Category: Activism in Action

Red, White, and First Amendment Blues

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

One of the most fascinating and rapidly evolving news stories this week involves Nordstrom dropping Ivanka Trump’s clothing line, citing poor sales as its reasoning. In case you missed this, here is more-or-less what happened: First it was a simple schadenfreude-laden headline, because the Trump dynasty loves selling things and also is historically bad at it. But the collective amusement turned into incredulous outrage when Trump censured Nordstrom’s from the POTUS account, in typical 45th fashion. Then we all watched a Spicer Double Down Special in yesterday’s press conference, when he referred to the business move as “a direct attack on [the President’s] policies.” And by the time Kellyanne Conway got around to literally advertising Ivanka’s product in her official capacity as a White House adviser today, nothing was surprising anymore.

I’ve seen a lot of people note Conway’s endorsement that was illegal (which it was), that this whole story illustrates Trump’s inherent conflict of interest (which it does), and also that Spicer apparently doesn’t know what the word ‘direct’ means (which he doesn’t). But I also think this is the latest in a larger picture issue, and I don’t hear a lot of people talking about it. And that issue is that this administration is launching a systemic assault on the First Amendment.

What does Trump’s conflict of interest have to do with the First Amendment?

I’m glad you ask, Hypothetical Person in My Head! The key is both Trump and his proxy Spicer censuring Nordstrom’s business decision. The groundwork was laid when Trump criticized Nordstrom’s business decision from the POTUS account, saying: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. . . . Terrible!” This is because a statement from an official account that something was “unfair” can be reasonably read to carry an implicit threat. But that idea wasn’t fully developed until Spicer said this in the press conference yesterday: “There are clearly efforts to undermine [Ivanka’s] name based on her father’s positions on particular policies that he’s taken. This is a direct attack on his policies.” And it’s when a business decision becomes an “attack” on Presidential policies that the larger picture about the First Amendment starts to take shape. As it happens, these statements taken together tread awfully close to Nordstrom’s right to freedom of speech — specifically its freedom of association and freedom of expressive conduct (And also its freedom to contract, but that’s a whole other ball of wax.).

A Brief First Amendment Primer

For those of you playing the home game, the First Amendment contains more-or-less five basic rights:

  1. Freedom of the press;
  2. Freedom of speech;
  3. Freedom of religion (encompassing both the right to practice religion without government hindrance and the right to freedom from government laws “respecting a religious establishment”);
  4. Freedom to petition; and
  5. Freedom to peaceably assemble.

Though whole treatises could be (and have been) written on this topic, the main thing to take away for now is that the government generally cannot tread on these five things. That includes all branches of the federal government, not just Congress (which is what the First Amendment literally says), and thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment it includes state government as well. (Note that it does not, however, extend to that moderator on reddit who banned that one guy for using slurs, regardless of what that guy is yelling on 4chan.)

Okay, but One Tweet Isn’t an Attack

Good point, Other Hypothetical Person Also in My Head! But this is the part where I remind you that this wasn’t just one tweet in a vacuum — it’s just the latest part of a sustained, systemic effort. Let’s go through that list above, with an eye towards things this administration has done in the past as well as in the past few weeks, and see if they hit all of the First Amendment tickyboxes.

Freedom of the Press: Check. At this point, the 45th discrediting specific members of the press (and especially CNN) as “fake news” has become so commonplace that it’s a recurrent joke on Saturday Night Live. And that skit was hilarious, but it touches on a real phenomenon that’s pretty frightening: The idea that if you report displeasure with the President’s policies, you no longer get to count as real news. This is in addition to a growing rhetoric that the members of the fourth estate are enemies of the state generally, which is popping up in everything from serious allegations that the press is “refusing to cover” terrorist attacks to random statements attacking the “so-called media” over, of all things, reporting on a bathrobe. These statements, taken in tandem, paint a picture of this administration’s general desire to make Americans mistrust news in general.

Freedom of Speech: Check. I covered this one briefly above, but let’s spend a few more minutes on it. This administration has a long-established position of disliking First Amendment freedom of speech, which predates its assumption of office — from threatening to sue the people who stepped forward about sexual assault during his campaign to threatening to jail Hillary Clinton for telling ‘so many lies’ to threatening to remove citizenship for flag-burning. Since taking office, the administration has continued this trend, issuing a communications lockdown impeding executive government staff’s use of social media, demanding that park service officials retract tweets, and beginning to dismantle net neutrality. These actions, taken in tandem, suggest this administration wants people to fear speaking and relaying information freely in a variety of circumstances.

Freedom of Religion: Check. This administration has touched upon both the exercise clause and the establishment clause within the past few weeks. On the exercise end, mounting evidence is being considered by courts that the recent executive order is intended to curtail Muslim entry to the country due to specific Islamophobic animosity within the administration. On the establishment end, we have Trump threatening to dismantle the Johnson Amendment at the National Prayer Breakfast so that Christian organizations can participate more directly in politics, and promising to make persecuted Christians a political priority for immigration. None of this is a good sign, especially so early on in the Presidency.

Freedom to Petition: Check. This one is a more nebulous concept in some ways than the others, but the freedom to petition generally involves being able to talk to government directly about issues with governance. Political texts books often point to things like lobbying, letter-writing, e-mail campaigns, testifying before tribunals, filing lawsuits, supporting referenda, collecting signatures for ballot initiatives, peaceful protests, and picketing. It’s pretty closely tied to the freedom to assemble, which I’ll get to below. But things like shutting down the White House comment line, lying about the number of people who attended the Inauguration, the forcible follow of the POTUS account by 560,000 Twitter users, ignoring one of the most popular We the People petitions in history, and repeatedly attacking the judiciary branch all implicate the freedom to petition, and also all have happened in the past few weeks. Taken together, they suggest this administration wants to make it difficult for constituents as well as other branches of government to interact with its decisions.

Freedom to Assemble: Check. This right applies both to the right to protest and to the general right to associate with other people in things like unions. Though in general the Trump administration has been a bit cagey about this one, we do see early indications that we can expect future infringement of the right of assembly . Trump’s threat to cut federal funding over Berkeley protests is a mixed example at best, but his early description of protests as “unfair,” later description of Madonna’s statements at the Women’s March as “disgraceful to our country,” and more recent iterative rhetoric that protesters are being ‘paid’ all paint a larger picture that can be separated from the violence associated with the Berkeley news. And they come at a time when several state legislators are suggesting criminalizing protest. These things suggest a broader stance against protest generally.

Why does all of this matter?

It matters because the First Amendment collectively is an important check on centralized government process. The Founding Fathers knew this — the anti-federalists fought so hard for a Bill of Rights because they wanted to have a system in place that could slow the federalist machine and prevent it from steamrolling human rights. It’s not a coincidence that the First Amendment is, well, first.

And a natural extension of that is that a healthy enforcement of the Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment in particular, prevents a lot of the hallmarks of fascism from finding purchase (particularly the intertwining of government and religion, controlled mass media, suppression of labor power, and censorship of the arts). It’s a foundational part of American history, and one of the things that does, in fact, make America great. We’ve seen a lot of discussion about whether Trump’s administration is ushering in an era of fascism, and I personally believe that it is. In order for a nascent fascist state to take root in the United States, the Bill of Rights and especially the First Amendment (along with the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Tenth) need to be bludgeoned into submission. And we’re watching it happen, one tweet at a time.

What can we be doing? (Besides getting the 45th to stop tweeting. That isn’t going to happen.)

Okay, you raise a compelling counterpoint, Final Hypothetical Person, despite the noted disadvantage of not actually existing. But there are things we can be doing nonetheless!

  • Resist normalization of deviance. This is basically just a fancy sociological way of saying that there is real actual societal value in stamping “This Isn’t Normal” on your forehead and yelling it every time something infringes on a First Amendment right. On a related note, Amy Siskind recommends keeping a list of all of the things you notice changing around you — experts say this can be a very effective technique for resisting normalization. She keeps a weekly list herself, and you can read this past week’s here.
  • Continue to exercise your own rights, especially the last two. Protest things! Sign petitions! Call your senators and yell a lot! Obviously, this is easier for some people than others, but one very real way to preserve rights is to exercise them.
  • Keep track of the news. You can’t know your rights are being infringed if you aren’t paying attention — but more importantly, you also don’t know when your rights are being protected. The Ninth Circuit took a big step towards protecting freedom of religion today, though that fight is far from over, and that’s really helpful to know — it’s a form of petition being successfully preserved, at least so far.
  • Take care of yourself. It’s the best way to keep on fighting.

And on that note, I am going to take my own advice, and save writing about today’s three executive orders for tomorrow. Self-care, folks. It’s a thing. But you’ll hear from me again soon!

Head-Fakes and Chore Charts

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Hello from my lunch break! I’ve heard a lot of people talking about an article here on medium titled, “The Immigration Ban is a Head-Fake — and We’re Falling For It.” The central thesis of the article is that “the administration is deliberately testing the limits of governmental checks and balances to set up a self-serving, dangerous consolidation of power” and that the immigration ban was a “distraction” that we “fell for” by protesting. The article concludes by noting that protesting is a mixed bag which can “help the other side,” and urging reporters to do their jobs properly.

(There, I saved you a click.)

I actually agree the first premise of this article — like the author, I genuinely believe we were witnessing boundary testing of a nascent fascist regime.

That said, however, I do have qualms about the rest of the article. More specifically…

The immigration ban is not a distraction, and protesting is an absolutely necessary response to this boundary-testing, for several reasons:

  1. The immigration bans in place resulted in many, many people throughout the country being detained illegally on Friday. In addition to being real people with very real risk of deportation, which would be life-altering and in many cases potentially life-ending, those people are themselves a bell-weather for further fascist activity. It is absolutely vital that we pay attention to what is happening with our most vulnerable populations, because we know from history that fascist escalation begins there but does not end there.
  2. The protests in airports served as very important cover and coordination for the attorneys working in JFK, Logan, Dulles, and elsewhere. They helped attorneys get people access to representation during detention, file emergency motions that created court holdings (in case anyone were curious whether it’s normal for court holdings to issue on a Saturday, it is not), and test our boundaries against this regime — we can’t know whether they will ignore court orders until there are court orders in place, and once they have done so we have really important information about next steps.
  3. It’s extremely important for the average citizen to be doing things they feel are helping resist, both in terms of general morale and because resistance is a natural counter to normalization. Fascist regimes rely on normalization very heavily in order to work properly; it’s why propaganda is so prevalent and it’s also why you keep hearing politicians say the phrase “This is not normal.” Average citizens might not be able to file motions, but they can coordinate with people who can, and they did, and that is in no way “playing into this administration’s hands.”
  4. Protests reinforce the objectively true fact that fascism is not an end goal of a majority of Americans, which is a piece of propaganda we’re hearing over and over again. Though this article contemplates the idea that Trump has lots and lots of supporters, he actually doesn’t, especially on scary fringe issues like whether Bannon should have the authority to assassinate American citizens. Protests help the average American see that. It’s much, much easier to lie about this if active protest isn’t visible.
  5. Most people don’t know what they should be doing instead, and protests give people who want to do something something to do. This is actually really psychologically valuable, and as long as people don’t conclude they’ve done everything they need to do purely by showing up, it’s not a bad thing that they feel they have helped. So the moral is not “don’t protest,” it’s “don’t only protest” (which, to be fair, that article does state clearly). At minimum most people who showed up also tracked the news, which is very important and a thing we all need to be doing.

All of that being said, if we should be doing more than protesting, what else can we be doing?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot of late, and more specifically about how we diversify and cooperate over the next four years — I think we all know that everyone doing everything every day just isn’t going to work that whole time, and as the article notes, protest is necessary but not sufficient to enact long-term change. There are so many things we all need to be doing — from gathering information, to disseminating information, to political action, to legal action, to logistical support, to morale boosting, to name a mere few — and we all have a role to play here.

Think of it as maintaining a house together — everybody gets a chore to do, and if all of us are sweeping daily, nothing else gets done. Some of us want to swap chores, and some of us want to do the same one every time. And the beauty of this work is that both of those are possible! I would love it if we were all thinking about how we can work together, playing to our strengths, to get through this.

After pondering this a bit, I concluded the best way to thinking about distributing various tasks necessary for change is to use a process of discernment I learned at school, which is loosely based on a Jesuit process of discernment of spirit (but is not religious).

Here is the basic question to ask yourself:

What…

1. Brings me joy…
2. …And I am good at…
3. …that is needed right now?

Note that those three things, by the way, are in order of importance; something that you really don’t enjoy is not sustainable for four years even if it’s really important, and we all need to be playing to our strengths. Some things, like protesting, are all hands on deck, but all hands on deck is no way to live day-to-day, and it’s a great way to burn ourselves out.

So, to synthesize for those of you who have less time for a lunch break than I do:

1. These are scary times;

2. Protesting is valuable;

3. So are other things, and we should be talking about what else we’re all going to do to keep on keeping on.

Okay, that’s all for now! Time to head back to my own task for social justice, which would be my advocacy day job. I’ll catch you all at the next EO.

Tales from the Borderlands: An Early Analysis of the “Border Security” Executive Order

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

(This is the first installment of a series of articles unpacking the many executive orders issued in Donald Trump’s first week of office. Though I am not an immigration specialist, I am a legal generalist working with indigent populations professionally full-time. This article is not intended to form an attorney-client relationship or constitute legal advice, though it is my hope that it will help people understand what is going on.)

Of all of Donald Trump’s promises, perhaps his most famous was his promise that he would personally ensure that the American government would “build a wall” to keep out “illegal immigrants.” It is therefore not surprising that one of his first acts in office is to sign an executive order entitled “Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements,” which outlines his plan for building a wall (among other things). The order is long — it contains seventeen distinct sections — and a lot of it is either vague, confusing, or both. This article is intended to break down what the executive order is actually saying, to help families prepare and to inform the average citizen what we can expect on this front.

Here’s what is new and clearly articulated as of today, January 25:

  • The administration is ordering a wall built on the border between the United States and Mexico. Yes, that’s really a thing that is apparently happening. That said, it’s still unclear what the funding streams will be, what the budget will be, or generally what the plan is for construction.
  • The administration is ordering new detention facilities built near said wall. Again, it’s not clear where the funding is coming from or what the budget will be, though I’ll write more on that below. If Congress doesn’t cooperate, the actual construction is probably not going to happen.
  • Pre-proceeding release will no longer be a thing. The actual language of the executive order describes “the termination the practice known as catch-and-release,” which is really just a fancy way of saying “we won’t let people out before their hearings anymore.” This practice actually was originally terminated in 2006 under President George W. Bush, but much like NSEERS we’ve been walking that back under subsequent policy since 2009 or so. This is a big deal, both because it’s not especially humane and because refusing to release people puts huge amounts of strain on the detention systems, which often aren’t equipped to hold people in the numbers they are apprehended. This executive order does have a plan for that, but… you’re probably not going to like it.
  • Though we now have a federal hiring freeze for most government agencies, good news: The Wall is Hiring! The Secretary of Homeland Security “shall” (which is legalese for “this ain’t optional, Hoss”) hire 5,000 more border patrol agents, which the administration wants stationed “as soon as is practicable.” And they said Donald Trump wouldn’t create more jobs.
  • The order compels every executive department and agency to report all aid and assistance to Mexico since 2011. Folks, I honestly wish I were making this one up, but the language isn’t exactly ambiguous. Despite it not being remotely illegal to provide funds or otherwise provide aid to Mexico during President Obama’s tenure, each executive department and agency “shall” (there’s that word again) “identify and quantify” all such aid going back five years — in other words, not just what types of help everyone has given, but how much. They make sure to include language specifying that they mean “all bilateral and multilateral development aid, economic assistance, humanitarian aid, and military aid.” The first report is due to the Secretary of State within thirty days of today’s report — so by the end of February, basically. And thirty days after that, the Secretary owes a report directly to the President. Incidentally, note that all of this involves the Secretary of State, not the Secretary of Homeland Security. So, you know, that’s promising. Also, the section outlining all of this contains a grammatical error, which I note in a vain attempt to make myself feel better about the whole thing.
  • The Secretary of Homeland Security is now allowed to deputize any and all state and local police infrastructure of the United States as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. This is another one I dearly wish I were making up, because my concern that it might happen has been literally keeping me up at night. But again, the language is not ambiguous — “as the Secretary determines are qualified and appropriate,” police can be authorized “to perform the functions of immigration officers in relation to the investigation, apprehension, or detention of aliens in the United States under the direction and the supervision of the Secretary.” Oh, but in case you were worried about those poor ICE officers being out of a job, you needn’t be; the very next sentence clarifies that this is “in addition to, rather than in place of, Federal performance of these duties.”
  • This executive order is really hoping you haven’t heard of the concept of ‘sanctuary.’ It grants officers “access to all Federal lands as necessary and appropriate to implement this order” as well as authority “to perform such actions on Federal lands as the Secretary deems necessary and appropriate to implement this order.” I’m not sure how this one will be implemented in cities that refuse to cooperate, but I guess we’ll find out.
  • They want prosecution of people detained at borders to be a high priority. I know this because they explicitly say so. There’s a section devoted to it and everything — and the petty part of my brain that wishes none of this were happening would like you to know that they use the term ‘nexus’ wrong while saying so.
  • There will be monthly reports on their apprehension statistics. In a “publicly available way,” though it’s unclear what exactly that means.

Here’s what the executive order might be saying, but we need more information to really know:

  • Detained immigrants may be sent back to the place they are fleeing — or they might not. The exact language in the executive order is “The Secretary shall take appropriate action . . . to ensure that aliens . . . are returned to the territory from which they came pending a formal removal proceeding.” It’s not clear whether that would mean “we stick you in a truck and give you a nice starlight tour of Mexico,” or it actually means people might be extradited to the country they are fleeing. As awful as the former would be, the latter would be even worse — but it’s likely the latter is the accurate interpretation, because this administration has been adamant in its denial of refugees, and the policies in this order about asylum aren’t exactly much better. Relatedly…
  • Asylum might be about to become impossible to obtain at the border. Some provisions of this executive order promise to “end the abuse of parole and asylum provisions currently used to prevent the lawful removal of removable aliens.” This is a confusing statement to me, in addition to being a vague one, for a variety of reasons — first of all, it’s not exactly easy to get asylum granted; though rates vary by location and by type of application, less than one-half of asylum applications are granted annually. But also, from a legal perspective, you’re not a removable alien on the basis of status anymore if you have asylum status granted; it’s literally a status that grants the right to permanent legal residence. This is like saying “we will end abuse of the self-defense doctrine currently used to prevent the lawful incarceration of people who punched someone assaulting them and then ran like hell.” At any rate, that confusion aside, it’s not really clear what abuses they are contemplating or whether they are saying asylum will stop being a defense to deportation, so we’ll need to keep watch on this front and wait to see what is going on.
  • Special Immigrant Juvenile Status might also be about to become impossible to obtain at the border. Right now we have a status that is like asylum that specifically can only be applied to unaccompanied children — it’s called Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (or SIJ status for short). This executive order tells the Secretary of Homeland Security to “ensure that unaccompanied alien children are properly processed, receive appropriate care and placement while in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security, and, when appropriate, are safely repatriated in accordance with law.” It’s not clear whether this processing means deportation, or if it means filing SIJ paperwork; I guess we’ll need to wait and see on this one also.
  • The administration may be assigning asylum officers and immigration judges directly to detention centers. The language in the order itself isn’t entirely clear, but it sounds like the order is simply installing asylum officers and judges directly in the detention centers. To my knowledge, this is new — though it’s possible to plead asylum as a defense to deportation, traditionally that’s done at the court as part of deportation proceedings, just like the proceeding itself. This provision is probably not legal, in case anyone was curious. It sounds like they are expecting many of these cases won’t even get to the deportation proceeding stage , which would be a staggering change if I’m reading this correctly. Basically, they are aggressively minimizing how much detainees even get to set foot in the country at all.

Here’s what the executive order dictates for the near future, which presumably will clarify some things:

  • Several reports or reviews. Per the executive order, there’s a report due to the President in ninety days on the general progress of all of these directives, and another one due in one hundred and eighty days. There’s nothing guaranteeing that any of us will be told anything about this, but I suspect strongly that anything that makes this administration look good will be reported upon at length.
  • A budget of some kind for the project. Though there’s nothing guaranteeing we’ll see this either, it is required per the order itself for the current and next fiscal year. That gives them more-or-less six months to slap something together.

And now you know everything you ever wanted to know about this executive order! And presumably several things you didn’t. At any rate, it’s going to be a rough few years, but if you are reading this, you presumably knew this already. Keep on keeping on, and take care of yourself while you do; we’ll do everything we can to keep all of this bearable.

(Note: Click here to continue to the second installment, on the Enhanced Public Safety executive order.)

This Should Probably Be More Self-Evident Than It Is

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Though I don’t believe the inherent morality of humankind is improving with time, the available technology, and particularly our ready access to information, absolutely has. In Jackson’s era, it was possible to go one’s entire life believing racist things that were never disproved within one’s immediate frame of reference. In our current information-laden era, in contrast, it is possible to go to websites whose express purpose is to research rumor and belief and articulate their factual underpinnings — and we have ample scientific evidence negating the idea of racial superiority. Further, the entire nation literally just lived through eight years of efficient governance by a Harvard-educated black man. No one is saying that Obama was not an effective President; in fact, the common Breitbartian complaint and battle cry is that it’s necessary to undo all that President Obama accomplished–because that is a long list.

In other words, antebellum America had commonplace racist beliefs and rigid societal structure that strongly restricted disproof of these beliefs. We, in contrast, have ready access to Snopes and a black President.

This is probably obvious to you, as well it should be, but it also has an important corollary that I haven’t heard anyone talking about:

In this era of ready information, belief in the myth of white supremacy requires more than mere ignorance; it requires active and intentional disregard of available knowledge. For this idea to find purchase, it must be inherently more comforting to the recipient than an acceptance of meritocracy. The myth of supremacy is a security blanket that white racists are refusing to outgrow, and rather than accepting facts they are cocooning themselves in untrustworthy and laughably false information in order to protect the myth. There is no ‘empathy’ that will get around this, because it is the reaction to the myth of superiority that is driving it and the person has already preemptively rejected egalitarian progress.

This is why it is so hard to ‘go high when they go low.’ This is why ‘meeting people halfway’ is a myth. White supremacy in this day and age is a primitive ego defense driven by an ugly desire to see other people fail, and it actively drives society backward.

Advocating to Callous Listeners: Five (Not-So-Easy) Steps

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This is a very strange Martin Luther King Day. In my lifetime, we’ve always had a long way to go on race relations–I think most people agree we were not enjoying a post-racial society before the November election–but this is the first time that a President-Elect picked a fight with a civil rights legend the weekend before his inauguration. And, more importantly, this behavior does not exist in a vacuum–our President-Elect ran on a blatantly racist, homophobic, ableist, and Islamophobic platform, and though he did not win with a majority, he did win. And his victory (such as it was) emboldened racist people throughout the country to say what they really think–or, as was the case in many school bathrooms and Congressional floors throughout the country, do what they really think. And most of us who are decent human beings are horrified by this, and want it to change.

However, when many of us with these reactions tried to talk to our family/colleagues/friends/neighbors’ cats who supported Trumpian politics, we had a second horrifying realization: This person we were speaking to did not care about fellow human beings. “The Black Lives Matter movement started because people are dying,“ we told them, and to our abject horror, they just didn’t care. Appealing to a sense of humanity did not work, because the listener did not view the subject population as people.

And this is the point where many of us well-meaning advocates, and especially allies, start to draw a blank about what to even do next. Recognizing the humanity of fellow human beings is so basic to us that we don’t know what to do when someone rejects it–the carburetor in our brain stops turning over, and we stand there sputtering, “But they should!” And we’re right–they should–but they still don’t.

I know something of this challenge, because I spent four and a half years writing about mitigating factors of very marginalized and vulnerable people for a living. Talking to people about their experience above has made me realize it might be helpful to talk about my trial and error process. To that end, I’ve drafted a quick primer on an unofficial five-step process I’ve identified over years as a professional advocate for speaking to listeners who have already reject moral and empathy-based arguments. Though this is by no means exhaustive and makes certain assumptions about the relationship between the speaker and the listener, I’m hoping it’s a helpful start for the average ally and advocate.

1. Let Go of ‘Should,’ And Recognize ‘Is’

This is the first step, but it’s also by far the hardest–if you can manage it, the rest becomes much easier. Most people reading this probably agree that anyone with the empathy God gave a grapefruit thinks that other human beings dying through preventable means is bad. The natural corollary that extends from this understanding is that this person we are speaking to does not, in fact, have the empathy God gave a grapefruit. There’s a real impulse to reject not just that person, but the whole rest of the process–“Well this person is terrible, so until they aren’t, I’m done.” And I hate to break this to you, Dear Reader, but if you have set out to advocate you are not, in fact, done–or at least, not just because this person should have empathy and doesn’t. Nobody is going to make those people play by the rules of basic humanity. People who show they lack empathy to a degree that appalls you still sometimes need to be dealt with, and walking away in those situations is a luxury we’re losing the ability to exercise. You gotta even. I’m sorry.

This doesn’t mean that you have to think this person is wonderful, of course–as soon as you are done interacting with that person in that context, it is appropriate (and even healthy) to blow off steam about how awful it was to engage with them. It’s part of the human condition. But you definitely can’t have a win condition without even playing the game, and that means recognizing the reality in front of you.

2. Identify Goals (Ahead of Time, if Possible)

You’ll note that I said above, “People…sometimes still need to be dealt with.” The obvious corollary is that sometimes, they don’t. The best way to avoid banging your head against a human brick wall for an hour is to have a good idea of whether you need to deal with this person–and the easiest way to do that is to identify your goals. And even when you do need to talk to a person, having a firm understanding of what you’re trying to achieve helps you get in, say what you have to say, and get out–so it’s very helpful to know going in. What are you trying to achieve by talking to this person? Do they control access to a resource you need? Are they engaging in a damaging behavior you want to stop? Are they voting all of our human rights away in the first week of their first session before your eyes? (Spoiler: If your answer is “I want to let them know that their ideas are bad and they should feel bad,” I recommend walking away.)

To help you see what I’m talking about, let’s go through an example scenario–for the purposes of this essay, let’s pretend we are members of Congress, which is both a helpful universal and a pleasant daydream. Mitch McConnell is holding another Senate vote about the Affordable Care Act. The Senate committees have come up with alternate legislation, and it’s just forty blank pages followed by the words “Buy an HRSA.” People may die if we can’t convince some of the Republican Senators who voiced early opposition to the lack of “replace” in the phrase “repeal and replace” to vote differently this time around.

3. Look for Carrots and/or Sticks

Okay, so: You’ve accepted that the obvious appeal to humanity won’t work, because the listener is a jerkfaced jerk. But they’re a jerkfaced jerk who has a thing you need. Now what?

Here’s where the first thing I mentioned becomes really important–because figuring out what is going to be effective requires an understanding of what motivates that person. Please note that I am not adding my voice to the chorus of white people saying that everything will be fine if we just give white supremacists more empathy, which I believe is a dangerous model of thought at best. But in order to advocate, you need to know what a carrot and/or a stick would look like for this person, because everybody has their own carrot and stick–and you can bet that a racist callow person’s stick and carrot probably don’t look like yours.

To continue the example above, let’s talk about what would constitute a relevant carrot and stick for your average Republican Senator. Though this is an incredibly complex topic, for the purposes of this exercise let’s assume the carrot probably looks like money, or political capital. The stick probably looks like being voted out of office.

So as we’re navigating negotiation with these Senators, we need to either figure out why the ACA will save/earn them money or figure out why they should fear what their constituents will do if they accept this legislation.

4. Offer a Carrot or Raise a Stick, and Preferably One that You Believe

This is another hard but crucial step, because it requires you to take on the listener’s paradigm long enough to persuade them. It honestly does help to believe what you are saying, for several reasons. First of all, a credible argument tends to carry more weight; a thing even you don’t believe is generally not that persuasive to other people. But more importantly, an argument you can accept as true helps you remember is that speaking this person’s language doesn’t mean you hold their values, or that you agree with them–it just means you need something from them and you have to figure out how to coalition-build in order to make that happen. It’s helping them figure out why they want to do this thing you want them to do anyway. (And lastly, though perhaps this should go without saying, it is never a good idea long-term to lie your way to a built coalition, as this creates many problems for both you and others throughout the process.)

Let’s go back to our replacement plan vote. Though I’m generally a carrot person by personality and trade, in this instance I think the stick is easier to argue. As I noted above, this is incredibly complicated, but for now let’s pick one stick: That preserving the ACA probably will not save these Senators money, but constituents relying on the ACA will not be happy to see their health insurance evaporate–even if they currently don’t know it. Elaborating on that is where the advocacy starts, and ideally is the vehicle by which change happens. Awesome and canny Senators that we are, we talk with the folks who are already wavering about why their instincts are good and this move is risky. We note their specific reelection dates. We note how long it would take the ACA to be effectively repealed. We observe how close the end date will be to their campaign season. We heroically refrain from yelling at them. We generally try to persuade them that their scary inhuman boss won’t even be their boss in two years if they do this now. In an ideal world (or at least, in this tiny scenario we have built), we are successful.

5. Take Care of Yourself After the Rinse/Repeat Cycle Ends

Most people’s minds aren’t changed in a single five-minute session; it takes a lot of work and internal screaming and fantasizing about shaking them by the shoulders. This process is hard on a person, and appropriate self-care should be treated as a necessary step. Do what you need to do in order to stay healthy, and that tends to be different things for different people. I encourage you to think of self-care as the final step of the advocacy process, because it’s that crucial.

To wrap up, let’s talk about final steps in the Congress scenario. After several grueling hours of arguing convinces my Republican colleagues to vote against the bill, I am tired and hungry. So I reward myself. By eating their share of the vote-o-rama pizza.