Democracy, dictatorship, and the dangers of confusing strategy and tactics—LBW 6.7

Hi everybody and welcome to Living between Worlds for July 16, 2025. I'm Gil Friend. I'm CEO of Natural Logic and an ontological coach, and together with my co pilot, Ken Homer, and our special guest. Really glad to have you here today, as Living between worlds as we are. Look, despair is loose in the land, right? We've heard that from climate doomsters for the last year or two, even from the great David Suzuki last week. And now democracy doomsters thinking that it's over, that we've lost, that it's irretrievable. And look, it's dangerous. It's clearly dangerous and it's scary. Project 2025 is being played out. Last time I checked last week, 42% of the measures had already been implemented. These folks are moving fast and breaking things. But resistance is not futile. We may be scared, you may be scared, I'm scared. You may not know what to do. But there's a long history of resistance toppling authoritarian regimes around the world. And there's a catalog of some, what, 200 successful methods of that resistance. So today let's explore that catalog together and the potential for strategic, consistent, non violent, non cooperation and the role that can play in what Benjamin Franklin reminded us was a republic, if we can keep it. Our guest today is Don Goldmacher, a retired community physician who ran Contra Costa County Mental Health Service in the early 1980s. Don is famously known as the doctor who almost shut down the Woodstock festival back in 1969. He's been a political activist since the 1960s. He was a leading figure in the Medical Committee for Human Rights, which I know some of you may remember, the medical arm of the civil rights and anti war movement in the 1960s. And he's been making award winning documentary films since 1975 that focus on social justice issues. Don's first film, do no Harm, exposed the marketing practices of the pharmaceutical industry back in 1975. Nothing new under the sun. Probably his most important film, heist who Stole the American Dream, is now being reissued and will be available for free on social media platforms by the end of July. Don and I have been friends since 1980 when we served on the National Committee of the Citizens Party running ecologist Barry Commoner for president, and I am glad to introduce you to him today. Don, take it away.

Thank you, Gil. Nice to see everybody here today in a moment in our country's history that we could not even have imagined a few months ago. So, in the words of a famous tactician, what is to be done? So where to Begin. So history shows us, and recent research reinforces that non violent resistance movements are capable of toppling authoritarian regimes. Erica Chenoweth is one of those leading researchers. I do not have a reference for her in the, in the, in the chat, but you'll be able to find her online. She's gotten a lot of airplane the last couple of months on all the various podcasts. So what does it mean to have a non violent resistance movement? Well, guess what? We had a very famous one here in the United States. It was called the civil Rights movement. And it began with one African American woman refusing to move to the back of the bus in the early 1950s. Her name was Rosa Parks. And she was not accidentally doing that. She was deliberately there. And that was the launch of what would become the civil Rights movement on a grand scale in the South. Okay, so let's look at that movement for a moment because it's our most famous example here in this country and one that we should all be very, very familiar with. And if we're not, it would be good to spend some time reading up on it and looking at all the documentaries about it. Now, that civil rights movement, of course, was based upon what Gandhi had done in India. That's where really non violent resistance movements had their origins and most famously forced the British Empire to relinquish India. So what I want to do today is a couple of simple things, because there's a lot of confusion out there right now about what we're all doing. And what we're all doing is trying to stop this regime from consolidating further authoritarian and dictatorial power. But people often confuse what is called strategy, what is called tactics. So let's look at the civil rights movement for a moment. What was their grand strategy? Their grand strategy was to get rid of apartheid in the United States, otherwise known as Jim Crow. That was the domestic term for it, but it was apartheid. It meant separate but equal. And that was in place for 80 years. So the grand strategy was, let's get rid of apartheid. The key element that they used, which was a sub strategy of that grand strategy, was an economic boycott that would force one city in the south to get rid of their apartheid transportation system. And that was Montgomery, Alabama. So when a sustained economic boycott for almost 18 months by the entire black community of Birmingham, Alabama forced the city of Birmingham to say, okay, we give up. So that was a huge win for the civil rights movement. One of the other key strategies was non cooperation. What does non cooperation mean? It means you are not going to Cooperate with the regime in whatever ways you can figure out to not cooperate. So what did they do in addition to this bus boycott throughout the South? You had sit ins. Now that was new. What did that mean? It meant that young people went into Woolworth stores throughout the south and just sat at the counter demanding service and refused to leave. And we know what happened because we all saw the pictures, we all saw the video, the film footage on the news. That was again, an essential element. That was a sub strategy of the grand strategy of getting rid of apartheid. And that and the key theme there is called non cooperation. Okay, so all of these elements are described in great detail in a book, though I did not put in the chat yet, but Gil will show it in the slides in a few minutes. It's called From Dictatorship to Democracy. Now, when Donald Trump was elected in 2016, a small group of friends and family said, oh my God, what are we going to do? So we started to meet, we started to talk, and we somehow stumbled on this book. And we read this book in great detail because this is the manual for non violent resistance movements around the world. It was written in the early 1990s by Gene Sharp, is available for free as a PDF. It's also available as a book which can, which you can buy, but not on Amazon, hopefully, because that's part of our strategy of non cooperation. We will not, we will not subscribe to anything on Amazon. So the book describes in great detail how you put together a non violent resistance movement in an already existing authoritarian regime with the goal of toppling that regime. And it's, it spells out all of the elements I just described here, but a great deal more. So I commend that to you very heartily. Okay, so let's take a few minutes and look at our current situation of our movement here in the United States. I'm sure everybody on this call has already been to one or more protest rallies. And that's good. So what's a protest rally? It is one of 200 tactics that you can employ to challenge a, an authoritarian regime. But it is a tactic, it is not a strategy. Okay. And we'll go into that in a moment when we get to the slides that Gil has up. So let's look at what we have. We have to acknowledge that we do not have a united front at the current moment that is effectively resisting the regime. We have a number of individual movements, one of them led by Reverend Barber, which is a continuation of the movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King of the Poor People's Campaign. We have Indivisible that has been responsible for several nationwide mass demonstrations. We have an upcoming demonstration tomorrow led by yet another group, mainly black led. We have a democratic socialist group in New York City who just demonstrated the capacity to win an electoral victory. And the electoral arena is one sub strategy. We have various groups focusing on the midterm elections next year. We have groups like the ACLU and others who are fighting in the courts to stave off the authoritarian overreach. So when you look at all of these organizations and all of these actions, what we see is we don't have a grand strategy, and we do not yet have what I would call a united front, which is a term back from the 1930s, you know, more currently. We do not have a unified liberation movement that will free us of this authoritarian takeover that is, know, accelerating by the day. So that's the task of putting together such an organizational framework, which is going to take time because Honestly, today is July 16th. This crew has been in office since January 20th, and only a handful of people really foresaw that this was going to happen and the pace at which it is taking place. So the term that I refer to as we look at what's happening and the rapidity with which it is happening is this is a blitzkrieg. It's totally modeled off of what the Nazis did as they ran into country after country and rapidly took over. So what we're, what we're seeing here is that the Trump a Project 2025 playbook is rapidly being put into place so that you don't know where to resist first. Right, okay, let's fight here. Okay, let's fight there. Okay, Let they have a strategy and we don't. And they're putting their strategy into place every single day. And I called Donald Trump a mafia monarch, imperialist, because that's the best way for me to understand what he and his regime are up to. They act like a Mafia, he acts like he wants to be a king, and he is certainly an imperialist. So all of those titles for him certainly describe accurately what he's doing and what his regime is doing. I think. Now, Gil, I'd like to switch over to your slides so we can now look at what we're talking about.

Well, let's start here, Don, because this goes to. Right. What you said about Trump and his crew in Project 2025 don't just have a strategy, they have a grand strategy.

Exactly.

And, and I think, you know, one of the points that you've wanted to make here Is the relationship between these three, between tactics, strategy and grand strategy, and how all too often our movements are stuck in tactics and we're facing an opponent who has got a grand strategy that they are playing out fairly successfully. So take it away.

Right, so what is our grand strategy? We haven't decided on one yet. Honestly. That dialogue may be taking place in various corners of the country, but we don't have a grand strategy. And as defined again in From Dictatorship to Democracy, as you see on the slide here, what is the overarching plan that aligns strategy toward the overarching goal of toppling this authoritarian regime and restoring a democracy in this country which is every day being eroded very rapidly. So that's how we have to think every day as we plow ahead. Is this in accord with the strategy? Is this. We were where we need to be moving. Now when you start looking at sub strategies, which is here, multiple coordinated tactics to achieve a specific objective that has to do with what's going on in the moment, what is the vulnerability of the regime in the current moment and which sub strategy will work in the moment. So if we look at the current chaos being created by the quote, Epstein files, suddenly you see a vulnerability in this so called authoritarian regime that appears invulnerable. Well, guess what, they're vulner. And part of their own coalition is going nuts. Right. So if we had a grand strategy in place, we would immediately say, okay, let's implement a psychological and political strategy to go after this, and go after this in a way that utilizes all the tools that we would have, which we would call tactics, to make them even increasingly vulnerable, make them look even more ridiculous and show them for the clowns that they are now. Of course, one of the things that the right wing has built over the last many decades is a media apparatus that, quote, progressive, liberal and left forces cannot match in the moment right now. And without that, I would argue, and so would other. So would some other experts on fascism and authoritarianism argue if we don't gear up quickly to be able to challenge that on a daily basis, we're going to lose that messaging war. So in the chat, I've already put three resources for expertise in that arena, because as a media professional, I know the importance and power of media. And I'll give you an example of what I mean. If you turn on any television station or you go to any social media platform, you will see that the right wing conducts itself in the following manner. They are always pushing emotions. What do liberal Democrats do? They talk about facts. Well, guess what? Now I'm speaking as a psychiatrist. If you want to activate people, if you want to get them excited, you must target their emotions. And you've got to spend some time researching what's the emotion that you want to hit. Well, obviously the right wing has been pushing fear a great deal and not just in the United States, which is very important to understand. This is a worldwide right wing movement and they have gained enormous leverage and power because of the social media platforms that this country, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Etc. Have spread throughout the world. Facebook alone is responsible for a number of regimes, a number of democratic countries being overthrown because of its platform. Okay? And I kid you not, there are books written about that. You'll have to research them. I'm not going to give them to you now. Okay? But these social media platforms are enormously dangerous and we have to pay a great deal of attention. So as part of tactics on a daily basis, we have to have an apparatus that's capable of challenging them all the time. Gil, could you scroll down a little bit more on this slide?

No, that's the bottom of the slide.

Well, let's go to the next slide then.

Okay.

Okay. I think this is pretty much self explanatory. Tactics always serve strategy and strategy serves the grand strategy. And again, the specific strategy we engage in is attuned to what is happening in the moment. And that depends on a great deal of other things that we don't, I don't think we have up on the slides, which is what is our capacity, how well trained and how disciplined are our people, how well informed are they in terms of how to think about all of this and how well are they prepared to engage in this struggle, which is not going to be harmless. We have to understand that when people get very serious about all the stuff. I'll get into here in a moment on this slide, we're going to sustain casualties. And people have to understand going in, just like they did in the civil rights movement in this country, that this would not be a walk in the park. This was not. This would not be turning on and turning off your television. Or as Gil Scott Heron famously said, the revolution will not be televised. Okay? So as people get trained up and, and I want to commend indivisible for entering into this fray now of training people up, training a million people over the next few weeks to understand this concept of nonviolent, disciplined movement and what that will entail.

And that training series starts tonight, by the way, with this. Thank you Chat and we'll put it in again.

You put it in the. Yeah, let's put it in the chat. Because anybody who wants to start gearing up, this is your moment. Okay. All right, so six arenas of non cooperation. So now here we're. We're getting into the weeds, so to speak.

Don, before we go into these for a moment, let me just. Let me just go back up a bit to. To this one. Yeah, this one here. Because a lot, to my eyes, and I think to yours and to many others here, a lot of what passes for action on the progressive side of the spectrum here is tactical. Let's do something. But these pieces have to nest together. If the grand strategy is to stop an authoritarian coup in the United States. And Jim Hartsfield questioned whether that's actually the grand strategy, but if that's not. Yeah, the grand strategy is the world that we want. An immediate need is to stop this authoritarian coup that's reversing 70 years of.

Social progress to restore democracy in all the ways that we understand it and.

Have understood it, or restore democracy, Some might say the strategies are, you know, direct action in the streets, legal action in the courts, electoral action to take back, you know, take back House and Congress, House back to take back the courts, et cetera.

The.

And the tactics are the specific pieces within that always being aware of how these things nest together makes for something much more powerful than just tactics and certainly more than performative tactics. Expression of rage may be an important part of the puzzle, but it's not a strategy. So with that, let's come back to the list.

Well, let's just stay with the last sentence that you said, because that's critical to understanding that. Look, we've been out on the streets a number of times now. I myself have organized a group of older people in the building that I live in, and they've loved doing it. And people who have never marched before, demonstrated before, are now out on the streets. The rage and the anger is very high on the part of our side at a level that I've never seen before. Now, that's all a good thing, because now people are emotionally engaged because they realize that stakes are very high. But again, those are tactics. They are not a strategy. So let's look at one thing that is approaching a strategy, a sub strategy, not a grand strategy. It's an economic boycott. And everybody knows what I'm talking about, right? It's called take down Tesla. So every week across the country, tens of thousands of people are in front of Tesla showrooms. Why Are they doing that? I don't need to explain that. We all know why. But it is an economic boycott. It's saying we're going to destroy this brand, which I think has already been destroyed by M. Musk behavior and our reaction to that. And it was a very quick way to implement a strategy without a grand strategy, because everybody was doing their own thing, which is so. So us, we're all doing our own thing going back to the 60s, right? Anyway, so that's been partly successful. Now, Tesla has not been destroyed, but the brand has been seriously damaged. Okay? People are not buying the car anymore for a variety of reasons. And lo and behold, Elon Musk is no longer a friend in the White House. He's no longer doing doge. So that's a victory, ladies and gentlemen, sisters and brothers, that's a victory. And every time we have a victory, we have to acknowledge it and say, huh, let's learn from that, okay? So if you look at this slide that Gil has put up here, one of the arenas of non cooperation is economic boycotts. Lo and behold. So the black community initiated a boycott of Target at essentially the same time. And guess what? Target's first quarter results were down like 5 or 6%. They did not want to say out loud what had happened there, but when they decided they were no longer going to do dei, members of the black community leadership said, huh, okay, well, we're going to tell black people not to shop there anymore. That's an important. This is. This strategic approach to economic boycotts is so terribly important. I wish I could say that I could put up tomorrow, hey, people, don't go to JP Morgan Chase for your banking. Don't go to Wells Fargo, don't go to bank of America, don't go to any of the big banks. Use your local community banks. Or better yet, go to a credit union. Guess what? That would have enormous impact, but we're not ready for that. And that has to be part of a strategic grand strategy. Do we want to go after the banks? For any number of reasons, not the least of which is they're funding global warming, which is one of my other obsessions, right? And I'm sure it's true for many of you on this call. So, okay, political non cooperation. Now, what that would mean in other countries is if a dictatorship or an authoritarian government is already in place and they hold fake elections, you would say, we're not going to participate in the next election because we know it's fraud, right? We're not there yet. Next year we have just the opposite situation here. We have one more opportunity to preserve a part of our democracy which is the electoral arena, which is part of the political arena. And I would argue that we must do everything we can to secure elections across the country so that we at least are capable of taking back the House. Because if we don't do that, we're toast. Okay. So that is part of a grand strategy that we don't have yet. But again, understand, Don, you've, you've, if.

If I could step in here.

Yeah.

So I want to move us into discussion with, with the larger group here.

We can do it at any point.

Yeah, you've said a couple of times we're not ready for that yet. So talk a little bit about what it takes for us to become ready for more sophisticated, more strategic, more coordinated action. What's the, what's the pathway from here to there?

Okay. Number one, I'm going to say I'm not the expert. Okay. Because I've never done it. I've never been in that situation, honestly. Okay. But I have read and studied. Okay. So one of the great pieces, I'm sorry, one of the great arenas for us to look at is Latin America. Latin American countries have gone through these cycles of dictatorships and then popular movements. Dictatorships and popular movements. And I think they're a great way for us to learn about what it means to build a popular movement that's unified and then is determined to take power. Okay. To, to restore democracy and take power and put forward a people's agenda.

Let me ask the question in a different way then. And maybe some other people have some thoughts about how we get there. But how would you recognize that we had that?

Well, you'd have to see. Yeah, I'll address that. You would have to see that various corners of our population, whether they be political movements, non profit organizations, institutions, churches, etc, are prepared to sit down and have these conversations and say, what are we agreed about and what are we prepared to do to make sure that this country becomes a democracy again? And, and part of that planning and discussion has to be, well, if we're successful, what does that look like? What does this country look like after going through this nightmare and then retrieving democracy? And again, that's a conversation that has to happen across a broad front of people. And right now you don't have that. For example, we are not only fighting an authoritarian government, but we are seeing within the, quote, opposition party, they're fighting each other. Okay. So it means that we, we are now Dealing on two fronts. We're fighting an authoritarian government and we're having to do deal with an opposition party that's not playing the role. It's not truly an opposition party, as we have seen in other countries. That's a problem. So that's an example of what would need to happen is to say, hey, you know what? Who's the enemy here? Who's the. Who's the who? Who we. Who do we have to topple in order to begin to even say, okay, we have differences, but here's what we agree about. So all of that has to come together. Like what are you agreed upon and what are you prepared to do to be part of that?

So let me get some hands up. Let me go to the room. David, I'm going to ask you to hold for a second. I want to go to Eleanor Lecane, who has been working on that very point that Don just addressed of working, but within and with and sometimes against the Democratic Party on this democracy in the United States before. Eleanor, before I turn your mic on, one of the things we're going to suggest to you all, I'll suggest it now rather than at the end of the call is to, is to get together with groups of people and talk about this stuff. One possibility would be to take the book From Dictatorship to Democracy that we mentioned, reference and have a reading group together. Read the book together, go through these 198 tactics, think about what works where you are now.

Go through the strategy first.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the book will take you through grand strategy, strategy and tactics and read it and talk about it together. Because if the 40 people here, if half of you do Those groups with five or 10 people and some of those people do those groups with other people, that's one of the ways movements move. Eleanor, to you. And then, David, you're next.

Yeah, that's great. Can I ask we get off the shared screen.

Absolutely.

So we can see each other. Yeah.

You also have a tab at the top of your screen so you could toggle between the slides in the gallery. But.

Cool. Thanks, Gil. And thanks, Dawn. Hey, dawn, great to see you again. I. I think this is perhaps the most important conversation in the country right now. So I thank you both, Gil and Dawn, for doing it. I am very familiar with the Gene Sharp here's the book From Dictatorship to Democracy. It's right here next to me every day. And I knew Gene Sharp. I worked with him some when he was live. He's actually written, he wrote several editions of the book. And it kept getting better and better as he did it. But I think. I think it's a great book. And, Joe, what you were just saying is kind of what I was going to suggest is this group read this book together and think together about what a grand strategy might be. And we can all also do our five to 10 other groups with a book study on this important book. And I am concerned that the reaction to Trump is lost in tactic land. And even like aoc, who I love, is saying, do anything, no matter how small it is, because it's more important to do something than nothing. But we are really hurting for the lack of a grand strategy. But I think there could be a connection between the lack of a unified front and the lack of a grand strategy. If there could be at least some preliminary thinking about the framework of a grand strategy, that might be the way to draw in all the groups and factions that are out there right now to say, we may disagree about this and that, but we all agree on the overarching goal, restore democracy, stop authoritarianism in the United States. But I would love maybe this group actually do a draft of what that grand strategy might look like.

Eleanor, in your experience, has Indivisible done that or not?

What I will say is, no, they don't have a grand strategy per se, along the gene sharp lines, which I think is crucial. But there are conversations going under the radar where leadership of major groups are communicating, cooperating, coordinating, trying to do things in a sequence that are complementary. So there's at least the rudiments, more than there may appear, of coordination behind the scenes. But I think it lacks this kind of very sophisticated grand strategy focus. And if we could get something from this group or a set of groups that might start from here, I mean, I could get it into Indivisible for their consideration. Say this is the kind of strategic thinking we need as a framework for all our strategic and tactical actions.

Yep.

Thank you. In my experience, 40 people can't write a document, but one person could draft a document and circulate it to the 40 and refine it and strengthen it and then roll it out.

Right. I totally agree. And, you know, we. I think starting with this group of 40, it's good. You know, dawn, if you want to, I'll work with you, dawn, or I'll draft it, or Don can draft it. But yes, get a draft out, have this group debate it, discuss it. And there would be significant conversations about what that looks like. But the experience and why this on that.

If anybody here is interested in participating in drafting such documents, say so in the chat and we'll hook you up together.

Yeah.

And keep in mind that the people who use this strategic approach that Gene Sharpening developed it over the course of a lifetime. This reflects an entire lifetime's work. He learned how to speak Norwegian so he could go to Norway after World War II and talk to the non violent resistance activists in Norway to learn from them the strategies and tactics that they use. So he was deeply committed his entire life to the power of non violent resistance to authoritarianism. So the people who used his work, which has been used in many, many countries around the world, to successfully topple authoritarian regimes, they had the intense desire to win because they would die if they didn't, or they would lose their democracy if they didn't. So there's some way still, I think this is blitzkrieg is happening so fast and people are so unaccustomed to, to thinking about the United States in the same breath as authoritarianism. People have to like, be woken out of the sleep. While this is a very serious authoritarian blitzkrieg that is very successful so far and moving rapidly. So we need to be as animated as someone who is under an authoritarian dictatorship to be highly motivated to come to agreement, at least on a framework. And from the framework, we could, I think, beat back these guys.

Eleanor? Thank you. David.

I just want to say one thing before you go to others, one thing that I left out, which is terribly important, which is the heartbeat of our film heist. It's political economy. If you don't understand political economy, then you don't understand how the right wing won. I'll. I'll leave it at that. I can circle back to it later.

You want to see this film because it speaks to a grand strategy. Not starting with Project 2025, but starting back in 1971. That's been being played out with great consistency for 50 plus years. We are seeing the fruits of a lot of work, not a random success from a reality TV star. So be clear on that. I've got David. Thank you for your patience. Susie, Daniel, anybody else, if you'd like to speak, please raise your zoom hand. It'll line you up in cue and sequence and I'll take you in order. David, go ahead.

Thank you, Gil. I want to push back on what Don said and call out what I see as tunnel vision. First off, when you talk about restoring democracy, I didn't see any democracy in 2024. The Democrats to me are not a democratic organization. They certainly show that they're not listening to the public when it came to mounting a candidate. And in addition, they are having abandoned workers. They are a hostile force in terms of imposing corporatocracy. I have a copy of heist I, I've met Don, but Democrats are by no means my idea of the world. I want and, and I, I'd add that during the pandemic the Democrats were actually intolerably authoritarian from my standpoint. And, and as a result, I don't see, I, I don't see you making a break with the status quo, which to me is completely, the status quo is completely unacceptable. We live in a raw ta society of rent seeking financial strategists. This is not acceptable. And so I just want to throw that out there as the, the very convenient us and them totally doesn't work for me.

It's a very important addition, David, and I'm glad that you raised it. And it goes back to what Don was saying a while ago about the united front front strategies of the 1930s where in order to stop Nazism, people who were political opponents came together to join forces against a common opposition that was more important, more dangerous, more significant than the differences they had between them. I share a lot of your critique of the Democratic Party and to my eyes they are a necessary ally in the strategy of right now. There's that, that, you know, stopping as, as who was it said earlier on.

Stopping bringing them back into power is not restoring democracy. That's my point.

Then, you know, then we need to talk about what's your strategy? Not, not now on this call, but at another point, what's your strategy for the trajectory that you want to see us go on?

Don't have one.

Okay. And you know, to my mind, the immediate, it's like if I find somebody on the street hit by a car, bleeding out of their thigh. I'm not going to talk to them about changing their vitamins. I'm going to tourniquet their leg first. And I might lose their leg, but that's what I do first to save their life. And then we'll talk about health building strategies. We're in a desperate moment now here.

Let me respond to both of you, okay.

And then we'll.

It's not either or even I happen to totally agree with you. We can go for hours in my experience with the Democratic Party, but what you have to do is not only have part of your grand strategy being to topple authoritarianism, but what are you going to put in its place. So that's what you're addressing, and I happen to totally agree with you, the Democratic Party is as equally corrupt as the Republican Party, so not as. On as grand a scale, but I can tell you stories.

Okay, Gil, go ahead, David. Thank you, Susie. And then Daniel and then Heather and then Shell. Go ahead, Susie. Good to see you need your mic off.

You're muted.

It's what Ken Homer calls a rookie error.

Okay.

So I, too, could tell you stories about the Democratic Party because Don and I were very involved. So I'm not going to go there. They're terrible. I completely agree with David. I just wanted to make an announcement for people who may not know. Indivisible is really, I think, starting to look at this because they're starting this whole thing beginning this evening, talking about strategy. I'll tell you in a second. And people should sign up. It's called One Million Rising Strategic Non Cooperation.

We put the link in the chat several times. We'll put it in again.

So starting tonight, what do people think about that? That they're beginning to do this? I mean, where did they get this from? Because I'm not in touch with leadership and stuff, so I don't know where this came from, but it clearly they've gotten this message.

Yeah, good. Thanks for reminding. I put it in the chat.

Yeah.

Let's go.

Thank you.

Well, I will just mention that a New York Times columnist had two columns on From Dictatorship to Democracy a few weeks ago. So obviously the word is getting out.

Yeah.

That, you know, flailing is not going to cut it, that's for sure.

Thank you, Daniel. Then, Heather.

Hi. Yeah, thank you guys so much for having this conversation. It's. It's bringing up something that has been on my mind for quite a while now here, which. And I, I love the way that you're framing it about tactics and strategy. It just occurs to me that fighting authoritarianism is not enough. Uh, we need, like, a winning message. We need a message that people are going to get behind. And I, I think that's already been alluded to here, but I just kind of wanted to put that out there of like, yeah, we need a winning message. I think that message is an economic message because people are hurting so much all around this country. We've seen the success of Bernie and AOC's anti oligarchy rallies around the country. How many people are flocking to that. And I think there's something there. And I think. I think we need to figure out how to get all of these groups like Gil saying, kind of to come together even Though they have differences but come together around a message like that.

Message so well, I'll respond to that. Since the movie that we're going to keep recommending that I made 13 years ago, Heist who Stole the American Dream, speaks to that in many ways. Shows how the income and wealth inequality came about over the last 40 plus years and how we need to change that. If that is not a central part of a new agenda, then we're wasting our time. Because I can tell you, every time I get into an Uber car, because I sold my car when I moved into this retirement place, I have conversations with these drivers and a number of them have either lost their good paying job or this is their second gig, okay? To make ends meet. That's where the country is. And Trump seized upon that. So did Bernie in 2016. And by the way, Bernie is the co star of my movie, FYI, made it. You know, we filmed him in 2009. Okay, so he was on this way before anybody else was. And Trump seized upon it like a good opportunist. That he is. And the Democratic hierarchy, you know, I, we don't need to name names. We all know who they are. Said we're not going to do that. We're going to make sure Bernie is not the nominee of our party. Twice, okay? Twice they screwed him. So that meant Trump was going to win. And they seem to be fine with that. And they still seem to be sort of fine with it. I'll shut up now.

Thank you, Heather and Joanie.

So.

I'm in a little bit of a different mindset locally. We're working on our comprehensive plan update, which is planning the future for our community. Twenty years into the future, I've fallen down a rabbit hole around how to decolonize land use planning or how to indigenize land use planning. I've been in this conversation mostly inside my own head for a lot of reasons about how do I get people to even talk about the difference between a colonial capitalism worldview and an indigenous worldview As a starter, around what world are we trying to build? But what I woke up this morning wondering, and I'm glad Ken Homer's here, because this is a Ken Homer question.

Is.