World's Richest Man Pays to Screw America DOGE-style

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are partnering to create and new US government agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

Musk underwrote the Trump campaign with $200 million in donations (AP estimate) and his own brand of buying votes.

Supposedly, the acronym comes from Musk's favorite cryptocurrency, the Doge. Whatever. When Heather Cox Richardson says the name of the pending Musk/Ramaswamy agency, she pronounces it doggy. She's authoritative enough for me. 

So yes, Musk paid for his new appointment, which represent a colossal conflict of interest, as that agency reportedly, avowedly, will shut down many regulations that currently govern aspects of Musk's enormous US government contracts. Getting his new powers involved corruption--a person really isn't supposed to pay to acquire powers in the US federal government. Can there be a shred of doubt that corruption won't feature in nullifying EPA regulations on SpaceX, Tesla, and other Musk holdings?

But that is just toxic foreplay. Musk and Ramaswamy tell Forbes they will cut some $2 trillion in US federal spending (sparing all the contracts with Musk-owned corporations, no doubt). What do they intend to defund?

They will get rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which tells us, "We protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices and take action against companies that break the law." Thanks, Elon, for planning to deep-six this one.

Goodbye, Department of Education. Populist demagogues like Trump have railed against such an unwanted department for decades, clearly tired of spending funds on schools that serve marginalized communities 

DOGE will get really vicious with organizations like Planned Parenthood, which averages approximately $50 million a year in federal funding. Reproductive help for women is almost certainly taking that hit.

Musk will make headlines when he and Ramaswamy end the $535 million federal support for public radio and TV. They actually called that "unauthorized spending," even though Congress authorized it. You may not get public TV--so long, Sesame Street--but you will get a full display of gaslighting. 

The Veterans Administration health care funding is targeted by Musk--interesting, a white South African deciding the US military veterans should stop getting healthcare.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposed "austerity" measures on some poor countries that were not managing to repay loans and the impacts were severe, with poverty increased and government services decreased, even eliminated. The targeted countries--such as Greece, Kenya, and many more--reacted with cries of extreme pain and many of those harmful punishing policies were curtailed. 

Musk says his DOGE will inflict hardship. Many Americans will lose their jobs, both inside the government and outside--the government contracts with many companies and when DOGE decides those contracts are not going to be honored, the losses will be severe in some quarters. Add to that the rising consumer prices that are widely predicted from Trump's tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China (and possibly everyone else), and the American lifestyle may be in for the biggest shock since 1929.

When Trump was desperately seeking votes from retirees and those who love them, he promised not to cut Social Security, and even added that he would stop the practice of the IRS taxing Social Security. We will see if Musk lets him keep that promise. 

It is astonishing that, in a roaring Biden-Harris economy that is benefiting literally every class of Americans, Trump garnered more votes than Harris and will throw wrenches into many of the gears of that economy, if Musk succeeds. 

You asked me to help because I have all the answers. Right?

"We may assume that to help the parties in conflict, we need to have answers. We need to have substantive suggestions for how to resolve their problem. But, in fact, we don't. To help, we just need to be curious, listen carefully, and ask questions that can open up new possibilities" (Ury, 2024, pp. 249-250).

You are asked to mediate a conflict between members of a core organizing group in a social justice organization. You have little experience mediating but you want to help, so you agree. It makes you feel a bit panicked, so you reach out to someone you know who mediates professionally and has for years. You describe the situation and ask for advice. She asks you, in turn, about your history as a mediator. 

"I am the oldest of six kids, so I had to grow up mediating," you tell her. 

"Interesting," she responds. "How did you go about that?"

"I would inquire about the disagreement and come up with a solution," you say.

"Yup," she says, "the Oldest Sibling Syndrome. You grew up feeling a responsibility to arrive at a good solution to resolve conflicts your little sisters and brothers were having. That is not likely to help you in this case."

"Why not," you ask, surprised. 

"You are asked to mediate amongst grown-ass men and women," she tells you, "not credulous little kids who assume you have the answers that will fix their difficulties. Look, if you want, I can co-mediate with you. I've done a few hundred of these and you might pick up something to help you in future conflicts." 

You gratefully accept, you and she co-mediate, you do indeed learn a great deal, and your activist group is stronger, more effective, and back to saving the world, one small victory after another. Nice.

References

Ury, William (2024). Possible: How we survive (and thrive) in an age of conflict. Harper Business.

The upside of monarchy or the downside of democracy?

Democracy is what people want when they are either so oppressed that they have no voice and are given reason to believe their lives can be made more tolerable by getting that voice. Democracy is also what fairly privileged people (middle-class and upper-middle class) want and expect when politics are routinely done for their relative benefit--even when their side loses an election, their benefits continue at some level. They look around the world and see that countries without democracy frequently have an eviscerated middle class with no voice and few prospects.

But when the masses without privilege seek systemic change, they can frequently be captured by demagogues who promise them exactly what they want in the moment--vengeance and membership on the winning side. Further, when they live in places where elections routinely fail to produce the change they desire, they can be recruited into support for a brutal opposition and help it seek power. They can become weary and distrustful of the promises made by candidates leading up to elections when those promises are proven again and again to be hollow, broken, and buried in excuses and justifications.

For example, during the long civil war in Colombia, peace was promised by candidates who were elected and failed to succeed in achieving the peace people needed to live decent lives. This was the case "during the Belisario Betancur administration from 1984 to 1989, the César Gaviria administration from 1991 to 1992, and the Andrés Pastrana Arango administration from 1998 to 2002" (Sg, 2024, p.2).

Is it any wonder the Colombians, despite their war weariness, grew increasingly intolerant of the political candidates and even of democracy itself? While the politics swung from far right to centrist and back, it finally took a coalition of peace-seeking parties from across the political and military spectrum, assisted by talented international peace negotiators and mediators, to achieve the historical peace accords of 2016, ending the decades of war. 

Is the peace secure? Some analysts warn that the combination of delays in achieving the transitional justice desperately needed by the war victims, coupled with increased politicization of the factions who were parties to the peace process, threaten the fragile peace that succeeded so many decades of militarized massacres, sexual violence as a weapon of war committed by both far right and far left insurgents and paramilitaries, and the radical misery and insecurity visited upon almost all sectors of that poor country.

With the global trend toward more autocracy and the lack of imagination of leaders who reflexively respond to violence with even more violence, places like Colombia are susceptible to the slide back into war and away from democracy. 

In the long term, peace education and conflict transformation training might be the strand of hope from which so much hangs. Reading about the international focus on ending the long war in Colombia (Ury, 2024) shows what is possible, but the rise of anti-democracy strongmen in so many places shows what is also possible. Ultimately, people power and a great deal of development of the talents for negotiating and executing the structural fixes needed to bring peace and stability will be necessary. Structural nonviolence can follow the strategic nonviolence proven to be a path to change in so many cases, but the generalization of the skills and professionalization of peacework may be the key requisite factors in positive sustainable change.

References

Sb, G. (2024). Elite theory and politicization of negotiated settlement: challenges to peace durability in Colombia. Journal of Iberian & Latin American Studies, 1–15. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/14701847.2024.2426393 

Ury, William (2024). Possible: How we survive (and thrive) in an age of conflict. Harper Business.

Intent or content?

William Ury (2024) advises us to go past the "what" and focus on the "why." Grenny, et al., (2023) cautions us to look past the content and suss out the intent, bringing zero assumptions to that process. 

If the Board of Trustees is discussing the deficits does this mean we should ignore that and think about our opportunity to bond with members of the BOT?

No. It means that showing and expecting mutual respect is the first baby step toward sincere, productive, principled negotiations. When frustrated members of one side resort to dehumanizing targeting of the other the chances for actual progress based on a win-win possibility are quickly reduced, usually to zero. Ad hominem attack almost always guarantees either a protracted stalemate or a win-lose, or a lose-lose outcome. Maintaining genuine mutual respect is the only hope, even when slim, of a win-win agreement. 

When Uri Savir, one of the chief negotiators for Israel in the Oslo process, first met Abu Ala, his Palestinian counterpart, he wondered to himself if this was one of the terrorists who killed his friend. Because of the excellent facilitation and due as well to the actual desire by all parties to produce a working peace, relationships flourished over time--Palestinian negotiators and Israeli negotiators attended each others' children's weddings, and they took family vacations together. They did it--they got a working peace agreement. 

It took determined spoilers to derail that peace, including radical violent ones on both sides doing their best--their worst--to upend and destroy the peace. A radical Islamist bombed a bus in Tel Aviv. A radical Zionist imperialist shot Itzak Rabin at a peace rally. The process unraveled. But its brief success was a tantalizing glimpse into what a Middle East peace could look like. 

Empiricists could generate the amount of time needed to reduce past atrocities in the collective memory enough to inoculate against the spoilers, but clearly there are times, like in the Middle East, when the spoilers have an advantage for quite some time. 

My activist slogan for decades, literally, has been, "Heighten the confrontation while we deepen the invitation." I learned that from my Dad. He was a WWII vet, in the Philippines "for the duration" plus a year, but he became a peace activist during Vietnam, quit his corporate VP gig to go back to school on the GI Bill, got his doctorate, was the only draft counselor on his campus even as he was Chair of his dept., and most tellingly, kept all his corporate conservative friends even as he became a radical peacenik. I've been following in his footsteps forever.

References

Grenny, Joseph; Patterson, Kerry; McMillan, Ron; Switzler, Al; Gregory, Emily (2023). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high. 3rd ed. VitalSmarts.

Savir, Uri (1998). The process: 1,100 days that changed the Middle East. New York: Vintage.

Ury, William (2024). Possible: How we survive (and thrive) in an age of conflict. Harper Business.

How dare you! (disagree with me)

Joseph Grenny and his co-authors (2023) probe the styles each of us might have in tough conversations. They ask 30 questions of the reader about each of our unique styles (pp. 120-122). I answered each of the questions and found that I do many things in conflict conversations that are sometimes unhelpful and some other things that are virtually always counterproductive. 

While I do some things that they advise (I would hope so, since this is the discipline in which I teach and write and practice), I found plenty of room for self-improvement--with their coaching. For instance, despite teaching deëscalation on the Portland Peace Team for years, and despite being certified as an expert in deëscalation by at least one judge, I flunked this question: "When I am very confident of my opinion, I don't like it when others push back" (p. 122). I may or may not say how much I don't like it, but this is a flashing red light to me. I need to get past this and I believe the best way is the self-talk I picked up from a National Public Radio podcast, an episode of Short Wave, their science podcast, on the neuroscience of disagreement[1]. That self-talk was highlighted by the researchers who studied our brains while agreeing and while disagreeing. They concluded that the most adaptive approach is to self-frame difficult conversations as our personal goal: learn, not win. 

If I can make that my mantra in tough conversations I am confident I can respond to disagreement with me, even when I am certain I am right, with curiosity, and not curiosity about how the other person could be so stupid, but rather what they might be seeing that I am not. There is literally likely no topic on earth that I know categorically to be the unalterable, nuance-free case. 

I revisited a conversation I had with three students when I heard one say something that was in disagreement with something I had given a great deal of thought to. I flared up, not in an abusive way, not in a snarky or attacking fashion, but definitely with emotion. Instead, I needed to inquire and then listen. 

Note to self: next time someone hijacks my amygdala, go to the balcony, as William Ury advises[2], and remind myself that, aside from a snarling off-leash German Shephard charging me, no one can hijack my lizard brain and put it in control except for me.

References

Grenny, Joseph; Patterson, Kerry; McMillan, Ron; Switzler, Al; Gregory, Emily (2023). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high. 3rd ed. VitalSmarts.

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[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/24/1215086883/neuroscience-of-disagreement-short-wave

 

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=secuHmqIuJM

 

The sieve

"How does this task empower anyone?" (Ohmer & DeMasi, 2009, p. 306)

The supervisor of a crew of consensus organizers, reviewing the collected work plans, would ask this question at the weekly meeting. If she got no good answer, she would draw a line through it. 

That question related to the principles around which all their consensus organizing revolved. Those principles constituted filters through which all decisions ran. When something could not pass through those filters, it was not done. 

Clearly, said Ohmer & DeMasi, a written set of principles comes before much of anything else. Those principles are a sieve, even for employment as a consensus organizer. So, for example, if one of the principles of the organization was to meet people where they are and respect local norms, a consensus organizer from a Muslim-majority country would not quote Sharia law as a guide when working in eastern Oregon, just as a US consensus organizer operating professionally in Riyadh would not invoke a "What would Jesus do?" talking point. 

Similarly, if one of the principles of the consensus organizing team was nonviolence, the question might be, "Does this element of the work plan enable or encourage nonviolence?" If the answer is no, that element might not be a wise investment of the consensus organizer's time. 

In any organizing environment, it is oppressive and stultifying to have too many stated unbendable principles. A few that guide decision-making can really help, but too many can feel constricting and arbitrary. Many posited rules are fine and should be a living document that flows from a few absolute principles. The policies can be revisited, but revisiting the few basic standing principles should be a rare moment, if ever, in a consensus organizing operation.

References

Ohmer, Mary L. & DeMasi, Karen (2009). Consensus organizing: A community development workbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Peace journalism

While Johan Galtung is credited with coining the term "peace journalism," it continues to morph in its definition and practice even after Galtung's passing. 

Some tend to see it as the need to interview guerrilla fighters to provide context to viewers and readers to help them understand a hot conflict from both sides. That view is rooted in the problematic war journalism that tends to cover the government side, the rationales behind the official warmaking on the insurgents. 

While that is an element of peace journalism, it is my contention that the most important aspect is the gatekeeping to nonviolent actors, who may be just as opposed to government oppression as the guerrilla, but who are using nonviolent methods of resistance. This goes to my personal definition of positive peace: Peace and justice by peaceable means. Admittedly, that six-word definition is the bumper sticker version, but sometimes simple is best.

Of course environmental protections fall under the justice rubric--denying future generations clean water, clean air, and a robust natural world free from anthropogenic climate chaos events is basic injustice.

And by peaceable means I only mean conduct and practices that won't injure or kill people. I include very loud demonstrations, careful property damage, and other means that may not always feel so peaceful in my peaceable means broader scope. 

As an example of peace journalism one might ask, so, who were the nonviolent resisters in the long terrible war in Colombia? Everyone keeping track of that war in mainstream media would know about the government and the guerrilla, such as the FARC. But would the indigenous villages who were telling both sides to stay away, to stop offering "protection" that instead would make the village a battleground--would those indigenous villagers be covered by mainstream media? Would there be any appreciation internationally that there was a third side, a nonviolent set of parties to the horrific and protracted conflict? 

Peace journalists would cover those villages and villagers. What would the result be? Instead of the vast majority of, for instance, US Americans feeling like, "I don't have a dog in that fight," which contributes to generalized apathy, they might feel like they want to be an ally to those indigenous villagers, they want to pay attention to military aid sent in their name to the government, and they might decide to help put pressure on their federal representatives to vote against any further such aid from the US.

Fast forward to our US (and elsewhere) polarized scene now, with society pitting true believers on one side against the other side of deeply divided others. Michael Brüggemann, Communications research professor at the University of Hamburg and others are focused on this and challenge journalists: 

"Journalists and other moderators of public debate need to ask themselves: Are we (unconsciously) contributing to polarization? How can we (consciously) contribute to constructive public debates?"[1]

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[1] https://thenew.institute/en/media/journalism-and-community-moderation-in-polarized-debates

Pracademic knowledge

 As a scholar-activist (sometimes referred to as a "pracademic"), I frequently note the disparity between the respective knowledges. As a scholar, I deeply appreciate the many voices and interesting arguments from other academics, especially those who use clear empiricism, though as an activist I will note mentally that they always miss things that I've experienced repeatedly over the decades in various movements and campaigns.

As an activist, I deeply disagree with some of the more philosophically driven arguments backed by no serious groundtruthing by academics of both left and right, yet I am profoundly grateful for the empirical research that reaches strong conclusions based on much more than anecdotal evidence or even case studies. Large n studies, or experiments done with validity-threat-proof methodology, are exceedingly helpful to campaigners who wish to actually win, not just do something cathartic because it's "justified." 

Learning from all is messy and most effective. Learning from is not following after them; learning from is adding to the corpus of knowledge that feeds into your decision-making process, both as an individual and as a collective. 

Scaling up

William Ury writes about a protracted workplace conflict divisions growing over time into deeply divided camps with tensions at a boiling point one day when one of the workers, a young woman, arrived late carrying her little baby, explaining the impossible circumstances of her day and why she had no choice if she were to show up for this crucial meeting except to bring her baby. She took her seat and placed the sleeping baby on a blanket in front of her.

"Everyone looked at the baby, who had fallen asleep. I suddenly realized that the baby, lying there in the middle of our circle, was the third side, the symbol of the whole, the newest citizen standing for the future of the country. The baby was a silent witness who, without a word, had reframed the conversation, reminding people of the bigger picture. For a moment, it was no longer 'us against them.' It was 'all of us together'" (Ury, 2024, p. 240).

This is not to make a generic claim that babies will bring peace in from their third side. Ury saw it in that moment, but the third side is Out There or In Here in every conflict, he seems to be asserting, if we are conflict-alert, third-side-observational.

Babies were not the third side in the European Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, slavery in the Americas, the theft of the Americas from the Original People--other conflict work might have stopped those genocidal, extractive conflicts, we will never know. But when cases like the Liberian women discovering the third side in the middle of their godawful war, they stopped it and gained democracy for their beleaguered country. I would suggest the third side there was the unity that Muslim and Christian women perceived as possible, then doable, then the power the combative men and boys did not anticipate and which won for everyone. 

The third side, I posit, is what might be the key to winning for all. It may never be identical to the third side in any other conflict, thus requiring us to be open to what might be identifiable as that third side and then working to hold it up for all to consider.

References

Ury, William (2024). Possible: How we survive (and thrive) in an age of conflict. Harper Business.

Conflict transformation principles and street activism

I use Fisher, Ury, and Patton's Getting to Yes 3rd edition in my Introduction to Conflict Resolution course. Decades ago, when I took my first Conflict Resolution class in the 1980s, they had a skinny 1981 first edition, which gave me new language and organizing principles in my activism (I was a professional community organizer in those years). I began to bring forth a concept I called enlightened self-interest, which helped me and my fellow activists foreground cause, effect, and sustainable gains. We stopped the US Forest Service from spraying pesticides and herbicides, we helped the Anishinaabe regain their treaty rights, we forced Rio Tinto Zinc to mine in the strictest environmentally safe way, we stopped two proposed nuclear waste dumps, and we shut down a US thermonuclear command base in Michigan and Wisconsin. We had so many close relationships that we became a highly functional regional crew really strengthened by evoking that sense of enlightened self-interest, so that we could partner with hunting groups to stop some environmental threat even though people like me had their land posted No Hunting. 

A key phrase re: the 2020 BLM uprising is public opinion and policy change. I have asserted for decades that each decision by the organizers should run through a filtering question, "How will this affect recruitment?" because in nonviolent social movements, size matters. Rioting will turn public opinion against any group, as a fair bit of research documents, so the most functional approach in my experience is to let rioters know that those actions are not part of the campaign, and if they occur in the context of the campaign they will be denounced. 

Failure to do this is failure to win. I'm an old white man so I was there in the summer of 2020 in person a bit but gave up on any nighttime actions as dysregulated dysfunctional failures. It was not my place to try to correct that as an ally, not a leader, but I was unimpressed by local African American politicians, and I was similarly unimpressed by the African American ministers who refused to act as any corrective. Sure enough, local Black politicians were beaten in 2022, the Defund the Police campaign has been completely reversed by a public demanding more cops, and any "victories" were ephemeral at best. 

References

Fisher, Roger; Ury, William; Patton, Bruce (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in. (3^rd ed.). New York, NY: Penguin. 

Table that motion or move to new tables?

"Be entrepreneurial. Identify groups and organizations that are interested in community organizing and community building. Find new tables to sit at that help you see the connections that exist in your community" (Ohmer & DeMasi, 2009, p. 306).

We are all busy people with great big lives and so most often resist getting involved in yet another group, taking up another cause, helping another struggling person, and all the new ways to take what little discretionary time we have each day, and each week. 

Organizationally, however, consensus organizers can likely do this by using those new connections to make their other work more efficient. Asking someone to step up and help with something you are doing so that you are free to make a new potential partnership connection with another group is empowering in multiple ways. 

The person you asked to help out with something you are already doing in your organization feels the confidence you have in them and frequently does their own adjusting to find the bandwidth to help. They hone skills or develop new ones, strengthening their own toolkit while they strengthen the organization. 

You investigate potential partnerships with another organization which has strengths your organization may not, while you may bring them organizational assets they lack. 

Perhaps it works out or perhaps it doesn't, but without sitting at that new table, it certainly won't.

References

Ohmer, Mary L. & DeMasi, Karen (2009). Consensus organizing: A community development workbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Fool's Choice vs Possible

"Break free of the Fool's Choice that's made you feel helpless to choose anything other than going on the attack or staying silent" (Grenny, et al., p. 100).

"Beyond the two sides, there is a third side. It is the side of all Venezuela--the side of your children and their future" (Ury, 2024, p. 224).

Ury was in Venezuela speaking in a large hall to a mixed crowd of chavistas and anti-chavistas. It was seeming as though civil war was likely. He helped convince at least some enemies to enter into dialog to help prevent war, to understand that the third side was more helpful than either positional devotion to one immutable side. 

This acceptance of much more choice beyond the Fool's Choice is at the heart of the last best response to existential threat. We know about flight, fight, freeze, abject surrender, and posing (well, hopefully we know about more than fight or flight at least). The only other choice, the only other response, is the illimitable power and capacity of human creativity, imagination, and the art of the possible.

References

Grenny, Joseph; Patterson, Kerry; McMillan, Ron; Switzler, Al; Gregory, Emily (2023). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high. 3rd ed. VitalSmarts.

Ury, William (2024). Possible: How we survive (and thrive) in an age of conflict. Harper Business.

Backfire

All violence backfires. Police kill Black people and the citizenry reacts against police. If that reaction gets violent, the public disapproves of both.

And now, more than 400 days into Israel's retributive war on Gaza, backfire is operating in all directions and in ways that will sully the public reputation of those committing it. 

For example, in Eugene, at the U of Oregon, spraypainted swastikas and other hate defacing vandalism are emphatically not saving any children in Gaza. Instead, "pro-Palestinian activists" are causing increasing public apathy about what Israel is doing. 

Smart activism--and there is some being conducted by Palestinians--uses the tenets of conflict transformation, not conflict exacerbation. Any identity slurs will alienate the public and the public will decide if peace in the Middle East is a priority. 

If Americans who claim to care about Palestine would use nonviolent methods, including advocating for those Palestinians on the ground anywhere engaged in nonviolent resistance, we might see effective pressure on our own government to stop arms transfers to the region, and we are by far the biggest source for those arms. 

Labile electorate (apparently gender-dependent)

Trump won (2016 vs Hillary Clinton), Trump lost (2020 vs Joe Biden), and Trump won (2024 vs Kamala Harris). 

While the margins of victory and loss were slim, they are meaningful. In the educated environments Trump was given no chance of victory in 2016. While the university president where I teach had some very different views than I did, he chose to sit next to me at a summer dinner in his presidential manor backyard with approximately 35 others sitting at various picnic tables on his huge deck. It was July, 2016, and I said, "Looks like Trump might win." He scoffed, saying, "No chance of that." Of course he listened exclusively to very educated people in his political and social ecology. I was a professor, yes, but also a street activist who interacted every day with working class folks in many ways, including trips to the lumberyard for my many home projects. While Trump had no chance in Portland, Oregon, I knew from many working class and activist connections in southern and eastern Oregon that the pulse of the working class was not favorable to Hillary Clinton, exacerbated by her term for the violent supporters of Trump at his rallies: deplorables. And the majority of those who were driven hard by sexism were going to vote for Trump. 

Another white man is apparently the only thing that can beat a racist, misogynist, toxic nationalist like Trump in racist, misogynist, toxic nationalist America. So Biden did, in 2020. America will put aside some of its focus on racism and toxic nationalism, as we saw with Barack Obama's great successes, but apparently the gender question is a bridge too far for at least a slim majority of us.

That Trump picked up percentages of women from 2020 to 2024[1] shows deep levels of internalized oppression as well as susceptibility to an onslaught of fake news and lies about the economy--both from rightwing candidates and spokespeople but also from Russian digital placement of stories and articles full of lies. As all independent analysis of the Biden-Harris economy showed amazing strength in virtually all categories--stock market, unemployment, recovery from covid-caused inflation--Trump lied about it all at every turn, often parroting fake news[2] planted by Russian sources.

Putin got his wish again. Ukraine will be forfeit and we will see about other free former republics of the Soviet empire. Watch this space.

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[1] https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latinos-black-voters-0f3fbda3362f3dcfe41aa6b858f22d12

[2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-russian-active-measures-disinformation_n_58dd49c0e4b08194e3b8320e

Kent Shifferd: An appreciation

Aside from my Dad, the person who influenced me and mentored me more than any other human is the late Kent Shifferd, a peace historian and educator. I heard Dr. Shifferd give a talk at a small regional peace conference he organized at a college about 75 miles from where I was living on a pretty 40-acre forested site in my solar cabin with a lovely little river--a tributary to the St. Croix river, which itself was a tributary to the mighty Mississippi river. I was moving from there to Hayward, Wisconsin because my son wanted to live in a town, not in the woods, and I was working as a community organizer for Waging Peace, a collective of three of us--a former national AFSC organizer--Madge Cyrus--and a pastor's wife, Jeanne Larson. 

Hearing Kent planted a seed. Within a couple of years I sold my home in Hayward and moved to Ashland, Wisconsin, and started taking classes from him. His teaching content and style were revelatory, extremely engaged and engaging. His Ph.D. was in History so his Peace & Conflict Studies degree was history-centered but much more along the lines of those historians who bring the lessons of history straight into the news of the day. 

Kent also introduced me to the synthesis of peace and environmentalism, something I had come to on my own in a generalized fashion as an activist, but he turned it toward an academic melding of cause and effect for many of us. I recall one of my brilliant peace classmates (and my girlfriend for those years), Nikki Goldstein (now Nikki Main) writing a leaflet that we copied and handed out that she titled, Can you be a militarist and an environmentalist? It was before many were thinking about that connection and, in our case, it was an outgrowth of some of Kent's talks. He was even gracious enough to invite me to be a co-presenter of a workshop on exactly that at an academic conference when I was just a lowly undergraduate. 

Kent thought in structural, systemic terms and helped all of his students begin to do the same. Indeed, after he retired he wrote a great book that did all that exceedingly well, From War to Peace (Shifferd, 2011). I used it for several years in my Peace Studies class. 

Kent fired up the thirst for knowledge in his students--it certainly did so for me. I graduated from college top of my class, summa cum laude (back before there was Latin status inflation, so I was the only one of them in my graduating class). This was despite graduating in the bottom half of my high school graduating class and was largely due to Kent and his intellectual inspiration. 

Remarkably, Kent continued to boost my future even after. He co-created a blockbuster course, Dilemmas of War and Peace, offered through the University of Wisconsin Extension--distance learning in the pre-digital age. He succeeded in getting them to hire me to teach it as I was earning my masters degree, which broke a lot of rules and yet he did it. It furthered my education as I read the mammoth texts right along with students. Teaching an upper-division course with only a bachelor's degree was only possible because Kent created that opportunity for me. 

He didn't stop there in his profound effects on my life. When my resistance partner, the late Donna Howard and I did a Plowshares action of direct disarmament, Kent testified at our trial and set it up so the jury of 12 northwoods citizens understood how much I knew about the thermonuclear command center that we partially dismantled. The jury acquitted us on the major charge--Sabotage--thus obviating the potential for an extra decade in prison. The lesser charge, Destruction of Property, had no defense, we were convicted, and went to prison on a three-year sentence. 

So being part of our defense that succeeded in keeping us out of a long sentence was still not the end of Kent's powerful effects on my life. When I got out of prison, still on parole and wearing an ankle monitor, Kent called and said he was going to take a fall term sabbatical to do some writing and would I like to teach his Peace Studies course. Wow! Hells-yeah! I was super-excited and super-prepped because of not only taking that course from him but from teaching the amazing Dilemmas of War & Peace class he co-created.

So, one underpaid term as an adjunct--it was so enriching, so validating, so in line with what I wanted, but just temporary. Then, right in the middle of the fall term, my one and only semester, the college offered senior faculty a one-time early retirement payout and both Kent and Pat, his wife and Sociologist, took it. Kent called again, told me, and said he recommended to the Dean that I be hired on an ongoing basis until a national search could replace me. The Dean agreed and Kent basically handed me the Peace and Conflict Studies major and minor that he had created years before--the first one in Wisconsin.

Yes, my father shaped me most of all, but Kent was a close second. And, like my father, Kent kept friends on all sides of all questions except those that dealt with basic human rights. He modeled that for all his students, and it was no wonder that former military were avid peace students of his. 

Kent Shifferd, Ph.D., lived an examined life, standing up for peace, for people, and for the Earth. 

Shifferd, Kent D. (2011). From war to peace: A guide to the next hundred years. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Calling: in our out?

For many years I've noticed that the most effective activists have been those who refrain from the most negative aspects of woke culture, i.e., calling people out. That is relationally destructive and alienating. Calling them in is far more effective and can enhance the elements you describe. I raised two mixed-race boys as a single Dad. I learned that if I wanted them to have a better life, I needed to call in anyone who used racially offensive language instead of calling them out. For example, if someone used the n-word, I would tell them something like, "You're a better man than that." Calling them in like that opens their mind to a different reality in which they question their own racism rather than being defensive about it. Using conflict management techniques that elicit the best emotional qualities is part of how transformation happens. 

Culture Club

In the best workbook on how to be a consensus organizer (Ohmer & DeMasi, 2009), the authors begin a detailed roadmap to help introduce consensus organizing to virtually any organization with two words: "Be curious" (p. 304).

As anyone knows who has despaired of the culture within an organization of which they are a part, this is an even tougher problem at times than a radical revision of policies because it gets deeper than the what? and confronts the why? in any organization. 

Being curious is how we evolve as individuals and as collectives. Failure to do so is often framed as respect for those who came before or those who founded whatever organization of which we are a part. It can lead to a stagnant, ossified, hidebound group incapable of relating to the rest of the world, unable to meet challenges or change, even if they align with some triumphant party. As this is written, it is exactly what has happened to many Christian evangelicals, hyper-religious people who latch onto anyone who pretends to champion one or more of their goals. That people who call themselves devout followers of Jesus should virtually bow down to an immoral philandering conman like Donald Trump is an astonishing case of failure to be curious. Indeed, at one event I witnessed a peace person--a small woman holding an apolitical sign for peace--yelled at by a self-identified Christian, "Jesus said 'An eye for an eye!" It was an amazing instance of a profound ignorance of the New Testament, which repudiates the eye-for-an-eye approach. Stuck in the retributive and jealous God Old Testament, exhibiting a failure to even be curious about a "new" shift some 2000 years ago, is how some get almost hopelessly stuck.

But Ohmer and DeMasi's advice to start with "be curious" can help shake up an organizational culture. Kwame Christian (2018) also focuses on that orientation, calling it "compassionate curiosity." Similarly, the iconic civil rights strategist, the late Reverend James Lawson, advised civil society campaigns to always begin with a thorough assessment and investigation into all aspects of a question, of a general goal, of any deciders and influencers, and of any potential opposition. 

This is how any investigator starts--police, lawyer, researcher, and it should be how any social campaign or community organization begins anything.

References

Christian, Kwame (2018). Finding confidence in conflict. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Zg65eK9XU&t=325s

Ohmer, Mary L. & DeMasi, Karen (2009). Consensus organizing: A community development workbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Bedtime stories in the nightmare house of our mind

Grenny, et al. (2023) give examples of how we tell ourselves stories, sometimes blindingly fast, that can lead to flare-ups and destructive conflict. For instance, I work hard to create a course that gives students numerous paths to success, with self-actualizing options that can earn them extra credit. I not only quickly provide required accommodations for students with disabilities as the Disability Resource Center on my campus sends me notices about individual students, I informally create additional accommodations for students who are studying under circumstances I regard as special and worthy of greater leeway. I ask for notice in week one introductions to let me know if English is not their first language. If so, I set the online quizzes to allow them extra time. When I find out a student is a single parent, working, and studying full time, I am quick to grant extensions for assignments that are due. All this is extra work for me that I happily do to help students I regard as climbing the mountain of higher education while also carrying extra burdens. 

Imagine my internal storytelling when a new student begins by posting snarky comments about the required assignments, then contacts me privately to instruct me on exactly how they expect me to accommodate them, with some snappish or snarky element in every email. Finally, they accuse me of ableism.

In the wild I would likely react with some expression indicative of how angry I felt. As a professional faculty member, I don't. But my inner story has me quite defensive, with an interpretation of the student's character and motives. That story began with the first dismissive post and was underscored with each communication. 

As a professional who has begun to learn about trauma-informed care, however, I can change the stories I tell myself. I can recall times past when I was in pain and lashed out, and can allow for that possibility for the student who is dysfunctionally and unfairly confrontive. I can hold back from coming to any conclusion until more context is available.

What Grenny, et al. say about this is that we can deëscalate ourselves fairly quickly when we look to the conclusions we reach really quickly and question the possibility of other stories that might plausibly lead to different interpretations. We can then choose to seek more context or, if we feel the other is too intent on off-loading their pain by inflicting it on others, we can step away, or, as William Ury tells us, Go to the balcony--stand aside and observe our own role and those of others in a time of reflection. These steps can help us avoid what Kwame Christian notes is the amygdala hijack--the sudden takeover of our minds by the most primitive part of our brain, that which evolved to spring us into fight, flight, abject surrender, or posing as scary in the face of existential threat.

References

Christian, Kwame (2018). Finding confidence in conflict. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Zg65eK9XU&t=325s

Grenny, Joseph; Patterson, Kerry; McMillan, Ron; Switzler, Al; Gregory, Emily (2023). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high. 3rd ed. VitalSmarts.

Ury, William (2014). Go to the balcony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXFoCzjdozQ

Outsider Alert!

There are three ways community organizers approach a community and possible external resources. 

One, let the community know that outside resources are crucial to any possibility of success and that without some major assistance or dealmaking with external parties success in reaching any community goals would be unlikely. 

Two, reinforce any and all suspicions the community may have of external parties and counsel rejection of any overtures to the community from the outside.

Three, facilitate negotiations with external parties if the community sees potential advantages, and help get valid guarantees against any unethical practices that can harm the community in any way. Also help fend off external approaches that the community is convinced are malicious at some level. 

The adversarial-orientation of some community organizers is adaptive at times and dysfunctional at others. A good consensus organizer doesn't push a point of view, but takes cues from the community and applies skills as they can further the success of reaching goals the community has developed via processes as close to consensus as possible. Once that bonding has created a community prepared to do more effective outward-facing negotiations, a good consensus organizer will assist in developing the bridging relationships that can benefit the community.

In short, grappling with the questions surrounding partnerships with outside groups or people is sometimes eliciting enough to explore the possibilities thought impossible until now. Acknowledging the high barriers and risks and asking, So, can we think of any way that being in partnership with that company can help us without any serious risks? 

Some dialog coaches or community organizers call this eliciting process a query into the "magic wand" ideation that can prompt actual creativity without any imagined constraints, just an aspirational vision. If the community can imagine no risk-free way to make such a partnership succeed, even on a limited basis, it is likely that such a discernment process will produce a more unified rejection and some deeper consideration of some of the variables that may not have emerged previously. It is also very likely that one or more community members will feel that they have contributed valuable insights to their neighbors, which continues the process of cohesion and asset mapping.

Organizing with humility

In one of the James Lawson Institutes, a professional community organizer told us that one of the rules on their crew was that if any one of their names was mentioned in any news story that person would buy beers for everyone that day. It was a lighthearted "punishment" meant to underscore the centering of the community members, not the organizers. 

On the Portland Peace Team, we teach "listening with humility," which includes practices such as paraphrasing but not telling the person what they said. Instead, offer something like, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I think you said..." You hand them the power to control the message, showing them respect, which can serve to deëscalate them and assure them that someone is truly listening. 

At one of the Indigenous Environmental Network gatherings, this one in Oregon, I was doing some interviewing of some of the leaders in attendance for possible use at a tribal station back where I was then living, in northern Wisconsin. I approached Winona LaDuke, easily the Native American leader at that gathering of a few hundred with the most name recognition in tribal country or in the US. She told me, "Interview that young indigenous Chicana first. Then interview that Apache elder. Once you've interviewed them, I will sit with you." LaDuke was practicing what we might call organizing with humility, centering others and helping those who did some media work to do the same. This is part of consensus organizing. 

Which women deserve rights?

 (Hint: All)

In the Oxford University Press peace text Approaches to Peace: A reader in peace studies, 4th ed., David Barash writes about the evolution of human rights and international law, noting that, pertaining to the humans who make up more than half of the species--women--rights in many societies in both previously colonized and colonizer nations are often protected more often for men.

"...forced seclusion and isolation of women in certain contemporary Hindu and Muslim societies; sexual mutilation, as currently practiced on millions of young women in numerous African societies; polygyny; restricted or nonexistent choice as to marriage; substantial discrimination regarding educational opportunities, especially in some conservative Islamic countries, and--even in such ostensibly liberated societies as that of the U.S. and the UK--restricted economic and professional opportunities along with underrepresentation in political life" (p. 187).

We see it in the US in large pockets of various subcultures, such as Christian nationalists who abide by some of their pastors' commands[1] to women to vote as their husbands instruct them to vote. Donald Trump--who famously threatens to sue any school he attended which releases his transcripts--consistently refers to women he likes as "really attractive," and women he doesn't like as "dumb" (or equivalents[2] to those terms). It absolutely follows that "conservative" politicians and "justices" are anything but conservative with the rights of women, overturning a half century of a woman's right to make her own health care decisions.

This moral arc of the universe is not a smooth one, with some jagged edges as rights fought for and won are erased, setting the stage for the next struggle to both regain lost rights and win new ones. That is the long story, which will only continue when we help each other and the next generations understand what previous generations suffered, struggled for, and succeeded in getting.

References

Barash, D. P. (Ed.) (2018). Approaches to peace: A reader in Peace Studies (4^th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

 

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/01/maga-trump-men-supporters-womens-rights

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/21/trump-harris-dumb-stupid-low-iq/

Systemic conversion: War to peace

In a war system, the rational thing to do is to strive for global dominance by means of overwhelming force.

--Kent Shifferd (2011, p. 98)

Kent Shifferd (1940-2024), a renaissance man of the highest order, started the first Peace and Conflict Studies academic degree program in Wisconsin. I was one of his many students in his 30+ years of teaching. We, his students, knew that he would challenge us with the logic of the destructive methods of conflict before seeking, with us, a path to the constructive methods of conflict. We knew two things when we finished such deliberations: 1) We would be facilitated to find possibilities in the most collaborative possible way, and, 2) Dr. Shifferd would gently intervene to help us regain momentum if we began to sputter and stall. 

In the end, in his 2011 book From War to Peace: A guide to the next hundred years, was all about the incremental yet quickest and surest road to a peace system, something which would all but obviate the need or even the possibility of war. He never had a magic one-step whoosh of a wand, but rather the recognition of the infinite subsystems that needed conversion from war to peace, thereby flattening the hierarchy of peacemakers. A preschool teacher could account for a key component of such conversion as well as a Pentagon strategic planner or an elected official. Everyone is part of a system every day and Dr. Shifferd's challenge to all of us was to be, insofar as daily possible, a great or small part of converting some societal subsystem away from war and toward peace. That is a feminist, uplifting, nurturing analysis and picture of a line of sight from war system to peace system.

References

Shifferd, Kent D. (2011). From war to peace: A guide to the next hundred years. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Make America Hate Again

I'm writing this bit three days before the 2024 US election. Jess Bidgood just noted in the New York Times[1] that: 

When Trump won the presidency in 2016, the Me Too movement had not yet forced a reckoning among women about the way sexism shaped their lives. The Dobbs decision had not turned women’s right to an abortion into a matter of geographic privilege, nor had it imprinted searing stories about those denied care into the national consciousness.

It is this logic that persuades me that the polls are wrong; Harris will sweep the swing states and run the table. Mark my words. Also know how erroneous I have been in the past about these matters. Perhaps I have made a career out of overestimating the decency of the American people, my people, my fellow citizens, co-workers, and neighbors...

Nah. I got one thing right every time; where I live I understand. What I have come to realize is that the US is not some extension of where I live. I've lived in Minnesota, Illinois, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Oregon. Where I've lived and when I've lived there the voters--my people, my country fellows, voted for good decent people, and I joined them. 

When I lived in Massachusetts I could feel the strength of the George McGovern campaign--but, as it turned out, only in the state where I lived. 

Obviously, the common decency of the folks in Minnesota when Walter Mondale lost big was my environment, but more isolated than I understood. 

 When I lived in Wisconsin it was safe for me to vote for Winona LaDuke (yeah, and Ralph Nader) because it was overwhelmingly clear that Al Gore would take the state, so my vote was not "thrown away." It's been the same in Oregon. 

So the fact that I "know" that Harris is about to win and Trump is about to become a sadass footnote is something to take with a block of salt.

But if Trump wins fair and square it will fire up the secessionist in me. His time in the White House was the longest lucid nightmare of my life; I have no desire to enter that waking horror picture show again. Maybe a new Confederacy can secede, but without the violence this time. 

---

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/us/politics/harris-trump-womens-health-election.html

 

But isn't the Third Side much more work?

It has been noted that cities with the highest crime rates are "liberal" cities. 

Yes, and the bulk of the populace expresses that via voting for empathic human social safety nets, which helps both the deserving poor and the criminal poor. We know that. 

The Third Side challenge is to have both empathic social services and robust law enforcement, which would feature restorative justice and rehabilitation in proven ways to reduce recidivism. We can be both empathic and strong on law and order. 

The ongoing challenge is that cities with strong social safety nets constantly attract new people from elsewhere who need that, some of whom prey on others. It's much more work to be a successful liberal city than a lock-em-up or light-em-up rightwing city. But many of us feel it's worth the work.