Published in the Boston Globe

Well, that didn’t take long. On Monday, the Trump Organization announced plans to launch a chain of three-star hotels to target the millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump but could never afford his gilded hotels, condos, or clubs.

Until now, Trump’s middle-class base had to settle for purchasing little chips off the Trump brand: a bottle of water, a steak, a made-in-China tie or, of course, a hat. But there is more gold in them thar voters, and it is positively un-Trumpian to leave it unmanned.

Published at The Intercept

Now that it seems virtually certain that Donald Trump will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, and the climate movement is quite rightly mobilizing in the face of this latest dystopian lurch, it’s time to get real about something: Pretty much everything that is weak, disappointing, and inadequate about that deal is the result of U.S. lobbying since 2009.

The fact that the agreement only commits governments to keeping warming below an increase of 2 degrees, rather than a much safer firm target of 1.5 degrees, was lobbied for and won by the United States.

The fact that the agreement left it to individual nations to determine how much they were willing to do to reach that temperature target, allowing them to come to Paris with commitments that collectively put us on a disastrous course toward more than 3 degrees of warming, was lobbied for and won by the United States.

Published in the New York Daily News

Let’s just give up. That’s one way of responding to the reports that President Trump has decided to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord.

After all, without the world’s largest economy and the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases onboard, what point is there in any of us doing our part to try to prevent catastrophic climate change? Time to focus on yoga and juicing and what the kids today call “self-care.” Or maybe there’s a recreational drug that will make serial disasters seem exciting. Oh, and if you are really rich, it’s time to join the movement of high-end preppers and invest in some land on higher ground.

No, wait a minute, that’s . . . monstrous. Monstrous to people in Sri Lanka, where hundreds were killed in recent days in the midst of deadly mudslides and flooding. Monstrous to people in India and Pakistan, where thousands have died in heat waves in recent years.

Published at The Intercept



United's stock plunges after video emerges of a passenger being violently dragged off an oversold flight. Pepsi yanks an ad that portrays police and Black Lives Matter-ish protestors making peace over a can of soda. Fox News faces an advertiser exodus after new revelations of massive payouts to settle sexual harassment and verbal abuse allegations against host Bill O’Reilly.

If there is one lesson that emerges from all these controversies it is this: Institutions organized around a powerful brand image – often understood as “a promise” from a corporation to its customers – are in big trouble when that image gets battered and the promise appears to have been broken. These facts make corporate brands intensely vulnerable to public pressure, particularly when that pressure is loud and organized.

Published in the New York Times

For progressives, Donald J. Trump’s presidency so far has been a little like standing in front of one of those tennis ball machines — and getting hit in the face over and over again. Yet looking back, the blow that still has me most off-kilter didn’t come from the new president himself. It came two weeks ago, when several smiling union leaders strolled out of the White House and up to a bank of waiting cameras and declared their firm allegiance to President Trump.

Published at The Intercept

We already know that the Trump administration plans to deregulate markets, wage all-out war on “radical Islamic terrorism,” trash climate science and unleash a fossil-fuel frenzy. It’s a vision that can be counted on to generate a tsunami of crises and shocks: economic shocks, as market bubbles burst; security shocks, as blowback from foreign belligerence comes home; weather shocks, as our climate is further destabilized; and industrial shocks, as oil pipelines spill and rigs collapse, which they tend to do, especially when enjoying light-touch regulation.

All this is dangerous enough. What’s even worse is the way the Trump administration can be counted on to exploit these shocks politically and economically.

On Friday evening, Jacobin Magazine, Haymarket Books, and Verso Books co-sponsored a lively “Anti-Inauguration” event at the Lincoln Theater in Washington, DC, where Naomi joined an exciting lineup of speakers offering their take on Trump and the way forward.

In her speech, Naomi contemplates the band of uniquely “junky capitalists” now ascending to power, and how to prepare for and respond to the violent shocks they’re already starting to unleash. She ends with a call to build and strengthen connective tissue between our movements as we push for alternatives to Trumpism.

Check out the full video below (the event begins at about five minutes in). Naomi’s remarks are followed by fantastic speeches from journalists Anand Gopal, Jeremy Scahill, and Owen Jones, and author and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.

Published in the New York Times

For a great many women around the world, Donald J. Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton feels like a painful setback not just for democracy, but for our gender.

Voters chose a loose cannon of a man with zero government experience over a calm, collected and supremely qualified woman. The root cause of this injustice, many have suggested, can only be sexism — proof that the glass ceiling protecting the highest reaches of power cannot yet be shattered.

The reaction is understandable. It’s also wrong and unnecessarily demoralizing.

Of course no female or nonwhite candidate with Mr. Trump’s lack of experience, angry outbursts, boasts of sexual assault or trail of broken marriages could have gotten elected. That Mr. Trump did, while spouting such ugliness about women and minorities, speaks to deep and persistent strains of misogyny and white supremacy in American society.

Published in The Nation

At the precise moment that Donald Trump was giving his acceptance speech, I was in a room packed with a thousand people in Sydney, Australia, listening to Maria Tiimon Chi-Fang, a leading activist from the island state of Kiribati. All day I had been sending e-mails with the subject line “It’s the end of the world.” I suddenly felt embarrassed by the privilege of this hyperbole.

If Trump does what he says and rolls back the (insufficient) climate progress won under Obama, inspiring other nations to do the same, Chi-Fang’s nation and culture will almost surely disappear beneath the waves. Literally, the end of their whole world.

Chi-Fang talked about how the Paris climate negotiations was a rare moment of hope. It’s not a perfect text, but island nations waged—and won—a valiant battle to include language reflecting the need to keep warming below 1.5. Celsius. “We didn’t sleep,” she told the crowd.

Published in The Guardian

They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?