“What if God was one of us?”

“Just a slob like one of us.”

“Just a stranger on a bus.”

“Tryna make his way home.”

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Do Democrats really have a messaging problem? Or is it a messenger problem? Or a platform problem?

The answer is all three. But here's what nobody wants to admit: our biggest problem isn't external—it's internal.

We Have the Infrastructure. We're Just Not Using It Right.

Look around. We have thousands upon thousands of progressive political and non-profit organizations around the country, dedicated to social justice, equality, inclusion, and political action.

We have labor unions nationwide. We have candidate training programs at every level, from local school board races to congressional campaigns.

Podcasts? Social Media Platforms? Also multiple sources. Sources with millions of followers and subscribers. Yet, we have Democratic leaders soliciting major donors to fund new platforms. Why? We’re not fully utilizing what currently exists.

So why do we keep losing winnable elections?

Because too often, I've sat in rooms where organizational leaders would rather protect their turf than build real power. They'd rather it be "their idea," their credit, their spotlight—even if it means we all lose together. This ego-driven approach to organizing is killing us. We will continue to lose elections if we keep choosing individual recognition over collective victory.

It's time to choose differently.

What We Can Do: Build Real Community, Not Just Networks

Start Where You Are

Every single one of us has agency. Whether you have 5 followers or 5 million on social media, your voice matters. Your followers are reading. They're listening. Engage them. Post consistently. Share your truth. Stop waiting for permission to speak up.

But social media isn't enough. What about the hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters who don't scroll Twitter daily or follow political content? How do we reach the people who showed up for the Women's March in 2017, then disappeared when we failed to channel that energy into lasting change? What about the millions who participated in No Kings Day on June 14th—where are they now?

We can’t squander these moments. We cannot afford to squander the next ones.

The Voter Registration Reality Check

Here's a hard truth: Democrats could win every single race if we got all registered Democrats to actually vote. Yes, we must register every eligible voter we can find. But we also have a responsibility to the millions already on the rolls who've sat out recent elections.

Instead of chasing new registrations while ignoring existing voters, we need to do both. Find out why longtime Democrats stopped showing up. Listen to their frustrations. Address their concerns. Bring them home.

Support the Voices That Matter

Independent media creators are doing heroic work, often without the resources they deserve. Subscribe to their Substacks. Support their reporting. Make it possible for them to keep telling the stories mainstream media won't touch.

Today I'm specifically recommending Amy Pritchard of GainPower and Will Robinson of The New Media Firm. Amy writes with the kind of clarity and urgency we need right now. Her recent posts—"No Silver Bullet: It Takes Political Will to Build Real Power" and "Five Hard Truths About What We're Doing Wrong"—should be required reading for anyone serious about winning.

Will has been in the rooms where decisions get made, and unlike many veterans of Democratic politics, he's actually learned from experience. He's an innovator who understands how to reach voters in ways that work, not ways that make consultants feel comfortable. His piece here and here gives you some insight.

If you want to meet like-minded progressives and support this work and see Will Robinson receive GainPower’s Lifetime Achievement Award TONIGHT RSVP for GainPower's Powerful Idea Awards event—5:30-9PM at 700 M Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003. For the cost of an evening out and a couple glasses of wine, you can start building the community we desperately need.

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The Authenticity We're Missing

We need to stop performing politics and start living it. Candidates, surrogates, all of us—we need to speak from our hearts, not from talking points. Tell your story. Make it about "we," not "me." Show people how we can create change together instead of promising what you'll do for them.

Look at what's happening in the Greater Los Angeles area right now. Ordinary people have become activists, documenting injustices, confronting agents, protesting civil rights violations. They're not waiting for perfect messaging or polling data. They're responding to what they see with courage and clarity.

Normal, everyday people are taking videos, standing up to masked militia, fighting back against the White Supremacist agenda being implemented from the White House. They understand what's at stake.

Our Goldilocks Problem

As Democrats, we suffer from Goldilocks Syndrome. Everything has to be just right. The polling has to be perfect. The message has to be focus-grouped. The strategy has to be approved by consultants who've been losing elections for decades.

Meanwhile, our opponents are out there winning with authenticity, passion, and a willingness to take risks. They're not waiting for permission. They're not overthinking it. They're acting.

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The Choice Before Us

We can keep doing what we've always done—protecting egos, perfecting messages, and losing elections. Or we can choose collaboration over competition, authenticity over polish, and collective power over individual credit.

The infrastructure is there. The people are there. The energy is there.

The question is: are we brave enough to use it?

The communities rising up in Los Angeles aren't waiting for us to figure it out. They're showing us what courage looks like. They're demonstrating what happens when ordinary people decide they've had enough.

It's time for the rest of us to follow their lead.

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On a side note: I want to welcome and thank all the new subscribers to GirlUnCensored. Please feel free to share with friends, as we build community. And please feel free to share your opinions and/or send me a message.

We are all feeling a bit on the helpless side, to say nothing of overwhelmed by the actions (and inactions) of both the current administration and Congress. It never seems to stop, in fact, seems to get worse with each passing day.

BUT, there is something we can do now and that is to sign a petition, alerting 7 GOP, very vulnerable Senators who are up for re-election in 2026 — Senators Susan Collins (ME), Thom Tillis (NC), Dan Sullivan (AK), Jon Husted (OH), Ashley Moody (FL), John Cronyn (TX) and Joni Ernst (IA), to vote NO on H.R. 1 - the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that is anything but. Passing this bill will bring irreparable damage to anyone not making a zillion dollars a year, for years.

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The petition, sponsored by Welead OC PAC, will be sent to 7 GOP Senators, who will need to be held accountable in 2026, should they decide to support Trump over their constituents. They're on recess this week. We want to ensure that upon their return, we will have gathered enough signatures to alert them --- voting in favor of this working family crushing bill, will be met with consequences come 2026.

This massive bill creates a two-tiered America: one set of rules for the wealthy 1% who never worry about losing healthcare or paying bills, and another for working families who struggle every day. While the rich get more tax breaks, working families face cuts to the services they depend on.

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The combination of massive tax cuts for the wealthy and deep cuts to programs for working people will explode our national debt and deficit, leaving our children and grandchildren to pay the bill. Meanwhile, this legislation hands even more unchecked power to the presidency at a time when working families need representatives who will stand up for them.

We can do this!

Sign this petition and let these Senators know that working families are watching their vote on this critical issue.

Should you be looking for other actions you can take to combat what is going on, here is a spreadsheet, updated daily, with a whole host of suggestions.

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If you have not already done so, I highly recommend you read Amy Pritchard’s Substack piece. I had already written the piece below. I want to expand upon the important message she is sending. If you care anything about the direction of the Democratic party, I highly suggest reading what she had to say, and then consider my observations/opinion that follows:

Imagine if you will.

After weeks of research, interviews and tenacity, you are at long last hired to manage the campaign of your dreams. You walk into the campaign headquarters. To your utter amazement to say nothing of confusion, you realize: there are no computers, no laptops or tablets. No mobile phones. No answering machines or voicemail. There is no online voter database to access, no online database for donors or access to donor profiles or giving history and what’s more, there are no digital mechanisms to track those voters or donors or how to find your voters and donors. And because this data does not exist online, you wonder just how you can put together an effective, strategic and successful field/donor/voter outreach program.

There are no apps available allowing you to design glitzy, glamorous eye-catching, carefully wordsmithed political ads and/or mailers. There are no apps to bombard your donors with text messages endlessly begging for money, because there are no cell phones.

There is no internet. No email. No spreadsheet or Powerpoint apps. There is no social media —- No FaceBook. No Instagram. No TikTok. There is no Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Slack platform, no Powerpoint. There are no podcasts, or bloggers, or newsletter platforms.

There are no printers. No fax machines. Only one mammoth copy machine, mimeograph machines and a telecopier.

There is no 24/7 cable news coverage.

Confused? This is what the infrastructure of political campaigns looked like in my day, 50 plus years ago. Before the advent of technology in or around Y2K.

Without the high-tech of today, political candidates and their campaigns relied heavily and almost exclusively on print and face-to-face engagement. There was no real-time news coverage; campaign news traveled slowly, limited by the speed of mail and the reach of newspapers. The absence of a 24/7 news cycle meant that campaign events and controversies unfolded at a much slower pace, and candidates had more control over their public image and messaging.

Before the advent of technology, candidates reached out to voters primarily through indirect, personal, and community-based methods rather than direct mass communication. So just how was information disseminated absent technology?

Campaigns used surrogates and supporters; print media; public events such as rallies, parades and speeches, banners, music & slogans; word of mouth, local gatherings, and community leaders played a significant role in spreading information about candidates and their platforms, making political events into public entertainment and fostering grassroots participation.

Unlike today, outreach by campaigns was highly localized, personal, and dependent on physical presence and printed materials.

With our massive dependence upon technology, the Democratic party has lost touch with its people. We no longer listen to what people are telling us. We spend less time in front of voters and more time behind the screen.

Campaigns have become a big business, relying heavily on consultants of varying degrees —- General Campaign Consultants; Fundraising Consultants; Mail Consultants; Media Consultants; Communications Consultants and Organizing Consultants. The three Democratic Party Committees - Democratic National Committee, The Democratic Senatorial Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee —- all depend upon these campaign consultants and in fact, promote those they have a relationship. Consultants become rich while voters are left to languish by the wayside. In the end, campaigns listen more to consultants and less to voters.

Much has been made, and rightly so, Democrats have a “messaging” problem, we are unable to articulate to the voters succinctly, just what it is our party stands for. As a means of effectively communicating its “message,” Democrats are now asking high dollar donors to invest heavily in social media platforms such as podcasts as a means to effectively reach out to donors. We are sorely missing the point.

Don’t get me wrong. We NEED the technology to campaign effectively. But our dependence upon it has caused us to lose sight of the most important component of campaigning —- voters. Direct face-to-face contact with voters.

And while high-dollar donors are being courted to invest in infrastructure that already exists, voters are screaming —- Can you hear me? Can you see me?

We have lost our way.

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Without question what is happening all around us is a five-alarm fire. And because of this immediate emergency, we are not thinking strategically. We are not thinking long-term. But then again, we never have. Not for decades. Instead of joining together, truly assessing and facing our demons, we react. We address what is immediately in front of us, instead of surgically dissecting precisely what has ailed us for the last generation. We do not listen. And frankly, we simply have not learned from our past mistakes.

For more than two decades I worked on countless campaigns while living in Washington, DC. It wasn’t until I moved to Chicago and attended a women’s political event I realized just how insulated those of us in Washington were to the rest of the country. Democratic women leaders were invited as special guests to a luncheon. The attendees: high dollar women donors, high-dollar in their own right, who were also very active politically. They raised legitimate concerns with the special guests, but were summarily dismissed and/or spoken over. In short, the special guests, women and leaders within the Democratic Party at the national level, made it clear, they knew more than those who were actually on the ground during the work. I was both sad and disappointed. It opened my eyes.

I was busted by a number of DNC delegates because of my disappointment over the DNC Chair’s race back in February. I continue to be disappointed. With the exception of being bombarded via text and email, multiple times a day for contributions to the DNC, I have seen no change whatsoever in the infrastructure nor the direction of the party. As of today, May, 29th, nothing seems to have changed. Nothing.

We have party leaders and influencers attacking a duly elected vice chair for having the unmitigated nerve to advocate challenging Democratic elected officials who are doing nothing more than warming a seat. This when there are leaders who could better and more effectively represent the voters of those districts. This very scenario occurred back in 2018 when AOC challenged a sitting member who was being groomed for a leadership position in the House. She was a pariah for a very long time. Her crime —- 1) she organized her community, a community who felt they were not being heard, they were not being represented, because their MOC spent the majority of his time in Washington, DC, instead of the district he represented and 2) she didn’t know her place.

I am the founder and chair of an organization —- Welead OC —- developing Progressive Women Democrats to run for city councils and school boards. I bring this up only to highlight what I’ve learned as a Women of a Certain Age —- as well as to emphasize the highpoints of Amy Pritchard’s Substack piece —- there were legions upon legions of volunteers who worked themselves into exhaustion. They were actually on the ground. Speaking to voters. Listening to what voters had to say. These volunteers never appeared on CNN or local news outlets. They weren’t what the rest of the world would consider VIP’s. But they knew what they were doing. They kept at it. Our candidates won because of strategic and targeted field/voter outreach programs. The candidates and their volunteers are battle-tested in red/purple districts. They know first-hand, the meaning of People-Powered campaigns and the values of the Democratic Party.

But you won’t see these volunteers being hired for campaign/political work. Because they don’t have the connections required these days to get themselves in front of the decision makers. Or, they’re too old, or they’re outsiders and in many cases, viewed, as the Chicago women activists, not as seasoned or knowledgeable as those in DC.

If the Powers that Be took the time to look around and do a deep-dive, they would see, as many others and I who do this work have seen, there is a massive pool of beyond qualified people, passionate about the values the Democratic Party represents. And they do what many in DC do not do —- they listen.

We can sit and wait and watch as the current administration and GOP Congress implode, because they may, there is no guarantee, or, as a party, take action that is outside our comfort level. It is the only way we can rebuild an institution that is well worth our efforts.

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Photo Credit - Matissse - Odalisque with a Turkish Chair - 1928

I’ve been on somewhat of a writing hiatus since the end of February. Not something I gave any thought to or planned in advance. It happened without notice. It happened without warning. It simply just happened. Lost time.

Admittedly, a series of personal challenges occurred, coupled with the loss of two very important and dear friends, who, together for over 50 years, passed within 11 days of each other.

Funny thing is this loss of time happened so slowly I almost didn’t recognize what was happening, until it did. It’s as if I’d been wearing a pair of tinted glasses that darkened gradually but deliberately over time.

For me to complete even the simplest of tasks required a Herculean effort like suiting up to scale Kilimanjaro. Forget about more complex or involved responsibilities. It was paralyzing and defeating.

And yet, I continued to move through everyday routines, paying almost no attention to what was happening to me personally, ignoring the undercurrent, as if nothing was going on in the background.

Major holidays and events occured. A new Pope. A gray, cold winter turned into a gorgeous lush spring. Birthdays.

And just like that, irretrievable months, weeks, days and minutes lost, until one day I picked my head up and it was May. And with it, the resolve it was beyond time to pay attention.

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I feel like this is precisely what’s going on in our country —- we are walking through it all, detached, devoid of time, seemingly unaware of how life as we’ve known it, is slowly but deliberately vanishing.

We are being governed by fiat. In an effort to expand and consolidate executive power, bypassing and eliminating traditional checks and balances, Trump has enacted 157 Executive Orders since January 20th. None of these EO’s have been debated and passed by Congress, a co-equal branch of government. No hearings, no deliberative debate. Just one man, surrounded by extreme zealots, preparing and writing orders for his signature, the Constitution be damned. Because to hear them tell it —- “this is what the voters wanted.”

But did they?

In the last few days, Trump has pardoned two reality tv stars who were convicted of defrauding banks out of more than $30 million, a former Virginia Sheriff convicted of taking $75,000 in bribes in exchange for handing out deputy badges and his border czar, Tom Homan, earned consulting fees from an immigration detention firm, the same firm that will directly benefit as Homan shapes U.S. immigration policy to massively expand detention centers. Corruption.

Under the guise of eradicating “anti semitism” and “woke” policies, he is going after higher learning institutions, Harvard in particular, with a vengeance. Trump is targeting a private establishment, with demands issued by authoritarians, a direct attack on academic freedom, threats to deport foreign students whose ideology don’t align with the administration’s and politicizing federal funds, using them as weapons. Where does it end?

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In a blink, the FBI arrested a federal judge, a U.S. Attorney is charging a Democratic lawmaker with a crime, the Executive Branch is going after Democratic-allied law firms and shaking them down.

One of the most egregious to say nothing of nation-changing, is the never-ending quest to Make America White Again, triggered by border and ICE agents, law enforcement deputized as ICE and other unidentifiable officers —- because all of the above show up masked, more often-than-not without badges —- whisk people off the streets, throw them into unmarked vans then delivered to places unknown. No access to lawyers. No access to family. No notice. No hearings. All without due process, a legal principle that ensures fair treatment through our judicial system, as enshrined in the Constitution —- a fundamental protection against arbitrary denial of life, liberty or property by the government.

On the campaign trail, Trump told us he was going to implement the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. In a faux effort to “keep the nation safe,” he was going to ensure the most dangerous criminals would be deported. The reality is it has not stopped there. U.S. Citizens are being swept up. Green card holders are being deported. Immigrants who appear for their hearings are having their cases dismissed then being arrested when they leave the courtroom. If you have Black or Brown skin, and God forbid, tatoos, you’re gone.

The on-again, off-again tariffs; The Big Beautiful Bill; making multi-billion dollars deals with countries that launched an attack against us, killing thousands and ordered the brutal and gruesome dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist; Trump’s multi-billion dollar pay-to-play side hustle; a president who when asked, can’t answer whether or not he’ll follow the Constitution and is in bed with some of the most notorious dictators/authoritarians; DODGE massacres and the avalanche of Project 2025 edicts.

This is our country. Home of the Brave. Land of the Free.

And so, here we are. Another day, week and month go by. We sit. We watch.

To quote the Handmaid’s Tale, June Osborne:

“Fighting may not get us everything. But we don’t have a choice. Because not fighting is what gave us Gilead to begin with.

Gilead does not need to be beaten. It needs to be broken.”

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Since the November 2024 election, our lives have been ambushed, thrown into chaos, seemingly by surprise. But in reality, none of this was a surprise. The warning signs were there. We chose to look the other way. "It Can’t Happen Here" unearths the quiet warnings we’ve ignored, revealing how the storm we dismissed now rages daily, its deep seated unimaginable affect on our lives, and what we, as everyday citizens, can do.

Not only can it happen here, it has and is.

Photo Credit - Crossroads Initiative - crossroadsinitiative.com

Author Margaret Atwood, of The Handmaid’s Tale, written in 1985 revealed during a 2019 Penguin Podcast interview that she is often asked how she came up with so much material that fueled her dystopian novels centered around fictional Gilead. Her response: “the terrifying events of the novel all have their precedents in some of the darkest chapters in world history…from the brutal Communist reign of Ceausescu in Romania to the battles waged over female rights in America during the 1980’s.” Atwood would clip articles from newspapers and magazines, placing them in a notebook. It was from these pieces she created the famed The Handmaid’s Tale.

“…In 1985 racists in the US were preaching revolution: ‘US conservatives push new order – the push to the right.’ And religion was a significant part of that whole movement: ‘Racism and religion a potent brew,’ ‘Evangelist moles running for US president,’ ‘The power and influence behind America’s right’ – meaning the rise of the religious right.”

“…Once any democracy starts curtailing freedom in the name of freedom, it may land us in trouble. What if you wanted to take over the US today? What flag could you wave successfully?”* Margaret Atwood, September 9, 2019, Penguin Podcast

*(Emphasis added)

In Atwood’s Gilead, Christian Nationalism and extreme right ideology meld together, sprinkled heavily with sexism, topped off with a hefty dose of misogyny. Women’s autonomous freedom over their bodies and themselves was removed. Handmaids were held down by “barron” wives, raped by their husbands, all while they looked on. Should the rape render a pregnancy, the Handmaid surrendered the child to her rapist. Freedom to speak and move freely, removed. The Constitution of the United States of America, or Gilead as it was known, replaced by the Bible and used as the official Law of the Land. Under His Eye.

BBC Culture -(Image credit: Rebecca Hendin)

There existed a distinct hierarchy —- White, powerful, well-connected wealthy men, served as its governance.

As horrifying and far-fetched the story, one could take heart that at least it couldn’t/wouldn’t happen here.

Dizzying. Disquieting. Chilling. Stunning. Horrifying. Depressing. Exhausting. Debilitating. Deranged. Surprising. Not Surprising. I can’t believe it. I can believe it. Shocking. Expected. Unexpected. Fascism. Constitutional Crisis. Dictator. Authoritarian. White Evangelicals. Christian Nationalism. Nazis. White Supremacy. Suppression. Coup. Hostile Takeover. Oligarchy. Autocrats. Autocracy. Fiat. Succumb. Obedience. Loyalty.

Feelings, phrases and words. Just feelings, just words, from a country reeling from chaos and destruction. Missing is “unprecedented” because it’s all unprecedented. All of it. And we’re only 4 weeks into a 4-year term.

Our nation has gone from a Constitutionally mandated, 3 co-equal branches of government —- Executive, Legislative, Judicial —- each branch no greater or less than the other —- to an Executive branch aggressively and with hostility, wresting power from the GOP-controlled Legislative branch, its members aquicessing its power serving only as advisors and a Judicial branch, hanging barely, in the balances.

In real time we are watching the potential collapse of democracy and life as we know it. More than 30 government agencies have suffered the scourge of the unelected co-president and his band of teenage Ninjas, inflicting pain and suffering throughout the country and the world, the effects of which will be felt for another generation. And they’re not done yet. Today it’s the IRS, where the plan is to infiltrate the most sensitive private, personal information of hundreds of millions of tax paying citizens. All of this without any accountability, oversight, least of all any checks or balances. Remember the hoops Members of Congress jumped through, for years, to obtain the tax returns of Trump, which they needed for legitimate investigative purposes? Funny how that all works.

Risk-averse Democratic leaders are trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing and just how far into the water they can wade. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

The big question —- What can we do?

What We Can Do

First things first: We need to educate ourselves.

Over time I have been amassing publications, authors, influencers and Substack newsletters. I have put them on a spreadsheet. It is by no means comprehensive or exhaustive. I welcome your suggestions/recommendations. Let me know by sending a message or comment and I’ll add them to the list.

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For Non-Spreadsheeters (I completely understand!) I have included links corresponding with each section in this newsletter.

There are references to books, documentaries and docuseries on the spreadsheet and below. No need to spend money for online streaming services or giving your money to Amazon for book purchases (although independent bookstores would greatly benefit from your support!) If you have a library card, at no cost, you can borrow online, audio/Ebooks, and online streaming movies, documentaries, docuseries.

“Libby” for ebooks; “Hoopla” for audiobooks/ebooks and music and “Kanopy” for videos. All three have apps you can download onto your phone

Educating Ourselves

Throughout history and over the last few decades, democracies around the world have collapsed. There is a playbook. For us to effectively and methodically resist, seeking the truth to combat the avalanche of miss/disinformation, we need to educate ourselves to better understand. Some recommendations:

• Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. She advises governments and corporations on autocats and authoritarian parties and the threats to democracy they pose. She is the author of Strongmen Mussolini to the Present and Lucid, a Substack Newsletter and Podcast.

• Timothy Snyder is an American historian of Europe. An author of many publications, his books On Tyranny and Bloodlands are particularly prescient to what’s happening here. He also has a Substack Newsletter, Thinking About…

• Jeff Sharlet —- a NYT’s bestseller author of The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War; The Family (a Netflix series); and C Street; Sweet Heaven When I Die and This Brilliant Darkness. He is a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair and a Professor of Literary Journalist, Dartmouth.

I have watched Sharlet’s Netflix series, The Family a number of times. It’s not about “a family” per se, but about the Far Right Christian movement dating back at least 70 years, and the subtle, highly organized, very well-funded organization that began here in the U.S., and fanned worldwide systemically, thanks in large part to their relationships with U.S. elected representatives. I have also read The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. Both are superb introductions/assessments, through his reporting, the intersection of religion and politics. Sharlet also has a Substack Newsletter - Scenes from a Slow Civil War. All of it — more than worth your time.

Love her or hate her, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY14) held an Instagram Live Stream, February 3, 2025, where more than 25,000 viewers took part. She explains what in her view, is happening and gives ideas of what we can do to resist. If you need motivation and/or need inspiration, I highly recommend. Total viewing time is about an hour-and-a-half. AOC’s personal Instagram account - for upcoming live streams here.

Building Community

What exactly does that mean?

Building community means creating and nurturing connections among people who share common interests, values, or goals. It involves fostering relationships, encouraging participation, and creating a sense of belonging. This can happen in neighborhoods, workplaces, online spaces, or social groups.

The far right has been effectively building communities and information silos since before the 1950’s. Like their movement, they have done so systemically, methodically, are well organized and well-funded. Democrats are eons behind but there is positive coalition building taking place nationwide. In the meantime, it depends upon each of us.

Everyone has a phone —- instant means of communication. We are on at least one social media platform, have email list serves and personal lists. Whether you have five follows or five million, it doesn’t matter. The majority of America is not consumed with cable news on a daily basis. In fact, especially today, less are paying attention because the news is too overwhelming. This is one key area where we can make a dent in the information abyss. We. Can. Do. It.

Take Action

Any number of groups and individuals have put out “Resistance Tool Kits.” There will of course, be actions you have zero interest in. Take with you what you can and what you’re most comfortable.

• Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit

• How You Can Protect Democracy

• The Relentless Playbook

• Fighting Fascism: How We Push Back and Win

• How Do We Stop the South African Billionaire

• Democracy Playbook 2025

• Ten Things We Can All Do To Protect Democracy

• What You Can Do

• MoveOn.org

• Indivisible

• 50/50/1

Here are a few independent(ish) publications:

• ProPublica

• The Atlantic

• The Guardian

Here are some Influencers you might find informative and engaging:

• Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American

• Matthew Dowd

• Mark Jacobs – Stop the Presses

• The Bulwark

• Tim Miller

• Brian Beutler - Off Message

• Norm Ornstein

• Meidas+

• Aaron Rupar - Public Notice

• Rick Wilson - Lincoln Project

• Charlie Sykes – To the Contrary

• Contrarian - Substack - Contrarian was founded by Jen Rubin, formerly of the Washington Post and Norm Eisen. The list of contributors is both extensive and impressive and can be found on the Contrarian Substack website.

• Joyce Vance - Civil Discourse

• Marc Elias - Democracy Docket

All of the above is contained on our Resistance Tool Kit spreadsheet here.

Only we can save ourselves from what is coming.

Please feel free to reach out. I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Not only can it happen here, it has and is.

Stunningly, it was only 12 days ago that Donald Trump was sworn in as President.12 very long, excruciatingly painful, head-spinning days ago. It’s not as if we weren’t provided plenty of warning. We were. Trump, his co-president, Musk and their administration are now neck-deep into the implementation of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

I know, I know. Trump emphatically denied any knowledge or culpability of Project 2025. He even went so far as to say he had no idea who the Missive’s architects were, despite more than half had either worked in his previous administration and/or remained close to him after his 2020 defeat. But his bluster, or lies, as I like to call them, were just that. He wanted first to become elected before inflicting pain on millions of Americans.

It’s hard sometimes to understand how half of Americans thought electing this massively flawed, corrupt, self-serving, narcissistic, twice-impeached, convicted felon was the right fit to serve our country. But clearly they did. Every dystopian thing about him has been normalized.

But hey. It can’t happen here. Right? Yet, we are here. On the edge of a very high cliff of a Constitutional crisis. All the while we are cratering into the abyss of a despot government at breakneck speed.

Most of the country has been in a deep sleep/denial since 2020. It’s understandable. Four years plus of Trump was beyond exhausting. As was the pandemic which melded itself within the last year of his term. A double, painful wamy.

BUT —-12 days later —- Where is the outrage?

Where is the outrage against the Laken Riley Law, named after the Georgia nursing student who was killed by an undocumented immigrant in 2024. On the face of things, it seems fair enough and balanced. But upon closer look, there are potentially major civil liberty flaws.

The law requires mandatory detention without conviction, in other words, a person need only be suspected of committing a crime by law enforcement, arrested and detained before being convicted. A law that raises concerns about presumption of innocence which could lead to unjust detentions. A law that raises all kinds of questions regarding due process. Or the increase of federal powers in immigration detention, which some argue may lead to detaining individuals without adequate judicial oversight.

The Laken Riley law also raises questions about racial profiling. The disproportionate targeting of Black and Brown people will most certainly lead to over-policing of immigrant and People of Color communities, including legal residents and U.S. citizens. We saw that last week, when a Puerto Rican mother and her child were detained simply because law enforcement officers heard her speaking Spanish. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. A number of Native Americans, also most definitely U.S. citizens, reported being unlawfully detained —- because of the color of their skin.

Laken Riley Act garnered the support of 26 Senate and 46 House Democrats. No outrage. No townhalls with constituents. Just a rush to judgement for fear of extreme-right attacks and the bullying of a mobster, no matter the long-term chilling effects on Communities of Color.

Where is the outrage over mass deportations? Declaring a “National Emergency” for the sole purpose of deploying the U.S. Military to the Southern Border, against an imaginary “invasion” of the undocumented? All of it to invoke fear over an imaginary Boogey Man, demonizing an entire culture of human beings.

Where is the outrage over the for-profit concentration camps, most notably Guantanamo Bay, to house detainees?

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Where is the outrage over the 2.2 million Federal non-politically appointed, career civil servants, who received, en mass, a “Fork in the Road” email notifying them of a proposed buyout, or the freezing of Federal grants and monies legally authorized by a co-equal branch of government, the U.S. Congress, or the freezing of all foreign aid, also approved and appropriated by Congress? Or when Special Counsel prosecutors were fired because of their work on prosecuting Trump? Or senior FBI leaders and rank-and-file, being ordered to retire, resign or be fired by Monday, with a focus on anyone and everyone who played an investigative role against the Trump. In other words, for doing their job?

Where is the outrage over the dismantling of the USAID and Centers for Disease (CDC), ceasing any and all communications? All of this with bird flu and the largest outbreak of TB in decades looming on the horizon?

Or the dismissal of Labor board leaders who backed workers rights? Or the removal of the head of the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB)? Or the head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)?

Where is the outrage when 1500 rioters, militia members, violent offenders and thugs, characterized by the president as “hostages,” were summarily pardoned, despite being convicted by a jury of their peers and sentenced by judges to serve time, to say nothing of assaulting over 140 law enforcement officials, now free to roam the streets?

And —- how about those tariffs? Run, do not walk, to the nearest grocery store and load up on avocados, because shortly they’ll be more expensive than a dozen eggs.

Then, there is the forced resignation of the Treasury Secretary, who had four plus years to go of his appointment, because he refused Elon Musk, the unelected, unvetted, richest man in the world, and Trump’s co-president, access/control of the country’s most sensitive payment system.

As of only a short time ago, Musk and his merry band of marauders, also unelected, unvetted, and without security clearances, gained access to the U.S. Treasury Department payment system. These guys, Silicon Valley Bros, none of them with even a scintilla of government experience, are accessing a system responsible for trillions of dollars in government payments, that controls the flow of more than $6 trillion annually, to tens of millions of people across the country. This includes Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, salaries for Federal personnel, government contract payments, grant recipients and tax refunds. The database includes sensitive data including but not limited to, social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, and a whole host of personal information. All of it, now in the hands of Elon Musk and his team.

Where is the outrage from our leaders? Someone? Anyone?

During a press briefing yesterday, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, alongside Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, discussed their strategy for navigating the early days of Trump’s second term. At the briefing, Jeffries made an analogy, comparing his approach to that of Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge:

"We understand that extreme MAGA Republicans have a strategy. They want to flood the zone with outrage, but we can’t chase every outrage. I’m a Yankee fan and Aaron Judge is my favorite player. One of the reasons that Judge is a great hitter is that he does not swing at every pitch. He waits for the right one and then he swings. We're not going to swing at every pitch. We're going to swing at the ones that matter for the American people."

Okay. I get it. If we start swinging at everything we’ll have no swings left. BUT —- there have been ZERO swings over the last 12 days. No pushback. No coordinated efforts anywhere. We are in a crisis. A Constitutional crisis.

And also today —- The Democrats met to elect a new chair. They chose an institutionalist, hellbent on following and reinforcing traditional party structures and unity, over a candidate whose focus is on sustained grassroots engagement and year-round mobilization. A head-scratcher to be sure, given the post-mortem, election analysis hysteria that ensued (rightly so) following the November election. We’ve learned nothing. It’s no wonder why people stop engaging. No one listens.

With each passing day, Trump gets closer and closer to consolidating his power over every institution that serves as the foundation of our republic, into an authoritarian government, answering only to his billionaire friends, donors and to himself. After all, it took Hitler merely 53 days to bring down his government, and Victor Orban, Trump’s hero, 8 months to bring down Hungary. It can happen here.

As a Woman of a Certain Age, I came up through the 60’s — the Civil Rights Movement, Voting Rights, Vietnam War, Watergate, Feminism, Roe vs Wade, LGBTQ and Marriage Equality. I managed to stick around after Trump’s 2016 election and George Floyd protests. But somewhere along the line, we stopped with our outrage. Have we become so transactional that retreating now appears to be the best option? I wrote here Don’t Turn Away. Because if we do, I believe this time, we are doing so at our own peril.

There are actions we, as ordinary, caring, engaged citizens can do. Stay tuned for a resource kit I have been putting together of collections from others. But for tonight, hold on to each other. Rest. Read. Watch a good movie. Have a nice meal. Educate yourself. And prepare for tomorrow.

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Immediately following college graduation, I moved to Washington, DC where I landed a job with my Congressman, a Democrat, who represented my hometown comprising what was then the 3rd District of northern Indiana. He held a prominent House leadership spot of Majority Whip, a position he served for 4 years, placing him immediately behind the Majority Leader and Speaker of the House. His rise in power was a boon to the manufacturing cities in Northern Indiana.

The 3rd CD included not only my hometown of Elkhart, but also rural agriculture-heavy areas and South Bend, the most populous and the seat of both Saint Mary’s College and Notre Dame University.

The 3rd District by today’s standards, was ruby red. But not by today’s standards, people registered as Democrats or Republicans, voted for the candidate they believed best represented their values, regardless of party affiliation. Then Democrats held nationally, majorities in the House and Senate. Democrat Jimmy Carter was President, serving his first term. A trifecta

So it was then that September, I left the safe and comforting bubble of Washington, D.C., returning home to work on my boss’ campaign. His opponent was a 25 year-old, pro-choice candidate with absolutely zero political or policy experience and limited business experience. Game on.

Returning home after a day on the campaign trail, I was met at the door by my Mom. In her hand was a mimeographed sheet, the pungent smell of the purple ink on the thick paper, hanging in the air.

As my Mom recounted, two very nondescript, unassuming women knocked on the door in the middle of the afternoon. Two women were about to speak to a proud and unapologetic, dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying Democrat, who had voted Democrat her entire life. Their message —- Her Congressman was a baby-killer and a gay-lover, both rejected by the “Bible.” His opponent was in fact, a God-fearing man and a far better choice. The only choice.

The mimeographed paper they handed her had paragraph-after-paragraph, bullet-pointed, listing the sins of abortion and gayness. My Mom was lectured for nearly an hour of the disdain God, The Father, had for her Congressman and for the people who supported him. My Mom denounced their hate speech, they cloaked under their faith and reinforced her unyielding support for her Congressman. Nothing they could say would change her mind.

That document of 1980, of course, was riddled with lies and disinformation.

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As my Mom recounted what had occurred, I will admit I dismissed out-of-hand, her encounter, thinking these women had no real power behind them, instead neighborhood volunteers, religious zealots, looking to intimidate voters. She disagreed vehemently, predicting this was only the beginning. The women were passionate about their message. She countered the women were by no means acting alone. In fact they had a well-funded, organized and structured movement behind them. They were there at the blessing of Jerry Falwell. While I had only a cursory knowledge of who the hell this guy Jerry Falwell was, my Mom was fully aware of him and the “movement” he was creating.

Hence the Presidential election of 1980 gave birth to the dawning of the Moral Majority Movement. (More on that later.)

In the end, Ronald Regan went on to win overwhelmingly, his election forever referred to as the “Regan Landslide.” And my Congressman, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 22 years, lost 55%-45% —- to a man wholly supported and funded by the Moral Majority, elected on a pile of lies.

I will never forgive myself for ignoring those early warning signs of what was to come over the next 40 years, nor will I forgive myself for doubting my Mom and her prescient premonition. If only she was here at this moment. I would give her the biggest, strongest hug, and tell her she was right.

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January. 2025. Washington, DC.

It is now 4:00pm on Monday, January 20th in Washington, DC. The 47th President of the United States of America, the most powerful position on the planet Earth, was sworn in four hours ago.

I sincerely understand and by no means judge the millions of citizens who refused to tune in to the Inaugural events. Nor those who have sworn off watching even a second of cable news. No one can be blamed, because listening to him, about him and all Trump pundit analysis, is far worse than nails on a blackboard.

It’s not just a matter of being disparaged by the outcome of the November election. It goes so much deeper than that. There is an extreme-right information ecosystem that has purposely fed hundreds upon millions of Americans lies, disinformation and misinformation for decades. (More on this topic later.) There is no solid infrastructure in place to counter anything within that extreme-right information ecosystem. There are no leaders within the Democratic party or otherwise, willing to step up to challenge even one word the 47th President and his surrogates. It is non-stop, unrelenting propaganda.

Too many Democrats within the party and elected leadership are too risk-averse to confront the constant barrage of outright lies from Trump’s lips. It’s not about being “anti-Trump.” More like “anti-lies” and “here’s the truth/facts.” It’s not about leaders standing up to convince the other side/present them with facts, hoping to change their minds. Rather, it’s about speaking truth to the people. If we had done that over the course of the 2024 election, more than a few would have been better educated on policies implemented by the Biden administration, countering what was being fed over the airwaves and social media platforms.

It’s almost as if those-in-the-know are waiting, foolishly, for him to fail, for his administration to fail. If that is the strategy, we are going to do so at our own peril and will forever lose. We need a plan.

Over the last nine plus years, we have waited. Waited for the Mueller investigation. Waited for the Mueller Report. Waited for his first impeachment. Waited for his second impeachment. Waited for Merrick Garland. Waited for the Documents case. Waited for the Georgia Election Interference case. Waited for Americans to understand what they were voting for if they chose Donald Trump. Waited for Americans to come to their senses. Waited for an election. Waited. Waited. Waited. No one came to save us.

So we turn away.

As cringe as the prospect may be, if we are to save ourselves for what is in store over the next four years, we cannot look away. We must be aware, play close attention and educated about what we are up against, what injustices need to be preserved, who of our brothers and sisters need protecting, what constitutional and individual rights are being violated and unchecked corruption. Because what should be painfully obvious, no one, absolutely no one, is coming to our rescue. It is up to each and every one of us. That is if preserving our republic is a priority.

Find your community. A book club. Social media platform. Church group. Breakfast or lunch club. Gaming Club. Friday night club. Wherever you and your tribe gather.

Because if the threat of losing our representative democracy, its institutions, its protections, is more important to you than the threat of losing access to a social media app, then the next four years is your moment.

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As it turns out, like turkey, I’m not a big fan of Christmas. Well, not Christmas per se, but what it’s become.

In this seemingly suspended time after Christmas and before the New Year, I started unpacking boxes of books. While doing so, I decided to flip through a couple and came across a maple leaf, pressed in between pages —- the leaf was a “gift,” from my Dad decades ago. It got me thinking.

A few years back when I was living in Southern California, I was watching the local morning news. Christmas was about a week away. A reporter was out on the street in Los Angeles, interviewing kids who were lined up by the hundreds, waiting to meet Santa, with their gift lists in hand. The kids were accompanied by their working class parents, waiting patiently on a line which was endlessly snaking around the block.

The reporter randomly approached each kid, asking what was the one thing they wanted for Christmas. One-by-one, the responses would be a bike, an X-Box, a tablet and so forth. In short, what these kids were hoping for were enormously expensive and clearly out of reach financially. I know this because I watched the parents’ reaction as their child responded to the reporter’s question. They became overcome, put their head down, clearly consumed with grief and guilt. Plainly, under no circumstance would their child’s wish come true. It made me sad. And made me wonder why in the world the question was being posed, on tv, in front of the world, embarrassing and humiliating the hell out of parents who could not come through.

I wasn’t the only one. Apparently there was such a public outrage over how the local network was conducting these interviews that kind, ordinary people were arriving on the scene with donations, bikes, X-Boxes and tablets. Why the pressure, why the constant drum beat to go into debt over this Christmas holiday, in search of the biggest, the best of “gifts” for our loved ones?

I’ve read countless social media posts over the years of friends filled with guilt because they couldn’t buy their kids expensive gifts, feeling like failures as parents. As if that is the measuring stick for good parenting. It gets worse every year, more consuming, more guilt, more pressure. More disappointment. The biggest and the best. And then poof, it’s over.

Remembering Christmas’ past. My family did not have much money. Working class. Seven of us crammed into a small house with one bathroom. As kids, our expectations were high, but we knew. We’d pour over the Sears, Spiegle and Penny’s Christmas catalogues compiling our lists. My Mom would take us to see Santa Claus, the same Santa Claus every year, who was so very real —- an actual white beard, white hair and jolly. We believed. But when it came right down to it, we knew that 99.99% of the items on our list would not be under the tree, the same tree that appeared out of nowhere and decorated on Christmas Eve.

Then the big day. So excited we were up before the sun. We would gather on the stairs while my Dad dragged out the movie camera to film us coming down into the still and quiet living room. The tree lights twinkling reflecting off the tinsel we had carefully draped over each branch, under the strict supervision of my Dad. It was magical.

The absolute best part were our stockings. My Mom (Santa), filled them to the brim with goodies and trinkets. We would take our spot by the collection of gifts with our names. In that collection was one “big gift,” sometimes, but not always, one from our list — many were homemade, or treasures handed down or books or momentos. No matter, we knew every one of them were heartfelt.

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We were taught it was not necessarily about “the gift,” which I’d forgotten, as my sister was quick to point out the other day. And that a card, something made, anything unconditional, was among the greatest.

Somewhere and somehow we’ve drifted away. Christmas over the years has become hugely commercialized and frankly, in my lifetime, has always been. We’ve lost our ability to connect with each other, to key in on the Spirit of the season, the fellowship, the relationships, community.

In the approaching years we are going to need each other more than ever. We will need to connect, to form communities. There are boundless “gifts” before us that don’t come from stores. We just need to pause for a moment and find them while we have the time. And learn once again what it means to share and become.

My biggest wish for the coming New Year is that we can take a moment from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and commit to being present with those who are important to us, who bring us joy and peacefulness.

Because one day, decades later, while unpacking a box of books, you may come across a maple leaf, pressed in between the pages of a book, from your Dad, who’s no longer here, and you can’t tell him how much you love it. And the sentiment and thought that went into choosing that one special maple leaf.

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Today’s post is not political, rather a far more personal one as the brightest, shiniest light in my life has been dimmed. Yesterday I walked Mighty Max to the Rainbow Bridge on his 14th birthday.

I am filled with profound grief and sadness. I haven’t known for a very long time, just how heavy my heart could feel.

He was my steady companion all these years. I am hoping that by writing my thoughts I will be able to rejoice in the joy he brought me every single day (well, not every day!), each filled with one magical and insane adventure after another.

As a puppy, he managed one day to eat all remotes. Not just the tv remote, but all remotes. One day he shredded a $100 bill, it was the last $100 I had to my name. And on another, while I was gone for only a few hours, I returned to find every cushion on the sofa and loveseat ripped to shreds —- both fabric and foam.

Then there was the digging and burying. Can’t find my car/house keys after searching high and low? Ahh yes. The backyard. I would look for a spot that had fresh soil. And ta da —- there they were, buried six inches below. He once buried my phone.

He was very social. He would burst through the gates of the dog park, coming in hot. Then would move from one dog to another, giving them kisses and head bumps. And then, just as the Pied Piper, would start running through the park followed by a long string of canines in a snaking line.

His lifelong quest was to rid the planet of all cats and squirrels. He worked it and spent serious time attempting to sharpen his craft. Although he was never able to actually catch his prey, it was not for a lack of trying.

He loved, loved, loved the beach. Not for the water, of course, despite being a water dog with webbed feet, but because it was a seemingly endless playground filled with ground squirrels and other creatures. And smells. Endless smells.

Max lived for our walks. Most days, so did I. For many years he pulled me behind him, moving quickly, as if he had a meeting to attend and was late. He showed purpose. But over the last year he pulled a little less spending more time gaining pleasure sniffing every blade of grass, every leaf, every brick, every concrete block and of course, fire hydrants.

He was my protector and a grand one at that. He was my security system I fed and walked every day. He did not allow anyone near me without his permission, including my sister, who when opening the door to her own home, was greeted with growls and barks. That is, until he recognized who he was terrorizing.

Our last and greatest adventure was our road trip from Southern California to Washington, DC, where I put down new roots. It took almost a month. We traveled through 8 states, stopping in all but Alabama (on purpose). We spent close to 3 weeks in Texas with my siblings, had crawfish, walked through City Park and watched local lads gather together to jam in New Orleans.

We stayed in some nasty motels along the way and encountered massive, torrential and dangerous rain falls. All the while, my Sweet Max sat like a trooper in the back seat, taking it all in, serving as my faithful Emotional Support Companion.

Max lived life according to his own rules. Sure he would sit on command, but only when food was involved. And come when he was called —- sometimes. He could be very bossy. But in the end, I always obeyed. Always.

Over time, and without much fanfare, his black, velvety face became more frosty, as did his muzzle, his eyelashes and even his eyebrows.

Having Max by my side meant I was living eternally in a judgement-free zone. No one to impress. He was going to be there no matter what.

And now he isn’t. He will no longer be here for any of it.

We ascribe human behavior to dogs. We include them in almost every daily event. We talk to them in complete sentences, ask their opinions, seek their counsel, make sure they are comfortable, feed them the best food and treats, brush them, bathe them, hug them and kiss them, treating them like we would our family and/or best friends. Because in the end, they are just that. Which is why all of this is so incredibly difficult.

For awhile I will be looking for him in the backseat, or the front door awaiting my return, or in the yard taking in all the sights and sounds (and other pups) in his new hood, or the back yard stretched out on the brick pato soaking up the nice warm sun, or in the kitchen holding out hope there are scraps of food on the floor, or in the living room, on his dog bed, or lying by my side, or snuggled up on my bed.

But he won’t be there.

But for now: May the flights of dog angels sing thee to thy rest, across the beautiful Rainbow Bridge, my always Forever Friend. You will never grow old, you will never know pain, and you will be surrounded by all the love you deserve.

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It has taken me over a week to write about the election. I started last Saturday, November 2nd, 4 days before the most important election of my life. The title then reflected how I was feeling at the time for our candidate who, according to all publicly shared metrics, would likely become the 47th President of the United States. 

It is now an entirely different piece.

Last Saturday I was both overcome and overwhelmed with pride, with joy, with optimism, with affirmation and with hope that after almost 10 years, a seemingly endless decade, we had the opportunity to rid ourselves of a terribly flawed man, a convicted felon, a man, who by any other model, in any other election, would have been completed eliminated from seeking another term as President of the United States of America. Most certainly eliminated after attempting to overthrow a free and fair election to remain in power, simply because he lost fair and square.

I convinced myself the election would be close, dangerously close, but he would lose because I had faith in my American brethren they would see through his con, his grift, his criminality, his sexism, his racism, his misogyny and that my White sisters would rise up to take legion of their bodies and their lives.

I couldn’t have been more gut-wrenchingly wrong. I’ll admit it.

There were warning signs, of course. Any number of ruby red, glaring flags hitting me in the face, which I willfully ignored.

Yes. I was excited at the prospect that as a woman of certain age, at long last a woman, a woman of color, might be elected to highest position in the world. But I was also looking for a whiff of normalcy in our government. More willful ignorance.

And so a week and two days after I began writing this post, I am now facing my demons where “overcome” and “overwhelmed” are taking on new meanings.

For the last 3 1/2 years, I have watched almost every Trump rally with the idea you can’t confront what you don’t know. I was less interested in what Trump had to say, because his words and actions are so predictable. I was far more interested in watching and listening to his crowds’ reactions. His rallies typically ran between an hour-and-a-half to two hours. There was rarely anything new in his prepared remarks. What was new was his veering away from the teleprompter to adlib to the absolute joy of his cult.

As the election drew near, pundits and anti-Trumpers remarked how the once and future president’s crowd sizes were thinning. His followers seemed less interested in what he had to say. It was never the case. More willful ignorance.

I have watched Trump simulate a sex act on a microphone, talk about the size of a pro-golfer’s genitalia, dry hump the American flag, call out women from the audience to remark about how beautiful they are, make vulgar remarks and insults about Democrats and elected officials, threaten to have members of the “fake media” arrested and jailed for writing and producing pieces that didn’t paint him in a favorable light, fantasizing of the press taking bullets first, before reaching him onstage, calling people names in much the same way elementary or middle school children would of their classmates, lying incessantly with impunity, painting the most violent, repugnant picture not only of our country, but of immigrants coming into this country, ironically to escape repressive regimes. I listened while he, the racist that he is, singled out specific countries, like the Congo, claiming without evidence, they were emptying their prisons, mental institutions and insane asylums, spilling hundreds of thousands murderers, criminals and terrorists into our country. An invasion. Our country was being conquered by “illegal aliens,” who were poisoning the blood of our country, in every city across the map.

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While the average person would be absolutely repulsed by his words, his overt racism, misogyny, xenophobia, oversized machismo and bravado, Trump’s crowds ate it up. Uproarious cheers and applause, sometimes it was deafening.

Chilling. Disturbing. Sad.

I watched Bubba’s, bedecked in their union gear, from the Steelworkers to the Teamsters and those in between, jump out of their seats with cheers as Trump promised “no tax on overtime,” all the while hypnotically taking a serial liar at his word. Point of fact, not only is his de facto Co-President Elect and soon-to-be Co-President, Elon Musk, one of the biggest union busters on the planet Earth, but both he and Trump abhor the notion of paying workers overtime. Trump admitted just that, point blank, during at least 3 of his rallies. Bottom line —- there will be no overtime to tax, because there will be no overtime. Collective Bargaining —- gone. Labor unions that built this country’s middle class —- gone.

But hey, let’s keep our heads in the sand. Because no way can any of what Trump is promising, or Project 2025, or oligarchs and friends of Putin, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, can happen here. Nope. Never. Not in the good ‘ole U.S. of A.

One of Trump’s authoritarian hero’s, one he bragged about endlessly at rallies, Prime Minister of Hungary, Victor Orban, managed to dismantle major levers of his then democratic government and institutions, like its Constitution and courts, within a year of being elected.  And when Filipino President Duterte took office, and controlled all three branches of his government, it took him only six months to crumble his country’s institutions.

Enter Donald J. Trump. The 47th President of the United States of America.

What Went Wrong

All of it. Everything we have read and heard contributed to the defeat of VP Kamala Harris. 4 of them stand out.

• 3 months and 9 days was not enough for Harris to cross the finish line. It was always going to be an uphill fight given Trump had spent over 3 years putting his campaign together, developing strategy and implementing his infrastructure. It didn’t matter to whom Biden passed the torch or even if Biden had gotten out earlier. Trump’s victory was all but baked. In fact, no matter who took the mantle, they would not have prevailed. Given her unusual and unprecedented time constraints, she ran an almost flawless campaign. Mistakes? Of course, but overall, she can hardly be faulted for her loss.

• Trump increased White support with both men and women over 2016 and 2020. I wrote about some of that here. Until the Democratic Party acknowledges there is a serious race and cultural problem, seeking constructive ways to address them, we will continue to lose. In the final analysis, White men and White women let our Black brothers and sisters down.

• The Far-Right, for decades, has had an overwhelming advantage over the Democrats when it comes to information ecosystems. Fox News which hit the airwaves in 1996 led the way, but soon wasn’t conservative enough for the Far-Right. Today Right-wing media includes —- Fox News (News Corp), Newsmax, One America News Network (OANN), Sinclair Broadcasting (radio, tv, newspapers), IHeart Media (formally Clear Channel), Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, Podcasts such as Joe Rogan’s, whose staggering reach, 11 million, is greater than MSNBC, CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC taken together. Democrats have nothing that even comes close to the reach of the Far-Right in disseminating information. In addition, the media outlets, both in print, radio, and digital media, are owned by billionaires, which as it turns out, have more than a personal interest in how information is distributed. The mainstream media totally failed.

• And finally, at long last the Democratic Party needs desperately to rebuild. it has been ablaze, a fire seemingly out of control, dating back to 1980. We have tried to put it out with a garden hose. Now that it is all but smoldering ashes, we need to take a serious assessment of the party and where we stand. Are we truly the party of the working man and woman or are we packed to the gills with the elite, consisting primarily of the college-educated, we have little interest in listening to those outside our bubble, preaching instead of taking a moment out our busy day to sit with those in the field and on the ground. We hero-worship our elected officials, forgetting they work for us, not the other way around. We have been top-down for far too long. If we expect to confront the nightmare we are about to encounter, we must, and this is worth repeating, we must reshape, repair, reform and restructure or we have no hope of ever getting out from under this authoritarian regime.

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What’s Next

This is the only country I have lived in. I have no idea what it looks or feels like to exist under the thumb of a repressive government nor do I have any idea what it’s like to be governed by a would-be dictator whose only interest is enriching himself, and the Christian Nationalists he surrounds himself, whittling away our freedoms each and every day to suit their whims, and support their misogyny and sexism.

So what comes next? The people who brought us to this moment, those in leadership roles with MAGA, Christian Nationalists and White Evangelicals, have been organizing, indoctrinating and strategizing to reach this very moment for decades. They are very well funded. We have not. We are not.

We need to start from scratch. Building communities. We must in all earnestness 1) admit and acknowledge that while we have been in the fight for a long time, we by no means know it all. I would argue there’s too much we don’t know. It’s all changed. All of it.

While there is still time, we need to live to fight another day. We must in all earnestness, listen and learn from each other. We’ve spent far too many years as Democrats, as activists reacting election cycle-by-election cycle rather than methodically and systemically putting together a long range plan.

I have faith we can do it. The question is, will we.

November 5, 2024 will go into the history books as the Presidential election that not only Trump and MAGA won, but that lies won, that propaganda won, that dark money won, that the oligarchs won, that White men and White women won, that Gen X & Z bros and the tech bros won.

The biggest losers — Democracy. Freedom.

We cannot let this happen again.

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For the last few months I have been reading and researching extensively in an effort to unearth the answer to this head scratching question: why is this election so close?

A race for the U.S. Presidency. One between a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, serial liar, lifelong con, a cheater, adulterer, extortionist, a narcissist, a sociopath, inciter of a violent insurrection to overturn a free and fair election in an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, a vacuous human being, vs. a hugely qualified, brilliant, effective, skilled, talented, strategic, focused, experienced former DA, AG, Senator and Vice President. A woman. A Woman of Color.

So why then is this election so close?

Two words —- White People.

Specifically —- White women.

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Trump’s base is and always has been a mix of the aggrieved working class filled with rage and anger, Evangelicals and suburban women. But it’s not Black/Brown working class who are raging with anger, or Black/Brown Evangelicals lining up in droves behind Trump and his MAGA cult and certainly not Black/Brown suburbanite women clamoring for the opportunity to enlist Trump as their protector. It’s White people.

Then there is this curious fascination/adoration of Trump from White women. A boorish man who has been accused by at least 26 women of sexual assault, who blatantly objectifies women, who brags endlessly with pride that he and he alone is responsible for stripping women of their right to reproductive healthcare.

The question then becomes: why DO White Women Support Donald Trump?

 In September, Trump posted to his Truth Social platform, in all caps:

This message is obviously targeted to a specific group —- White women that Trump is hoping to tighten his control, crassly appealing to and exploiting their most base emotions.

Trump. The Protector. The Fixer. The Great White Hope that will rush in, scoop us up and rescue us from all that is evil in the world because God knows, we certainly are not capable of doing so ourselves. We need him to make us healthy, hopeful, safe and secure. And of course, because he tells us we will “no longer be thinking about abortion” is reason enough to stop thinking about abortion. Alrighty then.

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Shortly after the Trump screed, I came across his co-president, Elon Musk’s post on his platform “X:”

To put this in perspective, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, White women have only voted in plurality for a Democratic presidential candidate twice since 1952 (emphasis added); once in 1964 for Lyndon B. Johnson and in 1996 for Bill Clinton, otherwise their plurality has careened in the other direction.

I’m a 1955 baby. Like every White woman before and since, I was thrust into the social construct known as patriarchy, a White male-dominated power system, dictating moral, social and political authority over everyone and anyone not White and male. We’ve lived it.

A social construct that goes hand-in-hand with racial privilege and Christian Nationalism. To be sure, it is a difficult topic for White people not only to talk about but to acknowledge. It’s messy. The whole patriarchy thing is inextricably entangled and steeped in racism and sexism and bigotry and misogyny and homophobia and islamophobia and xenophobia and transphobia, all while sitting piously in a church pew clutching their defining props —- the Bible and Jesus. After all, it was White women who were not only responsible for falsely accusing Black men of rape, but packed picnic lunches for the family to attend the lynchings.

The hard truth is, White women are direct beneficiaries of patriarchy and all the benefits it affords.

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In 2016, after calling Mexicans rapists and murderers, publicly mocking a disabled reporter and bragging about sexually assaulting women at will, 53% of White women cast their vote for Donald Trump; this despite his sexist, racist and derogatory behavior towards them. It is a harsh reminder that more than half of White women were more interested in protecting their privilege

I was willing to give my Tribe the benefit of the doubt that first time around. But then in 2020, White people, particularly White women, were more than willing to overlook 4 years of utter chaos —- total ban on Muslims entering the country, ripping tender-aged children from the arms of their parents, putting them in cages or worse, his indefensible, gross mishandling of a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic that he intentionally misrepresented and downplayed (because it might affect his re-election), leading to the preventable deaths of millions and millions of Americans, and oh, inciting a violent insurrection in the seat of our democracy because he was pissed he lost an election fair and square. In the starkest of these examples and too many more to even begin to list here, White women’s support of Trump increased 2% over 2016 to 55%.

And here we are today. 9 days away from the most consequential election of our lifetime. Bombarded daily with code words and buzz words of a wannabe authoritarian, whose former Chief of Staff called out his fascist predilections.

He holds his rallies in sundown towns and those with concentrations of militia members. His rhetoric is a clarion call to White men and women, always with an emphasis on “OUR” —- “OUR country, OUR cities, OUR government, defend OUR borders, defend OUR great American flag, protect OUR citizens, protect OUR people.”

And then there is Trump’s constant/slow drumbeat against the perceived evil Brown/Black menace - “We will not be invaded, we will not be conquered, we will take back what is OURS, we will make America safe again, we will make America strong again, we will make America proud again, we will make America wealthy again, we will make America great again,” all with a little sprinkle of transphobia - “We will keep men out of women’s bathrooms, we will keep men out of women’s sports and stop schools from making sex changes on students without parental consent (which has never, not ever happened anywhere in this country. Not even once.)

New York Times columnist, Charles Blow said, after the 2020 election:

“Let me be specific and explicit here: white people —- both men and women —- were the only group in which a majority voted for Trump, according to exit polls. To be exact, nearly three out of every five white voters in America are Trump voters. It is so unsettling to consider that many of our fellow countrymen and women are either racists or accomodate racists or acquiesce to racists…in any case, while women vote for Trump at higher rates than all other women, despite the fact that Trump has spent his first term, indeed his whole life, denigrating women.”

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Are we to believe White women are supporting Trump because they believe he will “protect” their status and their privilege masked by their institutional racism? As long as the GOP extremist nominee continues to hammer away by debasing the “other,” instilling unfounded fear of personal safety on American streets, in American schools and communities, the white woman’s vote is a guarantee.

So what can we do with the election days away? Michelle Obama implored us all as women last night, at a rally in support of Kamala Harris —- take the time to reach out to at least one of our Sisters, take a minute to talk to her about the high stakes of November 5th.

Because in the end, it won’t be Donald J. Trump who will rescue us. It won’t be White men who will rescue us. In fact, it will be our Sisters of Color, in particular our Black sisters, who will and are rescuing us. Black women have been playing a central role in shaping the agenda and voter turnout for decades. Their organizing and mobilization role could well be decisive to say nothing of essential in sustaining a more inclusive democracy, now 9 days away.

White women —- will we rise to this moment?

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