You can watch Governor Walz speak on YouTube as he defends what this country is about and what Trump and his cronies are working to destroy. Go to YouTube and watch “Governor Walz addresses ongoing federal presence in Minnesota”. Tragic!
Gathering
The aftermath of the funeral march on Sunday at the Marin Civic Center is still with me. Over 1500 people gathered the to protest the deaths by ICE.
Robert Hubbell today: Since the first day of his second term, Donald Trump has refused to follow the Constitution. This month, Trump is asking Congress to continue his lawless reign by passing a “continuing resolution” that will fund the government at its current levels—including its current levels of lawlessness.
Congress should refuse to do so. Instead, Congress should: Defund Trump, Defund and abolish ICE, Defund and abolish the Department of Homeland Security, Defund Trump’s ability to invade sovereign nations and NATO allies, and Defund the corrupt DOJ that investigates the victims of crime and protects the out-of-control thugs wearing facemasks and flak jackets.
Is it “radical” to suggest “defunding” major agencies in the federal government? Hmm. . . let’s see. What did Donald Trump threaten to do today? He threatened to “defund” every state that has a “sanctuary city” —which means Trump will “cut off” federal funds to states representing 37% of the American population.
To be clear, Trump. has no authority to “cut off” funding to any state or city. Congress controls appropriations and the president is obligated by law to carry out those appropriations. But Trump has been violating his obligation to “faithfully execute the laws” by refusing to spend money as directed by Congress.
I just read James Rebanks book, The Place of Tides. Rebanks writes of a summer he spent on a remote Norwegian Island where he learned from 70 year old Anna Masoy, known as the Norwegian “duck woman”, about the ancient tradition of collecting eiderdown from eider ducks. Her dedication has brought the ducks back to these islands, ducks threatened by the introduction of minks and other predators. It shows the power of one woman, and right now, we have thousands of people across the country demonstrating against the policies of Trump.
Today in Heather Cox Richardson: On Sunday, David Marcus of Fox News warned that “organized gangs of wine moms” are using “Antifa tactics to harass and impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.” He claimed that those people organizing to protect their neighborhoods from ICE may be “criminal conspiracies.” He complained of “self-important White women” protesting “with a weird and disturbing glee.” He seemed to threaten them by warning: “if we simply allow these cosplaying would-be revolutionaries to do whatever they want…, Renee Good will not be the last to needlessly die.”
“Organized groups of wine moms”. Wow! I do love my glass of wine, but I can tell you there was no “weird and disturbing glee” on Sunday. It was a funeral procession, and my heart is still heavy with the weight and sorrow of the experience.
Democracy
Yesterday I attended a protest/vigil in Marin County. We gathered at the Veteran’s Auditorium, and walked in a long and winding line around and through the Civic Center leaving flowers in front of the sheriff’s office and next to photos and names of the 33 people killed by ICE. Our sheriff’s office cooperates with ICE and we want ICE out of Marin. We were told to wear black, and bring a flower and did, so it was a sober line that stretched before and behind me. Six coffins had been made of cardboard and painted black and covered with flowers were carried along the route. It was a sober and quiet group. The event began with twelve minutes of speeches, most of that a prayer, so we began walking after saying Amen. Volunteers carried recorders repeating the names of the 33 people killed. Tears come enough now as I feel the immensity of the event, the power of people gathering to silently speak for empathy, morality, and Truth.
I’m awake now, up in the night. I’ve been sitting outside with the stars and a sky streaked with light wondering, receiving, embracing what might be as we come to Peace and walk with others in quiet and love.
Unity
Like so many of us, I am sobered, stunned, shocked, and suffering with the continuing onslaught of horrific political news. And yet this morning I experienced the gift of coming together with a group of 72 people from around the world led by Russell Delman to celebrate our personal embodiment as well as to be part of a field of people who unite in the cultivation and sharing of Love and Compassion.
Today we grieve the murder of Renee Nicole Good, murder by ICE agents as she attempted to comply with their orders. She was a legal observer volunteering to help protect vulnerable immigrants, a mother of three children and an award-winning poet. Her youngest child, 6 years old, is now orphaned.
Both Pam Bondi and Donald Trump defamed her immediately following her death, labeling her a domestic terrorist and making gross misstatements about what actually took place. The facts are available for all to see. Their lies are exposed.
As we grieve, we unite and fight, with “effortless effort” as Dogen, the founder of the Soto School of Zen in Japan, put it, with the ease with which a bud rises, emerges, and graces the world.
Celebration
The news of our country is staggering, and it is December, a time of gathering and celebrating what connects us with nature and the seasons, the nature in each of us. On Tuesday, I was at Cavallo Point and yesterday took the ferry to San Francisco for our yearly book club gathering at The Waterfront. One half of the restaurant was closed because the ever-increasing winter tides came flooding in.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration said it will dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of the world’s leading Earth science research institutions. One reason is that their research shows climate change. The other is that the Colorado governor won’t obey Trump in pardoning former Colorado election official Tina Peters, convicted by a jury for state crimes in facilitating a data breach in her quest to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Trump has granted her a “full pardon”, of course, but it needs to be Governor Polis who pardons her since it is a state crime.
And so we approach the Solstice, a time in the northern hemisphere to honor the richness in the dark and return to the evolving expansiveness of light.
The Garden Path
I rise at four, meditate and open Arthur Sze’s poetry book, The Glass Constellation, to these lines in the poem “The Flower Path”.
You must learn to see a pond in the shape of the character mind,
Walk through a garden and see it from your ankles;
Wondering what the shape of the character mind is I ask AI who responds:
The primary Chinese character for “mind” is 心 (xīn), which looks like a stylized, simple drawing of a physical heart, with a central vertical line, two curved strokes on the sides, and a dot at the bottom, representing the ancient belief that the heart is the seat of thought and emotion, often translated as “heart-mind”.
And then I wonder if AI is a who, which brings me to Dr. Seuss’s book Horton Hears a Who!, and the words “a person’s a person no matter how small”, and as the mind curves in the shape of a heart, I think of how tragic it is that we have people leading our country who’ve never read Dr. Seuss.
Human Rights Day
Heather Cox Richardson: Today is Human Rights Day, celebrated internationally in honor of the day seventy-seven years ago, December 10, 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
Heather goes on and adds this –
Last year, under President Joe Biden, the White House celebrated Human Rights Day by recommitting to “upholding the equal and inalienable rights of all people.” The State Department bestowed the Human Rights Defender Award on eight individuals who have defended migrant workers, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, and democracy. The recipients came from Kuwait, Bolivia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Burma, Eswatini, Ghana, Colombia, and Azerbaijan.
The U.S. government did not recognize Human Rights Day this year.
Instead, Humeyra Pamuk of Reuters reported, administration officials are threatening to place sanctions on the International Criminal Court to guarantee it will not investigate Trump and his top officials. “There is growing concern…that in 2029 the ICC will turn its attention to the president, to the vice president, to the secretary of war and others, and pursue prosecutions against them,” a Trump administration official told Pamuk. “That is unacceptable, and we will not allow it to happen.”
They will not allow it to happen. Hmmm! The world conscience against a few. We’ll see.
Candlelight
These days I’m with the magic of candlelight even as I read the news.
I was on a Zoom Call on Monday and AI gave a beautiful summary of the experience and journey.
We can thank Chat GPT for this as posted by Heather Cox Richardson.
When G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbersasked ChatGPT to fact-check an article for him yesterday, the chatbot couldn’t get its head around modern America. It told him there were “multiple factual impossibilities” in his article, including his statements that “[t]he current Secretary of Defense is a former talk show host for Fox News,” “[t]he Deputy Director of the FBI used to guest-host Sean Hannity’s show,” and “Jeanine Pirro is the U.S. District Attorney for DC.”
“Since none of these statements are true,” it told Morris, “they undermine credibility unless signposted as hyperbole, fiction, or satire.”
But of course, Morris’s statements were not “factual impossibilities.” In the United States of America under President Donald J. Trump, they are true.
May that change as people wake and vote for democracy, support, unity, and humanity.
Propaganda
I’ve been trying to understand Trump’s boat attacks. Why, especially when he pardons a man at the top of drug trafficking?
This guest essay by Phil Klay in the NY Times today allows me to understand.
Klay begins with this:
When Trump administration officials post snuff films of alleged drug boats blowing up, of a weeping migrant handcuffed by immigration officers or of themselves in front of inmates at a brutal El Salvadoran prison, I often think of a story St. Augustine told in his “Confessions.”
In the fourth century A.D., a young man named Alypius arrived in Rome to study law. He was a decent sort. He knew the people at the center of the empire delighted in cruel gladiatorial games, and he promised himself he would not go. Eventually, though, his fellow students dragged him to a match. At first, the crowd appalled Alypius. “The entire place seethed with the most monstrous delight in the cruelty,” Augustine wrote, and Alypius kept his eyes shut, refusing to look at the evil around him.
But then a man fell in combat, a great roar came from the crowd and curiosity forced open Alypius’s eyes. He was “struck in the soul by a wound graver than the gladiator in his body.” He saw the blood, and he drank in savagery. Riveted, “he imbibed madness.” Soon, Augustine said, he became “a fit companion for those who had brought him.”
We must continue to stay on top of what’s happening, and not allow what happened to Alypius, to happen to us. It’s a horrific manipulation to destroy humanity and the continuing development and evolution of peace, communion, fairness and democracy.
Empathy, not Lies, Greed, and Hate
I‘ve been making every effort to post positively on this blog. I know we’re all worn down by the horrors, lies, and deceit of the Trump administration, but tonight as I read Heather Cox Richardson I must post excerpts from what she says. It’s unfathomable that when they control the Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency, and much of the media, they continue to try to set the Democrats up to take the blame.
Heather Cox Richardson:
It appears the administration is using those Americans who depend on food assistance as pawns to put more pressure on Democrats to cave to Trump’s will. Today, Annie Karni of the New York Times reported that Trump has joked, “I’m the speaker and the president,” and Trump ally Steven Bannon calls Congress “the state Duma,” a reference to Russia’s rubber-stamp assembly.
With Republicans refusing to negotiate with Democrats in the normal way, with House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) keeping the House out of session, and with Trump leaving for Asia for a week, Republicans are clearly making the calculation that Democrats who refused to give up their demand for the extension of the premium tax credit to stop dramatic hikes in the cost of healthcare premiums will cave when America falls into a hunger crisis.
I drop down to this: While a great deal has changed in nutrition support programs in the past sixty years, what has not changed is the importance of food assistance programs to retailers, and thus to local economies. In 2020, Ed Bolen and Elizabeth Wolkomir of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that about 8% of the food U.S. families buy is funded by SNAP. In fiscal year 2019, that amounted to about $56 billion. Beneficiaries spent SNAP dollars at about 248,000 retailers. While about 80% of that money went to superstores or supermarkets—in 2025, Walmart alone captured about 25% of that money—the rest of it went to small businesses. Bolen and Wolkomir note that about 80% of stores that accept SNAP are small enterprises. SNAP benefits are an important part of revenue for those smaller businesses, especially in poorer areas, where they generate significant additional economic activity.
Not only will the loss of SNAP create more hunger in the richest country on earth, it will also rip a hole in local economies just as people’s health insurance premiums skyrocket.
And yet, at the same time the Department of Agriculture says it cannot spend its $6 billion in reserves to address the $8 billion needed for SNAP in November, the administration easily found $20 billion to prop up right-wing Trump ally Javier Milei in Argentina.
What are we doing here? Yes, what are we doing here, and why?
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