Call goes out to citizens `Profiles in Courage moments

`Good Night, And Good Luck' a big hit; Beware of Russian disinformation on social media

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The woman rose as the final speaker of the evening.

Perhaps, as an exclamation point.

Perhaps, as the most important message of the night.

She told people about Sinclair Lewis's 1935 work of fiction where an autocratic president is elected and shatters American democracy. He uses the military to hold power, people are arrested without due process and the freedom of the press is eliminated.

"It was as if Sinclair Lewis had traveled to 2025, then went back to 1935 and wrote this book," the woman said of It Can't Happen Here.

I was nodding in agreement.

I read the book last year.

It scared the hell out of me.

Donald Trump has only been president for four months and at this rate our country will be unrecognizable by the end of four years. Court decisions will be ignored, there will be no midterm elections and no presidential election in four years.

Few believe that is possible, but I do.

As I made my way down the Northway to the Saratoga Springs Public Library Wednesday night, I was in poor spirits,

I had been watching the latest news of President Trump's use of the military against American citizens in California.

This was the beginning.

I was a reminded of It Can't Happen Here all over again and as I became more and more frustrated with the lack of parking in downtown Saratoga, I thought of abandoning my effort.

Pat Nugent gave a presentation at the Saratoga Springs Public Library about the women’s suffrage movement that related to what is happening in the country today.

But I told Pat Nugent I would be there and this was the first in a "Profiles in Courage" series sponsored by the Saratoga Springs League of Women Voters. I was hoping for a little inspiration.

The topic was women's suffrage, but I sensed Nugent had loftier goals. I suspected the goal was to uplift us for the fight ahead.

I certainly needed it.

The room was filled.

One-hundred and ten had signed up, and from my count, most had shown up, too.

Her first slide screamed out the message of the evening - "Deeds Not Words."

While her topic was the women's suffrage movement and winning the right to vote, she connected that story and challenges those women faced with what was going on today.

At one point Nugent flashed a collage of news photos from the past. The audience shouted out the context: Kent State, lynchings, the KKK, the internment of Japanese-Americans, Civil Rights protests, and the Matthew Shepard murder.

This IS who we are, Nugent insisted.

"We've been here before," she proclaimed, letting her words hang in the air. "We navigated it before. We transcended it before."

This was a pep talk.

Nugent was speaking of the ongoing battle for citizen rights - for women, for minorities - and the constant battle to keep our democracy.

She was also was speaking of the dangers we face today.

People were nodding their heads.

She chronicled not only the obstacles the women's suffrage movement endured, but how they did it. It was an instructional manual for the future.

"It's time to stop talking and start doing something," Nugent said finally.

Finally, she posted a series of questions. She was asking each person in that room to search their soul.

What does it take to be that brave?

How fearful are you of reprisal?

What moral imperative is worth putting yourself at risk for?

More 100 showed up at the Saratoga Springs Public Library Wednesday for the first of a Profile in Courage program. A second will be held at SUNY Adirondack on June 25 at 7 p.m.

That struck a chord for me. It goes to the heart of why I write this newsletter. The local newspaper has give up on that moral responsibility to the community, so have newspapers all over the country.

This past weekend I went to Saratoga to see the Belmont Stakes along with 45,000 other people.

To have fun.

This was America after all, but as I scanned the other spectators, there was no obvious concern for the state of our democracy; that troops were deployed against their fellow American citizens.

Life goes on while our freedoms are attacked.

All across our communities this weekend, parents will be at ballgames, thousands will flock to the craft fair in Glens Falls, living their lives, but there is also a growing number of people who are lending their voices to protest.

You will see some of them in Glens Falls Saturday.

And Saratoga Sprin gs.

And Warrensburg.

Listen to them. Encourage them. Tell them you support democracy.

Some of them were there Wednesday night.

Many have never been active before, never political, but they love their country and are worried about it as never before.

This weekend, Saratoga Springs will hold its annual Flag Day parade and Indivisible activists will march with flags because they also love America.

Across America "No Kings Day" protests will be held as counter programming to the military parade planned in Washington, D.C. by the president, including a 4 p.m. rally in Warrensburg by the Indivisible group as well.

The intended goal of Wednesday's event was to lift marginalized voices.

By the end of the night, those voices sounded stronger than ever.

As the last action of the night, Nugent called up folk singer Dan Berggen to sing his song "The Good Fight."

It made me uncomfortable at first, seemed out of place, but as the final refrain started, the audience - 100 strong - rose and joined in with the chorus:

Who will fight - the good fight?

Who will work - for what is right?

If not me - if not you, then who

Will fight - the good fight?

- Dan Berggen

California Gov. Gavin Newsom took the extraordinary step of delivering a prime-time messages to the citizens of California this past week that condemned the Trump administration.

“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said. “This moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball…to our founding fathers’ historic project: three co-equal branches of independent government.

“I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear,” he said. “But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment,” Newsom said.

That moment has arrived.

What will you do about it?

It is something we all should be asking ourselves.

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Good Night for Good Night

Broadway might consider some more live television screenings after the success of Good Night, and Good Luck last week.

Brian Stelter of CNN reported that a combined 7.34 million viewers saw the Broadway show. It was ranked the top show of the day on cable. On Broadway, just 155,000 people had seen the entire Broadway run.

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Enemy within

To the delight of the Chineses and Russians, the Trump administration is showing more concern about the dangers from our own people than foreign adversaries.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that social media is being flooded with messages of support for President Trump and attacking immigrants and Democrats. Many of the those social media accounts have been linked to Russia and Russian disinformation.

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Whoops!

We have a Secretary of the Navy who was never in the military and apparently doesn't know his military history very well.

In April, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan - appointed by Donald Trump - visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

He said it was to “to pay my respects to the service members and civilians we lost at Pearl Harbor on the fateful day of June 7, 1941.”

Phelan was a large donor to Trump's campaign and Substack columnist Heather Cox Richardson said he told the Senate that his experience overseeing and running large companies made him ideal for leading the Navy.

Of course, the attack on Pearl Harbor did not occur on June 7, 1941, but Dec. 7, 1941.

This is who is in charge these days.

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What you believe

So often you hear that getting a government job depends on who you know, not your skillset.

That is changing in Washington where new guidelines imposed by the Trump administration will make it about "what you believe" instead of who you know.

At the heart of the policy is this essential truth: If you disagree with Trump administration policy, you will not be hired.

In the past, Civil Service jobs were nonpartisan. That will no longer be the case.

The New York Times reported this:

In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.

While 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointments, the remaining federal jobs are nonpartisan and objective assessments of the job applicant's credentials.

For instance, my son was hired out of college to work for the National Park Service as a park ranger at what is called a GS-5 level. It paid about $35,000 and is an entry level position. Under the proposed change, every person applying for a GS-5 or higher position would have to submit four essays addressing how they would advance the president's executive orders, identify relevant executive orders they find significant, explain how they plan to implement those executive order and finally how their commitment to the Constitution and founding principles of the United States inspired them to pursue a job in the federal government.

The essays sounded more challenging than a master's program.

The administration says its goal is to recruit "patriotic" Americans.

An op-ed in the New York Times said this new policy was akin to McCarthy-era "loyalty oaths."

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Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.