In major cities and small towns throughout all 50 states, millions of people showed up Saturday at more than 2,600 pro-democracy rallies (otherwise called Hate America rallies by Republican leaders). The sheer number of protests far outstripped the 2,100 No Kings rallies in June.

I’m sitting at my dining room table — alone since Covid continues to demand my isolation from others for a few more days — penning posters for Saturday’s No Kings rallies. As I push down on my markers, I picture my words transformed into action. With every stroke, I imagine I can magically create some needed change.

There’s a popular slogan going around “Activism is the antidote to despair.” We prefer, “Activism is the antidote to tyranny.” While the former may address our sense of hopelessness, the latter acknowledges the very real crisis we are in. With the federal government shutdown; our president posting AI-enhanced racist videos; people losing healthcare benefits at an alarming rate; and masked ICE agents grabbing people, including children, from their homes and workplaces, we have to overcome our despair, harness our outrage and engage in activism to fight the tyranny that is engulfing us.

We are pleased to bring you a guest essay from noted author, Daniel M. Klein, about his experience surviving polio as a young boy in the early 1940s. In our time when the importance of vaccines is being questioned and so many people around us are not old enough to remember what it was like to live in an era before vaccines, we believe it is important to share these stories.

Free speech.

In the last two weeks, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered while expressing his right to free speech and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was fired for invoking his.

Responding to the murder of Charlie Kirk is tricky business. Political assassination is never justified. And Charlie Kirk was killed while exercising his absolute right of free speech – his right to express his opinions in a public forum.

Autocracy.

Dictatorship.

The end of democracy.

Takeover of the Supreme Court.

Denial of health care and services for the poor.

The term micro-aggression had a moment in the late 90s and early oughts. It spoke to the ways people of color, of religions other than Christianity, and cultures other than white Anglo-Saxon suffered indignities in small but hurtful ways every day. Systemic racism seems to be a more commonly used term today in considering the way discrimination is baked into our society and government, yet both terms are equally important in these times of rampant discrimination, unbridled hate, and unconscious and conscious bias. We, as individuals, have more control over micro-aggressions, since we can determine what we ourselves say and do, and we can respond to others when they speak or behave in a micro-aggressive manner.

In our efforts to be relevant and make a difference, even in the face of our not infrequent sense of hopelessness and helplessness, we are turning our focus to the children in our communities who will be returning to school in a few days, many of them without their basic needs filled – some because that is always the case, some because of recent cuts in funding and resources to organizations and agencies that usually provide aid.

After years of wishing it were not so, we’ve come to admit this truth: watching and reading more and more news does not make it better or change it. Much like exercise, unless we are hoping to become world-class athletes, we do not need to commit several hours a day to pumping iron in order to be fit.

August is a big month for celebrating suffrage. Last week, on August 6th, we marked the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The law was the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement, designed to assure suffrage to African Americans. In a couple of weeks, on August 26th, we will mark the 52nd anniversary of the establishment of Women’s Equality Day, created to celebrate the passing of the 19th Amendment that gave US white women the right to vote in 1920.

Last week, Medicare and Medicaid, our country’s largest public health insurance programs, celebrated their 60th birthdays. Few of us probably remember that these programs were part of President Lyndon Johnson’s attempts to desegregate American healthcare and fight poverty. They were part of the president’s War on Poverty.

Who doesn’t love the story of Robin Hood? How can we resist the image of a brave young man hiding out in Sherwood Forest with his merry band of outlaws as they stop the coaches on the road to Nottingham Castle to steal from the rich and give to the poor? As they make sure those in need are clothed, housed, and fed? Sure, Robin and crew were breaking the law, and it would have been nice if there were a few women in the bunch but, hey, you’d be hard put to find a more appealing hero.

One of our Leading Ladies decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather recently and gather her dog into the car for a trip to a nearby park for a romp. Once there, she and the dog bounded out of the car only to be confronted by an angry man in a pickup truck. He rolled down his window and yelled that dogs were not allowed in the park. Our friend tried to defuse his vitriol, telling the man that she was on her way to the part of the park where dogs are allowed and he need not speak to her that way. He would have none of it. Her efforts only made him angrier. He continued to harass her, ultimately vowing to make sure no one ever tried to bring a dog into the park again.

In 2025, survivors of domestic and sexual violence are facing more than the trauma of abuse—they’re confronting mounting barriers to safety created by harmful shifts in policy. These changes at both federal and state levels are making it harder for service providers to do our jobs, for families to feel secure, and for survivors to access the support they need.

With passage of Trump’s big, bad, bloodthirsty bill, estimates are that $285 billion dollars will be cut in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (SNAP), also known as food stamps, in the next decade.

Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, orator, statesman and essayist, spoke on July 5, 1852, to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Douglass and his family lived in Rochester, a city of liberal thought and activism.

Juneteenth snuck by us this year, and shame on us for that. The occasion marks the date in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 made it to the far reaches of Texas to finally end slavery throughout the country. Juneteenth was first celebrated solely by African Americans in the South with church gatherings, parades, and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Attendance at the president’s birthday party, aka the 250th Birthday of the U.S. Army Grand Military Parade and Celebration, was well below the expected crowd of 200,000, according to the Associated Press. That is fewer than usually attend the annual Fourth of July festivities in Washington, DC.

At my college graduation, the class poet stepped up to the podium to speak and announced that he was gay. The school authorities immediately cut his microphone. That was decades ago and we have come a long way since then.