Confession: the news is getting to me. I fear reading The Washington Post and The New York Times. Every day there is reporting about a new atrocity that is happening due to Trump and facilitated by the gutless Congressional Republicans who cower in fear that Trump will have them “primaried out” in the next election, and a compliant Supreme Court. Today (Saturday, October 25) there was particularly tragic news in the Post and the Times—thousands starving in Somalia due to US AID food support being terminated and many thousands of others in poor countries in Africa, now at risk of starvation and death, who had depended on US medical and food support. Some 41.7 million Americans—12 percent of the US population— have been cut off from SNAP (food stamps), and food pantries are running out of supplies. Starvation is now a risk for thousands of Americans.  Most people affected are children. Health care premiums are skyrocketing for those using insurance under the ACA, making it unaffordable by many with lower incomes. Medicaid is soon to be terminated for many more. The military is bombing small boats coming out of Venezuela that are accused of  carrying drugs but with no proof or evidence. Thousands of immigrants including many US citizens are being  roughed up and arrested by masked ICE police. Trump has destroyed the East Wing of the White House to make way for a 90,000 square foot ballroom paid for by his billionaire buddies. He has ordered the conviction of Comey and James and others who opposed him on completely bogus accusations. Now he is declaring Canada an enemy because of a Canadian TV ad quoting Reagan about the stupidity of tariffs….

And that is just a portion of the grim news reported today. Tomorrow there will be more, probably worse.

Friends, the Five Alarm Fire is happening. The pain and suffering that Trump is unleashing on poor people in poor countries and on poor people in the US is now a reality as is the pain he is trying to inflict on his political enemies at home.  And it will only get worse. Trump is ordering every red state he can to gerrymander to protect the Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections.

So what are we to do? The No Kings protests were certainly a start and a good one. But they must be the beginning, not a one-off. Massive resistance must happen. We Americans aren’t bad people. Most of us want to do the right thing. Trump’s popularity is plunging. He appealed to the alienated (mostly) white working class by promising lower prices and preaching a populist message. Many of the people who voted for him will be hit the hardest. Bait and switch, big time. People will figure this out, but will it be in time?

 I have also wondered from time to time how oppressed people in major countries tolerated terrible dictators–the Germans under Hitler, the Italians under Mussolini, the Spanish under Franco, the Russians under Stalin and now Putin, the Japanese under the emperor/military coup, and the Chinese under Mao and now Xi Jinping. Embry and I have been to every one of these countries and have found the ordinary people we met welcoming and kind. They are not bad people, but many in those countries went along with the program when terrible dictators were in power. We are not exempt. To our credit we have a constitution and were founded as a country based on laws, not personalities. But will the U.S. Constitution hold?

What is it about us Homo sapiens that most of us fall in line even when our leaders are bad people? The answer, of course, is that we are basically herd animals. That is why we were the only species–out of many human species–to survive and beat out the competition like our cousins, the Neanderthals.  We follow a leader. Without a leader communities fall apart. Look at what is happening in Hati. The kind of leader that you have, of course, makes all the difference. Now it is our time to deal with a terrible dictator as other great countries have had to do. In many instances it took wars and violent revolutions for the regime change to happen. I hope and pray that this will not be the case for our republic, but it will depend on us fragile humans to muster the strength and courage to get through this, battered but not destroyed. How that will play out I do not know, but I am hopeful it will.

Now that I have ruined your day, you can cheer up a bit by going to my Substack where I am retelling true (and funny) stories, which should brighten your day. My latest one is now posted and is about our experience taking in a homeless family.

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Bowie, Maryland, is the jurisdiction in PG County where Collington (the senior living community where we now live)  is located. It comes as close to representing “Middle America” as any Washington metro area community with the exception that  the county is racially integrated with a high percentage of middle and upper-middle income African Americans.

On the day of the No Kings protest,  some 60+ residents of Collington gathered in front of our community to wave signs at the cars passing on a heavily used road. Embry took the Metro to join members of All Souls Church participating in the mass gathering of several hundred thousand near the Capitol. I went to the Bowie Library with two other Collington residents to join a racially integrated crowd (though still mostly white)  of many hundreds spread out along a major highway on both sides of the road, waving their colorful signs and cheering. The atmosphere was   festive and up beat, and it did not hurt that the weather was drop-dead gorgeous.

The most amazing thing to me was the constant cacophony of  honks of automobiles passing with people rolling down their  windows, waving and giving us thumbs up  and victory signs in support of the effort. This went on for at least two hours and was still going strong when I and my two friends from Collington returned to the campus to share our experience with others here who had demonstrated at the entrance to the community. There were similar No Kings protests in other parts of the county.

By now you have probably seen the estimates. Between seven and eight million people  demonstrating all across the country in close to 3,000 locations and in every state in the Union. This would make it the largest coordinated mass demonstration in US history. There were few incidents or arrests and the mood elsewhere all across the country has been described as mostly upbeat, hopeful, and focused on the dangers  Trump has wrought on our nation. Many were waving American flags.

Will this make a difference? Will it change the hearts and minds of the spineless Republicans in Congress who are afraid of standing up to what many of them must  know in their heart of hearts that much of what Trump is doing is wrong? Is this the beginning of something greater or just a flash in the pan? That is, of course, yet to be decided. Trump, Vance, Johnson and the Republican leadership continue to describe us No  Kings participants as Marxists, Communists, Anitfas, thugs, criminals, and people who hate our country. Really? All of us? My guess is at least some of them must know that something is brewing here that could–and I believe will–get our country headed back on the right track. But the No Kings effort on Saturday must be the beginning not the end. As the old saying goes: never give up, never, never give up. We shall overcome.

Standing by for what happens next….

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Apologies for the faulty link to Substack. If you click below (“Visit me…”) , that link will take you to the Substack site. I have already posted two stories that I call “Gullible’s Travels” and a new is in the works. These are all true stories, perhaps “artistically embellished” a tad, but they all happened. Several more will follow.

In the meantime I will continue to post on this photo blog website my rantings and ravings about our current situation and will have a post on Monday about my experience in participating in the NO KINGS event near where we now live. 

I hope that you will subscribe to the stories but you are not expected to pay anything. Several people already have subscribed for an annual fee, an action for which I am honored and grateful but these stories are available for free. Just push the bottom button and it will take you to the post as an unpaid subscriber. 

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I have published the second true story about another experience that happened in the early 1980s and which I wrote about on my first  website promoting Civil Rights Journey. More will follow providing further evidence that, yes, I am an idiot. The link is  provided below and I encourage you to subscribe so that you will receive an email when the story is published:

https://joehowell.substack.com/p/gullibles-travels-chapter-two

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Friends and blog followers,

My children persuaded me to post on Substack, which I have resisted up to now but will do for my longer  posts and if this works out, eventually all of them. I am starting with some classics posted almost 15 years ago. The only thing is to be able to read a Substack post you have to subscribe (at no cost to you in my case).

Here is the link that you need to click on:

https://open.substack.com/pub/joehowell/p/the-gullibles-travels-stories

Once you do that the first  time then you will get notices of all the future entrees. Let me know if  you are having trouble or if this does not work for you. Some of the oldies are a tad longer than my recent ones, but I think you will enjoy them. Let me know what you think about the new arrangement. New josephhowellphotography.com/blog/   posts of course will continue as long as it makes sense. Also I am planning to podcast on Substack the best stories and will keep you posted….

And thanks again for your loyal following! This has meant a great deal to me.

Joe

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We Democrats are continuing to struggle to figure out how we lost the support of the white working class. Most now realize that part of the reason rests with their perception that in general we libs look down on them and part rests with “political correctness”, including our emphasis on “diversity, equity and inclusion” or DEI, which naturally I am in favor of. There are certainly more reasons, but these two are important—especially DEI.

I confess. I am one of casualties of DEI orthodoxy. In the early 2000s I was fired by the University of Maryland for being “a sexist and a racist” and was warned by the Department of Public Policy where I was a lecturer never to set foot on, or even come close to, the University of Maryland campus again.

Here is my story:

When I sold Howell Associates in 1998 (which provided technical assistance to developers of affordable housing and seniors housing), I began to slow down and was looking for some ways that I might make a contribution. I had done some college level teaching before (when in 1981 I was the Benjamin Banneker Professor of Washington Studies at GW, a one-semester, temporary assignment, and enjoyed the experience) and thought I might be able to somehow get back into academia. Someone suggested the University of Maryland where I was able to land a position as lecturer in the School of Public Policy where I lectured on affordable housing finance as part of a larger course on housing. I only lectured a few times a semester but enjoyed the experience and liked the students, many of whom were already working and taking the course as part of their required continuing education.

In my fifth or sixth year of lecturing, I got a voicemail message from an administrator overseeing the program which stated the following: “Mr. Howell, there is no place at the University of Maryland for racists or sexists.  You are fired! Do not come to class and do not set foot on university property again.”

I immediately dialed the callback number and was put into her voicemail. I said that I enjoyed the classes and sorry to hear I had been fired but could she please explain why I am a racist and a sexist.

The next day I received another voicemail message from her stating simply that it was because of the racist and sexist story I told in class this week. Having no idea what she was talking about, I immediately got her voicemailbox again and said, “What story are you talking about?”

The following day I received another voicemail message from her stating, “I am not sure but think it was the racist story you told about the Chinese people.”

I immediately returned the call and got her voicemailbox again. “Why was the story racist and sexist?”

The next day I received her reply in my voicemailbox, “I don’t know, but call the student that complained about you and do not bother me again. You must apologize to her, and do not come on campus again. Ever! And do not call me again!” She gave me the name and telephone number of the student, whom I called immediately. She actually answered the phone. What a relief, I thought, at least I am getting a chance to talk to a real human being. I started off by saying that I understood that I had upset her about something I had said in my class and would like to apologize and then asked her to tell me exactly what I said that offended her. She replied that she would not accept my apology and that what upset her was the racist and sexist story that I had told in class.

This story is the story I had told:

I was at a board meeting of one of my clients, the Chinese American Retirement Enterprise Nonprofit or CAREN Inc. There were six or seven people at the meeting, all Chinese Americans, all young, in their late 20s and 30s, and very enthusiastic and very smart. After I explained to them what one of the obscure HUD regulations was attempting to say, I added, “I know it may sound confusing, but it is not all that complicated. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out.”

One of the people, a young women, smiled, blushed and replied, “Mr. Howell, don’t worry. We get it. We actually are rocket scientists, all of us. We work at NASA.”

I could not help asking her what about the story made me a racist. She replied that it is a racial stereotype that the Chinese are smart. “Ok,” I replied, “I guess I understand why I am a racist but why am I a sexist?”

“You are a sexist because you said a young woman asked the question. You should have said young person. And you can apologize all you want to, but I will never accept your apology.”

I tried calling the Maryland administrator back to assure her I had done my duty and understood why someone as racist and sexist as me should never be allowed on the Maryland campus but of course only got her voicemail. We had never talked in person or over the phone during the entire ordeal.

But as luck would have it, a couple of years later I got a desperate call, not from the administrator but from her assistant, saying that the person who replaced me had quit and they were having trouble finding someone to lecture about affordable housing finance. She was pleased to report that they had concluded that by now I must be rehabilitated enough to come back. Could I be there for the class next week?

I chuckled, accepted, and soldiered on for several more years. Eventually the administrator and I  reconciled though neither of us ever brought up the unpleasant ordeal but I have resisted her demand never  to tell the “racist and sexist story” again.

It is too good a story not to share.

Now who does  not understand why some think we libs might have taken the DEI stuff a little too far?

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A lot of people are warning that under the unhinged President, we are inching dangerously close to becoming a fascist police state. Well, this is not the first time that the fear of fascism has raised its ugly head. Here is my retelling of a true story (now lost) that I posted in 2012 when I first started blogging. Enjoy.

In 1967 Embry and I were living in New York City. She was in her senior year at Barnard College and I was taking a year off from Union Seminary to participate in a program designed for worn out seminary students to give us a breather. It was long overdue for me and looking back on that year I count it as one of the best I ever had. I had several secular jobs, met regularly with a half dozen other seminary students in a program where we talked about our experiences, and we lived off campus in a rent-controlled apartment on Riverside Drive a short block away from 125^th Street and Harlem.

We loved out tiny studio apartment. The one window opened onto a fire escape in an air well and the only way that you could figure out what the weather was like was to make a call to the weather lady. But it was perfect for us, and for the first time we were away from Union and all the angst that went with it. And we were still battle scarred from our summer working with SNCC in Southwest Georgia in 1965 in the civil rights movement and all the demonstrations going on as the Vietnam War was heating up and the various protests responding to injustice were continuing. One tends to forget that in those days the grass roots energy was from the Left, not the Right as is the case today. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weathermen, the Black Panthers and various other radical groups were getting all the attention. We were glad to be free from all this, to have a chance to live a normal life, and to take advantage of all the great things to do in the city.

Our apartment was in a five story aging structure, which was poorly maintained due in part to rent control (our rent was $75/month including utilities) and to poor management, and ruled over by a superintendent—or a “super” as they were called–who lived in the basement with his wife, and was feared by everyone who lived in the  40-unit building. His name was Joe Poitras. Poitras spoke with a heavy accent of unknown origin, was balding and overweight, probably in his mid 50s, had tattoos on both arms, an unshaven, perpetually frowning face, and always wore dirty blue jeans and a grease-stained undershirt. No one ever saw him smile but everyone in the building heard him shout, mostly at his wife, often accompanied by loud noises caused by pots and pans being thrown, which we could hear from our apartment on the fifth floor. He was such a feared person that hardly anyone asked him to fix anything for fear of being yelled at. The streetwise Episcopal clergyman that hosted the weekly discussions of our seminarian group gave me the advice to give the guy a generous Christmas tip, which I did, and from that time on, I did not get the scowl that most others got, who presumably did not understand the rules.

In the apartment next to us lived Don, a tall, skinny graduate student at Columbia who had a huge crop of very curly hair making him look a little like a young Art Garfunkel. Occasionally we would chat; and when his door was open, I could see that the only furniture in his room was a mattress and box springs. Except for a guitar next to his bed, there was nothing else that I could see in the room. Across from Don was Mrs. Finklestein, an aging widow who must have been in her mid to late eighties. She was very quiet, frail, and shy and left her apartment only to go shopping occasionally and to do her laundry in the basement. These were the only two people we knew in the apartment house.

In the spring of 1967, I smelled what I thought might be smoke and ventured out into the hallway to see what was going on to discover that smoke was coming out of the trash chute. Oh, my goodness, I concluded, the building was on fire! Don was standing beside the trash chute and looking down the stairwell trying to figure out what was happening. I immediately asked if he had called the super.

“Are you kidding me, call Poitras? He hates my guts. The guy would kill me, and besides the smoke seems to be dying down.” Then without missing a beat he turned to me and said, “You know, we live in a goddamned fascist police state.”

“Excuse me?” I replied.

“Yeah, a fascist police state. Last night around midnight I was not bothering anyone just practicing on my guitar and sitting on my mattress, and I hear a banging on the door. I opened the door and in come two cops. I go up against the wall, arms out and spread eagle, but there was not much to search since I was in my jockey shorts. The cops saw me but didn’t search me and went straight to my bathroom and started flushing my toilet over and over. Then they turned to me and said ‘you no good motherfucker, hippie creep, you try a trick like this again and your ass is going to jail. In fact, you are damn lucky we aren’t locking you up now. Then they slammed the door and left.”

“Good heavens,” I responded. “Sounds pretty weird to me.”

“Weird, maybe, but if this is not fascism, I don’t know what is. We live in a goddamned fascist police state. How else can you explain it?”

By this time the smoke from the trash chute had died down and I was relieved that the apartment building was not going to burn down after all. When Embry returned from doing the laundry, I immediately told her the story, concluding that America in 1967 was becoming a fascist police state. How else could you explain it?

She immediately broke out in laughter.

“What is so funny about that?”

She then told me her story about her experience in the laundry a few minutes earlier talking with Mrs. Finklestein, the elderly lady with an apartment directly across from Don’s. 

“Mrs. Finklestein was in tears and told me that she had lived in New York City all her life but had never had such a terrible experience. In the middle of the night her toilet started to overflow, and she did not know what to do. She was afraid to call Poitras, so she called the police and pleaded for help. She waited and waited, flushing the toilet all night to keep it from flooding her apartment, but the police never came. ‘They had always come before,’ she said, ‘but not this time. The police just do not care anymore. Nobody cares. That is just what the world has come to. This is the way America now is. Nobody cares.”’

The next morning, she had gotten up her nerve and called Poitras, who begrudgingly fixed the toilet. As far as I know, neither told the other about their experience. Don apparently left the building for good the next day and Mrs. Finkelstein was either too weak or too afraid to answer our knock on her door. We departed from the city the next year for Chapel Hill where I would get a masters degree in city planning and Embry a masters in biostatistics, not having a chance to talk to either person, who presumably went through the remainder of their lives believing that that America was a fascist police state or a country where nobody cares.

If only the fears of a fascist police state that many think may be happening today could have a similar happy ending.

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