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flag day.

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Dear America: we need to talk.

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Get it right.

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High resolution banners free to download for water protectors and actions. Permission by the artists Isaac Murdoch & Christi Belcourt.

Help the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ with donations, supplies, and legal funds.

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“Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.” Orwell

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Francis Bacon, born on this day in 1561, on the spirit of true learning and how to read intelligently.

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Debbie Millman and other designers respond constructively to what can be done about the political situation today. 

Also see Carl Sagan on moving beyond us vs. them. 

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Ok one more post before I delve back into shaping this activism opps calendar.

I personally know an overwhelming amount of people who engage in all manner of struggle and hustle and strife who are raw as hell today. You all have beautiful hearts. Your anger and horror – for your own situations in America or on the behalf of others – is something to behold.

We’ve got to transmute this crackling rage into something viable, useful.

Today is Day 1 of America openly acknowledging to the world a reality about ourselves that many didn’t think possible … and catching a sobering look in the mirror.

And the fumble toward owning this has just begun, beginning with the instinct to loudly and defensively distance ourselves from some ugly realities we didn’t want to see.

Will that help? I don’t think that’s the path we need.

This entire election season was a very important litmus test. It’s been a bite of humble pie between each fallen certainty; it’s been fittingly discomfiting.

So let’s start with day one. Look for the helpers. Work alongside them. Listen. Learn. Commit.

We do this on our level, and I think before long we'll rely less and less upon "savior" politicians and dividing lines.

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At a loss about how to best defend the most vulnerable Americans? Check out the events tab for a Rochester-based calendar of activism opportunities. To be updated daily. People from other cities: feel free to copy-cat what we’re doing here. xo

Philip Larkin

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Conditions are ripe for some protest songs.

In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing. About the dark times.

Bertolt Brecht, “Motto”

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While I'm not happy about Trump's win, I think that a considerable problem with a Clinton victory would have been so many liberals hitting the snooze button again. A lack of outrage and a lot of shrugging while we keep fighting devastating proxy wars, filling prisons, letting badged murderers off, choosing corporate interest over the environment, and committing other atrocities under a liberal administration. If your reaction to that is to get puffed up, just take a breath and think about it. We can all be doing more.

Take for example how little the left cares about the record deportations that happened under Obama's administration while flipping out about Trump's rhetoric.

There's bad and there's the illusion of good. This nation chose the overt bad. That's actually really useful information.

There's a window of opportunity in this mess. People are on edge about what actions Trump will set in motion for this nation. There is potential for more scrutiny, more willingness to be critical. We need to use this momentum, and we need to use it now.

We have a chance to create genuinely healthy, direct-action movements because the liberal candidate lost and people can't wash their hands of personal accountability. But will the left work harder for the nation they say they want to manifest? Are we willing fight for it? Will we examine what more we can be doing?

I understand the lamentations everyone is posting on various media today, but I'm especially proud to see so many of you writing calls to specific action, words of encouragement, statements of support for vulnerable Americans targeted by hateful rhetoric, and calling for help in planning courses of action.

We have our work cut out for us, but we always have.

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Can't support a system that finds no wrong doing here. They dismiss blatant horror as a freak tragedy, offer no recourse, no corrective action. And the reality show aspect of it is beyond disturbing - propaganda for the militarization of the police. The article offers insight into this rolling phenomenon of cops being trained to think of themselves as tactical teams.