Social worker Emily Feiner being physically removed from Rep. Mike Lawler's town hall event in Somers, New York on Sunday night, May 4 (image via screengrab)
We are living in a time when monsters roam the globe: Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Xi, Modi, Erdoğan, and others.
They are destroying countless lives, fueling hate, spreading fear.
What is our moral obligation as human beings in the face of this? How do we maintain integrity in a time of monsters?
Some people I know are in denial. They’ve stopped listening to the news. They’d rather not know what the monsters are doing.
I understand. It’s all too painful — the abductions and deportations in the United States, horrific deaths in Ukraine and Gaza, abuses of human rights in China’s Xinjiang region and in Turkey, violence in Kashmir.
Why learn of it? they ask. Nothing can be done anyway, they say.
Others are immobilized with grief. They cannot abide the inhumanity and suffering, so they’ve collapsed into despair.
Nothing will be done, they say.
Some others I know are resigned to what’s happening and believe their only real choice is to keep quiet. They don’t speak out against the monsters for fear of reprisal.
It’s the only practical choice, they say.
These are all completely understandable responses. If you are in denial, despair, or submissive silence, you should not feel guilty. You are only human.
But it’s also important to know that these attitudes help the monsters thrive and grow.
When most of us believe that nothing can be done, or assume nothing will be done, or think that silence is the only practical choice, we fuel more monstrosity.
Yesterday on the Coffee Klatch, Heather and I interviewed Emily Feiner, a social worker in Nyack, New York. Last Sunday she had gone to her congressman’s town hall and simply asked him — Mike Lawler, a Republican member of Congress — what would get him to refuse to go along with Trump?
When Lawler gave a non-answer, Feiner didn’t accept it. She continued to ask her question, and was told to leave. When she refused, state troopers lifted her — a 64-year-old — out of her chair and carried her out of the meeting. The audience erupted in calls of “shame, shame, shame” against Lawler and the troopers.
Feiner told us that Lawler subsequently labeled her a “radical far-left” activist. In reality, she’s an average American who sometimes votes Republican but has now had enough.
She also told us she’d received words of thanks for her act of resistance from all over America and the world, even from someone in Turkey.
Emily Feiner does not deny what’s happening. To the contrary, she’s going to town halls, asking questions, expressing her views.
She’s not in despair. When she talked with Heather and me, she seemed filled with positive energy.
She’s not silent. She’s actively resisting the monsters and their agents — demanding that they be accountable for what they’re doing.
Thank you, Emily. You are an inspiration to us all.
We are in a national emergency, as is much of the rest of the world. If you are in denial or despair or in fearful silence, you are hardly alone.
But if enough of us stand up as Emily did, the monsters cannot win. We will prevail. We will end up with a democracy stronger than it was before the time of monsters.
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Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/