as seen through Letters to my neighbors
Sadly, very few people in my local community care to hear about, or follow, what’s happening in our country, much less get involved in anything that might disturb their peace, so I gave up writing to them after this became obvious….(if you’re just looking at this now, you might want to start at the bottom… you’re way behind)
It’s way past the time for armchairs
Neighbors, I know some of you think I’m a loose cannon, but the $hit is hitting the fan: Behind the smokescreen of deportations, arbitrary funding freezes and and other outrages, Musk’s DOGE group is actively rewriting live, production-environment code for the nation’s Treasury Department Payments system (https://www.rawstory.com/musk-treasury-doge/). Aside from being totally illegal this is very dangerous; as an IT professional with 20 years of experience… I can’t even begin to list the disasters this could cause.
I know we’re all hearing that this is part of the administration’s Shock-and-Awe strategy, but please don’t be passively shocked. Lawsuits are starting, but they take time. Please go to https://indivisible.org/ or Rockland Chapter’s Facebook page and try to find an active way to show your objection to these developments.
*ALSO (behind paywalls)
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/eddblog/musk-cronies-dive-into-treasury-dept-payments-code-base
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-associate-bfs-federal-payment-system
Too early to celebrate…
Hi neighbors, it’s me again,
Hard to keep up, and hard to stay sane. We did go to Schumer/Gillibrand’s offices in midtown last week, but only saw 2 other Rocklanders there – and the fact that we know that, should tell you how disappointingly small the NYC crowd was. At least the nationwide actions on Wednesday got some press. And I hope you’re relieved at the ousting of Musk’s Nazi incel hackers from the bowels of the Treasury Department (thanks in part to a WSJ article – though Trump and Musk have already called for rehiring the self-proclaimed racist who resigned). The lawsuits continue piling up, many with promising rulings. But so does the destruction.
Hundreds of thousands in the US with temporary status have been called “dirtbags” and had their status suddenly revoked (though Trump has ordered the U.S. to prioritize refugee resettlement of White south Africans!). We have a concentration camp starting up at Guantanamo. We now effectively have no EPA, no CDC, and at the Federal level, no worker safety or employment protections, fact-based medicine or medical/scientific research (as we all learned from the last pandemic, if you don’t count the plague cases, they still happen….and this time there will be no vaccines). The safety of your Social Security Income is questionable, especially if you voted the wrong way. And it shouldn’t be last on the list that unfair discrimination of all kinds is now not only Federally sanctioned, but actively encouraged. Almost overnight we’ve officially become a Shithole Country. Excuse me, a Christian Shithole Country.
New York’s borders won’t protect us. If you think you can sit this one out, you’re wrong.
We need to stop the Trump Travesty Train before conscripted US troops are erasing Palestinians and helping to build hotels in Gaza, and occupying Greenland. We all need to be like the South Koreans. The Indivisible Rockland Organizing Committee is having a General Interest Meeting Monday, February 10th @ 7PM at the Valley Cottage Library. There’s also a great idea circulating, that requires absolutely no action at all (though at this rate the date may need to be moved up, and the duration extended):
Economic Blackout, February 28 2025. 24 hours. Don’t buy anything (except locally). Don’t spend any money (plan ahead). Don’t engage with Major Corporations.
Thanks to those who responded to my previous email; even the person who asked to be removed. I understand it’s all too much sometimes. Maybe you’re overwhelmed, or already engaged; you don’t need my urging. We’re all scrambling for ideas – if you have better suggestions for what to do or how to cope, please share!
If you don’t want to hear from me again, let me know and I’ll be glad to leave you out. But if it’s because you don’t think there’s a problem, let me know. Because, believe me, I don’t want to stay in touch – in any way – with anyone who is okay with any of this.
Are you worried yet?
Hi neighbors,
this one is short. I’m not going to try to list all the new things to worry about (that’s pretty much impossible anyway), except to point out that Bird Flu is about more than the price of eggs, and Measles cases – 48 in Texas, 3 in New Mexico, (“only”) 1 in Bergen County, where the patient visited several clinics before being diagnosed – may have something to do with canaries (and coal mines – it’s nice to be in New York State, but germs don’t respect borders and our federal health agencies are…never mind).
Anyway, this note is about what to do if you’re worried:
- This Monday,Feb 17th (President’s Day) there are protests in all 50 States, at State Capitols and City Halls; additionally there will be one at the New City Courthouse and one at Union Square in NYC (https://www.fiftyfifty.one/, https://thirdact.org/nyc/events/1224/)
- Economic Blackout, February 28 2025. 24 hours. Don’t buy anything (except locally). Don’t spend any money (plan ahead). Don’t engage with Major Corporations.
If you’re still not worried, maybe do a little reading about 1930’s Germany and then reflect on the legal (thanks Ronnie, Donnie), technological and communication changes (social, digital, and particularly A.I.) that have enabled a much wider and more rapid spread of propaganda than the Third Reich could have managed, and which vastly ease the manipulation of data and information – across the Federal government, and in national media.
As always, If you don’t want to hear from me again, let me know and I’ll be glad to leave you out. But if it’s because you don’t think there’s a problem, let me know that too. I don’t want to stay in touch – in any way – with anyone who is okay with any of this.
Quick follow-up (as the world around us crumbles)
Hi neighbors,
I couldn’t find any listing for the New City Protest – I think Indivisible Rockland deciding to do something in Peekskill may have wiped it from the schedule, so I have started one for noon tomorrow at the Courthouse in New City.
You can sign up here: https://events.pol-rev.com/events/72c97e91-887e-41cc-a7ad-f705e130f60a
If you come, please bring friends. And signs, if possible.
Good protest at the Courthouse yesterday! But…
Hi Neighbors;
We had about 17 people at the Courthouse yesterday! Good visibility, and no trouble; many people drove by trying to ignore us, a few yelled at us from cars, but a surprising number honked in approval and gave thumbs-up. I think a lot of Rocklanders are upset and feeling isolated, so this was good – we plan on doing it again next week!
JOIN US: Check https://www.facebook.com/share/1637rGfvtU/
or try https://events.pol-rev.com/search?contentType=EVENTS&search=rockland&eventPage=1.
I get that some of you are worried about the potential for MAGA violence at these events… At this point, frankly, I am so concerned for my children, my grandchildren, my country and the world, that if there IS violence, I’m happy to take the risk if it serves to make people wake up before it’s to late. It may be that we need Pearl harbor. So here comes the rant:
The real reason that our Democratic politicians are paralyzed and unable to act in any meaningful way, while Trump dismantles democracy, is that they are completely wedded to their corporate donors’ campaign money, and afraid to alienate a single penny. This much is painfully obvious and Trump’s litany of unchallenged lies last night could not have made it more clear. Our politicians don’t care about their actual human constituents, and haven’t for decades (since corporate money became protected speech).
Bernie Sanders, who has been drawing large crowds at Town Halls in MAGA territory during recent months, is right and has been all along. It has been excruciating, over the last 8 years, to watch monsters consolidate their wealth and power with the collaboration – unwitting, or just self-serving and clueless – of our elected Democrats, while those same desperate Democrats have continued to fail the very constituents who are now mesmerized by visions of Trump’s largess, to the exclusion of all facts or reason. The only Democrats who have been speaking out at all, in any way effectively, are on the far left; that’s where we all need to go. The myth that we need to cleave to the center in order to win Republican and Independent votes is just that: a failed myth, and a dangerous one. And we have to STOP BUYING IT.
We are fighting billionaire Nazis armed with AI. In this fight, your hedge fund neighbors are not your friends. Your tech bro neighbors? Not them either. In the rarified atmosphere of billionaire get-togethers you may be seen as useful peons – a step up from the troglodyte slave class – but nothing like the superior beings that are created from the melding of great wealth and “visionary” thinking. In their delusional minds they are a new type of human, creating a new order (sound familiar?) that will save humanity by efficiently employing it in the service of their visions.
We’ve lived through this thinking before, but just barely. This is a new ball game. Do we have any balls?
And if you just can’t make it out to protest…
And yes, fine, waste some time calling your representatives, but send Bernie some $$, too. He is not running for any office; he’s taking the fight to huge Town Hall meetings in red states, swing districts. Don’t scoff, look at the pictures. Read the message. Send him money to tell people in the heartland what’s really happening, because they’re clearly listening. And the young people who everyone says didn’t vote, and aren’t coming out to protests… they’re there. While our elected Democrats are paralyzed, Bernie is informing and organizing and mobilizing.
——– Forwarded Message ——–
| Subject: | I’m heading out west |
|---|---|
| Date: | Sun, 09 Mar 2025 22:48:45 +0000 |
| From: | Bernie Sanders <info@berniesanders.com> |
| Reply-To: | info@berniesanders.com |
You know history as well as I do. Real change never takes place from the top on down. It always takes place from the bottom on up when ordinary people, by the millions, stand together to fight oppression and injustice.
With your help that is exactly the movement that we are building.
Over the last several weeks I have held a series of town meetings in districts with Republican House members who won close races in the last election.
And what I have found is that in these districts, and all across the country, Americans are saying loudly and clearly: NO to oligarchy, NO to authoritarianism, NO to kleptocracy, NO to massive cuts in programs that working people desperately need, NO to huge tax breaks for the richest people in our country.
As you know, the Republican majority in the House is very slim. If we can convince 2 or 3 Republican members from these districts to vote against cutting Social Security, Medicaid, Education, Nutrition and VA programs in order to pay for huge tax breaks for billionaires, we can defeat that horrendous piece of legislation.
Our first events in Nebraska and Iowa drew thousands of people.
But that was NOTHING compared to the events we just wrapped up this weekend in Wisconsin and Michigan.
On Friday night in Kenosha, Wisconsin we drew 4,000 people who came out on a cold night to stand up and make their voices heard.
The next day, we went to Altoona, WI — population 9,200 — where we had over 2,500 people attend our town meeting. I have long been told that progressive ideas are not popular in rural America.
Not what I saw there.
People in Altoona, and across the country, understand that health care is a human right, and our economy must work for all, not just the few.
And we closed our meetings in Warren, Michigan where we had more than 9,000 people come out to hear Abdul El-Sayed, Shawn Fain of the UAW and me. It was a gym full of people.
And an overflow crowd.
And an overflow-overflow crowd.
And an overflow-overflow-overflow crowd.
And by the way. At these rallies I made it clear that we cannot simply be on the defensive – in opposition to Musk and Trump. The working families of this country are hurting and we must go on the offensive – fighting for concrete solutions that will improve their lives NOW.
The good news is, poll after poll also shows that our agenda is incredibly popular with the American people. People want the wealthiest in this country to pay their fair share, they want leaders with the guts to take on the drug companies and the oil companies. They understand that healthcare is a human right, not a privilege. Overwhelmingly, they want an end to our corrupt political system that allows billionaires to buy our elections.
We’ve now taking our campaign against Oligarchy to Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan. Next, it looks like we’ll be heading out west.
Let me close by thanking the almost 200,000 people who have contributed over the past few weeks to make these rallies possible. I am very appreciative of your continued financial support.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
(Not) Short notice, (not) short message
But too little sleep will get to you and eventually you’ll re-use a subject line…
Hi neighbors, I’m still here;
Protest: Tuesday March 18, just down the street from the County Courthouse in New City, on the scenic corner of New Hempstead and Main.
New developments this week – a few are ‘good’, in that the courts can still be counted on to deliver rulings that aren’t stamps of approval, though I don’t think Trump’s record of compliance with those rulings has improved. The rest, a continuing onslaught. The general state of our nation isn’t great for holding back the Administration’s scattered fantasies:
- the military has problems above and beyond Musk’s chaos and the understandable recalcitrance of Zelenskyy:
- We’re screwing the veterans again: Republicans are cutting $22.8 BILLION from the PACT Act:
- Between Trump’s war on foreigners, science, and research, and his wholly unAmerican censorship campaign, our nation’s Universities are toast. These are just a tiny sample:
- https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/03/umass-disbands-its-entering-biomed-graduate-class-over-trump-funding-chaos/
- https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khalil-ice-440828980a4ee7bf4ddcf3d123e02b3e
- https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2025/03/just-48-hours-later-the-trump-gangsters-have-yanked-400-million-in-contracts-and-grants-from-columbia-university-seri.html
- and yes, Leiter is Jewish and authors “The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003”
- and yes, Leiter is Jewish and authors “The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003”
- Elementary schools, toast also:
- Trump & Musk cut ONE BILLION from school lunches and food banks: https://apnews.com/article/school-lunch-usda-trump-c1485f824573913fe9a734bbf1273e26
- tacking air quality and public safety on in here too: https://lailluminator.com/2025/03/08/co2-pipeline/
- Elections? What elections?
- https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5301676/save-act-explainer-voter-registration
- https://cyberscoop.com/cisa-election-security-review-lacks-transparency/
- https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/13/cisa_red_team_layoffs/
from The Register article in case you’re tired of clicking thru:
Former CISA employee Christopher Chenoweth, a senior penetration tester, said via LinkedIn that he and more than 100 others had their government contracts terminated on February 28, as ordered by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He said this comprised his entire red team and all support roles, and the following Wednesday (March 5) a second red team tasked with “mission-critical work” was also cut.
The EI-ISAC’s role was to advise election officials and voting machine makers about cybersecurity risks that could impact the integrity of elections. It isn’t the first move made by the current US administration to loosen oversight on election security.
Also confirmed this week to be shut down is the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), which was similarly tasked with informing responses to threats against local and national elections.
“Many state and local election offices rely on EI-ISAC as their only source of federal cybersecurity support, so cutting it puts entire counties at risk. Defunding EI-ISAC doesn’t just weaken election security, it leaves communities wide open to cyberattacks on schools, emergency services, and local governments,” he added.
That was only the first half of the week; I pretty much gave up after that. I heard the new mission of the former Environmental Protection Agency was a low point: “to make it cheaper to buy cars, heat homes and run businesses.” And the kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil was perhaps the bottom, though more similar horror stories are ‘developing.’
The only really positive thing I can say is that our kids and grandkids – while they haven’t been joining us old folks in our hand-wringing and feeble protests – aren’t hesitating to stand up when it’s necessary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSq8nTjUpms&pp=ygUgamV3aXNoIHByb3Rlc3RlcnMgYXQgVHJ1bXAgVG93ZXI%3D
We had better hope they decide soon that this is their battle too. And if they do, we had better have their backs this time.
--
p.s. Schumer needs to go. Find and sign one or several of the many petitions on line!
I don’t know if you’ve been following this…
…but the last couple of weeks, the Trump regime has kept busy, busy, busy:
- Closing 47 Social Security offices (while newly requiring many seniors to appear in person for routine changes)
- Proposing to cut the CDC and NIH staff by a further 10,000 employees, for a total loss of of about a quarter of the HHS personnel
- Announcing that a notorious medical fraudster and vaccine denier will head an official government vaccine-autism study
- Doing Deportations – using masked thugs.
- Extreme renditions to foreign prisons without evidence or charges.
- Reveling in Revocations – or removal – of every level of residency status ( native-born coming soon!) for social media posts, or presence at a protest. Fulbright scholars and top post-docs serving as high-profile examples of the kind of educated undesirable “we don’t want here”
- firing almost all the employees of Homeland Security’s civil rights office
- Outlawing demonstrations, empowering campus police to make arrests
- Straight up blackmailing universities and major law firms
Germany, 1934, anyone? We must cling to the knowledge that Trump did NOT win almost 90 percent of the vote, and that while this macabre circus races on, the administration’s clowns just announced (classified not classified) bombing plans in a group chat which accidentally included a journalist. But I’m not sure their massive incompetence will save us – and it may well kill us. After only two months – yes, it does seem like years – of an escalating tsunami of idiocy and pointless cruelty, it should be clear to anyone with open eyes that we can’t wait for midterms. Regardless of the outcome – regardless of whether midterms will even be held – we will not have anything like a democracy after 2 years of this. We don’t have one now. The underpinnings have been ripped out and we’re in free fall. With each judicial ruling, the constitutional crises pile up, one atop the next like leaky old air mattresses. The judges are blowing as fast as they can, but the tired vinyl isn’t going to cushion our descent.
This may be my last letter, it’s getting too depressing to revisit this relentless decimation of democracy week after week, as Bebe obliterates Gaza and AIDS surges back into the vacuum left by USAID. We are still protesting in New City at the courthouse, Tuesday at noon, though I won’t be there this week. I would love to say I’ll be [at what I hope is a massive showing] in the Capital next Saturday, but instead I’ll just be coming back from visiting family. I hope some of you will go – I’ve already donated towards your bus fare…
Events at the Triangle, and in the world
Dear neighbors,
I’m so sorry. I sincerely regret my attempt to share the Easter insight that came to me on Good Friday eve; a conceptually powerful visual synergy linking neighborhood outcry over the unexpected slaughter of 9 trees at the Woods Road Triangle, which many in Snedens found profoundly upsetting, to deafening silence in some quarters regarding the ongoing, unprecedented, and indiscriminate slaughter of the pillars of federal infrastructure. (The signs were rapidly removed, so if you missed it, this will have to do: video (https://photos.app.goo.gl/493PBzE7JD8C1x3k6 – and if you weren’t one of the outraged, you can stop here: the rest isn’t meant for you.)
I did not intend to scare anyone, and I regret that some neighbors were alarmed; it never occurred to me that suspicions might jump right to ‘foreign agitators have entered my safe space,’ rather than instantly grasping – or at least trying to comprehend – the visual allegory. That certainly says something about the climate in Snedens, and perhaps America. My simple (and transient) visual message provoked agitation from people I rarely see outside of the lower landing – at least three of whom who were so upset by the acronyms of our knee-capped public institutions, that they were apparently compelled to rush out, one after another, to “disappear” the signs, to save themselves and 
others from the horrifying experience. One resident angrily accosted an interested bystander. One even beseeched for the signs to be placed on our property, out of sight, where the only people to offend would be friends, immediate neighbors, and trespassers (as I’m sure everyone in the landing knows, our road is not and never has been public, as it’s made up of easements that run with the parcels – if we’re getting technical).
The extent and depth of these reactions would be laughable if it weren’t so disturbing. I am so deeply saddened and discouraged to realize that much of the community where 3 generations of my family have grown up, a community where many marched against the Vietnam War or for Civil Rights, is now so isolated from normal life and civic engagement, from even its fellow inhabitants, that panic and rage were the overt reactions to encountering placards with endangered government agencies’ initials on them. The desperation to remove any reminder of the divisions outside our door, to preserve dysfunctional social fictions that now drive community cohesion, is a hard thing to see in broad daylight, particularly through the lens of history.
While what’s left of our independent press is threatened at the national level, some neighbors clearly can’t tolerate even a moment’s upsetting of the local facade. In their “idyllic” hamlet, there must be noreminder of the disorder and collapse going on outside. Though I’m sure it’s tinted by memory, the Snedens I grew up in was both messier and more genuine. There were no fences, and we could talk about difficult issues. Morality and Politics seemed distinct and separable. Now? Andy Norman must be spinning in his grave. Snedens tolerates no social airing of the disappearance of a house cleaner or nanny who’s no longer in the country, or the sudden scarcity of landscapers, or the loss of that foreign student who was tutoring your grandson. Certainly not until the imaginary gates are actually crashed: by ICE, the thought police, or a pandemic we didn’t prepare for because malicious, avaricious clowns are running our public health and research institutions. Until then we must keep things “civilized.”
America is terrifying right now, and I regret that people were further frightened by this local moment. But if vigilante censorship is one’s immediate reaction to a hint of unpleasant reality, some here may be ill-prepared for the America of our future. Then again, some residents may really love it. Ultimately I don’t think wealth and location will protect anyone from all that’s coming. And at some point, equivocating or staying silent to protect others’ tender sensibilities will also have a price; remind yourself how the term “quisling” came into use.
Addendum (because life marches on while thoughts coalesce):
We have new laws against Christian bias: I have been made aware that some Christians are uncomfortable with the traditional displaying of Halloween skeletons and supernatural phenomena, so I trust that no such displays will appear at our Woods Road triangle going forward. Especially now that J.D. Vance seems to have killed the Pope. 5K runs are apparently still neutral. And Ivy League Universities are suddenly a lot easier to get into – for as long as they last!
The Frog in the Pot
Dear Neighbors,
it may feel like things are in limbo, staying at the same level of chaos. Don’t be deceived. The freedoms, institutions and information, data and even people, that this administration is rapidly “disappearing” from existence will take decades, at least, to reconstruct, and in the meantime we will not have safe medicine, safe vaccines, safe food to eat, safe air to breathe; we will not be safe in our homes or anywhere on the planet. Having persecuted, deported, imprisoned and alienated foreign workers – from day-laborers and farmhands to research scientists and doctors – apparently most of us are intended, perhaps destined, to resign ourselves to Howard Lutnick’s plans (https://fortune.com/article/commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick-tariffs-factory-jobs-robots/) for American employees, fulfilling our duty to MAGA. That future will be hastened by the ongoing destruction of American education, and if we don’t comply, perhaps we’ll end up in Alcatraz (https://www.npr.org/2025/05/05/nx-s1-5387239/trump-alcatraz-reopen). Tourism will be nonexistent – in both directions, now that we’re self-incubating virus mutations and exporting formerly-preventable infectious diseases. Even those of us who believe in vaccines won’t be able to get them.
I’m not going to bother with more links to the meltdown of democracy – you can look it up for yourself, and it is just too discouraging to revisit all the stories. But this is not hyperbole. It’s not a joke, and it’s not a drill. When people warned you to believe what Project 2025 laid out, they meant it. Unless citizens – OTHER THAN, AND IN MASSIVE ADDITION TO the ragtag groups currently protesting – begin to get involved in a variety of effective ways, there will be no going back. We have a “president” who isn’t sure it’s even his duty to uphold the Constitution (or, is actually SURE it isn’t), who has already created numerous constitutional crises – which no one wants to enumerate for fear of having the whole house of cards collapse at once. “The Democrats” will not “save” anything but their own figurehead positions in a one-sided and unworkable status quo, a runaway steam-roller obliterating the true American Values of our founders; everything we once held to be self-evident.
You may think you are still ok. But you’re the frog in the pot, and it’s already on the stove. I’ve said before, and I’m more convinced every day: anyone who still believes we will even have the capacity for fair elections in 2 years is living in a fantasy. Hell, thanks to Bobby Jr. we’ll be lucky to be alive by then. You don’t have to join ME – despite expressions of appreciation and support, only ONE neighbor has so far – but please, PLEASE get out of your comfort zone and find you own way to do SOMETHING. We’re one pandemic away from disaster, and running out of time.