As Thanksgiving rolls around, we at the Coalition on Human Needs are thinking about what we’re thankful for. We know – it’s been a painful year, with harsh cuts to health care and nutrition programs enacted, lawless attacks on immigrants, firings of federal workers, dismantled or disrupted programs, losses from the long shutdown…well, we’re not thankful for any of that. 

But still, we are seeing heartening signs, and it seems like the pace of promising signs is picking up. Maybe we’re at the start of:

1. The Great Wising Up: In poll after poll, we’re seeing growing dissatisfaction. We’re thankful that growing numbers of Americans get that we’re headed in the wrong direction, and that it does not help our country to deny people health care and food, or to tear immigrants from their families and jobs. A November poll shows only 36 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, plummeting from 51 percent in a poll released in early March. A majority think President Trump is going too far in his attacks on immigrants. While majorities of Republicans still support Trump policies, even they are worried about Affordable Care Act premium help about to expire and prices skyrocketing – more than half of ACA individual insurance enrollees live in Republican districts. Independents strongly support extending the enhanced premium tax credits, which will otherwise expire in December. During the shutdown, huge majorities had a favorable view of the SNAP program (78% overall; 71% among independents, even 69% of Republicans).

2. Millions Don’t Want a King: The President has unleashed attacks on immigrants and others, cut funding and programs and spent money without congressional approval – well, you know all that, and so did many millions of people nationwide. We are thankful to have had the opportunity to join with 7 million people who said “No Kings” in the most recent flowering of national events, plus the millions who participated in earlier ones. We are grateful for the courage and determination of people who stand against illegal ICE enforcement tactics. That surely includes the 30,000 students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system who walked out of school to protest the tactics of ICE in their “Charlotte’s Web” enforcement actions in Charlotte, NC. Students from several schools left class and protested the deportations of their fellow classmates. Thank you, students – you give us hope for our future.

3. Sandwich Against Injustice: We are grateful that Sean Dunn was found not guilty of a misdemeanor for throwing his sandwich at an ICE agent in Washington, DC, despite the agent’s testimony that he could smell onions and mustard on his uniform. We are also immensely thankful for the outpouring of sandwich mockery memes and rally signs. Well, I guess it’s not the sandwich that’s being mocked. A plug for the Midwest store Raygun, for which we get utterly no compensation, for its The Resistance Smells of Onions and Mustard shirt, and another shirt reading Sandwich Against the Machine. Union made – we’re thankful for that too.

4. Lawyers and the Rule of Law: Sean Dunn, Sandwich Guy, had a lawyer. So do immigrants who are being lawlessly detained and deported, and federal workers fired, and service providers whose funds were canceled, the cities and states that don’t want National Guard sent to their streets against their wishes …We owe such a debt of gratitude to the attorneys who are fighting in court to stop such lawlessness. The Coalition on Human Needs celebrated them during our Human Needs Hero event in July. Democracy Forward, the National Immigration Law Center, Public Citizen, ACLU, National Women’s Law Center and so many more – they’re fighting for the rule of law.

5. The Right to Privacy – There is Such a Thing: While we’re being grateful to lawyers, let’s celebrate Democracy Forward and its clients Center for Taxpayer Rights, Main Street Alliance, Communications Workers of America, and the National Federation of Federal Employees. They won an important round in court, stopping the IRS from sharing address information with ICE, contrary to privacy laws. Every step to stop an encroaching surveillance state is something to be thankful for.

6. Organized Labor: Have you noticed a common thread in some of the above reasons for thankfulness? One is labor unions. Union rights and federal services and jobs have been attacked by the Trump administration, but union members are fighting back. Here’s one more example: The Trump administration has been working hard to gut the services of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which seeks to prevent banks and other lenders from overcharging for loan interest and fees and other penalties disproportionately victimizing people with modest incomes. Over its years of operation, CFPB has saved consumers billions of dollars. In an effort to strangle CFPB’s investigations, Russell Vought, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director, doubling as head of CFPB, is ordering examiners to read a “humility pledge” to those being investigated, promising a collaborative approach. Of course, the regulatory actions have been plenty humbled already, since they’ve all been halted for the past 10 months. CFPB Union President Cat Farman responded, “What’s next, ‘Russell Vought Tells CFPB Examiners to Serve Tea to Their Wall Street Masters in Tiny French Maid Aprons?’ Instead of traumatizing CFPB workers with his roleplay fantasies, Vought should resign so we can finally do our jobs protecting Americans from Wall Street fraud again.” This is just one more example of labor truth-telling and fighting for services. We’re thankful for them, and for the American Federation of Government Employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, National Treasury Employees Union, Service Employees International Union, United Food and Commercial Workers, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, and others.

7. Federal Workers: We are thankful for the workers who did their jobs without pay for over a month during the shutdown, and thankful for the law that requires that federal workers get paid, whether they were required to work or prevented from working. We know that workers hired by contractors, such as cleaning or restaurant staff, do not get paid for the time they missed. That’s unjust – we look forward to being able to be thankful if Congress gets around to doing right by these workers.

8. Truth, Part 1: Facts; Sometimes Inconvenient: When the Trump administration did not like the jobs data coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they fired the head of the BLS and stopped releasing the data. Might food security data show serious hardship and get in the way of their efforts to cut SNAP and other nutrition programs? The Trump administration cancelled the annual reports. Other facts: The New York Times reported that the Trump Treasury Department and IRS are gutting the corporate minimum tax, meant to prevent corporations from evading taxes despite high profits. Much of the $222 billion the minimum tax was expected to collect is likely to be lost because of the breaks they’re giving “to giant private equity firms, crypto companies, foreign real estate investors, insurance providers and a variety of multinational corporations.” We are thankful for this fact-based reporting – that’s what we need a free press to do. We are grateful the jobs data is starting to be released again. We remain extremely concerned about efforts to collect citizenship data in the census, scaring people out of being counted, thereby seriously undermining the accuracy of the count. We are thankful to join with census and data experts who know that there is no democracy without accurate information, no matter how inconvenient to the powerful.

9. Truth, Part 2: People’s Stories: Officials may hurl unsupported accusations of fraud in the SNAP program, or pretend that some form of health savings account will take the place of ACA premium tax credits. We are grateful for people who speak out and tell the truth about how they will be affected. CHN asked for ACA health insurance stories, and about 500 people wrote in. Here’s a quote we included in a Voices for Human Needs blog post:
   
   “My husband’s ACA health plan premium is increasing from $300 to $1300 per month. There is no way we can afford this, so he will have no insurance next year. We are terrified.”

   There are more – people whose spouses have cancer or other serious illnesses and face tripling insurance costs. We are so grateful they are raising their voices – it is because they speak out that there is more talk about Congress doing something to protect them.

10. Advocates Taking Action: That’s you – from the meetings many of you attend to tell Congress why they must protect people’s health care and reverse SNAP cuts, to the hundreds of thousands – well, more than a million over the year – of letters people across the nation send to Congress when we ask them to, to state officials, or to the Trump administration, to the millions in the streets: This is what democracy looks like! It’s slow-going, we all know that. Needless suffering is being inflicted. But all these things we’re grateful for are starting to make a difference. Your work is making a difference. Education funds were unfrozen; WIC funding was enough to prevent waiting lists; parents with children younger than 14 were exempted from SNAP work-related time limits. The more Congress and the President see their cuts and anti-immigrant attacks are unpopular, the greater our chance to undo the harms. You join in, week after week, ready to seize opportunities. You get help from the tireless CHN staff. Thanks to them, and to you. 

Oh – and pie and hugging loved ones are reasons to be grateful too. Hope you enjoy that. See you next week.