What can we possibly do to defend democracy when such powerful people are acting with such impunity? In this episode … three things you could do today, an honest look at whether they’ll make a difference, and some thoughts on dedication from someone who’s been there before. Check out these leaders mobilizing people across the country: –50501: https://www.fiftyfifty.one/ –Indivisible: https://indivisible.org/ –Common Cause: https://www.commoncause.org/ –Democracy 2025: https://www.democracy2025.org/ –Windham County Action Network (for southern VT locals): https://www.facebook.com/groups/195358497603501 My Get Started Checklist 1.) Carve out a specific regular appointment to work on democracy (e.g. 7:00-8:00 on Thursdays. Put it on your calendar. 2.) Join organizations that are doing the work like the ACLU and media outlets with professional journalists and codes of ethics. 3.) Find (or found) a group of concerned citizens and meet regularly. 4.) Pick one goal. Make it small. Something you can accomplish with the resources you have in three months or less. If you reach it, throw a party, invite more friends and plan a little bit bigger.
Not Helpless
Intro: Are we helpless?
Democracy is awesome. It’s resilient. It is worth nurturing and protecting, and, even now, there is hope that we can. These were my conclusions in the last two episodes. But they are not enough. In today’s episode, why that’s so and what we can do about it. This is I Heart This, dear listener. I’m Ben Lord. Let’s talk about what we love.
At the end of January, my mom and dad came to visit for a weekend and celebrate my Mom’s birthday. I promise, I didn’t talk politics at them the whole time, but over breakfast on Sunday morning, the conversation turned to our fear and sadness over the administration’s dismantling of our democratic institutions. I shared some of my conclusions from the last episodes about hope and how we find it. My dad listened thoughtfully for a bit and then said, “But, Ben, I don’t feel hopeless. I feel helpless.”
And as soon as he said it, I realized just how right he was. What does hope matter, if it’s completely out of my hands … As my uncle, and good friend put it after reading a draft of my previous episodes, “But what do you want me to do?”
First Thoughts: Just Act
And my first reaction was, “Well I don’t know! I’m a science teacher who podcasts about appreciation. I’m just trying to celebrate how awesome democracy is and remind people that we have a chance to save it if we are brave.” But even as I said it to myself, I knew it wasn’t enough. Lying in bed at night, I am asking the same questions.
And after my mom and dad packed up and said their good-byes, I spent a long time mulling over my dad’s statement. “I don’t feel hopeless. But how can I stop feeling helpless?”
My first thought was, “Well, maybe all it takes is to just jump in. After an earthquake, no one person can rebuild a crumbled city. But nobody tries. They just start passing out bottled water and picking through rubble. So I asked myself what I could do right now with what I already have. Here’s what I came up with.
Step #1: Put It on Your Calendar
First, I carved out a regular time to work on this. I made specific appointments, like, 7:00 to 8:00 on Thursday and put it on my calendar. I decided to treat this like any new habit or resolution. So I’m telling people about my commitment, just like I’m telling you now.
Step #2: Join Together:
The simple act of writing something on my calendar was surprisingly settling, but I realized that I didn’t want to do this alone. Part of what makes me feel helpless is feeling isolated. So as my second step I decided I needed to join up with others. Now, joining is something I’ve always done. I’ve been a long-time member of my local NPR station, the ACLU, my local library board, and so on.
But I wanted more. I wanted something local, something face-to-face, that was working directly on preventing the Trump administration from consolidating autocratic power and targeting minority groups. I wanted to sit down with friends. I don’t want to be alone.
After the first Trump election, Laura and some of our friends did just that. They called it the Huddle and they met once a month. It was a kind of democracy club. And it really was powerful, so much so that state officials, candidates, even the lieutenant governor would come to visit them and listen to what they had to say.
It didn’t take long to find a similar group that met every month nearby. But, I thought, even if I hadn’t found something, it wouldn’t have been that hard to start. It could be as simple as getting a cafe table with a few friends who are also hungry to feel “not helpless.”
Step #3: Focus:
But what would we do? Write letters, organize protests, set up a support network for vulnerable immigrants. Convince our local sheriff’s department not to help enforce unjust orders. One of the key reasons I feel helpless is because of the crushing magnitude of it all. I know that I’ll need early wins to keep myself going. So my third is this: Pick one goal. Make it small. Something we can accomplish with just the resources you have in three months or less. Something that smacks of love and liberty and truth. Something that we could do locally but with ripples that, however small, might extend throughout the whole disaster.
I imagine reaching that one modest goal, throwing a party, and inviting more friends to it. Inspiring them, asking them to join us, picking a slightly bigger goal and moving forward. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
I realized, opportunities to help are everywhere. They are small, but so am I. I’m just making this up as I go, but that’s what people do in floods and fires too. Like Barbara Kingsolver said We can’t save everything all at once, but it’s still worth saving something. Because there are so many of us to do it.
And so, right now, I’m grateful for this. We are not helpless. There is no shortage of things that we can do. Any of us, no matter our talents, can find some small way to take action. We can start here and now with just the people around us.
This was my outline for this episode. And when I’d written it out, I thought that maybe this episode was done. But I was so wrong.
Plot Twist: Can’t Avoid Talking Strategy
Oh, my god, you guys! It is so hard to listen to the endless stream of disasters on the news. Not long after, I’d finished my little, “I’m-not-helpless” action plan, I listened to news reports on the radio on the way into town. Trump was ordering another slew of supposedly independent agencies to submit to his direct control. Next to that, my little list of humble actions felt like a joke. I lay awake that night tossing and turning. It wasn’t enough just to do something. This wasn’t about assuaging my feelings of helplessness. If they didn’t have some effect were they really any better than doing nothing at all? It’s not enough to be hopeful and helpful, I realized. The hope and the help have to be connected.
What are me and my little group of friends going to do against the massive power of Trump and his billionaires. Write letters? Make posters? Hold bake sales? Even if a thousand little democracy clubs sprang up all over the country, what effect would any of that have on the steamroller that is crushing one check on executive power after another.
I didn’t just want to feel not helpless. I wanted to actually not be helpless. It wasn’t enough to see how I could get started. I needed a vision of a possible endgame, a series of steps that might possibly lead from where we are now, to a future where my kids could feel secure in their freedom of speech, in the durability of the free press, in a government that acknowledged, represented, and was beholden to all of its citizens. And I just … I couldn’t …
Arghh!
When I started writing this whole series I felt like I made this commitment to inspire you, dear listener, that we can do it. And I’ve just to level with you … I might not deliver.
We Must Talk Strategy
Through this whole series, I’ve been avoiding talking about strategy. I’m not an organizer. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t have advice. But I’m realizing, right now, that I will feel helpless until I can see a strategy that makes sense. And maybe that’s at the heart of what my dad was saying … We need more than something to do … we need to see the strategy. We need to see a logical series of steps that could get us from where we are to where we want to be and think … gee, that just might work.
The trick is that any strategy that relies on the people is going to need something else, leadership.
Now I have never been a follower. I’m a “go my own way” kind of guy who’d rather sit out than have to follow somebody else’s plan. But I am way outside my comfort zone here, people. I’d be so grateful for some leadership right now. And when it comes to people power, “go your own way” doesn’t really cut it. We’ve all got to move together if we want anything to move at all. But imagine how hopeful it would feel to find somebody with a diagram up on the board that showed the way to a likely endgame. Well, damn, if we had that, and a well-organized grassroots engine, I think we’d have a shot.
So, I did what a twenty-first century guy does and went online looking for some leadership. And mostly, I saw people flailing around just like me. People wondering out loud where the Democratic Party leadership was, complaints that they weren’t doing anything and resentful rejoinders at them to “Do Your Job!”
Yeah … not what I was looking for. Right now, we don’t have our Martin Luther King or our Gandhi.
Nascent Leadership
But, we do have something. As I dug deeper … I found this group doing something with a bit of momentum. And then I found another. And then another.
You’ve probably heard of the 50501 (fifty-fifty-one) protests. Right now they are rallying the momentum for another round. And while protests and rallies on their own may not be enough to change political outcomes, it’s really disappointing when a potential autocrat makes a power grab and you don’t see them. Am I right? These protests might just be a signal. But I’ll tell ya, right now I need signals–some nice, loud, clear ones. I need to know that other people out there care enough to show up. I’m really grateful that people are.
Here’s another. Did you know that the group Indivisible basically has a roadmap for just the kind of local, face-to-face democracy club that I had been daydreaming about the day before. It’s a literal instruction manual.
Did you know the non-partisan democracy advocacy group Common Cause has over one and a half million members and truly is non-partisan? Right now they are pressuring the administration to fire Elon Musk.
Do you know about Democracy 2025? It’s a coalition of over 350 organizations with more than 800 lawyers and other experts. They formed explicitly to confront the threats to our checks and balances posed by Project 2025 and have been chasing that goal with passion.
In my own county, a local action network formed by my neighbors under the first Trump administration is applying years of experience to new challenges.
Later today, my senators and congresswoman are showing up to a virtual town meeting to fill Vermonters in on what they’re doing and how we can help.
Here’s my point. There are allies out there. There is leadership out there. There are people out there working hard, already, to do what they can. Maybe our generation’s Martin Luthur King is already organizing, and we just don’t know who they are yet.
I still don’t know what an overall strategy looks like, but for the first time since November, I am starting to imagine one. What if local and state governments across the country refuse to cooperate in the inhumane treatment of their neighbors? What if people from professions across the country go on strike until we get our checks and balances back? What if protesters block key infrastructure until our presidential overreach is rectified?
Actions like this will take planning, organizing, time, and sacrifice. But there is no way worth going in this life that is easy and secure. There are leaders who started working and planning long before people like me even showed up. If we have a democracy a generation from, it will be because of them. They deserve our help. They deserve our gratitude.
We are NOT helpless.
And not just them. If our leaders now have organizations and playbooks for fighting tyranny, it’s because they inherited them.
Two centuries ago, Abolitionists organized an underground railroad. A hundred years later women chained themselves to buildings and went on hunger strikes, determined to win themselves the right to vote. About eighty years ago, the people of India threw off colonial rule by defying British monopolies until India became virtually ungovernable as a colony. Lessons learned there informed the American Civil Rights movement. Bus boycotts and sit-ins, freedom rides and marches chipped away at the injustices of segregation. In South Africa, the African National Congress organized civil disobedience campaigns that simultaneously made the racism of Apartheid untenable from within and galvanized allies around the world to apply pressure from without. In 1986, when Ferdinand Marcos, dictator of the Philippines, claimed to have won a sham election, the Catholic church and defectors from the military threw their support behind the peaceful protestors crowding the streets and toppled his regime. South Korea, France, Ukraine, Spain, Georgia, Serbia, Tunisia, Egypt, Finland–all have similar stories.
But as uncertain and as frightening as it may be, history has shown that however we may feel … we are not helpless. We have actions we can take, we have people to take them with, and we have leaders who are already pointing the way. If they’re not yet a movement, it’s because they are missing one thing … us. They need us to not feel helpless or tired or overwhelmed. They need us to believe.
A New Birth of Freedom
On a crisp, autumn day in November of 1863, about 15,000 people turned out to dedicate a new National Cemetery in the tiny town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Four months before, Union and Confederate armies had converged there in a devastating battle. The number of casualties was more than three times the size of the assembled crowd. The surrounding land still bore the scars. Splintered trees, damaged buildings, fences riddled with bullets, and the shallow graves of the hastily buried dead. The work to move their bodies to the new cemetery was ongoing.
On that day, the future of American democracy was even less certain than it is now.
The ceremony was unremarkable. There was a band, an opening prayer, a benediction. The keynote speaker was a former senator and distinguished orator named Edward Everett. His two-hour speech told the story of the war and the battle of Gettysburg and honored the sacrifice of the men and boys who had died. It was widely considered a masterful remembrance, even though it is largely unknown today.
At the end, Abraham Lincoln, the Union’s embattled president, stepped to the podium. He was getting ready to run for a second term, and his prospects were uncertain. People felt helpless and tired and overwhelmed. Many criticized the president’s handling of the brutal war. And while he had strong support from abolitionists, he was widely seen as a divisive figure by moderates. He spoke for two minutes. And all through these past weeks, his words have been playing in my mind. And, I think, they are worth remembering. And whatever your political leanings, I hope you find inspiration in them now.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
So, Abe, this may not be “the last full measure of devotion.” But here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to show up to that meeting on Saturday. Somewhere near you, dear listener, there is one just like it, hosted by someone who is looking for hope, and hoping that someone will show up. They’re hoping for you, and they don’t even know you yet. And every time one of us comes through that door, they’ll believe, a little bit more, that a new birth of freedom is possible. And so will I.