change

Revolution Begins at Home

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“Revolution Begins at Home,” Jerome Stueart, (11 x 15), watercolor, mixed media on paper. October 18, 2025.

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Today, many (2 million?) of us are going to be protesting for #NoKings and maybe you’ve attended one of these protests across the country. They are exciting and powerful and you can see hundreds and maybe thousands in your city standing up for change. These protests are powerful things. I’ve seen the ones in New York City and Chicago (on TV) and they give me hope.

But maybe you’ve been part of something else, something smaller. Have you been to a house meeting where you meet your neighbors and strategize over soup how to be effective in strategic campaigns or actions that can help stop some of the negative consequences of Trump policies. Maybe your group is part of the Indivisible or No Kings movement. hey may not look like a movement–if you were looking for thousands of bodies to affirm your stance–but I can argue that they are the places–these living rooms–that will begin change in the country. Movements are born AND SUSTAINED in living rooms and dining rooms of your neighbor’s house.

These small house meetings are where you can find others who feel the way you do, where people can come together and think of ways to change the system. This isn’t about organizing the vote, it’s about voting to organize. All these small home meetings are where revolution happens–and I hope you find a good meeting near you, or start one in your home. This is what Democracy, what Revolution, looks like right now. These meetings of concerned citizens who want to create change.

And the big protests are an outlet for those people too–where we can all come together, peacefully, for change. Here’s where you hatch ideas that 20 people can carry out, and that can spread to other groups meeting in other homes. Our group talked about Cash for Change, the idea of using only cash to pay for things so that corporations don’t keep getting their share of your dollar every time you swipe a card. The store doesn’t get that money. The banks and larger credit institutions receive that percentage off of every sale. Cash for change–if a large number of people did it–would hurt the revenue they are collecting. And that’s kinda what these groups are for. How do concerned citizens get the attention of billionaires? How can we, small but mighty, make a difference against powerful people? We have power–but we have to cooperate to do it. These small groups can help foster new ideas. They still need the mass protests though–and large numbers of people. And until those numbers HURT the established order of things, until there is a general strike, people standing around for 2 hours may not make a huge difference to the oligarchs. But when people begin to stand around for days and shut things down–that may get their attention.

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I hope your #NoKings stays peaceful. But the more powerful we become, the more there will be resistance against us too. Please be safe. 2 million people protesting will keep growing and growing, no matter what happens today. Maybe you will have some frogs or TRexes in your group too!

Keep meeting. Keep planning. Keep that spark alive. Change will happen–we will bring more people together because we have so much common ground between us, and so much to do before us. We need everyone!

The (Yard) Signs They Are a Changin’

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“The Signs They Are a Changin’,” 11 x 15, watercolor, pen and ink, acrylic marker.

I’ve been excited by the Harris-Walz campaign. Something that’s been surprising me throughout, since KH became the nominee, is the number of new folks who are now voting for the Democratic Ticket. I’ve been hoping that we would find a way over our political and ideological divides. It involves forgiveness and understanding and not holding people’s past votes as a barrier to reaching out to them now. We can’t say, “Well, you voted for him twice, so you just stay over there.” We can’t afford to. Anyone who is willing to take a hard look at themselves and change their minds IS an ally. This is how you make allies. Allies aren’t perfect. But they get you to your goal. And ultimately, we all win.

Sometimes I’ve seen allies treated badly by folks— because of past failings, past tweets, every past action that suddenly MUST have a formal apology on social media that will be, of course, mocked and rejected by the self-selected arbiters of justice… and this negative reaction to a positive turn usually hardens the person against changing sides at all. They re-root in the ideology they originally found distasteful, something not aligned with their truth now, but they go back to it because they are accepted there. They are welcomed back. They feel it’s the only place they can “belong.” Sometimes, we on the Left, will criticize them, and say, well, you didn’t want change anyway then.

No, they wanted change–they wanted TO change, but they weren’t allowed to change for the sake of Change. That is a huge loss for any “Change” ticket or issue. There is no purity test for Change.

We have to create that “belonging” for people. We need to welcome anyone who wants to help fight for others, regardless of their past. People change; minds grow and change; and we have to work with those changes.

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Shine Anthology, and Dreaming of a Better World

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In another post I talked about thinking positive about the future.  I linked to an anthology, SHINE, open to writers, that wants to make the world a better place in the future–a vision of how we WILL get it right eventually.  How  decisions we make technologically, politically, personally will solve–or begin to solve–global crises we face right now.  For years, scientists have been cast as Dr. Frankensteins in movies–playing God with forces we don’t understand–and rarely are they those who solve the problem.  If they do arch heroically at the end, it’s often to put back what went wrong, the Hamlets of a technological Denmark gone rotten.

When doing the radio series, Yukon 2058, I was sitting with Lil from Lil’s Diner and we were talking about Angel’s Nest, the future home for the homeless teens in our area, a cause Lil’s Diner has taken a personal investment in, literally.  For Halloween, the employees at the diner donated all wages made that day to Angel’s Nest and they kept the diner open most of the night to host a fund drive party.  We sat and talked about what teens need in this town, and I realized that science fiction could be used to describe what we want in the world–not just to warn people, not just a good story, but planting seeds in the minds of those who might be able to help us make those changes.  SF can be used to help people envision.

Who wants to walk into a post-apocalyptic future?  Why not place things in the future we need to see–and once seen, that we can create for real.  So, via radio, I created a youth center, the kind I would love to see the town create in the old Canadian Tire building.  And I put it on the air, and inside my vision for the future.

So, if you have ideas about what kinds of positive strides the world could make in the future–ways of solving crises in the world– allow me to suggest some positive outlets for you, outlets where your vision could inspire the vision of others who can make it happen:

1)  CBC North is going to want to interview you for your vision of the Yukon–a place that will be much changed in the next 50 years.  Imagine the future, and then talk about it on the radio.

2)  SHINE anthology, edited by Jetse de Vries, is open to writers this next spring who want to write optimistic science fiction.  This doesn’t mean that utopia comes without dramatic tension or story, only that it includes a positive vision of the world of the future.  If you want to write up your idea as story, read these guidelines.  This is going to be a great opportunity for writers and thinkers, since anthologies, collecting these positive views of science, will likely have a great distribution and put you in pages populated by well-known, world-class thinktankers/writers.  (If only there could be a weekend to gather engineers, scientists and science fiction writers to pool ideas…)

3) the 24hr Playwriting competition, held here in Whitehorse by Nakai Theatre in April, might be another place to launch a positive future in the Yukon, as local plays are funded, produced and showcased through the Homegrown Theatre Festival in the Yukon, in order to get them ready for possible Canadian distribution.

4) Write directly to the Governmental groups that might help implement your idea: help them see what impact your idea–all consequences considered–might have on the Yukon.  Write for funding to research it through the Northern Research Institute

5)  Don’t forget other Canadian science fiction magazines: On Spec needs you!  And loves you.  And wants to promote Canadian voices.

I think if a people down south, my fellow Americans, can be inspired to change by electing Barack Obama as President, then anything is possible.  I think we are being called on to help make that change ourselves, first by envisioning and then by doing.  I think science fiction writers inspire change.

Else why would the first American space shuttle be named Enterprise…