We are the Fierce, Courageous Ones
We're Among Countless Others
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"Deaf of deadened consciousness of heart,
illumined by the Light of The Framers,
justice demanded is justice bequeathed,
“the governed” rise when
reclaiming ourselves as the source of authority."
POLITY - a voice for action occupies a bit of a different space in the world of fierce, courageous people who are the front line of defense for the democracy we love.
It's written as a service to you: to educate, to inspire, to re-assure you that we have a path to defend this glorious democracy.
It's your tool to the most impactful information of the moment.
Leveraging What Works is a Little Piece of Brilliance
While we feel daily assaults to our safety and well-being, our freedom of speech and our financial security, thumbing back through a successful playbook in 1944 will help us leverage how we fight and disempower this budding authoritarian government.
As Lady Liberte writes in The American Pamphleteer, the Office of Strategic Services - today's CIA - assembled a manual for regular people like you and me to sabotage the fascists who were overtaking Europe. She brings those strategies forward in what she calls the "Modern Equivalent, 2025."
Today, it's critical to focus on the most sinister aspects of how this administration, social media and technology companies are building profiles on each of us. Those deep, detailed data profiles are sold to data brokers - people who solicit us for products and services in return for cash. $300B annually, by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) estimate.
And only a few days ago… “The CFPB has decided to withdraw a 2024 rule to limit the sale of Americans’ personal information by data brokers”:
“…legislative rulemaking is not necessary or appropriate…”
The data that would be made available to brokers without CFPB use restrictions includes your: “social security number, phone number, financial details, personal behavior and interests.” The December 2024 rule that was proposed to protect us has now been quietly withdrawn.
Even more sinister, they're tracking our every move: every purchase we make, every website we visit, every group we join, every trip we take, every protest we attend, every online statement we write.
It's all one big profile.
And the government has easy access to it. Remember all those tech-bros standing on the inauguration platform?
Americans are Chattel
We have no privacy in the hands of Big Tech.
However… we can resist and thwart online tracking - very effectively.
Check out The American Pamphleteer's "Tactics to Disorient Digital Watchdogs."
STOP USING GOOGLE CHROME for searching. Restrict its use only to Google “properties”, like Gmail, Calendar, etc. Use a Chrome-based alternative, like Brave, which doesn't permit website tracking and profile assembly. It's an easy switch and it has all the same Chrome features.
If you have an iPhone, Apple changes its data settings each time they do an update. Watch this brief, easy video to turn off those settings. If you don’t change your settings, your personal information is going back to Apple every 15 minutes.
When you attend a protest, switch your phone to Airplane Mode. Location tracking is off, and you can still use your camera.
So, What About the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
Those of us defending American democracy share the wonder of its deep historical value, and recognize the countless sacrifices men and women have made throughout history to preserve it. A recent event made our commitment all the more poignant.
In the news several days ago, Harvard University disclosed that what they thought was a $27.50 copy of Magna Carta (originally written in 1215) turned out to be one of seven original issues in 1300.
One of the original 1215 issues of Magna Carta, the “Lincoln King John,” was transferred from Britain in 1939 to the U.S. Library of Congress for safe keeping during World War II.
Magna Carta, a foundational document in constitutional law, has influenced the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and other legal systems around the world. This is how the Library of Congress describes its influence on our treasured documents:
“Magna Carta exercised a strong influence both on the United States Constitution and on the constitutions of the various states. However, its influence was shaped by what eighteenth-century Americans believed Magna Carta to signify. Magna Carta was widely held to be the people’s reassertion of rights against an oppressive ruler, a legacy that captured American distrust of concentrated political power. In part because of this tradition, most of the state constitutions included declarations of rights intended to guarantee individual citizens a list of protections and immunities from the state government. The United States also adopted the Bill of Rights, in part, due to this political conviction.
“Both the state declarations of rights and the United States Bill of Rights incorporated several guarantees that were understood at the time of their ratification to descend from rights protected by Magna Carta. Among these are freedom from unlawful searches and seizures, a right to a speedy trial, a right to a jury trial in both a criminal and a civil case, and protection from loss of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”
We are living the seeds of democratic rights that originated more than 800 years ago.
This democracy belongs to us all. The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights say so. Our democratic republic is unique in the world. It's up to us to defend it.
As reminders of who is doing “fierce” work every day in the public sphere:
Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American. She posts daily on every topic this administration has hands in, and she’s fearless. At the end of her 5/19 update, she explains how the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office came into being from Great Britain’s HMS Resolute.
Jessica Craven, Chop Wood, Carry Water. Yesterday, Jessica detailed the charges against New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver for contact she made with ICE agents in a clash at a New Jersey Detention Center. Every day, Jessica directs us who to call or write, and she gives the language for an effective call or email.
Simon Rosenberg, Hopium Chronicles. Simon is a 30-year Washingtonian Democratic operative whose powerful presence is working behind political lines and by using democracy’s inspiring story to eradicate MAGA. He has a super-valuable weekly 1-hour Zoom for paid subscribers.
Free Press. Created to give people a voice in the crucial decisions that shape our media. “We seek to change the media to transform democracy to realize a just society.”
Brent Giannotta, Sleeping Giant. Brent is a former CIA officer who writes “The Psychology of Our Politics and Reaching Toward Utopia.” He’s a ‘straight-away-center-field’ kind of guy. “The Democratic Party should anoint a platform of societal improvement policies bold enough to shake disaffected citizens by the t-shirt.”
Keep up calling your legislators with demand actions that are important to you.
We’re the ones turning the screws, and it’s working.