Bulletin 278: Last 2020 fundraising reminder; "coming attractions" January 18-22; the year ahead

December 31, 2020

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Dear friends and colleagues --

We hope this New Year's Eve finds you well -- and full of resolve as we face what is certain to be another momentous year ahead.

Last 2020 fundraising reminder

To those of you who have so generously contributed -- thank you. We aim to use those funds as efficiently and powerfully as we can. Thank you -- all of you -- for your kind personal notes and well-wishes.

In 2021 we will be continuing all we are now doing in Washington and elsewhere while also starting a new advertising campaign here in New Mexico, as well as some other new activities you will hear about shortly. Your contributions have made this possible, at least at an initial level. How far we can go, and with what impact overall, will depend in part on others joining in.

To those who have yet to contribute, please consider doing so! Some further details about ways to contribute can be found in Bulletin 274.

The week of January 18-22

We are planning to kick off the new year with coordinated activities and initiatives grouped around Martin Luther King Day (January 18), the 2021 New Mexico legislative session (which convenes on January 19 at noon), the inauguration of the new U.S. president (barring a successful last-minute protest in Congress or the courts, both of which are extremely unlikely), and last but not least, entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) (January 22).

Especially if you live in New Mexico please consider setting aside some time on January 19, when some of us will be present (while also physically distanced) outside the Roundhouse. For public health's sake, the Governor has banned gatherings of more than five people, but even so there are some creative things we can do which at least partially reconstruct the important freedom of assembly. Our plans are evolving. There will be an in-person aspect, and there will be a virtual aspect. We should have some new advertising materials in place by then as well. You may have your own ideas about "hybrid" events on January 19 and if so please do write or call.

There will be some other announcements in the coming few days. This listserve is about to get more use. Please ask your friends to sign up if they want. Oh, and please sign the Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Weapons.

The year ahead

It is a strange and unfamiliar moment in our history. We all can sense that everything has changed but it is hard to know precisely how. Perhaps that is because so much is yet to be determined, and so much that we thought was real, or even now may think is real, is not. The confining, ordering, and somewhat safe walls that define "normal times" are falling. There are more possibilities than many people have realized, more than many find pleasant. Some of those possibilities are welcome -- such as a new reckoning of state and national priorities, if enough people demand such -- and others very much not.

Certainly the covid-19 pandemic has been and remains one of the most tangible symptom of the novel epoch we are entering. The pandemic, as we know, is not done with us. Even with vaccines we can expect 200,000 to 300,000 more direct covid deaths this year just in this country, pushing the U.S. death toll well beyond that experienced here as a result of World War II. Indirect morbidity and mortality will be greater.

A lot of the economic damage has yet to be felt and will be permanent, both in the economic sense and in many people's lives, economic prospects, and for children, their education. The year ends with 20 million people on unemployment in this country and millions more that deserve to get unemployment compensation but aren't, because the system has failed them. Public and private debt is sky-high and rising. The incoming administration's optimistic slogan, "Build Back Better," implies a hope that most of what was lost will be replaced by something "better." OK, "better" -- what is that? What lemonade -- if any -- is to be made from 2020's lemons, and the ones yet to come?

Is the answer to try and return to a growing economy, growing greenhouse gas emissions, growing inequality, growing corporate power, rising extinctions, a growing threat of great-power war (while "small" wars continue), ever-greater exhaustion of natural resources, and still-more-efficient propaganda and accompanying confusion and docility in this country?

Yes, that is indeed the default answer. With variations, it is the only answer currently acceptable to the political establishment of the United States -- all feints, postures, virtue signalling, and meaningless gestures aside.

The Biden Administration is coming in loaded to the hilt with people who believe in an aggressive U.S. empire abroad and minor amelioration of what are in fact existential domestic and environmental problems. They have tremendous blind spots. Just like the last administration did, come to think about it, though in different places.

Will anything really change? Yes, it will.Things which can't continue, won't. The present situation is unstable, and it could break in any number of ways, depending.

Please consider working with us in the New Year. Thank you for all the work we have done together in years past, and let's start the new year resolved to do our part to help guide the historic transformation at hand.

Stay safe, take care of each other,

Greg, Trish, and gang