The good news is that the 20-state, cross-country book tour completed last year — 50 towns and cities – hasn’t ended my availability as our country’s political crisis heats up.  So even while responding to emails and doing Zoom and in-person events, this week I’ll participate in civil disobedience to turn up the heat on PA Senator Fetterman who is playing the hawk on the Israel/Palestine war.  

I’m grateful still to be useful.  In my 20s I began doing speaking tours across the nation for the American Friends Service Committee. That got me ready to do international touring in Great Britain and the Continent at the end of the ‘60s. I was excited that people around the U.S. and beyond were finding my perspectives useful, and I’m still excited about that.  While I’m now too old to do extensive tours as such, there are still ways I can be useful.

• I can still travel to do one-off events, after which I return home. I’m currently scheduled to do a half-dozen of those.
• I can Zoom, since my input can be useful in that format.
• Right now, you might start thinking about where and how you want to use the new film documentary about my life and work, Citizen George.  It includes, of course, tips on “what works.” The feature-length version, 75 min., will be ready by midsummer or before.   I’ll keep you posted on where you can order your own showing, and how to make the most of its educational value for movement-building.

Politically in our country, the meaning of “citizen” seems to be up for grabs.  Do real citizens debase democratic practice or support it?  Do real citizens build community or tear it down?  Do citizens stand up for those who are oppressed, and for the Earth?  

Four years ago, in the national Choose Democracy trainings that reached tens of thousands, I worked with others to prepare people of goodwill in our country to be strategic, with creative tactics in our back pocket, ready to act for peace and protection of civility as we nonviolently tackle our differences with the right wing.

 To me, this is not a defense of the status quo.  The nonviolence commitment is critical.  The same resource of nonviolence we use to protect democracy offers the means we can then use to change our country for the better, taking on injustice, climate disaster, and the U.S. military empire!

In as complicated a country as ours is, transition can’t be easy or quick.  Fortunately, CRISIS = OPPORTUNITY.

We can use unfolding crisis to create opportunity for deeper positive change than ever.  

I show in my book Viking Economics how the 1920s/’30s crisis that the Scandinavian Nazis were hoping to use turned out wrong – for them!  Instead, democratic socialists used the opportunity to move Scandinavians to the left.  Those countries then generated a higher degree of democracy, justice, and well-being than any nation had enjoyed previously.  

The struggle period in Scandinavia was ugly!  The Nazis and right-wingers brought their worst. The democratic left had to provide the vision and the nonviolence, and that’s what enabled them to win.   

I was a baby in the 1930s when our American version of that left vs. right struggle was going on.  But now I’m an adult and wanting to join you in using this opportunity to the max for productive change here.

I’ll bring a lot of what I learned from the movements I joined along the way, lessons often reflected in the movie Citizen George.  

I feel lucky: lucky to be alive in this emerging crisis, and still to be useful.

Let me know if you’re keen to be among the first in your state or area to show the documentary.  It can be fun to be the sponsor of the state or community premiere for a film – and of course it’s an opportunity for outreach, gathering the pro-democracy crowd to begin to prepare for the crisis to come.