Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld

Political changes often seem like a pendulum swinging back and forth in endless motion. In our current era, the pendulum is on a rightward trajectory in many “liberal democracies” like France, Germany, and of course, the United States.

Many of us who believe in the democratic principles of social justice are shocked by the right-wing direction the United States has taken with the second election of Donald Trump. Many thought his first successful bid for the presidency was a mere fluke, but his recent victory shows the underlying roots of anti-liberalism, or more appropriately, the deeply embedded patriarchal Christian white nationalist roots on which the country is based. Trump merely brought these roots above ground to grow and prosper.

So what can we do to counter the trends, to resist the backsliding of our democratic republic and the backlash against the progress made in the long and hard-fought struggle for civil and human rights?

It is no longer mere hyperbole to liken the current political climate to the rising tides of European Fascism in the 1920s and early 1930s. While conditions today are somewhat different, there are many factors connecting those times with the present.

Social Movements

Sociologists have studied the lifecycle of social movements — how they emerge, grow, and in some cases, die out.

Resource mobilization theory is a name representing several related views of social movements that arose in the 1970s. This theory proposes that social movement activity is a reasonable response to unacceptable conditions in society.

A social movement may be defined as an organized effort by a large number of people to bring about or impede social, political, economic, or cultural change.

Types of Social Movements

1.     Reform: seeks limited, though still significant, changes in some aspect of a nation’s political, economic, or social systems.

2.     Revolutionary: goes further than a reform movement by attempting to overthrow the existing government or other existing institution and to bring about a new one and even a new way of life.

3.     Reactionary: named because it tries to block social change or to reverse social changes that have already been achieved.

4.     Self-Help: involves people trying to improve aspects of their personal lives.

5.     Religious: aims to bolster religious beliefs and often to convert other people to these beliefs

Stages of a Social Movement Life Cycle

1.     In the preliminary or emergence stage, people become aware of an issue, and leaders emerge.

2.     This is followed by the coalescence stage, when people join together and organize in order to publicize the issue and raise awareness.

3.     In the institutionalization or bureaucratization stage, the movement no longer requires grassroots volunteerism: it is an established organization, typically with a paid staff.

4.     The movement falls into the decline stage when people fall away and adopt a new movement, the movement successfully brings about the change it sought, or when people no longer take the issue seriously.

Non-Violent Civil Disobedience

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.” –Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

We live in a nation in which property rights hold higher value than human rights even though the First Amendment grants several specific rights: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I attended San José State University as an undergraduate from 1966-1969 and as a graduate student in 1970. At the time, the school had a relatively progressive administration. We had freedom of political speech, we organized and staffed informational tables throughout campus, and we had access to university facilities to hold our meetings and rallies.

In fact, I was a chief organizer of a rally in support of our university president against criticism from some conservative members of the university trustees who considered our president too “tolerant” of campus anti-war and anti-racism protests and protesters.

During the fall of 1967 and then again in 1968, we called for a student strike of classes. The purpose of the boycott was not to demonstrate against our professors or even our university. It was, rather, to send a message to our leaders in government — state and national — that the war we were waging in Vietnam was wrong, that it was misguided, that it was illegal according to international law.

Students take a risk when boycotting classes. Schools are microcosms of larger society. When students say, “We will collectively take a stand,” they are, at least symbolically, lodging their vote against what they believe to be an unjustifiable position on the part of their government. They are declaring their opposition to politics as usual.

I was a community organizer both as a student and following graduation, and I continued to join with others to oppose the U.S. invasion of Vietnam and Cambodia. I was arrested in Washington, D.C., during the historic May Day Demonstrations in May 1971 as I sat linking arms with other Gay Liberation Front activists outside the South Vietnam Embassy.

I helped organize several protest demonstrations during the late 1980s into the 1990s as a member of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) to raise awareness and pressure the often intransigent and biased governmental power structure to deploy sufficient resources for the defeat of the HIV virus that had already reached pandemic proportions. I was arrested an additional two times.

Civil disobedience involves actions in defiance of laws considered contrary to the core principles of a liberal democracy.

In her TED Talk: “The Success of Non-Violent Civil Disobedience,” political researcher Erica Chenoweth studied examples of 20th-century campaigns involving nonviolent civil resistance compared with violent campaigns, along with their implications for resistance struggles in the 21st century. She found that nonviolent actions were twice as successful as those that were violent.

“Researchers used to say that no government could survive if 5% of its population mobilized against it,” she stated. “But our data reveal that the threshold is probably lower. In fact, no campaigns failed once they’d achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5% of the population — and lots of them succeeded with far less than that.”

Though she entered her research with great skepticism over the efficacy of nonviolent campaigns, she soon came to believe that her skepticism was misguided: “Get this: Every single campaign that did surpass that 3.5% threshold was a nonviolent one. In fact, campaigns that relied solely on nonviolent methods were on average four times larger than the average violent campaign. And they were often much more representative in terms of gender, age, race, political party, class, and urban-rural distinctions.”

Coalition Politics

Identity-based politics has been employed for numerous practical and appropriate reasons, including to motivate people to organize against various forms of oppression that operate on multiple levels: the personal/interpersonal, institutional, and larger societal. Though we have come far as a society, we have many miles left to go on our path toward true progressive change and liberation.

People are joining in coalitions across identities to “transform” society by challenging overall power inequities in terms of traditional gender and racial constructions and the massive inequities between socioeconomic groups.

We are making connections between various forms of identity and oppression, and we are forming alliances between marginalized groups, as well as looking at additional means of activism that can result in true and lasting systemic change. 

Oppression operates like a wheel with many spokes. If we work to dismantle only one or a few specific spokes, the wheel will continue spinning and trampling over people. 

We activists are starting to see beyond ourselves and identities and are basing our movements not only on our own social identities but also on shared ideals. We are coming together with like minds, political philosophies, and strategies for achieving our objectives.

Working as individuals and in coalition, we can hold the line and push back against the right-wing tide. 

As a general caution, each person needs to determine the appropriate balance for themself between engaging in political organizing and getting quality rest time to recharge our activist batteries and avoid burnout. We also must have realistic expectations of what we can achieve within given periods of time. We may withdraw from active participation if our inordinate expectations go unmet.

Strategies in These Trying Times

In addition to engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, I have included other things we can do. I’m sure I left out many options, and I welcome suggestions for additions:

Donate to and/or volunteer at organizations like:

• The United Nations
• Doctors without Borders
• World Health Organization
• American Civil Liberties Union
• Southern Poverty Law Center
• Campaign for America’s Future.
• Catalyst (Workplace Diversity)
• Center for American Progress.
• Center for Countering Digital Hate.
• Center for Economic and Policy Research.
• Center for Media and Democracy.
• Center for Popular Democracy
• The Brookings Institute

Other types of organizations to seek out:

• Income and Wealth Inequality Organizations
• Immigrants’ Rights Organizations
• African American Organizations
• Asian American Pacific Islander Organizations
• Progressive Muslim Organizations
• Progressive Jewish Organizations
• Progressive Christian Organizations
• Progressive Atheist Organizations
• Women’s and Reproductive Freedom Organizations
• LGBTQ+ Organizations
• Indigenous Organizations
• Latinx Organizations
• Youth Organizations
• Elder Organizations
• Disability Rights Organizations
• Housing Organizations
• Environmental Organizations
• Gun Safety Organizations
• Food Security Organizations
• Democratic Clubs and Organizations
• Democratic Socialists of America
• Youth Shelters
• Women’s Shelters
• Shelters for Unhoused People

Other actions:

• Participate in local, state, and national resistance protest marches
• Sign up for non-violent civil sisobedience trainings and courses
• Work and vote for local, state, and national progressive politicians
• Work to take back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. If we take back the House, Trump will never be able to sign a piece of conservative legislation again. Maybe we will be able to reverse many of his fascist presidential orders that the courts do not reverse.
• Announce your houses of worship as sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants.
• Work with organizations that protect undocumented immigrants. Think about housing a family.
• Work to make your community a “sanctuary community.”
• Join a trade union.
• Organize and sign petitions for progressive change measures.
• Write letters to the editor in your local papers.
• Keep educating yourself on the issues.
• Organize or join an existing book club or writers club.
• Stay connected with people of like minds.
• Hug your loved ones as often as you can.
• Take some time each day to disconnect from social media.
• Take care of yourself. Experience the joy of living. Sleep and eat well if you are able. Share a meal with others. Enjoy the sunshine and raindrops.
• See lots of movies.
• Adopt and love your pets.
• Take walks.
• Eat lots of ice cream.

And remember the timeless and poignant words of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is when good men do nothing.”

And the inspiring words of Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Resources

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

On Freedom by Timothy Snyder

Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

“Resistance to Civil Government,” also called “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” or “Civil Disobedience,” an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, first published in 1849.

On Civil Disobedience: Henry David Thoreau by Hanna Arendt

The Civil Disobedience Handbook: A Brief History and Practical Advice for the Politically Disenchanted by James Tracy, Jennifer Joseph

Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action by Lisa Birman and Cleo Qian

Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice by Hugo Bedau

“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

Principles of Sociology by Herbert Blumer

The Strategy of Social Protest by William A. Gamson

“Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory,” by John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald

Social Conflict and Social Movements by Anthony Oberschall 

A Primer on Social Movements by David A. Snow and Sarah A. Soule 

From Mobilization to Revolution by Charles Tilly

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”― Lyndon B. Johnson

When President Lyndon B. Johnson made this comment in the 1960s, he could have been gazing into a crystal ball. The words perfectly predict the political agenda on which Donald Trump based his racist and misogynistic campaigns in his effort to divide and conquer the electorate. 

Trump has transformed the concept of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) into an accusation and epithet. He and his followers define the term as promoting unqualified, poorly experienced, and poorly educated people. In Trump’s world, DEI means hiring practices are anti-white and anti-male and rely on low expectations regarding workplace quality and performance.

Trump’s recent executive order revoking Lyndon B. Johnson’s landmark anti-discrimination act declared that DEI programs utilize “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences” and “undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”

“Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex,” the order stated. 

But that’s not it at all. 

To paraphrase the National Association for Multicultural Education, DEI is a philosophical and educational model founded on principles of freedom, justice, equality, equity, and the empowerment of human agency, integrity, and dignity as illuminated in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence, as well as the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. DEI affirms a standard of governmental, educational, and business policies and practices in organizing and sustaining positive, warm, and welcoming places essential in a democratic society. It values the many social and cultural differences and identities and prizes the pluralism that all people bring.

What is more “pro-American” and “patriotic” than programs and people who are attempting to bring about the promise of our founding documents?

But opposing forces have launched a fierce and sustained backlash to turn back progressive social change, including shutting down DEI initiatives. 

And this did not start with Trump’s recent anti-DEI crusade, which has also included an executive order on “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” That order claimed DEI programs constitute “immense public waste and shameful discrimination.”

During his first term, he also signed an executive order banning DEI programs in government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and other institutions that held or applied for federal contracts. The stated purpose of the order was to “combat offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping.”

This way of thinking has become infused into right-wing media.

Last year, Fox host Laura Ingraham blasted DEI for causing the incident of a door panel blowing off the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines plane over the state of Oregon at 16,000 feet, which terrified passengers and forced the pilots to make an emergency landing.

“We can’t link the diversity efforts to what happened, that would take an exhaustive investigation,” she admitted. “But it’s worth asking at this point, is excellence what we need in airline operation, or is diversity the goal here?”

Ingraham’s message implies that DEI efforts are more related to “wokeness” than to hiring talented and highly qualified employees and parrots the right-wing talking point that companies are prioritizing diversity over safety and that quality and diversity in hiring are mutually exclusive. 

During the unprecedented windblown wildfires in Southern California this past month, billionaires Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, among others on social media platforms, have, without any evidence, blasted the Los Angeles Fire Department’s DEI initiatives as the cause of the widespread devastation and loss of life.  

Musk reposted several anti-DEI posts on X, including one declaring, “DEI means people DIE.”

The online biography of Kristin Crowley, Chief of the LAFD, says she is the department’s first woman and first LGBTQ+ chief. Her department also created a DEI bureau the year she was hired. Though creating greater diversity within the force was one of her ten initial objectives, reducing readiness and quality of service never entered into the equation. Crowley’s main focus has always been on preventing and extinguishing fires. 

Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh argued on X, without proof, that the LAFD “deliberately set out to exclude white men from becoming firefighters” by announcing its commitments to hiring and retaining more diverse employees.

Elon Musk has also shouted from the rooftops into his high-volume microphone on his X platform his disdain for DEI efforts by promoting a post arguing that graduates from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have IQs nearing “borderline intellectual impairment.” 

Musk promoted the post of a popular user called @eyeslasho, which argued that the United Airlines program of hiring traditionally underrepresented employees such as people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, and others, some from HBCUs, is dangerous because graduates from HBCUs are not intelligent, and, therefore, not qualified to fly a plane.

“The mean IQ of grads from two of those United Airline HBCU ‘partners’ is about 85 to 90, based on the average SATs at those schools. (The SAT correlates reasonably well with IQ.),” @eyeslasho wrote. “The HBCU IQ averages are within 10 points of the threshold for what is considered ‘borderline intellectual impairment.’”

Musk added: “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE.” This came on the heels of the billionaire broadcasting a tweet asserting that Jews push “hatred against whites.”

While opportunities have opened up somewhat for people of color at primarily white universities since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, hundreds of thousands of people attend HBCUs today due to the high-quality education, stimulating atmosphere, and diversity in the student population and among professors, along with the cultural sensitivity in pedagogical methodologies. In addition, non-black students comprised 24% of enrollment at HBCUs as of 2022.

Esteemed graduates from these institutions include Thurgood Marshall, Spike Lee, Toni Morrison, and former Vice President Kamala Harris, among many others.

While Trump, Musk, and others on the political right oppose DEI initiatives, they stand in full and unqualified support for politics, programs, and institutions that promote OPK (oligarchs, plutocrats, and kleptocrats) hiring and retention initiatives. Simply consider Trump’s selection of his cabinet, advisors, and ambassadors for his second term, which includes an unprecedented number of billionaires. There is also the looming reality of a joint Trump/Musk presidency.

Falling over our bootstraps 

The continuing and perennial need for DEI programs in schools and industry lays bare the lie that the United States stands as a meritocratic nation built on the dream and practice that hard work, talent, and ambition alone is the ticket to success, regardless of one’s social identities.

The story goes something like this: For those of us living in the United States, it matters not from which station of life we come. It matters not about our backgrounds and social or personal identities. We each have been born into a system that guarantees equal and equitable access to opportunities.

Success is ours through hard work, study, ambition, and by deferring gratification to later in our lives. We will succeed if we “keep our nose to the grindstone” (ouch!) and “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” (without falling over on our faces).

This concept of “meritocracy” is founded on “personal responsibility,” and those who do not achieve success must accept responsibility for their failures. Maybe they did not try hard enough. Maybe they failed to scale any barriers that could have been placed in their way because they did not have enough will, self-control, fortitude, intelligence, or character or because they simply made bad choices.

While of course, we are all accountable and liable for our actions, what impact do the systemic conditions of our nation have to do with personal success?

This concept of meritocracy fails to consider the long legacy of differentials of power and privilege based on the social identities of race, socioeconomic class, gender, gender identity, sexual identity, ability, age, and others.

Today, the United States stands as the most culturally and religiously diverse country in the world. This diversity poses great challenges and great opportunities. The way we meet these challenges will determine whether we remain in the abyss of our history or whether we can truly achieve our promise of becoming a shining beacon to the world.

When deployed effectively, DEI initiatives can give us all the opportunity to shine to the outer limits of our potential.

Ellen DeGeneres and her wife, actress Portia de Rossi, have placed their Montecito, California mansion up for sale and flown to the United Kingdom’s rural posh Cotswolds region, where they have relocated in the wake of Donald Trump’s second election as president.

I seriously hope they take with them their absurd and irritating “Kind Science” cosmetics infomercials, where their airbrushed pearly white skin seems to fade into the background. 

And that is actually the point. These two entitled white women with an inordinate amount of wealth can choose to pack up, fly away, and live abroad when the going gets rough here in the United States. Though many other people want to escape the expected onslaught from the second Trump Reich, most of us do not have the privileged means to do so. Besides, many of us do not have an interest in abandoning our country.

Learning to fly 

The fantasy – or even the reality – of flying away in hard times is nothing new. The hoped-for escape many of us are dreaming of reminds me of the poignantly identifiable 1992 Hollywood film, Radio Flyer, with Mike (Elijah Wood as the child and Tom Hanks as the adult), his younger brother Bobby (Joseph Mazzello), mother Mary (Lorraine Bracco), stepfather “The King” (Adam Baldwin), and the boy’s trusted German Shepard, Shane (Vilos).

The adult Mike watches as his two young sons fight over an unkept promise one makes to the other. To teach them about the importance of keeping a promise, Mike tells the boys a story about a promise he made to his younger brother Bobby when they were young. 

It began in 1969. Following Mike and Bobby’s parents’ divorce, their mother packed the old station wagon with essential belongings, and having very little money, the three traveled the expansive country from their New Jersey home to stay with Mary’s aunt and uncle in Novato, California.

Soon after arriving, Mary met her future husband, a construction worker whom her children called “The King.” Following the wedding, the four members of this blended family moved to a modest suburban home with green grass on every lawn, a backyard, garbage can-lined alleyways, and plenty of other young children.

All seemed idyllic until The King took Mike and Bobby on a fishing trip. Bobby was the first to catch a fish and began to reel it in. The King, who had been consuming large amounts of beer, slapped Bobby in the face for pulling too hard and breaking the fishing line, letting the creature escape.  

This was the first time the boys had any indication that The King was not the good man he had purported to be. A few days after arriving back home at night in their shared bedroom, Mike noticed dark bruise marks down Bobby’s back.

Bobby pleaded with Mike not to tell their mom because she was finally happy now with her new husband. So as not to upset Mary, the boys promised to attempt to solve the problem of The King on their own.

In his narration of the story, adult Mike told his sons what he refers to as “the seven lost secret fascinations and abilities” of children, which they have until they enter puberty between their 12^th and 13^th years.

The “fascinations and abilities” are that animals can talk; your favorite blanket is woven from fabric so mighty that once pulled over your head, it becomes an impenetrable force field; nothing is too heavy to lift with the aid of a cape; when your forefinger is out and thumb up, your hand actually fires bullets; jumping from any height with an umbrella is completely safe; monsters exist and can be both seen and done battle with; and the greatest, most special and regrettable loss of all is the ability to fly.

They see the monster in The King every day when he comes home, reaches into the refrigerator to grab several beers, and retreats into the garage to listen to Hank Williams’s Jambalaya (On the Bayou) on his record player, all while Mary is working double shifts as a server at a local diner.

The brothers ordered an anti-monster potion in the mail to keep The King at bay. When the experiment goes terribly wrong and explodes on the kitchen stove, his stepfather ultimately beats Bobby, hospitalizing him with heavy bruises and cuts. The dog, Shane, took revenge by violently biting the man on his arm.

After spending some time in jail for child abuse, he came to Mary pleading to be taken back and promising never to drink or abuse again. But he soon violated his commitment and seriously injured Shane.

The boys then devised a plan for Bobby and Shane to escape the monster. Inspired by the story of a boy named Fisher who attempted to fly away on his bicycle over a cliff nicknamed “The Wishing Spot,” the brothers concocted a plan to transform their Radio Flyer toy wagon into an airplane in the hopes of uplifting Bobby and Shane away from harm.

They draw up an immaculate diagram with wings and an engine made from scavenged junk yard parts and an old lawn mower motor they found in an abandoned shed.

They secretly used The King’s tools they found in the garage and assembled all the parts into an elegant flying machine.

On the day Bobby and Shane were to lift off, Mike left a farewell letter for their mother on the kitchen table, telling her that Bobby and Shane would be leaving forever. The brothers then took their super-powered Radio Flyer to the cliff by night. The King, however, discovered their plans and drove his truck to the cliff. In his attempt to save his young pals, Shane jumped from the Flyer and ferociously attacked The King.

Bobby was then able to speed down the hill alone, knocking out The King with the wing of his plane. Toward the bottom of the hill, Bobby jubilantly soared into the air as Mike and Shane looked on in raptured amazement. Mary arrived at the scene with police officers, who arrested The King.

Bobby was never seen again. Occasionally, he sent Mike and his mother postcards announcing his latest travels on his around the world victory excursion.

The older Mike concluded his story by telling his sons: “That’s how I remember it.”

So many questions remain, however. How can a couple of young boys build a flying machine that can circumnavigate the globe? Did this really happen? Did Bobby die? Did Bobby ever truly exist?

Though the film’s director, Richard Donner, told the press that the film should be taken at face value, many theories have been put forward claiming that the film can be understood as an allegory for overcoming bullies and tyrants. In addition, it is possible that there was never a younger brother Bobby, and that the stepfather actually brutalized Mike.

Being too painful to acknowledge, Mike, in psychological parlance, may have disassociated from the trauma by inventing Bobby, the younger and physically weaker brother, to absorb the brutality. Possibly, Bobby did once exist, but The King had killed him. Mike could have kept the story of the mighty Radio Flyer to preserve his beloved brother alive in his imagination.

When monsters are real

I see a clear analogy in the plot of this film to the current era. Donald Trump, as the would-be King (monster), has the potential of turning back many of the gains progressive people have made, especially since the end of his First Reich in 2021.

I disagree somewhat with the adult Mike character in the film, who concludes that “the seven secret fascinations and abilities” of children disappear during puberty. Possibly, these can be retained, though transformed, for all of us who are past our adolescence and even past our middle years.

I know monsters exist and “can be seen and done battle with.” Oh, maybe not the kind of ugly creatures in horror movies and science fiction, but instead, the type that attempts to destroy our democratic institutions, the type that bullies us from the religious pulpit and from Congress to the Oval Office to the individual state legislatures.

The anti-monster potions, in these cases, are composed of the good people who join together in coalition against much greater powers to save and expand our democracy for “we the people.”

Characters in Radio Flyer represent in microcosm the four subgroups in the larger drama of tyrannies and genocides perpetrated throughout history.

1.     The King as the perpetrators, the leaders (including the head(s) of state, oligarchs, and kleptocrats) along with their conspiratorial followers who perpetrate the oppression by neglect and/or intent and design.

2.     Mary as the bystanders who consciously or unconsciously know what the perpetrators are doing but remain in denial and do not intervene.

3.     Mike as the upstanders who consciously resist the perpetrators by intervening to improve conditions.

4.     Bobby as the marginalized, scapegoated victim who alone is powerless to improve his plight.

Regarding the Holocaust, the bystanders might not have known at the time that they held the balance of power. If they had the understanding and courage to transform themselves into upstanders, the Holocaust may never have become a reality.

I am reminded of a time we had another would-be autocrat in the Oval Office. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, in the face of the enormous threat of HIV/AIDS and an intransigent administration that refused to take effective action, we didn’t just sit back. Many of us consciously chose not to be among the bystanders. We mobilized.

The women’s healthcare empowerment movement predates AIDS, as recorded in the ground-breaking work, Our Bodies, Our Selves. By the time the effects of HIV were first felt, a grassroots network of medical, social, political, and informational organizations had already been put in place. Some of us, who under other circumstances would probably not have engaged in political organizing, were spurred into activism by the crisis.

Queer and heterosexual people were at the forefront of a coordinated effort to provide care and support for people with HIV/AIDS. Existing women’s and LGBTQ+ community service centers expanded their services, and new centers were established to serve the needs of people with HIV/AIDS: people of all races, socioeconomic classes, sexual and gender identities, and their loved ones.

In addition, we must not overlook an irony: LGBTQ+ people developed safer sex strategies and educational campaigns, and we remain some of the leaders in prevention efforts. Just think about it: LGBTQ+ people created these strategies, and we continue to teach heterosexual people, all people, how to decrease their risks of infection.

We also faulted the very system on which U.S.-American medicine was based, and we declared that clinical drug trials and drug distribution procedures as were then constructed were inhumane and highly exclusionary.

Subsequently, by 1986, militant direct-action groups of largely young people known as ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) were organized. A network of local chapters quickly grew in over 120 cities throughout the world. I contributed my efforts to the Boston chapter.

Though independently developed and run, the network connected efforts under the theme “Silence = Death” beneath an inverted pink triangle, turning upside down the insignia the Nazis forced men accused of homosexuality to wear in German concentration camps.

We reclaimed the pink triangle, the ultimate stigmata of oppression, and turned it into a symbol of empowerment to lift people out of lethargy and denial and as a call to action to counter the crisis. We cared for the community in an era of government apathy, malevolence, and abandonment.

So here we are again, joining to build the bulwarks to thwart the destruction of our democratic institutions as manifested in the ultra-right Project 2025, which takes its inspiration and program from its German edition exactly 100 years ago.

Social justice educators Pat Griffin and Bobbie Harro have created their “Action Continuum,” listing the full array of positions people take on a scale from “Perpetrating Oppression” on one extreme to “Confronting Oppression” on the other:

·       Actively Participating in the oppression

·       Denying, which enables the oppression

·       Recognizing the oppression but taking no action

·       Educating Self to learn more about the oppression

·       Educating Others in mutual understanding through dialogue

·       Supporting and Encouraging others also to become involved

·       Initiating positive change to reduce and prevent further oppression

Now, as the Trump regime stands ready to retake power, he has again whipped up destructive Category 5 hurricane-force political winds, and he has left a collective national (possibly worldwide) traumatic stress disorder in its wake.

Trump’s First Reich was a contentious, divisive, Tweet-storming, scandal-plagued era from which the people of our nation suffer from a collective and all-consuming sense of PTSD (President Trump Stress Disorder).

He has twisted the acronym for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to DIE, as in death of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive society.

His forces have been readying to launch a newer and fiercer sustained backlash to turn back progressive social change.

Not only has Trump threatened to dismantle DEI initiatives, but he has also talked about getting rid of the so-called “administrative state,” a term describing the power that some government agencies have to write, judge, and enforce their own laws. The far-right, led by Trump, claims that this “administrative state” has gone after Trump and his cronies throughout the Biden administration.

Once referred to by Trump as “the swamp,” the President-elect and his conspirators allege that the deep state, a clandestine cabal within the federal government, especially the FBI and CIA), have been plotting, in conjunction with high-level financial and industrial entities and leaders, to exert extreme power against anyone and any entity not aligned with its agenda.

In psychology, we refer to this as projection: accusing others of actions the accusers themselves are guilty of perpetrating.  

But all is not hopeless. Following a grieving process, we can pick ourselves and others up and organize our defenses. We need not disassociate. We need not enter the realms of denial.

For in the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

By an 8-7 vote, the Texas State Board of Education authorized the incorporation of primarily Christian Bible-based lessons in public elementary schools from kindergarten through fifth-grade beginning in the 2025-2026 school year.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) voiced support for the program, saying in a May news release that it “will allow students to better understand the connection of history, art, community, literature, and religion on pivotal events like the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Movement, and the American Revolution.”

This measure stands on very shaky pedagogic and legal grounds by imposing a government standard on religion that directly violates the First Amendment’s right to religious freedom through the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. It is also a continuation of a broader trend in Republican-led states seeking to integrate more religious teachings into public education. 

Patriarchal White Christian Nationalism in Public Education

In the famous words of social activist Marcus Garvey: “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.”

The lives, stories, and histories of marginalized people in the United States have been intentionally hidden by socially dominant individuals and groups through neglect, deletions, erasures, omissions, bans, censorship, distortions, alterations, trivializations, and other unauthorized means.

Amidst the backlash and the organized movement to ban books; restrict classroom discussions on topics related to race, sexuality, and gender; censor curricular materials; and pass laws patterned after Florida’s notorious “Stop Woke” and “Don’t Say Gay” laws, we need to place the current counteroffensive on education into historical perspective.

Patriarchal white Christian nationalism has been the foundation on which this continuing trend rests.

Though some of the terminology may have changed over the intervening years, and the country has made some monumental progressive advancements in education, some conditions remain the same.

Throughout the history of this country, schools have reproduced the cultural norms, often with the attendant range of social inequities and dominant group privileges found within the larger society.

In Colonial America, few regions aside from the larger New England towns mandated by law the building of schools or the provision of childhood instruction. Schools that were constructed and teachers who were hired were done so only because local citizens decided to pool their resources.

During this time, classroom lessons were tied directly to Protestant religions and the Protestant Bible, which the early settlers (a.k.a. land thieves) brought with them from England. School lessons primarily centered on preaching, catechizing, and prayers that called for freedom from the influences of the Devil and from attacks by indigenous native populations.

The most frequently used schoolbook was The New England Primer to teach reading as well as the Protestant catechism. Several Catholic parishes established parochial or parish schools partly due to the Protestant teachings that pervaded the public school curriculum.

Following the Revolutionary War, leaders like Thomas Jefferson called for state-supported and mandated public education, believing that the very survival of the new republic depended on an educated populace.

Jefferson, for example, advocated for a three-year publicly supported education for all white children — no such guarantees were to be extended to children of enslaved Africans — with advanced education provided to a select few males.

As Jefferson wrote, the schools will be “raking a few geniuses from the rubbish.”

Withholding Education as a Tool for Oppression

The first statewide school system was established in Massachusetts in the 1820s, largely due to the efforts of Horace Mann, the first secretary of education of any state in the United States. While traveling throughout Massachusetts, Mann found an unequal patchwork of local schools dependent on the tax base of each community. He proposed a new structure, which he called “common schools.”

These schools were to serve children of all income levels. He hoped they would help to end, or at least reduce, the financial inequities between citizens of the state.

Mann and other political and community leaders also supported a homogeneity of opinion. They argued that the main purpose of public education was for the development of good character based on religion. By that, they meant the central teachings of the Protestant Bible.

In their attempts to “civilize” and convert native peoples to Christianity, French, Spanish, and English colonists established “Indian Schools,” though most native peoples refused to attend.

In 1790, the newly constituted United States Congress passed the Naturalization Act, which excluded all nonwhites from citizenship, including Asians, enslaved Africans, and Native peoples, the latter of whom they defined in oxymoronic terms as “domestic foreigners,” even though they had inhabited the land for thousands of years.

The Congress did not grant Native Americans rights of citizenship until 1924 with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, though Asians continued to be denied naturalized citizenship status.

Many legislators employed scriptural justifications to support the institution of slavery, such as Ephesians 6:5-6: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.”

And Luke 12:47: “That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows.”

Later, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, asserted: “[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God…it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation… it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.”

As wisely stated by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 1839 play, Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” This adage holds that the written word acts as a powerful tool in the transmission of ideas.

Why else would oppressive regimes and other avid enforcers of the status quo engage in censorship and book burning? 

The United States has been the only nation to forbid education to those it has enslaved. Except for imposing Christian conversion through religious instruction, legislators enacted laws making it a crime in most Southern states.  

Following an enslaved people’s uprising led by abolitionist Nat Turner in 1831, some states extended the education ban to free Black people as well.

Slavers identified literacy as a direct threat to the institution of slavery and their economic dependency on the labor it provided. An 1831 North Carolina law of 1831 stated in part: “Teaching slaves to read and write, tends to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion.”

The Code of Virginia of 1849 was passed to prevent those enslaved from assembling for religious or educational purposes, as legislators believed that education would lead to uprisings.   

If enslaved people developed literacy, they would be able to read the writings of abolitionists about attempts to help people escape to the North or about the 1791-1804 slave revolution in Haiti and the end of slavery in 1833 in the British Empire.  

Slavers believed that literacy would make enslaved people angry, dissatisfied, and rebellious. As stated by Washington, D.C. lawyer and clerk of the US Supreme Court,  Elias B. Caldwell: “The more you improve the condition of these people, the more you cultivate their minds, the more miserable you make them, in their present state. You give them a higher relish for those privileges which they can never attain, and turn what we intend for a blessing [slavery] into a curse. No, if they must remain in their present situation, keep them in the lowest state of degradation and ignorance. The nearer you bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them of possessing their apathy.”

With the end of slavery, the legal exclusion of education to formerly enslaved people, their children, and their descendants did not expire. Throughout the Jim Crow era and through the present day, Black people have faced de jure and then de facto segregation, underfunded schools, implicit bias from educators and school administrators, and public sentiments ripe with myths and stereotypes regarding the intellectual capacities of the African descended mind.

Following the Civil War and the passage of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, all citizens born in the U.S. or naturalized were theoretically granted the right to equal protection of the laws since it was now written that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens…”

The Southern states, though, passed laws — codified in the Supreme Court ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson — justifying segregated facilities, including schools. As such, Black students attended woefully underfunded facilities that lacked even basic resources.

Central to the patriarchal Christian white supremacist conquest of territory was the concept of “Manifest Destiny”: Providence destined U.S. expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific (“from sea to shining sea”) by the so-called “Anglo-Saxon race.” In the mind of the European, this idea justified the theft of Indigenous people’s territories and a war with Mexico.

During the eighteenth century, public schools throughout the U.S. extensively used the McGuffey Readers. Though children of several faiths attended the schools, a Protestant character infused these books. So both during colonial times and the early years of public education following the Revolutionary War, a Protestant foundation permeated schooling.

In his book Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of the Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States, Joel Spring addresses “cultural genocide,” which he defines as “the attempt to destroy other cultures” through forced acquiescence and assimilation to majority rule and cultural and religious standards. This cultural genocide works through the process of “deculturalization,” which Spring describes as “the educational process of destroying a people’s culture and replacing it with a new culture.”

A historical example of “cultural genocide” and “deculturalization” can be seen in the case of European American domination over Native American Indigenous nations, whom European Americans viewed as “uncivilized,” “godless heathens,” “barbarians,” and “devil worshipers.” 

European Americans attempted to deculturalize Indigenous peoples through many means: confiscation of land, forced relocation, forced conversion to Christianity, undermining their languages, cultures, and identities, and the establishment of Christian day schools and off-reservation boarding schools where they took youth far away from their people.

Under President Rutherford B. Hayes, the U.S. government approved and developed off-reservation Indian boarding schools. The first was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1879. It was run primarily by white Christian teachers and administered by Richard Pratt, a former cavalry commander in the Indian Territories.

At the schools, officials stripped Indigenous children of their cultures. They cut short the young men’s hair, forced all to wear Western-style clothing, prohibited them from conversing in their native languages, made English compulsory, destroyed their cultural and spiritual symbols, and imposed Christianity on them.

As Pratt relayed to a Baptist audience: “[We must immerse] Indians in our civilization, and when we get them under, [hold] them there until they are thoroughly soaked.”

Local and national standards for teachers, especially female teachers, may seem primitive by current standards, but strong echoes of those times resound today. For example, some districts throughout the country followed these strict rules.

1872 Rules for Teachers, from the Blackwell History of Education Museum

1.     Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys.

2.     Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.

3.     Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.

4.     Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.

5.     After 10 hours in school, teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.

6.     Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.

7.     Every teacher should lay aside from each day’s pay a goodly sum of his earning for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.

8.     Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.

9.     The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

1915 Rules for Women Teachers, from the Knox County Retired Teachers Association

1.     You will not marry during the term of your contract.

2.     You are not to keep company with men.

3.     You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function.

4.     You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.

5.     You may not travel beyond the city limits unless you have the permission of the chairman of the board.

6.     You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother.

7.     You may not smoke cigarettes.

8.     You may not dress in bright colors.

9.     You may under no circumstances dye your hair.

10. You must wear at least two petticoats.

11. Your dresses must not be any shorter than 2 inches above the ankle.

12. To keep the school room neat and clean, you must sweep the floor at least once daily, scrub the floor at least once a week with hot, soapy water, clean the blackboards at least once a day and start the fire at 7 a.m. so the room will be warm by 8 a.m.

Heterosexism in Education

A form of cultural imperialism for LGBTQ+ people, as is true for many ethnic and racial groups, is that they often grow up within an oppressive society that deprives them of a historical context for their lives. The larger society perpetuates the myth that they have no culture or history and that they do not constitute a bona fide community.

A crucial point in the psychology of scapegoating is the representation of, in historian John Boswell’s words, minoritized “others” as “animals bent on the destruction of the children of the majority” and dominant groups have long accused LGBTQ+ people of acting as dangerous predators concentrated on ensnaring, torturing, and devouring primarily children of the dominant group.

When demagogues play on people’s fears and prejudices by invoking these images for their own political, social, and economic gains, in more instances than not it results in loss of civil and human rights, harassment, violence, and at times, death of the “other.”

Boswell has documented the various means by which this falsification has been enacted to erase LGBTQ+ history. These sorts of discriminatory actions not only lead to the false conclusion that LGBTQ+ people have made no significant contributions to their societies but also further the isolation and invisibility of these groups.

Boswell cites as an example of heterosexist censorship a manuscript of The Art of Love by the Roman author Ovid.

A phrase that originally read, “A boys’ love appealed to me less” (Hoc est quod pueri tanger amore minus) was altered by a Medieval moralist to read, “A boy’s love appealed to me not at all” (Hoc est quod queri tanger amore nihil), and an editor’s note appearing in the margin informed the reader, “Thus you may be sure that Ovid was not a sodomite” (Ex hoc nota quod Ovidius non fuerit Sodomita).

One of the first instances of a change of gender pronouns occurred when, as Boswell stated, “Michelangelo’s grandnephew employed this means to render his uncle’s sonnets more acceptable to the public.”

We know about the figure of Sappho and her famed young women’s school on the Isle of Lesbos around the year 580, where we find the earliest known writings of love poems between women. Unfortunately, only one complete poem and several poem fragments have survived after centuries of the Catholic Church’s concerted effort to extinguish the works of these extraordinary women. In 380, an order by St. Gregory of Nazianzus demanded the torching of Sappho’s poetry, and the remaining manuscripts were ordered to be destroyed by Papal Decree in 1073.

Poet Walt Whitman’s book, Leaves of Grass, was published in 1860. The section titled “Calamus” was clearly homoerotic. Kalamos in Greek mythology turned into a reed in grief for his young male lover, Karpos, who drowned.

The Acorus calamus is the name given to a marsh plant. For Whitman, his “Calamus” poems represent the kind of love between Kalamos and Karpos. Very soon following the book’s publication, it was removed from library shelves at Harvard University and placed in locked cabinets with other books thought to undermine students’ morals. Whitman was also fired from his job at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Radcliffe Hall’s 1928 novel, The Well of Loneliness, involved a lesbian relationship, but soon after publication it was banned and declared “obscene” by officials in both England and the U.S.

In 1933 Nazi Germany, stormtroopers invaded, ransacked, and padlocked The Institute for Sexual Sciences in Berlin, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a gay Jewish sexuality researcher. The Institute conducted early sexuality research, the precursor to the Indiana-based Kinsey Institute in the United States.

Stormtroopers torched thousands of volumes of books and research documents, calling the Institute “an international center of the white-slave trade” and “an unparalleled breeding ground of dirt and filth.”

Education is Liberation

How very ironic that today, several states are either proposing or have passed laws prohibiting the teaching of slavery and other aspects of U.S. history that are not particularly flattering.

As philosopher George Santayana reminds us: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” But this time, we have an opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the past by speaking out against the racism and cultural genocide that surrounds us.

The current system in schooling is in opposition to the very meaning of “education,” which is derived from two Latin roots: “e,” meaning “out of,” and “ducere,” meaning “to lead” or “to draw.”

True education involves the process of drawing knowledge out of the student or leading the student toward knowledge, rather than putting or depositing information into what some educators perceive as the student’s waiting and docile mind — what the Brazilian philosopher and educator Paulo Reglus Neves Freire termed “the banking system of education.”

Freire talks about a “culture of silence” in the schools and society at large. This is the result of systems of economic, social, and political domination, in addition to paternalism, to which marginalized peoples are the victims.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire writes, “The rightest sectarian (whom I have previously termed a ‘born sectarian’) wants to slow down the historical process, to ‘domesticate’ time and thus to domesticate men and women.”

Not surprisingly within this current authoritarian climate, legislators in Arizona a few years ago banned Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a pioneering and foundational work in the field of social justice education through liberatory consciousness.

A society that exists for the benefit of the corporate sector will fill students’ minds and deplete their labor before putting them out for collection to be recycled in another form and used up and recycled again in a self-perpetuating loop.

What effects have our neo-liberal age of standardization, corporatization, privatization, and deregulation of the educational, business, banking, and corporate sectors had on learning?

Standardized curriculum and testing were initially intended to gauge students’ progress, but have, unfortunately, metastasized into benchmarks for student advancement through the educational levels, for teacher accountability, as well as criteria for school funding from the government.

The Neoliberal age — education for the corporate sector — acts like a postal sorting machine to plug workers into businesses on a conveyor belt of conformity.

According to the so-called ““Allocation Theory” of education, schooling has turned into a status competition, which confers success on some and failure on others. Our schools have morphed into assembly-line factories transforming students into workers, and then sorting these workers into jobs necessary for industry and business.

In so doing, educational institutions legitimize and maintain the social order (read as the status quo). Schools drive individuals to fill certain roles or positions in society, which are not always based on the individuals’ talents or interests.

Education should be, as affirmed by Freire, a path toward permanent liberation in which people become aware (conscientização) of their multiple positionalities (identity intersectionality) and learn to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions. Through praxis (reflection and action), they can then transform the world.

To be truly effective, educators must spend many years in self-reflection and must have a clear understanding of their motivations, strengths, limitations, “triggers,” and fears. They must thoroughly come to terms with their positions in the world in terms of their social identities, both the ways in which they are privileged as well as how they have been the targets of systemic inequities.

They are not afraid of showing vulnerability and admitting when they are wrong or when they don’t know something. They have a firm grasp of their content area, and they work well with and are accessible to students and their peers.

Educators must be “culturally competent,” aware that students come from disparate backgrounds in terms of social identities and that students learn in a variety of ways. They must be informed on the historical and cultural backgrounds of diverse student populations, pedagogical frameworks, theories of cognitive development, personality types, preferred sensory modes of learning, and others.

In the ideal classroom, the overriding climate is one of safety. This is not, however, the same as “comfort,” for very often, comfortable situations might feel fine, but are not necessarily of pedagogic value.

“Safety,” in this case, refers to an environment where educators facilitate a learning process in which one can share openly without fear of retribution or blame, where one can travel to the outer limits of one’s “learning edges” in the knowledge that one will be supported and not left dangling.

Very often, a single semester course may not provide the educator sufficient time to fully appreciate the true growth or impact of their endeavors, but it can at least provide the opportunity to plant a seed. Overall, the role of the educator is to excite, motivate, develop or enhance in the student a continuing and life-long quest for learning.

In addition to teaching the 3 Rs (Reading, wRiting, and ‘Rithmetic), we need to teach students how to investigate issues around self awareness: how to “Read” the Self and “Solve” social, emotional, and ethical problems.

A goal of education for Freire is also to give students the tools to “read the world.”

But “education” and “schooling,” as currently constituted contradict their own methodologies by primarily focusing on grades in the service of eventual jobs and economic security for the educational consumer. In so doing, we have diminished in many of our students the joy of learning for learning sake and for the sake of understanding themselves and the world around them.

We are witnessing students around the country, individually and in coalitions, resisting and protesting the restraints imposed on their learning by legislative bodies and parents groups. The controversy itself has become a learning experience, a “teachable moment” that has brought students ever closer to conscientização.

Censorship and the imposition of patriarchal white Christian nationalism stand diametrically opposed to what our schools should practice.