Don't listen to bad advice on civic engagement.
If you want to engage in democracy, consider carefully about where you get advice.
Find actual advocates, activists, and people who have worked in politics organizing ordinary people, or who've been doing effective work to find out what is the best use of your time and energy. Many people don't realize how major movements succeeded in the past,1 and have false assumptions about what's effective, what might be effective, or what's definitely not going to be very effective.2
There's an op-ed being passed around on social media and I can't tell if the people disseminating and reposting it are well-meaning and clueless, or just didn't think things through before hitting the post. But it's bad advice.
I'll lead with some actual examples of civic engagement before going over the bad advice and why I think it's bad below.
We need to do All The Things – however each individual doesn't have to do everything all the time. There will be other people doing other things, it's not a matter of "picking wrong". We're not all lawyers, lawyers can engage in lawsuits and such. Obviously you can support other people's efforts, including legal efforts. But this is for the average person. The first thing on the list, writing your reps, should be the easiest lift that most people can do.
Write your reps.
Or call them on the phone. Find out who are your representatives in government,3 from national to local, and then find their contact pages and bookmark them in your web browser app favorites. Even if you don't think it will change anything, make sure you communicate with your elected representatives so they know how their constituents feel about the issues. If you don't tell them, they will assume you don't care one way or another on any number of issues – and sometimes this will lead to them making absolutely horrid assumptions, and maybe acting badly upon them when they otherwise wouldn't have. There's plenty of evidence from insiders and experts that confirms what I'm saying.4 Elected politicians are humans, and they don’t read minds.
Birddog your reps.
This is about getting documentation on the record of where your reps currently stand on a given issue. You will know how much pressure needs to happen on the issue and you can point to their stand on this issue before their re-election so people have information to inform their votes. Often writing about most prominent issues will prompt the staff of reps to send you a prepared reply letter on the topic.5 But sometimes you will have to at least call the constituent services staff and ask them. If they're authorized to give an answer they will. On some things, they will not.6 At that point people who are birddogging will try to confront the representative with questions on the issue at a town hall they hold or other public appearance, or when they are known to be at a local office, or at the capitol. You can also request a meeting with your elected representatives to discuss an issue, for example. This is more likely to happen if you can get a few of the rep's constituents together, and request a group conference. Elected politicians will often do this remotely so it doesn't necessarily require people traveling. Some advocacy organizations hold trainings for this type of tactic. You can find instructions on birddogging.7
Write letters to the editor – to local newspapers or even national outlets.
You don't need to have your own platform because you'll be utilizing a platform that already exists. Your letters won't always get published,8 because after all a lot of newspapers are often nowadays owned by hedge funds or tycoons who suppress legitimate stuff9 and publish horrendous stuff.10 But It's worth trying because when they do, you might plant some seeds in your community about another way to think about things that people may not have considered, or you may be the person who calls someone's attention to something that matters to them. You can be clever about your introduction of topics11 that may lead to people to search for more information on their own. This is a known persuasion tactic.12
Write op-eds and pitch them to outlets if you have credentials or personal connection to a subject.
This is a known way that professional PR operations spread word of their interests and try to dominate a narrative about an issue.13 You may not have as many connections as fancy PR operatives do, but it's worth a try. They won't always get published, but when they don't, you can publish them yourself at least on your own blog or newsletter, so it's not like it's totally wasted. You don't have to be anyone special to do that.
Give public comments at public meetings and to public agencies.
There are public meetings and agencies which, at certain times, in certain venues, invite the public to give comments. City councils, school boards, state agencies, federal agencies typically have these opportunities. Depending on the venue and the options, people give public comments in person, in video conference call meetings, remotely calling in, or just by written comments that will be published publicly and may legally have to be considered by decision makers. (Note, it’s not useful to contact public agencies outside of legally structured public comments because government workers don’t answer to the public directly that way, it’s done through elected officials, or defined processes like official forms.
Sign up for legislation tracking alerts and search alerts for issues you care about.
There are services that are free to individual citizens to track bills in congress, or news and social media items. This can save you time, and let you avoid doom scrolling. This is what professional PR teams and professional political operatives do. And there's good reason for it – the industry and political organizations don't want to pay employees to waste time. So why would you want to waste your own time? You can find these services by looking for "search alerts service" and "bill tracking service" scroll down through the options and check them out, and then set up an account the way you want it, with specific keywords, daily alerts or weekly digests. I suggest having a special email account dedicated to subscriptions like this, so you're not overwhelmed, it's not cluttering up your personal correspondence, and can look at it just when you want to.
Sign up for news from organizations that specialize in particular issues you care about.
There are often volunteer opportunities, or you can donate to cause orgs. Those are both options if you have the time, resources, interest, and or money. But even if you don't intend to do that, keeping up with an organization that specializes in something is going to be a good way to know what's going on with those issues. And that goes even if you don't quite align with the organization's politics or or agree with their preferred solutions totally. They may be on top of things like opportunities for public comments, bills being introduced to congress, and that lifts some of that work from you personally. They may also share ideas about compelling talking points to use in your own engagement with your representatives, friends, and family. Or help you figure out where you actually stand on the issue.
Organize at your workplace.
If your workplace is unionized, join the union and engage so that you have a say in what happens. Even if you don't have a union job, or don't feel you could unionize at your job, it's still important to keep an open dialogue with your coworkers using comms outside the employer's eyes and time, about things that matter at your job. And this way you will have more leverage, and be prepared if the potential for unionizing, or when opportunities for collective action come about, or you need strength in numbers. You can never be too paranoid about the lengths some employers will go to in order to secretly monitor communications between employees. I worked somewhere that we actually suspected that a manager would wedge themselves up crouched onto a toilet seat in the end bathroom stall like that lady Roz in the movie "9 to 5" in order to listen to worker conversations in the lavatory. All messaging and email through the employer is not private. Use a personally owned and controlled device and a method with end to end encryption and preferably communicate outside of work hours and away from surveillance of the work space. Do not rely on social media as the only means of connection to coworkers. Especially not just one social media platform!. Exchange phone numbers & email addresses. (People still doing organizing primarily in Facebook groups need to pick up the clue phone.)
Vote. (Of course you should vote.)
Every election. Even the local ones and the primaries. Even if you don't know who to vote for (try to find out) but even if you have to leave stuff blank (abstain), you should still be letting the people running for office know you're out there and you're engaging and ready to cast your vote. Even when you're voting for "the lesser of two evils" it's still worth showing up. And if you have the capacity to campaign, do that if you like the candidate, or as many of us do, because the opposition is just so bad. You don't even have to volunteer with the campaign itself, but join in some campaign by another organization or union that is doing phone banking or postcards to voters for an endorsed candidate. There seems to be this all or nothing thinking around this in that of course voting alone won't solve everything, because no progress can be made if nobody ever does anything else to get better candidates pushed forward, or to pressure these reps after they get in there. But if you don't vote at all, nobody running for office needs to give a shit what you think. Let that sink in. There will never be perfect candidates, and nobody reasonable ought to hero worship politicians. I've been disgusted and disappointed, but I've never actually been heartbroken, because I've never been in love. Save your passion for people close to you who matter in your day to day life, not hoping for a savior with some parasocial relationship with a politician. The bottom line is that governance will happen – with or without you. There will always be governance, in some form, someone will fill that role because people do want leaders – the question is will you be involved in who wins this power struggle? Don't leave a power vacuum where your opposition will fill up the void.
Demonstration.
Demonstrations don't have to be huge million person march protests. The first Earth Day wasn't one huge protest – it was small groups of people in venues across the nation, and involved more than just gatherings alone – there was organizing to put public pressure on congress and Nixon.14 I've heard about a single person standing outside a rep's office holding a sign for weeks. But there's a reason I have this at the bottom. Not because mass protests appear not to be very effective, though it does seem that way often. I think a lot of times elected representatives can more easily dismiss even a big a crowd as anonymous and irrelevant or as "outside agitators" in a way they can't ignore their verified address in the district constituent confronting them. Obviously also, in-person gatherings, especially large ones come with various threats that make this option and these venues untenable for many. Infectious disease outbreaks, or getting harassed or attacked by counter protesters or by police – maybe just for trying to avoid getting sick by wearing masks. A lot of people get excited with a rush of adrenaline at protests, and some treat them as if they're social occasions or an end within itself. Some people just wait for the next "event" to go to, and if nothing really changes and no progress is made, many people doing this will become demoralized and give up on it all. If showing up to events is all you want to do, ok, it's a decision you have to make for yourself. But protest with a sense of reality and low expectations, and with the knowledge that there are other pieces to political engagement, and even a flopped protest is not the end of the road.
You should pick and choose what you want to do, with eyes open deciding soberly how you want to try to affect some change, and being at peace with those decisions, and the limitations of them all – while also taking care of yourself.
Robert Reich also has a list, and it’s different than mine, but it’s practical, and it is good compassionate practical advice:
What you can do - Ten ways to resist Trump II - Robert Reich Jan 23, 2025
And now for the gripes.
The op-ed I have problems with is this: Democracy Docket - 10 Things We Can All Do to Protect Democracy - By Marc Elias - January 25, 2025
It's a bullet list of 10 things. And I hope this was just a case of someone putting together something without much thought. But honestly, I think he would've been better off just telling us what he is doing – that would probably be more interesting and helpful.
1. Stay engaged When all the news is about Trump and pardons and lies, it is easy to want to retreat and stop paying attention. Don’t. It is precisely when things are hard that we must all lean into remaining vigilant and informed.
No. Do not lean into madness. Holy shit that's not the way to go. Remaining vigilant, constantly drinking in the firehose of garbage — leaning into that — is not healthy, and will not help us protect democracy, it won't even help someone survive personally.
Who benefits if more people stay engaged and remain vigilant? People who make money putting the firehose of crap out there. The political content creators who make money covering Trump.15 I'm not saying they shouldn't report on and document what Trump is doing, there should absolutely be people of all sorts reporting on that and documenting everything!
But practically speaking we don't need everyone stunlocked in the constant stream of everything being reported!
That doesn't help anything. There's an incentive to chase eyeballs because that's how the information economy works nowadays. But it's not a healthy media news system, and there are better ways to do it that we've already had in the past16 and we should be organizing to get back to that.
You know who else benefits from people drinking from the firehose of news and information? Your opposition to name one! The people who want you inactivated and so stunned on information overload that you just give up.17 This is a known warfare technique.18 It's been written about for centuries. As Carl von Clausewitz pointed out: "The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."
Humans can't really effectively multitask, that's been shown.19 People are much better off limiting exposure, and focusing on particular things, and then doing something with it, whether that's writing your reps about particular bills currently being introduced into the Congress, publishing about it, or getting involved in an issue oriented organization, or getting involved in electoral candidate campaigns. There are some topics I really rarely even mention, let alone write about. It's not that I don't care about those issues – I may even read about them here and there. But I tend to stick to focusing on a few issues I care a lot about, have followed for decades, and or have some professional experience in them.
You don't have to wear yourself out and make yourself sick to prove you care about everything that's happening. You're no good to the rest of us if you do that anyway.
2. Help Democrats - The success of any opposition movement rests on the opposing party taking power. This is not a minor detail; in our system of government, it is the essential goal. Next time you want to attack a Democrat for being too much of this or too little of that, realize that you are only helping the GOP. Instead, find a Democrat you support and volunteer or contribute to their campaign.
The only part of this that sounds right is where you find a Democrat you do support because they're good, and then you support them. Maybe join an organization that endorses candidates that support the causes you care about, and is able to push the elected representatives to feel that they owe that group the representation as their base.
But the idea that you can never criticize or disagree with or express opposition to anything a Democrat says or does is how we wound up here with Democrats who can't fucking win their elections properly.20 And this is why we're stuck with just Democrats who seem to care more about banks21 and business people, and want to dictate instead of listen to the preferences of their ordinary constituents.22 This is why people feel demoralized because representatives are actually helping those who've wronged them,23 and people feel like nobody really gives a shit about them. I've had people tell me this when I had to offer them voter registration in a context where they had every reason to be honest about it. People would literally say to me, "None of the politicians care about what happens to me anyway so why would I vote."
What good is a Democrat that acts like a Republican anyway? This idea that attacking a Democrat always means you're "only helping the GOP" doesn't make sense in the context where a Democratic Senator helps the GOP and Trump –- how is opposing that helping the GOP? My Dem senator is literally the one helping the GOP.24 I'm not the one helping the GOP. Make that make sense – then get back to me, bucko.
3. Don’t do Trump’s work - This is more than simply resisting Trump’s actions; it is refusing to accept his false assumptions. When he says he wants to abolish birthright citizenship, do not accept the premise that he has the power to do so. Stay grounded in the truth: The U.S. Constitution is clear, Trump is powerless and the courts will reject his efforts.
5. Believe in the courts Republicans control all three elected branches of the federal government. They do not control the courts. Yes, the U.S. Supreme Court has a solidly conservative majority, but the high court only hears a few dozen cases a year. And in some of those, the Court has sided with democracy. Most importantly, remember that Joe Biden confirmed a record number of new federal judges. And, of course, there are state courts. For better or worse, we are dependent on the courts to help protect democracy. Rather than assume they will not, insist they do.
Wait, what? So "the courts will reject his efforts" eh?... Isn't that what y'all told us about Roe Vs. Wade being "settled law"? Did Corey Robin write this list? I've written this before: In 2021 Corey Robin had an essay published in The New Yorker magazine arguing that fear of fascism and the overturning of Roe V Wade was overblown and essentially alarmist. All these people said Roe V Wade was settled law, don’t worry. Then a year after that was published, Roe V Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court. Historian Thomas Zimmer pointed out that after that happened apparently The New Yorker magazine quietly changed the wording in Corey Robin’s article,25 apparently to move the goal posts to keep chastising people as overreacting but acknowledging that what they said wouldn’t happen absolutely happened.
To be clear, I'm the first person to say do NOT normalize the bonkers crapola that Trump says, because obviously so much of the time he is either lying or he doesn't know what the hell he's even talking about – or why not both. Nobody needs to manufacture normal here, but there's also no need to minimize it. Why are people constantly writing op-eds that sound like elite panic,26 with the desire to calm people with spin,27 rather than allow people room to become alarmed and act appropriately – something that has been shown as what people generally do in numerous studies of disaster response.28
The fact remains that Trump is now the President of the United States, and some people will sometimes act upon his orders – illegal or not. And his support system has done their best to make sure he's mostly only surrounded with those people who will act loyally to Trump,29 even over their oaths to the Constitution. The Constitution may be clear on some things, but the Supreme Court has also clearly signaled to Trump and tycoons that they're ready and willing to bend the law to suit the wealthy and the Donald. Trump is not powerless, he himself is a paper tiger perhaps in many ways, but he's not powerless and he has lots of helpers ready and waiting who are the real ones who are nearly powerless without him.
We need to do all the things. If you're a lawyer, I applaud you for participating in legal battles for justice. I really do. I'm interested, and I pay attention to it. It's absolutely needed. I'm not here to shit on lawyers, that's for sure. It's a dirty job and someone has to do it. The courts fixing things is a slow process, but by all means that process must be pursued. However, it cannot be the sole remedy people rely upon for everything or really anything. And judges and lawyers cannot become saviours people "believe in" like prophets or gods. This way lies madness. Haven't people had enough of believing in and counting on people like Mueller and Merrick Garland for a lifetime?
Remember the Muslim ban? Some people who went to protest as youths at the airports 8 years ago do.30 Take a look at the ACLU's Muslim ban timeline detailing over 30 distinct details on the timeline about court proceedings over 3 years from January 2017 to February 2020.31 In October 2018 the Brennan Center said the travel ban was "still unconstitutional".32 In 2021, President Biden overturned the Muslim ban, but NPR reported that activists said it was "not enough".33 International Refugee Assistance Project said in 2022 that Biden's removal of the Muslim ban "didn't fix the harm".34 And now Trump's back and ready with a new Muslim ban, one that too many Democratic party politicians seem to be supportive of in principle, judging by their behaviour and rhetoric. This new Muslim ban is going to hyper focus on Palestinians and other foreign students who are believed to have participated in campus protests.35 And we know this will probably translate for law enforcement to probably target just anyone who is suspected of befriending or even sympathizing with Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians.
4. Don’t grade on a curve - This goes both ways. Do not hold Republicans to a lower standard and do not hold Democrats to a higher one. When a Republican does something normal, recognize it is normal not exceptional. When a Democrat does something normal, recognize it is normal and not terrible.
Why do we have to recognize anyone doing anything "normal" as a good thing? Lots of normal stuff is bad actually – in fact terrible. And here's a thought, maybe the best thing to do is to let elected representatives know what you think was good and what you think was bad – regardless of political party. I really believe if a lot more people – of any political persuasion – spoke up about their problems to a lot of these out of touch fools a little more, maybe they'd pick up the clue phone – or step aside and let someone else govern. At least they should be birddogged to go on record so everyone knows where they stand before their next election. But too often people just assume their representative is going to take the appropriate position on an issue just because they belong to the correct political party – even though we've seen over and over that this is not always true.36
7. Support independent media. The legacy media is failing our democracy. Every day brings more news of another billionaire owner or corporate overlord bowing down to Trump. The solution is found in independent news outlets that have no incentive to make nice with the Republican Party. Some of these are broad-based news operations, some are issue specific. Pick a few and subscribe for free. Find one or two that you pay to support. It will go a long way to ensure a vibrant media ecosystem willing to stand up for democracy.
This is the same person who was telling us to not criticize the elected Democrats who are making nice with the Republican Party. Make it make sense, and then get back to me buddy.
Independent media, while some are very good and many are certainly worth supporting if you can – it is not the end all be all answer to everything. There are fundamental problems with the information gig economy.37 We really need a media overhaul – as Victor Pickard said recently on a podcast that's "something we're going to have to do if we're going to have any sort of especially local journalism which the market will never support. There is no commercial future for a lot of the kinds of journalism that we actually need to have a healthy democratic society."38
I'm not trying to shit on independent journalists, not at all, but individual subscriptions will not save democracy by virtue of being independent in some "marketplace of ideas" concept. Institutions are able to give reporters more backing to take risks that invite backlash from the powerful39 and do serious research which takes time and money, and is hard work. Some of the biggest, most lucrative independent outlets with the highest number of paid subscribers are anti-vaxxers pumping out dangerous misinformation.40 Apparently a lot of Youtuber revenue has come from climate denier content creators.41 And if you think well maybe that the left can have its version of that, like people talking about having "a left Joe Rogan", I have to tell you that much of the big money is on the other side.42 And of course often it's dark money. And as I've said before: They have ways to use all these sock puppets to go around hitting like on everything and subscribe and even paid subscriptions too. That is a thing –paying some corporate PR outfit to go and subscribe to the YouTube channels and Substacks and whatever that they like the message coming out of there. And sometimes there are indirect benefits – it's been seen by internet researchers,43 it's not a maybe. And it's hard to compete with all that money in this so-called "marketplace" of information.
8. Use your town square - Every one of us has a town square. It may include our social media accounts, our local book club or dinner table. Use your town square to speak out in favor of democracy and against what Republicans are doing. Do not shy away from difficult conversations; seek them out. Engage the curious. Educate those who seek information. We all have a role to play, so don’t assume your voice is too faint or your platform too small.
This could be good advice, but I'm afraid that most of the readers clicking on this op-ed on Bluesky are not going to see this as "go to the square or outside your congressperson's office with a picket sign" or "point out objectively nonsensical and bad policies Republicans are proposing the next time you talk to your aunt on your phone". They're hearing "sit all night on bluesky and post into the void"44 or worse they're hearing "get into a pissing match with your drunk Qanon uncle on facebook".
This list, it's important to note, is coming from a lawyer whose bio on the Democracy Docket website says: "Marc continues to fight back in court and on Twitter." I think this person may have his own social media habit. There's no "fighting back" on twitter. I've said this before: The opposition doesn't go on open twitter and reddit in mixed company and use that for strategizing or exposing themselves to your opposing narratives. They’re not interested in “the discourse” – they go on twitter or facebook to drop the message bombs and all the garbage they want YOU to see, and then go back to their safe spaces for rallying, reinforcement, hope, and support. If you're doing anything but the same, you're losing, and what even is the point of engaging in that exactly with so little ROI to be had? Bluesky is a lot better, but there's already long been evidence45 that the same Internet of Fakes is taking over Bluesky now,46 because it's the watering hole effect – the operations go where the people are.47
And this whole list of tips is not going to reach the people he's clearly worried have been "checking out"48 anyway, because those people aren't reading his list, and they aren't on Bluesky. They've checked out! That's the definition of checked out! So this is probably just going to serve to validate people's doom-scrolling, and lead people who are actually paying attention to think that to engage politically they have to expose themselves even more to a toxic information environment. And this is what leads people to eventually just need to check out! I had to offer voter registrations to people in the past as part of a job and so many times people would say no thanks and say it's because "politics is too toxic" – they'd say that it was too demanding on their time and emotions they just couldn't handle it, so they just didn't even vote! There are people who've said that bad actors have leveraged this on purpose, to make the political discourse so disgusting no normal person wants to engage.49 And it's not just MAGA trolls, the liberal influencer accounts provide a steady stream of gross superfluous unpleasant content too.
I don't think anyone should stay silent because they "don't have a platform". But you have to be strategic and sensible. I've said before: If the baddies can pay endless money to promote influencers to repeat lies with massive botnets & troll farms - how well can regular folks compete on that landscape? The answer isn’t to stay on social media shouting repeatedly into the void. A more effective instruction would maybe be to have people write elected reps who actually make the laws, regulations, and have to at least somewhat listen to the people who vote for them, or don’t. Social media is NOT a town square. Your congressperson is not reading everyone's bluesky feed, and savvy people know this isn't how you engage politically.50 Elected representatives are reading their contact mail and their staffers notice you, and maybe the media too, if you're at their office, maybe with a picketing sign. Politicians are listening to the people who request meetings with them – and too often that's so-called "business leaders" and business interest groups.
I'm not saying don't post on the internet, clearly it's a tool of communication. By all means get your thoughts out there – preferably diversify on various platforms. But it's not a town square.51 It's not even as reliable for communication of information as the postal service since social media platform communication can be deliberately tampered with, manipulated, intercepted, suppressed,52 excluded from searches,53 or neglected and not go anywhere. The USPS was at least set up deliberately to facilitate freedom of the press and privacy of personal correspondence.54 There are no such guarantees or even expectations with the platforms run by tycoons with their own personal agendas and power.
Tips 9 and 10 were actually the ones that made the most sense and really the author ought to have started with them – "Prepare for a long fight" and "Don’t give up hope - Our best political movements were hopeful." I'll agree with that. It's mentioned that "Donald Trump and the Republicans want you to give up hope. Despair and cynicism fuel their movement." Which is true, but even on this, I want to caution people that they may hate you, but they love each other.55 They do indeed have a hopeful agenda that's not cynical – but for some it is often hypocritical.56 There's no reason to think that you can win them over with hope – they already have their own hope. But maybe if you stop touching the poo on social media, you maybe can win over some of those people who have thought politics is too dirty. Just a thought.
References:
Don’t wait for everybody before speaking up. Chloe Humbert Aug 11, 2023 Historically, change has actually come driven by a small portion of people dedicated to action who are the first to speak up and push things along. And then later after the fact there’s more broad support.
Elected representatives care about what their constituents say. No matter the issue, you are always best off contacting your own elected representatives - that means elected politicians who recognize you as their constituent, and that it’s their job to represent. Chloe Humbert Jan 07, 2025 It’s not worth wasting a lot of time attempting to contact other representatives in other districts or states. No matter if your representatives is terrible or good, Republican or Democrat, disagrees with you or agrees with you… It’s worth contacting your representative speaking as their constituent.
Trickle down economics - the trick tycoons just can’t pull off. The “bringing the jobs” stuff is insulting people into early graves, but the power consumption inequality may be what finishes off a lot of humans. Chloe Humbert Dec 30, 2024 And whenever I have written to Bob Casey about AI seeming like a lot of scam garbage and the horrendous power issues involved with this industry, I’d repeatedly get this canned form response that referenced Turing Tests, and assuring me that tech tycoons had promised to make sure the products were safe without regulation.
S5 EP3 It Don't Mean a Thing if it doesn't have that Pennsylvania Swing Northof48 Nov 8, 2024 As far as AIPAC is concerned Matt Cartwright got a pittance compared to other Pennsylvania congresspeople I mean if you look up how much all the Congresspeople have gotten from something like AIPAC and Matt Cartwright got a pittance compared to all these other people so I wouldn't actually consider that to be a big factor with Matt Cartwright I don't think I have no reason to believe that Rob Bresnahan was particularly like that was a key issue with this I don't know and I could say that like you'd have to look elsewhere for information on that I did not see it being a big thing in any ads or anything local or anything I do know that he was quiet on the issue of Gaza okay so when and I do have friends in my in my district who were frustrated calling his office when they wouldn't say wouldn't make a comment one way or another about that so there is that I can't explain that and I don't know what his views are on that because I did call too right so I can't say how big of an issue that was.
Indivisible - Bird-Dogging Guide: Get Them on The Record Grassroots constituents like you can often get officials to say things they would never reveal in a more structured interview. Such revelations are vital as we turn our attention to the presidential candidates and attempt to learn what they really think, and will really do, about core issues like health care, democracy reform, immigration and climate. Let’s bird-dog our candidates out of the bush and into the light of accountability.
NPR - Over 200,000 subscribers flee 'Washington Post' after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement Updated October 29, 2024 David Folkenflik The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
Thoughts on the Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper. Oh yes I have thoughts. Chloe Humbert Oct 17, 2024 I think some of the choices the Times-Tribune has made in publishing some things have been questionable and potentially dangerous for our community.
Rand Waltzman Disinformation 1010 infographic on Linkedin: Make Them Work for It. Make your targets desire the disinformation you are spreading. Make posts that hint at the existence of valuable information that you are trying to keep from them. You can accomplish this in many ways E.g., hint at the existence of (bogus) proxy servers that contain this valuable information and are "tricky" to get to. Make your targets think they are getting away with something if they manage. You want them to work for it. But not too hard. Balance is important. Just how much work is too much depends on your target audience. Some will be more skilled than others. You must provide the appropriate challenge level. Another approach is to convince your targets you are an idiot for trying to hide information in a naïve way. This will give your targets a false feeling of superiority over you that you can exploit. They will want to brag to their friends and further spread your disinformation. Remember, you can equally well leverage your target's skill as well as the lack thereof exploiting the appropriate psychological characteristics.
A Problem from Hell, 2003, by Samantha Power As was true with previous genocides these US officials were making potent political calculations about what the US public would abide. Officials simultaneously believed the American people would oppose US military intervention in central Africa and feared that the public might support intervention if they realized a genocide was underway. As always they looked to op-ed pages of elite journals, popular protest, and congressional noise to gauge public interest. No group or groups in the United States made Clinton administration decision makers feel or fear that they would pay a political price for doing nothing to save Rwandans. Indeed all the signals told them to steer clear. Only after the genocide would it become possible to identify an American constituency for action. At the height of the war in Bosnia the op-ed pages of America’s newspapers had roared with indignation. During the 3 month genocide in Rwanda they were silent, ignorant, and prone fatalistically to accept the futility of outside intervention.
Commemorating Earth Day with a Little Legislative History Jonathan Coppess Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics University of Illinois April 22, 2022 farmdoc daily (12):55 Forged in the wake of an oil spill and by the flames of a burning river, history demarks the origins of the modern environmental on the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, amid the troubles and turmoil of the Vietnam War at the end of the tumultuous 1960s. Within the first four years of its existence, the movement achieved an unparalleled, impressive legislative and political trifecta. The National Environmental Protection Act (1970), the Clean Air Act (1970), and the Clean Water Act (1972) were all enacted by strong, bipartisan votes across two congresses. In addition, President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 with Congressional acquiescence.
Politico - Les Moonves: Trump's run is 'damn good for CBS' By ELIZA COLLINS 02/29/2016 06:15 PM EST The 2016 campaign is a "circus," he remarked, but "Donald's place in this election is a good thing." "Man, who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? ... The money's rolling in and this is fun," Moonves went on. "I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”
Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael - Our Broken Media System in the Era of Trump & How It Could Be Fixed w/ Victor Pickard Jan 18 2024 “We designed our public media from the get go to be relatively economically and politically weak. Those are structural problems that can be fixed. That's not inevitable that that's how our public media needs to look like. And that's why in a lot of my work I float these more kind of ambitious even utopian plans for building out an entirely new public media system that I think ultimately is something we're going to have to do if we're going to have any sort of especially local journalism which the market will never support. There is no commercial future for a lot of the kinds of journalism that we actually need to have a healthy democratic society. So we're going to have to find some kind of public model to do that but again one that I I would argue must be radically democratized, devolved down to the local level so that you have local ownership and control.” – Victor Pickard
Psychology Today - Giving Up: Informational Learned Helplessness. It's exhausting when it’s hard to figure out what is true and what is false. December 23, 2021 | Susan A. Nolan, Ph.D., and Michael Kimball, Reviewed by Jessica Schrader The plodding repetition of conspiratorial lies can lead to “cognitive exhaustion.” But it goes deeper than that. Peter Pomerantsev, author of the book This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, popularized the concept of “censorship by noise” in which governments “create confusion through information—and disinformation—overload.” In time, people become overwhelmed, and even cognitively debilitated, by the “onslaught of information, misinformation and conspiracy theories until [it] becomes almost impossible to separate fact from fiction, or trace an idea back to its source.” And so “censorship by noise,” particularly common in regions governed autocratically, leads people to experience crushing anxiety coupled with a markedly weakened motivation to fact-check anything anymore. They may then “like” or share information without critical review because they lack the energy and motivation to take the extra steps to check it out.
First NATO scientific meeting on Cognitive Warfare (France) — 21 June 2021 "The impairment of cognitive processes has two harmful consequences: i) Contextual maladaptation, resulting in errors, missed gestures or temporary inhibition; and ii) Lasting disorder, which affects the personality and transforms its victim by locking him or her into a form of behavioral strangeness or inability to understand the world. In the first case, it is a question of causing transitory consequences, circumscribed by a particular critical environment (cf. Figure 4-1 Figure 4-1 is a drawing that could be reversible a rabbit or a duck depending on how you look at it. ). The second concerns the transformation of the decision-making principles of individuals who then become disruptors or responsible for erroneous actions, or even non-action (cf. Figure 4-2 Figure 4-2 is A soldier sitting on a stump thinking with hand on chin and rifle at side, and the caption says A Thinker: what about the inhibition of action due to indecision or cognitive overload.)."
Madore KP, Wagner AD. Multicosts of Multitasking. Cerebrum. 2019 Apr 1;2019:cer-04-19. PMID: 32206165; PMCID: PMC7075496. In fact, multitasking is almost always a misnomer, as the human mind and brain lack the architecture to perform two or more tasks simultaneously. By architecture, we mean the cognitive and neural building blocks and systems that give rise to mental functioning. We have a hard time multitasking because of the ways that our building blocks of attention and executive control inherently work. To this end, when we attempt to multitask, we are usually switching between one task and another. The human brain has evolved to single task.
North of 48 podcast interview about the election. I went on this Canadian podcast to talk about the recent US election. Chloe Humbert Nov 09, 2024 Note: this is just maybe 10% of my thoughts on the election as a garden variety progressive Appalachian genX lady in Scranton, Pennsylvania, as it focused mainly on the loss of my progressive Congressperson Matt Cartwright.
PA Democratic Party politicians celebrate corporate giveaway. Less than 10 days after having to deny being elitists who’ve abandoned the working class, to defend the party’s historic defeats they announce millions of taxpayer money being given to a literal bank. Chloe Humbert Nov 18, 2024 If we had participatory budgeting here, this would never happen. I guarantee you nobody regardless of their political leaning would vote for giving taxpayer money to a bank. Only people with privilege and power make these decisions for mysterious reasons we can only speculate make sense for them. This is “trickle down economics” being pushed by Democrats.
Residents contest Geisinger expansion in Scranton zoning ordinance By Haley O'Brien | WVIA News Published April 24, 2023 at 5:01 PM EDT State Representative Bridget Kosierowski urged City Council to put healthcare first. "It is going to change the makeup of neighborhood, and I understand that," she said. "But the risk of losing accessibility to good, quality, healthcare I believe is much larger."
r/Scranton • November 15, 2024 zorionek0 LackaWINNING Profile Badge for the Achievement Top 1% Poster Top 1% Poster - Fidelity Bank to expand HQ, revitalize downtown Scranton with $25M project (Reply) thebestswimmer • November 17, 2024 "It's pathetic. My reply is at the bottom. Just look at indeed and other jobs sites -- Fidelity is always hiring. They cut their employees incentives by 80% in the past year for opening certain types of accounts. I know this because of someone who worked at one of their branches. Instead of $25 for one account, they cut it down to $5. And you have to reach a higher amount now (if I'm not mistaken) to get those incentives. I hope this greedy bank fails."
Fetterman Abandons Pledge to Protect Dreamers - AFL-CIO Releases Deportation Defense Guide - Shakir Outlines Bold DNC Plan Mike Elk Jan 22, 2025 Given that his wife had arrived here as a child of an undocumented mother, Fetterman always promised to never vote for a bill that would hurt the so-called “Dreamers,” immigrant youth, who arrived undocumented as minors and were backed by DACA. However, not only did Fetterman vote for the bill, but he co-sponsored it with Republican Alabama Senator Kate Britt, a close friend of his, who visited him while he was hospitalized last year.
Democracy Americana The Anti-Liberal Left Has a Fascism Problem Prominent leftwing intellectuals are allowing their singular, disdain-driven focus on (neo-) liberalism to completely distort their perspective on the Right THOMAS ZIMMER MAY 24, 2024 I’d be very interested to find out what happened here. Maybe I missed something, but I couldn’t find an acknowledgment anywhere in the anthology that the selected pieces might have been altered and updated. In the credits, it merely says “reprinted.” The update, clearly, has been made to reflect that something major had happened in between the original publication and the reprint, something that in many ways directly contradicted a key argument. Robin’s overall assessment in 2021 was that Liberals needed to calm down since the Right wasn’t ever exercising its power in the way Liberals decried, the liberal doomsday scenarios were never coming true. But in Dobbs, the Right did exercise power in a dramatic way, stripping half the population of bodily autonomy and equal rights.
“In today’s corporate culture major PR firms promote crisis management as a necessary business expense. Whenever something bad happens to a corporation, often its first move is not to deal with the actual problem, but to manage the negative perception caused by that problem.” — Toxic Sludge is Good for You, documentary, 2002
Foreign Policy Magazine - The Only People Panicking Are the People in Charge. The public can handle disasters better than lying leaders can. By Malka Older - September 16, 2020, 6:16 PM It’s a staple trope of movies and TV shows. But there are more than 50 years of disaster studies demonstrating that people don’t do that in real life. As early as 1954, E.L. Quarantelli, who later founded the Disaster Research Center, had enough data to suggest that panic after a disaster was “uncommon.” Studies of disasters—from hurricanes to snowstorms isolating people in highway rest stops to the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11—show that the public does not panic, does not run screaming, and typically reacts in a reasonably rational way. In fact, studies show that people tend to react in highly social ways after a catastrophe; the first assistance to victims almost invariably comes from nonprofessionals, and affected people tend to come together and organize to improve their situation. My own anecdotal experience as a disaster responder supports this conclusion.
AP - Loyalty tests and MAGA checks: Inside the Trump White House’s intense screening of job-seekers By MATTHEW LEE, AAMER MADHANI and JILL COLVIN Updated 12:43 PM EST, January 25, 2025 Negative social media posts have been enough to derail applications. Those seeking jobs have been told they will have to prove their “enthusiasm” to enact Trump’s agenda and have been asked when their moment of “MAGA revelation” occurred. One federal employee said they briefly considered buying Trump’s crypto meme coin in case the president’s team asked about their voting record. The intense screening has led some federal workers to question whether Trump’s team cares more about loyalty than competence.
It Could Happen Here, podcast - About That Nazi Salute January 23, 2025 We could perhaps look at the airport protests from the first months of the original Trump administration, or masses of people, including a very young Mia who had not quite realized what gender she was, occupied airports all across the country to stop the implementation of Trump's Muslim ban by physically forcing the government to release the people had detained in the airports. The power of those protests was that they directly located the site where power was operating the airport and took them. The weakness of those protests was that people went home, and they went home because they had been told time and time and time again by the ACLU and by other legal organizations that the fight was over, that they could leave, and that the Muslim Bans would be defeated by the courts. Most of you lived through it. Some of you remember the Muslim ban was never defeated by the courts. It could possibly have been defeated in those moments, it wasn't. The contest was taken away from the real sight of power and into a domain largely ruled by the ruling class.
Mother Jones January 24, 2025 Trump’s Revamped Muslim “Travel Ban” Has Another Target: Free Speech on Campus - “We know—based on statements that have been made by Trump and others—that new provisions will be used to target pro-Palestine protesters.” Sophie Hurwitz Buried in the executive order is the fulfillment of another vow from the campaign: an attempt to find a way to easily deport pro-Palestine demonstrators. While much of the new order mimics the old Muslim “travel ban” Trump signed on the first day of his first term in 2017, this order is more neutral on its face. This time, Trump is not explicitly naming specific countries to target, but asking agencies to submit a report within 60 days outlining countries from which to suspend immigration. And then, tucked at the bottom, is a new provision that appears to explicitly single out new immigrants on ideological grounds—in particular, those on student visas who participate in protests against Israel’s war on Gaza.
one word: manchinema
The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide to the New Way of War by Mark Galeotti – Feb 2023 Outsourcing goes beyond direct warfare and into non-kinetic contests. This century has also seen the explosion of the gig economy. Individual freelancers and temporary workers sometimes recruited directly, sometimes through online platforms or third party matchmakers. It may seem ridiculous to draw comparisons with the cycle courier that brings you your pizza. But this is less fanciful than might appear in an age when conflicts may be fought through the medium of carefully curated newspaper articles highlighting a grievance or attacking a government. And when online influencers can pivot from hyping a hair product to pushing a political cause. This may be the age of multinational corporations, mass social movements, and powerful governments, but a coincidence of technological, social, and political change means that it is also the age of the individual, and many of them are for hire. Suddenly the world is full of people who seem to be doing the work of states. Yet not as direct employees, nor even out of ideological commitment or patriotic passion. Journalists hired to write hit pieces. Scholars saying the right things for a grant. Think tanks producing recommendations to order. There may no geopolitical equivalent of uber yet, but lobbying, strategic communications – were I a cynic I would suggest this is what we call propaganda when we do it ourselves – and similar consultancy and service companies often act as the middlemen.
Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael - Our Broken Media System in the Era of Trump & How It Could Be Fixed w/ Victor Pickard Jan 18 2024 “We designed our public media from the get go to be relatively economically and politically weak. Those are structural problems that can be fixed. That's not inevitable that that's how our public media needs to look like. And that's why in a lot of my work I float these more kind of ambitious even utopian plans for building out an entirely new public media system that I think ultimately is something we're going to have to do if we're going to have any sort of especially local journalism which the market will never support. There is no commercial future for a lot of the kinds of journalism that we actually need to have a healthy democratic society. So we're going to have to find some kind of public model to do that but again one that I I would argue must be radically democratized, devolved down to the local level so that you have local ownership and control.” – Victor Pickard
Don't blame the messenger. Don't Wait For Everybody - Episode 015 Chloe Humbert Dec 27, 2024 Every reporter who reports on these people is taking that risk. So just informing you of these things is a risk. It's a risk. Like anybody telling you or warning you about somebody trying to take advantage of you or give you bad information, every time someone gives you that information or attempts to give you that information, we're taking a risk. You know, the journalists, especially independent journalists, they're taking huge risks going up against, you know, big money disinformation and product pushing and whatever.
Anti-Vax Newsletters Pull in $2.5M on Substack — Experts on the platform wary: "My life has been threatened because of disinformation" by Kristina Fiore, Director of Enterprise & Investigative Reporting, MedPage Today February 1, 2022 Popular email platform Substack generates some $2.5 million each year from anti-vaccine newsletters, according to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hateo (CCDH). The controversial physician, Joseph Mercola, DO, runs one of the platform's most popular newsletters. Newsletters from Mercola and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson account for more than $2.2 million of that revenue, according to the report. They rake in a combined $183,000 per month.
Center for Countering Digital Hate - YOUTUBE’S CLIMATE DENIAL DOLLARS. How Google is breaking its promise to stop profiting from ads on climate denial videos. Published: May 03, 2023 Repeated research projects by the Center for Countering Digital Hate show that Google has repeatedly broken its promise not to profit from ads on climate denial content: Tests indicate that 63% of popular climate denial articles still carry Google ads. Google allowed Daily Wire to run ads on searches for “climate change is a hoax”. YouTube videos promoting climate denial with millions of views still have ads.
MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy - Thinker-Fest: Session 1 - Fireside Chat - How to Fix the “Splinternet” Mar 3, 2023 There are also indirect economic benefits. These are people that create content farms so for example there are businesses who are just invested in getting people to click regardless of what side. We see this a lot in the political sphere where you'll have the same company creating extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing content with a goal to monetize the clicks and the revenues. And then you also see hidden benefits and this is where it gets a little tricky these are companies that benefit from the discourse in ways that are slightly removed. So for example the latest conspiracy theory of 2023 which is the “15-minute City” conspiracy which we can talk about that is, that gives a lot of benefit to oil. And that is being perpetuated by Big Oil influencers which I'm sad to say actually exist. And so that is something to look at, that all of these end consumers are being accessed, or being manipulated, by very specific economic agendas.
Hypernormalisation Documentary, 2016, by Adam Curtis.”The liberals were outraged at Trump. But they expressed their outrage in cyberspace so it had no effect. Because the algorithms made sure that they only spoke to people who already agreed with them. Instead ironically their waves of angry messages and tweets benefitted the large corporations who ran the social media platforms. one online analyst put it simply — angry people click. It meant that the radical fury that came like waves across the internet no longer had the power to change the world. Instead it became a fuel that fed the systems of power making them ever more powerful.”
The grass is not that much greener on the blue sky. Don't Wait For Everybody - Episode 013 Chloe Humbert Nov 20, 2024 There's not an internet of things. There's an internet of fakes. And... I see a lot of people already passing around block lists. And let me tell you, block lists are dicey because - be cautious about taking on people's block lists. What I found out is that's the way that they shadowban people, they don't want heard. That is a real thing. That's not made up. And in fact, I believe that that's why Elon Musk wanted to get rid of the block button on Twitter, because it's, I'm not sure if it's an algorithm thing that's set up purposely or if it just is a natural outcome of the block function itself. But what happens is, is if enough people block the same account, it essentially squelches that person's ability to say or get heard or get seen, whatever. So now what I saw, and this was several, several years ago, was that there were, there was somebody who was, I don't think that the person who did it was doing it maliciously, maybe. I don't know. It's hard to say. But they distributed a block list on Twitter saying that you know, this is the list you can pre-block essentially Trumpy MAGA trolls. So that's what it was advertised for. Well, when I took it on, I found out that it blocked, progressive people who were not MAGA at all, were not Trump-associated at all, and who were, these people were Democrats, progressives, they were, in one case, it was somebody who was an actual union person
Selling followers where the skies are blue Sketchy follower sales sites are (unsurprisingly) expanding to Bluesky Conspirador Norteño Jan 24, 2025 As Bluesky approaches the 30 million user mark, operators of services that sell bogus social media engagement have been escalating their attempts to take advantage of the relatively new platform’s increasing popularity. Purveyors of bogus follows, likes, and shares require large armies of accounts in order to ply their trade, and these accounts can often be detected by their behavior.
What Is a Watering Hole Attack? – Proofpoint.com A watering hole attack is a targeted attack designed to compromise users within a specific industry or group of users by infecting websites they typically visit and luring them to a malicious site. The end goal is to infect the user’s computer with malware and gain access to the organization’s network. Watering hole attacks, also known as strategic website compromise attacks, are limited in scope as they rely on an element of luck. They do however become more effective, when combined with email prompts to lure users to websites.
AP - Americans are exhausted by political news. TV ratings and a new AP-NORC poll show they’re tuning out By DAVID BAUDER and LINLEY SANDERS Updated 9:00 AM EST, December 26, 2024 “People are mentally exhausted,” said Aunallah, 45, of San Diego. “Everyone knows what is coming and we are just taking some time off.” Television ratings — and now a new poll — clearly illustrate the phenomenon. About two-thirds of American adults say they have recently felt the need to limit media consumption about politics and government because of overload, according to the survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Smaller percentages of Americans are limiting their intake of news about overseas conflicts, the economy or climate change, the poll says. Politics stand out.
The New Yorker Magazine: The Real Paranoia-Inducing Purpose of Russian Hacks. By Adrian Chen, July 27, 2016 The real effect, the Russian activists told me, was not to brainwash readers but to overwhelm social media with a flood of fake content, seeding doubt and paranoia, and destroying the possibility of using the Internet as a democratic space. One activist recalled that a favorite tactic of the opposition was to make anti-Putin hashtags trend on Twitter. Then Kremlin trolls discovered how to make pro-Putin hashtags trend, and the symbolic nature of the action was killed. “The point is to spoil it, to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it,” the opposition activist Leonid Volkov told me.
January 19, 2024 - Professor Delivers URGENT WARNING Before Inauguration | The Weekend Show - MeidasTouch Jennifer Mercieca: “Social media platforms are not public spaces they are not used by officials to make decisions about policies that are affecting the public, right there's no way for us to directly communicate to politicians where they are listening to us and we know that they are and to have you know the sort of give and take there's the illusion of that right there's the promise of that we were we were told we were going to get that out of you know the sort of techno optimism of the 90s and the early 2000s but that's not what it it became it became this algorithmically controlled outrage machine” Anthony Davis: “and a business as well I mean it's a profitable business” Jennifer Mercieca: “big business right and so we think we're doing democracy when we go onto these platforms and we express our opinions but it would be much better for us to go out into the street and do that, that would be the kind of protected speech that you know the Constitution First Amendment protects it would be the kind that people pay attention to um and that is meaningful right gathering with others to express ourselves what we do on social media it isn't - it isn't the same thing.”
Shadowbanning on tumblr - wat3rm370n Jan 18, 2025 It had happened to me for several months I didn’t have that much engagement for awhile. And then someone told me that when they searched for tags I was using, and my posts tagged with them were not found in search. I then found some old posts of literally photos of Jupiter and a kitten gif that were flagged as “sexually explicit” – so I sent a support ticket to tumblr, and they confirmed that I was indeed shadow banned by the spam filters and they unlocked my account from that status at that point, and engagement exponentially increased almost immediately.
The Shadowbanning of Nicolas Smit Chloe Humbert Mar 26, 2024 Search Ban This type of ban causes your tweets to be hidden from the search results entirely, no matter whether the quality filter is turned on or off. This behavior includes hashtags as well.
USPS - Introduction to Postal Facts The United States Postal Service has a storied history, familiar to many. It began with the Second Continental Congress and Benjamin Franklin in 1775. It continued when the U.S. Constitution empowered Congress to establish Post Offices and post roads in 1787. Congress exercised those powers with the passage of the Post Office Act of 1792, which made postal services a permanent fixture of the federal government. The act included provisions to facilitate freedom of the press, ensure the privacy of personal correspondence, and expand the nation’s physical infrastructure, all vital to the nation’s growth and prosperity. These principles and objectives endure. While email, the internet and social channels have forever altered information-gathering habits, postal correspondence remains a highly secure and resilient form of communication, providing the American people with a delivery infrastructure vital to national security. (emphasis added)