Our mission is one of action, so beware the internet rabbit hole. (Remember that sitting in chairs helped get us into this mess.) But be informed.
Recent articles:
- A Better Way to Look at Most Every Political Issue, Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, February 11, 2018
- The First White President, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, October 2017
- Meet the Hundreds of Officials Trump Has Quietly Installed Across the Government, Justin Elliott, Derek Kravitz, and Al Shaw, ProPublica, March 8, 2017
- Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence, Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo, The New York Times, Feb 14, 2017
- Trump’s Radical Anti-Americanism, Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, Feb 13, 2017
- Trial Balloon for a Coup?, Yonatan Zunger, Medium, Jan 29, 2017
- Orwell’s “1984” and Trump’s America, Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, Jan 27, 2017
- I Was Trained in the Culture Wars in Home School, Awaiting Someone Like Mike Pence as the Messiah, Autostraddle, Kieryn Darkwater, Jan 26, 2017
- What We Actually Lose When the USDA and EPA Can’t Talk to the Public, Kendra Pierre-Louis, Popular Science, Jan 24, 2017
- President Trump Wants to Kill These 17 Federal Agencies and Programs. Here’s What They Actually Cost (and Do), Taylor Tepper, Money, Jan 24, 2017
- On Punching Nazis, Ken White, Popehat, Jan 21, 2017
- How to Culture Jam a Populist in Four Easy Steps, Andrés Miguel Rondón, Caracas Chronicles, Jan 20, 2017
- How social media is crippling democracy, and why we seem powerless to stop it, Jason Perlow, ZDNet Tech Broiler, Jan 19, 2017
- An Emerging and Very Pointed Democratic Resistance, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker, Jan 18, 2017
- From Headline to Photograph, A Fake News Masterpiece, Scott Shane, The New York Times, Jan 18, 2017
- The Observer view on president-elect Donald Trump, Observer editorial, The Guardian, January 14, 2017
- A Letter from Flyover Country, Pete Buttigieg, Medium, Dec 17, 2016
- None Dare Call it Treason, Marty Kaplan, Moyers & company, Dec 13, 2016
- Now is the Time to Talk about What We’re Actually Talking About, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The New Yorker, Dec 2, 2016
- Covering Politics in a “Post-Truth” America, Susan B. Glasser, The Brookings Institution, Dec 2, 2016
- Washington Post Editor Marty Baron Has a Message to Journalists in the Trump Era, Vanity Fair, Nov 30, 2016
- A Yale history professor’s powerful, 20-point guide to defending democracy under a Trump presidency, Timothy Snyder, Quartz, Nov 28. 2016
- Obama Reckons with a Trump Presidency, David Remnick, The New Yorker, Nov 28, 2016
- Why I Left White Nationalism, R. Derek Black, New York Times Sunday Review, Nov 26, 2016
- An Insider’s View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America, Forsetti’s Justice, AlterNet, Nov 22, 2016
- The Right Way to Resist Trump, Luigi Zingales, The New York Times, Nov 18, 2016
- The End of Identity Liberalism, Mark Lilla, The New York Times, Nov 16, 2016
- Secret Facebook groups become Trump-era activist tools: ‘This is a wake-up call’, Joanna Walters, The Guardian, Nov 14, 2016
- After the Election: What a Pathetic Thing is Decadence, James Fallows, The Atlantic, Nov 14, 2016
- The Alt-Right Hails Its Victorious God-Emperor, Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, Nov 12, 2016
- Surveillance Self-Defense Against the Trump Administration, Micah Lee, The Intercept, Nov 12, 2016
- We Have To Create A Culture That Won’t Vote For Trump, Ijeoma Oluo, The Establishment, Nov 11, 2016
- What So Many People Don’t Get about the U.S. Working Class, Joan C. Williams, Harvard Business Review, Nov 10, 2016
- Statement from PRA (Political Research Associates) on the Election, Tarso Luís Ramos, Nov 9, 2016
- No, We Won’t Calm Down: Tone Policing Is Just Another Way to Protect Privilege, Robot Hugs, Everyday Feminism, Dec 7, 2015
“The Complete Anti-Fascist Reading List” from AntiFascistNews.net
The Lessons of History:
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. –George Santayana
- Should We Even Go There? Historians on Comparing Fascism to Trumpism, Isabel Best, The Guardian, Dec 1, 2016
- What Those Who Studies Nazis Can Teach Us About the Strange Reaction to Donald Trump, Shawn Hamilton, The Huffington Post, Dec 19, 2016
- Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflicts, Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, International Security, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Summer 2008), pp. 7–44, 2008
- New York Times in 1922: “Hitler’s Anti-Semitism Was Not So Genuine”, CBS News, Feb 11, 2015
- Hitler in Bavaria, New York Times, Nov 21, 1922
The Liberal Activist bookshelf:
- 1984, George Orwell
- All the President’s Men, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,
- Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi
- Becoming A Citizen Activist: Stories, Strategies, and Advice for Changing Our World, Nick Licata
- Civil Disobedience, Henry Thoreau
- Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer
- Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, George Lakoff
- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
- Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–1949, David Cesarani
- Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for a New Political Age, David Cortright
- Here Be Dragons, James Baldwin
- Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance
- Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, Rebecca Solnit
- How to Be a Muslim: An American Story, Haroon Moghul
- How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
- Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus, Matt Taibbi
- It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis
- Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr.
- Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy, Jeffrey Feldman
- Patagonia’s Tools for Grassroots Activists: Best Practices for Success in the Environmental Movement, Nora Gallagher and Lisa Myers (editors)
- Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice, Bill Browder
- Rules For Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, Saul D. Alinsky
- The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
- The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
- The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, 1951
- The Plot Against America, Philip Roth
- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert
- They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era In America’s Racial Justice Movement, Wesley Lowery
- What We Do Now: Standing Up for Your Values in Trump’s America, edited by Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians
- White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, Carol Anderson
- White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Story of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg
(Fantastic list of stuff for deeper dives at Public Books’ Trump Syllabus 2.0)
Movies and TV (to make you think, after a long day of activism):
- A Face in the Crowd, Elia Kazan (dir), 1957
- Gaslight, George Cukor (dir), 1944
- I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck (dir), 2017
- The Manchurian Candidate, John Frankenheimer (dir), 1962
- Yes, Minister, BBC, 1980–84
The Liberal Activist Toolkit 