A lot of working-class voters, who live outside of blue voting areas are asking: Where the hell is the Democratic party?

Sad to say, the “Party of the People” is mired in Washington, controlled by a cadre of high-dollar consultants, corporate lobbyists, big donors, and meek political leaders who’ve decide that “red” and rural American voters are lost causes. But grassroots progressives who live in those areas say: Bovine excrement! After all, you damn sure can’t win if you don’t bother to show up.

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So, party inertia aside, progressive advocates for working class values, policies, and people must become the ground-level organizers to build a “little-d” democratic majority. Not by writing position papers, but by “going there” in-person, online, or otherwise. Let’s tap grassroots savvy to find ways to reach and move millions of people (just a few at a time) who’re now not being reached or motivated.

Who will do this? Maybe you! Or someone you know: People (young or old) with talent-skills-ideas that are now not being fully used should consider this chance to make a difference. , one of our nation’s best organizers of community organizers recently issued an Open Call for creative dedicated people to do new working-class organizing all across our country.

Don’t know how? It basically involves learning to listen to local people. Goehl, with his team of seasoned organizers, will train and provide essential support for people whose organizing ideas are accepted. Happily, project positions come with a full-time salary, benefits, and a start-up budget. The whole idea is to try new things, invest in what works… and win!

Want to throw you hat and ideas into the mix? No charge to apply. You can fill out an application at georgegoehl.substack.com.

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Cecile Richards--what a sparkling gem of a human!

It was my joy and good luck to know her from the 1980s, when I was running for Texas Agriculture Commissioner and her mother, Ann, was running for State Treasurer. Young Cecile was Ann's secret weapon, both a passionate surrogate campaigner and a compassionate advocate for workday people who're routinely overlooked by the political system.

We wanted her to run for high office, but she was too busy representing common people and standing for the Common Good to let a political career interfere. And she not only brought her smarts to every effort, but also her genuine, uplifting laughter that made people want to be part of whatever outrage she was battling.

If you're looking for a role model for a worthy life in public service, think Cecile.

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This week, we thought we’d share with you one of our favorite classic Lowdown issues from December 2021, on the increasingly tough time political cartoonists are having with the state of news. Enjoy!

As a tyke, I never dreamed of growing up to be a political activist/ commentator, but here I am, and it's worked out pretty well for me. I've been lucky enough to have a voice in public matters and eke out a modest living running my mouth as an independent populist agitator. Still, I have to confess to the sin of Job Envy. Not in the sense of being resentful, but regretful about my own inability to lift the trade of journalistic commentary to the heights attained by a small, feisty collection of unique public opinionators: Political cartoonists.

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One thing you can say about Trump is that he’s absolutely clear on his furious opposition to immigrants taking American jobs.

Except, of course, when the corporate honchos profiting from cheap immigrant labor are billionaire funders of Trump’s campaigns – or, hello, when Trump himself is doing the hiring!

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A work-permit program called H-1B actually allows corporate giants to import foreigners to take US jobs. Trump loudly denounced this in his first term, but that was pre-Elon. When gabillionaire Elon Musk became Donald’s campaign Sugar Daddy last year, he turned out to be a mass abuser of the H-1B loophole – apparently even firing workers in his Tesla corporation and replacing them with cheaper foreign imports.

Yet, far from scolding his new Best Buddy, Trump did a full-body flip-flop. Now hailing H-1B as “a great program,” he admits that he, too, has long used it, even when he was denouncing it as a shameful rip-off of American workers.

Trump’s use of the foreign hire scheme is even chintzier than Musk’s for he uses a companion H-2 loophole to import hundreds of low-paid foreigners to take jobs as cooks, waiters, housekeepers, and farmworkers in his luxury resorts and hotels – including at Mar-a-Lago.

Amazing. These are lordly billionaires reducing themselves to sleaze by exploiting a corporate scheme to shortchange American and foreign workers alike. Moreover, whether trying to import engineers or waiters, the law requires these über-rich applicants to lie. They must swear that there are no American citizens available who can do these jobs.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Welcome to Don and Elon’s phantasmagoric wonderland, where nothing is a lie if they say it’s true.

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The sorry state of corporate journalism sagged to an even lower low this month when the Washington Post banned publication of a piece by its own Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, .

Why cancel her drawing? Because it lampooned Jeff Bezos, the multibillionaire boss of Amazon – who also happens to own The Post. The cartoon depicts Bezos and other media titans (even Mickey Mouse!) groveling at the feet of Donald Trump and offering sacks of cash. She was mocking Bezos and the others for recently sucking up to The Don by giving a million dollars each in celebration of his election.

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Top Post executives not only abandoned the paper’s journalistic integrity by censoring its prized cartoonist, but they then tried to cover-up their suppression by calling it a technicality. “We had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon,” weaseled a top manager, claiming he cut Telnaes’s drawing merely to avoid “repetition.”

But hello, read any paper, watch Fox News, listen to talk radio – and you’ll see that mass media relies on repetition. Moreover, cartoonists don’t merely repeat a story, they add journalistic impact by literally drawing a picture of it!

Ann Telnaes resigned on principle over this affront. Imagine Billionaire Bezos acting on any principle (besides advancing his financial principal). Yet, solely because he’s rich, he can compel a paper once renown for political courage to conform to the current plutocratic order. That’s how journalism dies. Democracy, too.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Yet, genuine journalism and democracy itself remain resilient, specifically because scrappy champions like Ann Telnaes – armed with integrity and a sharp pen – don’t quit. She’s still cartooning. Find her at anntelnaes.substack.com.

Open WindowsAnn Telnaes- Artist, visual storyteller, creator of "Open Windows"By Ann Telnaes

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As a writer, I get stuck every so often straining for the right words to tell my story. Over the years, though, I’ve learned when to quit tying myself into mental knots over sentence construction, instead stepping back and rethinking where my story is going.

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This process is essentially what millions of American working families are going through this year as record numbers of them are shocking bosses, politicians, and economists by stepping back and declaring: “We quit!” Most of the quits are tied to very real abuses that have become ingrained in our workplaces over the past couple of decades – poverty paychecks, no health care, unpredictable schedules, no child care, understaffing, forced overtime, unsafe jobs, sexist and racist managers, tolerance of aggressively-rude customers, and so awful much more.

Specific grievances abound, but at the core of each is a deep, inherently-destructive executive-suite malignancy: Disrespect. The corporate system has cheapened employees from valuable human assets worthy of being nurtured and advanced to a bookkeeping expense that must be steadily eliminated. It’s not just about paychecks, it’s about feeling valued, feeling that the hierarchy gives a damn about the people doing the work.

Yet, corporate America is going out of its way to show that it doesn’t care – and, of course, workers notice. So, unionization is booming, millions who were laid off by the pandemic are refusing to rush back to the same old grind, and now millions who have jobs are quitting. This is much more than an unusual unemployment stat – it’s a sea change in people’s attitude about work itself… and life.

Bonus: one of our favorite memes from the last few years. More info from Snopes.

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You’re not fooling me, Jimmy Carter. You did that on purpose! Dying when you did, I mean.

You chose last month to grab the global political spotlight once more to make a statement with the only Earthly move you had left: Checking out. What better way to make people ponder the state of political integrity in America than to reflect on Carter just the Trump Kakistocracy is moving its arrogant billionaires, corporate grifters, and ideological tyrants into our White House.

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Sure enough, media coverage of Carter’s death highlighted his modest life in Plains, Georgia, plus the personal values of fairness and honesty that led him to a lifetime of roll-up-your-sleeves humanitarian efforts. What a damning contrast to the tawdry greedfest on display at Mar-a-Lago, with supposedly-respectable corporate executives flocking to “get theirs” in Trump’s sell-off of government favors and public offices.

And how amazed Carter must have been to see the gilded Trumpers flagrantly rejecting any pretense that theirs is to be a government of and for The People. He even saw Elon Musk – the prancing prince of plutocratic pomosity – practically move into Trump’s Florida mansion to shape the new government. To put a gloss of legitimacy on Elon’s self-serving role, Trump grandly named him head of an imaginary federal office he calls the “Department of Government Efficiency.” This DOGE should be pronounced “dodgy,” for it doesn’t actually exist and has no authority. But Musk is nonetheless flitting about officiously announcing that he will eliminate major programs that benefit people, while increasing government funding for – surprise! – corporations like his.

Even in death, the light of Jimmy Carter’s public integrity exposes the public corruption coming from Trump’s darkness.

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When we shared our New Year’s post including Woody Guthrie’s own famous resolutions/”rulin’s,” I was reminded of the visit that Hightower and I made to the fantastic Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, OK this past spring. Not only is the Center a thoughtful and beautiful collection of Woody’s work, but it’s also a poignant and insightful record of that era that he lived through. (With a bonus original copy of the song lyrics he wrote about Trump’s dad, his landlord when he lived in Brooklyn!)

The mainstream view of history that we’re taught leaves out so many radical perspectives on the realities of the day, and whenever I discover those perspectives and experience them, they give me a visceral sense of belonging to the long, long tradition of pushing for progress no matter what. It reminds me to keep marching, and to keep contributing to the documentation of our radical moments together.

Enjoy these photos and video from our time at the Center, and be sure to visit them if you ever have the chance.

— Deanna

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I made a few New Year’s resolutions this week – not for me, but as self-improvement ideas for some of the people running our country. No need for them to thank me – happy to help.

I drafted one for the GOP’s whole ultra-rightist gaggle of lawmakers who keep blocking passage of health coverage for poor people. “Resolved: We will forego the gold-plated socialized health care we now take from taxpayers, because it’s only right that we be in the same leaky boat as our constituents.”

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Then there are America’s 735 narcissistic billionaires who obviously need to find a moral compass. They’re so self-absorbed they keep wasting their money and “genius” on phantasmagoric plutocratic schemes to separate their fortunes from the well-being of the rest of us. Then they wonder why they are not beloved. So, rich ones, let me help. Resolve in 2025 to demonstrate a little less hubris/a little more humanity, less strut/more sharing. Practice in front of a mirror – try seeing beyond you to the Common Good. It’s a beautiful and deeply rewarding place if you can find it.

And I didn’t overlook you Washington operatives and Big Money donors of the Democratic Party. Please resolve to camp out in grassroots America this year – where everyday little-d democrats want and need your attention and support. Not just in safe Blue districts, but especially in rural, purple, and even in red areas. You’ve abandoned them in recent years, but they still yearn to build a progressive governing majority for America’s future.

Of course, the problem with New Year’s resolutions is keeping them, and my honorees can’t be counted on. So, we have to keep pushing them to do what’s right.

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One of the most perverse political gambits this year has been pushed by foam-at-the-mouth, right-wing extremists. They’ve been trying to convince Americans to close their minds to all efforts promoting our society’s democratic goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion. “Don’t Be Woke,” they bark.

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Hello, numbskulls! From 1776 forward, being wide awake to oppressors and exploiters is literally what made America… and continues to advance it. Our diversity, our national striving for equity, and our persistent struggle to include all in our historic democratic experiment are three core pillars that sustain the USA. My workaday father expressed this unifying reality to me in these profound words: “Everybody does better, when everybody does better.”

But a group of self-proclaimed “Anti-Woke” crusaders has surged from the fringes of autocratic, xenophobic, racists politics, demanding that schools, corporations, churches, and families shut our eyes, ears, and minds to our own DEI values.

All this would be a depressing end to this political year, EXCEPT that people across the country are rebelling, openly scoffing at the “Don’t Be Woke” hokum. Even the petty autocrats governing states like Florida and Texas can’t stop local school officials from looping around official “bans” against teaching the obvious virtues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Also, while a few corporations have bowed to the right-wing drumbeat, nearly all have continued their DEI programs this year… or even increased them. Why? Because the programs make sense, their workers and shareholders support DEI values, and not all CEOs are suck-ups to right-wing goofiness.

So let us not head into 2025 with political fear, but with a recommitment to the persuasive power of democratic ideals.

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This holiday season got me to thinking about America's spirit of giving, and I don't mean this overdone business of Christmas, Hanukkah and other holiday gifts. I mean our true spirit of giving -- giving of ourselves.

Yes, we are a country of rugged individualists, yet there's also a deep, community-minded streak in each of us. We're a people who believe in the notion that we're all in this together, that we can make our individual lives better by contributing to the common good.

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The establishment media pay little attention to grassroots generosity, focusing instead on the occasional showy donation by what it calls "philanthropists" -- big tycoons who give a little piece of their billions to some university or museum in exchange for getting a building named after them. But in my mind, the real philanthropists are the millions of you ordinary folks who have precious little money to give, but consistently give of themselves, and do it without demanding that their name be engraved on a granite wall.

My own Daddy, rest his soul, was a fine example of this. With half a dozen other guys in Denison, Texas, he started the Little League baseball program volunteering to build the park, sponsor and coach the teams, run the squawking P.A. system, etc. etc. Even after I graduated from Little League, Daddy stayed working at it, because his involvement was not merely for his kids . . . but for all. He felt the same way about being taxed to build a public library in town. I don't recall him ever going in that building, much less checking-out a book, but he wanted it to be there for the community and he was happy to pay his part. Not that he was a do-good liberal, for God's sake -- indeed, he called himself a conservative.

My Daddy didn't even know he had a political philosophy, but he did, and it's the best I've ever heard. He would often say to me, "Everybody does better when everybody does better." If only our leaders in Washington and on Wall Street would begin practicing this true American Philosophy.

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