Joy, despair, worry, hope
Another surreal week in America — and, perhaps, a path forward
Outside my Columbia University journalism classroom last Wednesday night, police helicopters circled the skies and New York City cops arrested more than 70 protesters — including a number of student journalists. (Some student journalists were even temporarily suspended from Columbia or Barnard; the last time I checked, journalism is not a crime or a disciplinary offense.)
Inside my classroom, 16 graduate students talked about the campus turmoil and the underlying global issues. These students — Americans as well as natives of China, England, France and Hungary — were thoughtful, passionate, reasonable and eloquent. Notably, they were respectful of each other’s disparate opinions. Put them in charge, I kept thinking.
It was that kind of week, surreal in its contrasts. Hope and anxiety, joy and despair, lived side by side.
For example, President Trump abruptly fired Carla Hayden, the beloved and respected head of the Library of Congress, the first Black person and first woman to hold that position. His spokeswoman made some absurd noises of explanation about Hayden’s inclusion of inappropriate books for children. Meanwhile, the federal agency that supports libraries and museums is under siege — one of many unfolding disasters.
The next day, I took part in a benefit for the public libraries in Western New York, conversing on a stage in downtown Buffalo with author and longtime New Yorker magazine writer Susan Orlean, who wrote “The Library Book,” a bestseller about the fire that ravaged the Los Angeles Central Library in 1986. Orlean and I talked about the magical influence of libraries in our lives, especially when we were children — and later, for our own children. The capacity crowd was well-read, well-informed and there to support an essential local institution. Put them in charge, I couldn’t help thinking again.
This repeats itself constantly. The problem, of course, is that the joys often are personal and small; the problems are big; they have sweeping impact. Days ago, Trump also fired Shira Perlmutter, the Register of Copyrights. As Congressman Joe Morelle of New York put it: “It’s surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”
Still, I take heart where I can, and try to remember that not all the victories are small.
Checks and balances are showing signs of life, as Ian Bassin, founder of the nonprofit Protect Democracy, noted after an important court decision in North Carolina. A Trump-appointed judge ruled that election results must be certified after a bizarre Republican effort to overturn an election for the state’s Supreme Court. As the New York Times wrote previously: “Never before …. has a losing candidate gained so much legal traction in trying to nullify votes cast by people who followed every instruction given to them.” The Times called it “an acceleration of the right-wing movement challenging the 2020 presidential election.”
But it didn’t work — at least not this time. Bassin, whose organization organized citizens and brought a class-action lawsuit, called it “a huge win for voters and democracy in North Carolina.”
The struggle for voting integrity and voting rights is far from over but let’s take the win.
One more that’s hopeful, and then, the biggest anxiety producer of the week. The good news: As local newspapers have declined, democracy has suffered; there’s a direct tie. In some communities, digital news sites have cropped up to fill the void. So it was a joy to see an intrepid nonprofit, The Baltimore Banner, only a few years old, win a Pulitzer Prize. Read about it here.
The worrisome news: Three prominent political scientists published an opinion piece in the New York Times that identified a way to know when we’ve lost our democracy. They wrote: “We propose a simple metric: the cost of opposing the government. In democracies, citizens are not punished for peacefully opposing those in power. They need not worry about publishing critical opinions, supporting opposing candidates or engaging in peaceful protest because they know they will not suffer retribution from the government. In fact, the idea of legitimate opposition … is a foundational principle of democracy. Under authoritarianism, by contrast, opposition comes with a price.” The whole piece is worth your time, and here’s a gift link.
The upshot: “By that measure, America has crossed the line.” We no longer live in a full democracy. Media self-censorship, which I’ve written about here and elsewhere, is a regrettable part of this. Appeasement is not the answer, the authors note, and there’s been far too much of that.
But, in keeping with my theme here, the small stuff matters. “Individual acquiescence also weakens America’s overall democratic defenses.” And individual strength is crucial.
“So far, the most energetic opposition has come not from civic leaders but from everyday citizens, showing up at congressional town hall meetings or participating in Hands Off rallies across the country.” The authors do point a way forward, involving collective action and strong leadership.
They conclude with a call to action. “America’s slide into authoritarianism is reversible. But no one has ever defeated autocracy from the sidelines.”
With this in mind, I’m proud of the readers of this newsletter because I know you are doing what you can, in many ways. Thank you for doing so and for continuing to care about these issues, and for supporting this newsletter. (I’m also appreciative of the guidance you gave me in the comments last week after I asked about subject matter and frequency; I take your views to heart.)
So, hang in there and keep the faith. Support the libraries; support local news. And, as always, let me know what gives you hope and what keeps you up at night.
Yes we have crossed the line. But we must continue to protest and resist. There is no choice; whatever the cost, it is less than that of capitulation.
“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One definitely hopeful and one potentially hopeful developments, one local and one national, give me hope. Here in Mt. Lebanon, PA, near Pittsburgh, our local library has designated itself as a safe haven for ALL of its books, including those the current administration disapproves. Interesting to imagine the public outcry should any governmental entity try to challenge that decision. The other thing is national, and in it's inception/infancy. It's the movement to run Independent candidates for office in those districts where a Democratic candidate would not stand a chance of running. It appears that most of these candidates would have views significantly different from mainline Democrats and also Republicans. I'm thinking Angus King and Bernie Sanders, and imagining that this might be a very good thing indeed, as it might mean we are developing a multi-party system along European lines, and/or a place where democratic socialist and other progressive voices can be heard and considered seriously by the nation as a whole, rather than demonized and dismissed out of hand.