This is going to be a long thread. Please read it anyway. I'll post something cheerful again soon. 1/
After Trump was elected and before I left office I woke up every day with the question, “What would we have wanted to mayor of Dusseldorf Germany to do in 1933?” and then I did my best to do those things. 2/
When Trump hired Steve Bannon it was clear what his agenda was. Trump’s call to troops at the border to stop “diseased” migrants and asylum-seekers, his invitation to a non-“rabbi” to “mourn” those lost in Pittsburgh to anti-Semitism, his call to end birthright citizenship, 3/
his plan to erase trans people from Federal rolls,his calls to hurt journalists, his creation of camps for immigrant children ripped from their parents’ arms,on top of all the other lies&atrocities are still so very clearly out of a mid-twentieth century authoritarian playbook.4/
(A fascist playbook, if we are allowed to use that word yet. Is the anti-Semitism and round-up of brown kids and the attacks on journalists and journalism bald enough yet for people to be less scared to name what’s happening?) 5/
I gave a speech about it at Mpls' Shir Tikvah in April 2017 bc history told me that every one of us needs to use every platform possible, every voice we have, as quickly & urgently as possible to fight this country’s goosestep parade into authoritarianism. mayorhodges.com/2017/04/one-mi…
I was completely sincere. I named what I saw and what the city could do about it. The New York Times and plenty of people here at home called it mere electioneering. Other said I was alarmist and overblowing what was happening. 7/
I couldn’t let the fact that I would be accused of insincerity and hysteria stop me from using what platform I had available to say what needed saying: 8/
The President is fanning fear through lies and he is quashing dissent to centralize power in himself and create a nation for white people. Rich white people. Rich white straight cis men. 9/
Nothing that has happened in the intervening 18 months says that my fears were unfounded, that I was being alarmist. Everything that has happened says we must redouble our efforts on behalf of our neighbors and our Constitution. 10/
I am no longer in office. However, I do still ask myself as a non-elected person, a resident, a citizen – what would we have wanted to people of Dusseldorf to have done? 11/
But now it is no longer 1933. It’s 1936. 1937. We must vote. We must use our voice. We must stand by our neighbors under attack, and fight for them in the places we have power and they do not. 12/
We must be real about what the plan is, and we must do what we can to turn the tide. Our lives, and the life of our beloved community, depend on it. Please use your voice, please use your platforms, to stand up for what you believe. Now is the time. fin/
