 Good evening, hi everyone, I'm Amy Martin professor of English and director of the Weissman Center for Leadership Tonight I am so happy to welcome Amy Siskind to Mount Holyoke Her lecture poses an urgent question to us is our democracy at risk and if you read Amy's very Important book the list the answer is absolutely yes Before Amy is introduced to you I need to thank some members of our community who made this possible first Joan Grenier of the Odyssey bookstore We're lucky to have a fantastic independent bookstore affiliated with Mount Holyoke College Thank you to our co-sponsor for this event the politics department and as always thank you to media services especially Zach Mattis for Making this event run so smoothly And every day I feel lucky to work with the staff at the Weissman Center in particular She always ducks out is she here my extra there she is my extraordinary collaborator In this work Janet Lansbury who is associate director of the Center and director of leadership and public service at Mount Holyoke College I also want to thank our amazing student ambassadors who represent the Center and the College so very well in Preparation for this event. I've had the pleasure of getting to know Professor Jennifer Taub who is introducing Amy Siskind tonight So I'm going to introduce her so she can introduce Amy Jennifer Taub is a legal scholar advocate and professor of law at University of Vermont author of other people's houses Corporate and white collar crime and numerous other academic publications She also writes and speaks regularly as a legal commentator and public intellectual And I also want to acknowledge personally that her daily posts and interventions on her facebook page have been sustaining and sanity inducing So welcome Jennifer Taub Thank you so much. Amy and thank you to everyone who's here and everyone from Mount Holyoke College who organized this event It's an honor to be talking about these issues in a place devoted to women's education I had the benefit when I was in middle school of going to all girls middle school and Now looking back and looking at the wonderful alumni networks both from Mount Holyoke and Smith in my own neighborhood of Northampton I have to say one of my biggest regrets is not attending a women's college So this is a you know quite an honor to be to be speaking at one Um So in some ways, I'm really proud to be here But uh, I think more than that. I'm kind of sad that I'm standing here And I can trace the reason why I'm standing here and probably why Amy herself has written this book and why we're all here to something You know two years ago. I remember Back in october of 2016 the run up to the to the election And you know how when you live in a household with parents obsessed with politics that kind of Seeps out to the kids and my youngest daughter arella Was very worried and she would often say almost every other day to me mama. What if trump wins? And I worried the same thing But I thought it was my job kind of like my job on facebook to keep everybody happy and not too worried about everything So I said, oh, it's not a problem. Don't worry. He won't but she kept asking and she would ask michael my spouse Her papa papa what happens if trump wins? So finally I sat michael down I said, holy shit. What if trump wins? I mean, what are we gonna do? Um, and he said well our institutions are strong enough It will it will work and right around that time The movie one of the star wars movies came out and there was this thing the resistance So I told her well, we'll just join the resistance And I didn't even know what the resistance was and Meet we're about to meet the resistance right here It's amazing women like amy siskind and so many others The millions who came to the women's march and the so many millions more who are fretting and writing postcards and calling congress And you know, I think everyone out there does not get enough attention for how much we are keeping Things at bay to some degree Um One thing, you know folks just mentioned or amy just mentioned that I write this, you know daily Post on facebook and the reason why I do this and I think and then I'm going to jump over to amy's weekly list The reason why I do this is because I know myself and I'm quite obsessive And I knew that the more the the more after I cried a lot the morning after I found out he'd won I knew that I was going to be we're in deep trouble having knowing enough about this guy and his past behaviors A white color criminal and such that we were going to be in a lot of trouble in this country And then I was going to be writing about it every day and I thought if I wrote about it every day People would be like and I would think I'm just doing the same thing over and over It's like this kind of circling back But I thought if I numbered it if this was day one and that was day two two things would happen It would seem like it was a new day And it would also seem like we were making progress the way one would if they were in a prison cell marking off the days And I counted how many days there were and you know the most days that there would possibly be I hoped Which would be until january 20th of 2020 and I figured like I could do this The other thing that kept me motivated for some friends who are here who know this I come from a family of republicans from the midwest and I remember I used to be friends with my parents on facebook And I love them, but they are blocked now because shortly after the election my mother kept arguing with me I say this with a I'm not upset now the time. This was really very difficult But she would say you're wasting your time Now they say Oh, we saw you on cnn and your hair was in your eyes or they gave you a lot of airtime or we're so proud of you They don't talk about the contents of my joke now is that I had to join the resistance because I couldn't talk to my parents on facebook But they have to watch me on cnn. Okay So Unlike me who's a little bit flip about this and loose about this Amy Siskind Has been incredibly detailed and disciplined and she faced the same challenge I think she wanted to if you see in the cover of her book She was following what experts in authoritarianism advise, which is she understood the things around us were going to change And she was worried I believe based on reading her work that we would just be like that boiling frog in the water And then we would be boiled before we would notice it So she was going to document for us as we went so we wouldn't lose touch But I think i'm pretty sure that along the way she understood that she was writing history Or her story and I I am so utterly grateful that she does this I think that one day when we're all long gone Hopefully if democracy survives and I don't say that jokingly we're in grave trouble now I think that this is going to be one of the most important guides You know, and I hope she makes another edition This was just from the first year but she keeps a list still And I think that I would want to have a copy of this I have a copy and I would want to have a signed copy To pass this on to my daughter Urella when she's old enough to know What joining the resistance really meant and to my grandkids and thank you for being here and listening to Amy I don't know that she's going to cheer us up, but she's going to tell us Why our democracy is still at risk and what we can do about it. So welcome Amy So the list and What it means it's it still is as Jen mentioned going on it's still on the website theweeklylist.org But why did I start doing the list? So as Jen was talking about and we were also sure about the election prior to Two years ago, and I had a house full of people with the H cupcakes and the champagne and everything We all did and it gradually went downhill. And so as somebody who runs a woman's organization I guess similar to Jen is somewhat public voice at that point And our young woman leaders especially many of whom were texting me saying this is the worst day of my life Since 9 11. What do we do? So I was trying to figure out what I could collectively do and Jewish American by background and I was brought up You know as a student of the holocaust and the rise of hitler and from the time Trump ran he has always struck me as being Off from the time he launched his campaign where he talked about the mexican rapists To the fact that he really didn't have a typical republican or democrat construct to what he was talking about or policies Everything was kind of fluid And after he won and I say it in quotes the election That's typically I've been alive long enough With you your party won or lost a time to unite the country and talk about policy and vision We didn't have any of that after he won There was a spike in hate crimes a southern poverty law center in the first week recorded 400 and I could have told you where they all were because they were all covered in the news They were happening on college campuses in schools around the country And then as we got to the first week and a half there were 700 and I the media couldn't keep up anymore The media would ask trump to condemn these attacks and he asked for understanding So as a sort of student of trump what I've seen of him from the time he made his mexican rapist comment and his time Asking for understanding shortly after the election. This man is the same person he was From the time he hit the campaign trail and probably for his entire life. He's not changed one bit. He's not adapted himself Um to the office nor will he ever he's adapting the office to him and his needs So in addition to being a student of the holocaust I started to read voraciously about authoritarian regimes and I just wanted to bring one of the articles I read at the time Some of you might have read it. It was in the new york review of books an article by marsha guess and that came out Just as this was happening But I I included this in week 99's list in the preamble One of the quotes from her article was quote There was little doubt that trump will appoint someone who will cause the court to veer to the right There is also the risk that it might be someone who will wreak havoc with a very culture of the high court So you see when I read all these articles and I cite them all in my introduction by the experts Everything they predicted has become true because even though authoritarianism as You know or the rise of authoritarianism is new to us in our pretty new democracy This has happened all over the world time and time again And they all tend to follow a somewhat predictable path and we are on that path So I'll I can talk about where we are now heading into this next election But just in terms of going back to 2016 and starting to write the list I You know, I live in westchester county and growing up My parents were a little older. They're not with us anymore, but I grew up hearing all about the the roosevelt's and My mother's north star was elinor roosevelt and she's my north star as well And I have been to her home val kil so many times I could give tours myself And you know at that point after the election, you know in addition to reading by experts I felt like I needed to have some guidance from someone who could see beyond You know she had done during the depression Beyond like what was in front of us and so I went back to val kil and for those who follow me on social media I brought chef and arlene with me and I Did the tour which I've done so many times I could give the tour But different things stood out to me at that time and one was our government is we the people And how important it was to empower ourselves and elinor had kept in some ways a list She wrote this column my day every day That is a historical document in its own way And so that night I went home and I wrote down a first list and To give you some perspective of where we were that saturday that I which is the first full week after the election Not the direct saturday, but the first full week That morning trump had been tweeting attacks at the cast of snl The new york times and the cast of hamilton So that's tripped down mammary lane Seems a lot different, but exactly the same. We're still doing those same exact things And so that night I went home and there was a really odd tweet I thought from the new york times reporter criticizing his own paper's coverage of trump. Why were they talking about him? You know attacking by the the cast of hamilton as opposed to the trump foundation being charged for 25 million So he was covering he was criticizing his own paper's coverage And I snapshot it. I said i'm going to include this in week one and the next morning when I went to go put it all in medium I noticed he had deleted his tweet and I thought that's strange But it lives on in week one on the weekly list.org And so the first week was nine items That were not normal and the second week was 18 items So when people asked me do you think it was a good idea to do the list? I pointed those weeks and say that's when I thought it was a good idea to do the list Right now we're up to between typically 150 to 175 a week But so those were the first two weeks and week five we were into the 20s and people started to say Oh, I missed five of those 25. Can you start to add links? And so around week five the list starts to get a little more sophisticated These are all at this point on medium And I was just for those of you who followed me back then cutting and pasting them and putting them on facebook and on twitter and So starting week five again, there's links the list start to come a little more sophisticated and consistent And then week nine, which was the week before the inauguration And tripped on memory lane That was when meryl streep gave her golden globe acceptance speech and she didn't Mentioned him by name But she talked about the way trump had attacked a person with disabilities and what it said with our of our country That we would elect such a person That week was the first week the list went totally viral and it had two million views and That's when I knew it was time to really get serious. So As he took office the list grew to 30 to 40 items and then as he staffed up the regime and there were many hands at work basically Deconstructing our democracy disappearing information The list gradually grew to at the end of the first year 120 items And around the end of the first year I Was waiting for the right Reporter and the right Outlet to write the coming out story about what I was doing And I was actually it was june of 2017 and I was just about to leave to take my son on college tours And I got an email from margaret sullivan at the washington post and she's I adore her So this was like the the one I was waiting for and she wanted to write about the project and So that was the end of june of 2017 Her article came out in the washington post. It was the most read at the washington post It's the only time in my life where I woked up and I was trending on twitter Which is not despite what you think like a positive thing. It's scary as all hell And anybody who wants to like take my account for a day on twitter will realize beat a public figure You'll cure you of it. But anyway, so that was the first day that the list really came a nationally known and Shortly after somebody who read margaret's article nominated it to be archived in the library of congress And you know, I try not to be fantastical about this stuff, but in the early weeks Things were disappearing off the website as soon as trump took office An apology on the state department to the lgbt community was wiped information on our environment information on breast cancer I mean everything has been wiped Week after week. I'm recording this kind of stuff and people were concerned that the list would disappear And I was concerned as well I I still to this day back it up on ubs drives not week one through 52 We're safe with those but I I still do back it up because people were concerned it would get hacked So the idea of it being in the library of congress Um, you know, I thought that was great and then people were like well Maybe you should get it in canada too because he might take down the library of congress and it was like funny not funny Um, but anyway, so it isn't it takes a year for it to crawl into the library of congress But it is the early weeks list and they're very primitive form if you follow me on facebook or twitter If you go to the library of congress and you google the weekly list Their old the very original versions are already showing up there and the rest are being crawled and gradually show up Um, so shortly after that the woman who does the website for my organization And I decided because I I did some videos as well with move on just to build a beautiful website to put everything all in one place So that was about a year ago now And it was also the time of year that my organization does our on-campus runs for sexual assault So I wanted to raise some money to do it, but we were concerned about the timing of doing both But I said to inilia, you know, I think a lot of people want to be part of this and the whole idea All along I've wanted to be very grassroots and something that everyone could feel part of So um, and people have been asking about ways to donate ways to be part We put up a campaign to raise 15 000 with a maximum donation of 25 dollars And in the first 24 hours we raised 20 000 and we're like trying to stop the thing like we can't read I would only need any more money, but it allowed us to then get a License with for 7 000 a year with getty images because at this point now the All these lists are being archived in the library of congress So they have properly licensed documents as opposed to a tweet from the new york times reporter screenshot So they have beautiful photos that capture and if you get a chance to go to the website the weekly list.org And look at the photos. We spend a lot of time each week in ilia and I thinking about the news that week, but what story What picture tells the story of that week? And so some of the early pictures of Trump addressing the Boy Scouts are not shaking Merkel's hand or Yeah, um, you know, I could only pick six for my book and I really labored over which it would be but You know, there's a few weeks where I just had tears coming down my eyes as I was recording the list And one of the weeks was charlotte's phil and I picked the picture from charlotte's phil And one was the week that myisha johnson Was standing over her husband's casket as I came back from niger and trump was attacking her and for drica wilson You know, it was just like, oh my goodness. What is happening here? And so the picture of her and her daughter and their flower dresses looking over her husband's casket as it's coming off That that was one as well um And but the pictures you tell the story and I encourage you if you have time and interest to go back and look At the pictures from the early weeks and it will just jog your memory because things happen so fast You know, and that's part of what's happened is And this was predicted by the experts in authoritarianism that information would disappear and so You know, kiddingly not kiddingly when I first did this into a book One of the experts said to me, wow, that's great that you have it in a book because unless we burn books At least it's there so Information does disappear. It is now in a book I had real reluctance about putting in a book one one I didn't really feel like I had the time to do it and anybody who tells you as my Editor did oh, it won't be much of a time commitment is lying to you um But I it was really for me it was the convergence of two things one It was my fear of the information disappearing and the second was the repeal of net neutrality About a year ago it was happening Uh, and so I was really concerned that people wouldn't even be able to see the lists on the internet Which is again something that had been predicted So reluctantly Somewhat and I guess in retrospect. I'm glad I did it But I we bound this book and it came to market super quick last Last um march and so this is the first 52 weeks. We're now on week 102 um, and the the second year would be 1200 pages at least so what I'm going to do is hold off from here on in until he's gone and then Do volumes because no one wants to carry around a 500 page book let alone a 1200 page book This book is 400 pages and and and the people the Publishers and agents have been coming at me coming at me It was finally like the third time that the editor at Bloomsbury like was after me when somebody had already come over to me at the gym And said to me are you Amy Siskian and I said yes He's like you need to call back my sister-in-law Who actually runs Bloomsbury in New York? So they I had all these editors and and I just kept was telling people I'm not interested I'm not interested but it was just sort of the the convergence of those factors and and Bloomsbury saying to me This is already a 400 page book so it's 400 page book with 100 pages of Of triple column footnotes and these are what the book captures are things that are not normal So this isn't just a story. These are things that are atypical to our democracy So for example when the republicans were trying to repeal obama care That's normal. That's something republicans versus democrats do What wasn't normal is protesters who are people with disabilities being dragged out of the real chairs in front of mcconnell's office And arrested and those are that's another picture in here that I chose to use What's not normal is changing the rules of the way the senate works which The nuclear option all the things that mcconnell has done To take away the power of bipartisan cooperation Those are the kind of things that I kept sharing here disappearing information rules and regulations being repealed rights being taken away You know this week's list will talk about what he's done with the transgender Community and but one of the first things they did was go after the lgbt community And that's in the early weeks of the list when they when jeff sessions said that sexual orientation should not be protected In the civil rights act from you know, then I mean They have been after this stuff throughout the list and so What this does is sort of in many ways. It's a trail guide back to normalcy Because we have lost so much and we have normalized so much that this man could get up on stage last night and say I'm a nationalist You know and then proceed to tell 10 other things that are factually incorrect And our media still doesn't know how to do this two years later They still haven't figured out and we can talk more about the media But just as a general sense they've kind of ebbed and flowed in how well they've covered him But every weekly list 80 percent of their attention goes into 20 percent of the stories on my list And that means 80 percent of the stories some which are super important Got almost no coverage or eyeballs. They got single source coverage Which actually led me 21 weeks ago to start to do a podcast as well I was at a big event in portland and That was at the time that trump had been separating migrant families at the border But you didn't know about it because none of the national media was covering it yet All the stories I was putting in the weekly list were coming from The the texas area papers of dallas morning news a houston chronicle The texas tribune which I have a subscription to all of them now And our national media that day when I was in portland were on their way to singapore to give trump super bowl type coverage For what any of us could tell you was going to be this big thing that tried to normalize him as a leader But came away with nothing other than Elevating the status of a third-rate dictator to Trump in exchange for nothing But our media gave him this, you know, wonderful coverage And didn't cover what was happening at the border and I sat in removes 400 people in portland and like You know people that were asking about it. We decided that weekend We were all going to be super proactive on twitter and that is one of the benefits of actually having a big following on twitter that you can Make things happen. And so that there was tweets that we sent one that I sent that out over 50,000 retweets And that next week the media did send people down to the border and and their governor as well There, excuse me, their senator had been down there as well So things were starting to move but that helped push the media and once the media went down there it stopped But that's the kind of thing that he throws them shiny coins. He drags them all to singapore This had been going on for five weeks and they hadn't been covering it or been covering it very little So that week I decided as well to do a podcast which is also In the library of congress being archived But what I tried to do is cover these stories that aren't being covered and if you have An hour monday morning or tuesday morning It will catch you up on everything that happened the week prior It covers the list in verbal form because I also realized it's hard to read 170 items So those are both happening each week So just I'll talk about a couple themes that I would love to take questions first Trump like What do I see of him? Who is he? He's the same person that he was as I mentioned when he first Launched his campaign. He cares about two things. He cares about staying in power and making money And if you look at everything he does Um In in the construct of those two items it starts to make a lot more sense You know, there's sort of like I call it a venn diagram between his interests and the republican party's interests and where they overlap is Him making money So his major achievement In the first year was the this huge tax bill could tax cut which has grown our deficit By 17 percent this year alone and is about to plummet our stock market But it gave him a big tax cut and all his friends Yeah, but there's so much that is not typical of him to the republican party And I I sort of joked like a Few weeks after he took office my son got in the car after school and said I miss jeb bush Um, and I said I miss george w bush. You know days like 9 11. There's just nothing Normal about this man. There's nothing dignified. There's nothing predictable or that Even if I might agree or disagree with ronald dragan or george w push on their policies There's nothing That really is is typical of a republican other when trump needs to sort of Get these people back in we're heading into a midterms We're not talking about the normal policy discussions We would be having on health care or tax cuts or you know any of the normal policy discussions we'd be having We're talking about a caravan You know, and we're we're stoking racism We're talking, you know about things that got him into office that relates to 35 of our country that Just believes our country should be back in the 1950s and we shouldn't have lgbt marriage We shouldn't have black people in the workplace or women or muslim americans should be out of this country And so that is what got him into office and what continues That's part of his fanning the flames and he does that throughout my book from the transgender military band to the nfl anthem Anytime he's sort of off his game. He throws a shiny coin Of racism and that's part of his ploy to stay in power He also has deconstructed our government pretty significantly half of our Key roles in our federal agencies are still unstaffed and the ones that are staffed Generally what they're doing is deconstructing the agencies they run from within So for example, elizabeth warren's consumer financial protection bureau When the person who was the acting director left They got and this was the first example of a trump judicial nominee Allowed melvaney to take over the consumer financial protection bureau And what was the first thing he did he put in a budget of zero The people that are in this regime have been remarkably efficient at deconstructing things you know We talk about Betsy devos and taking away protections for students for loans for You know For campus sexual assault For what we've done for our environment. They've basically taken away all of obama's progress on carbon monoxide emissions But week by week all of this stuff is captured. So that is sort of deconstructing our government from within and so trump Has basically remodeled our government to be like the trump organization, which is himself in power Surrounded by 20 sycophants and anyone who disagrees Is gone. I mean macan is gone. Nikki haley is gone He has had more turnover of high level people than anyone in history by magnitudes and those positions aren't necessarily being refilled Because trump thinks he's better at everything than everyone else including fortunately for us the best lawyer so The good news is and we can talk about this. I don't believe he's going to make it to 2020 But that's you know subject to what's going to happen two weeks from today Yeah, potentially So Those things have continued and trump is we're sort of on the precipice and i'll let you prompt me in your questions about this of really What's coming up in this election being so so consequential for so many reasons What we learned in high school about history class about checks and balances as gen mentioned in the intro I think what the takeaway from this is those are norms not laws and I think the outcome when we get to the other side will be a lot more things like what's happening in broad island Where there are state assembly passed a law that in order to be on their ballot for president You have to release five years of tax returns So I think we'll start to codify things that in the past were just expectations and trump has done none of these expectations But as time goes on we've stopped asking versus tax tax return. We stopped asking for his medical He still hasn't had a formal medical evaluation from somebody that we can trust Um, but these things kind of build up, you know, like remember when he first took office And how outraged we were that he was going to benefit from his properties Our whole foreign policy now is predicated on where trump wants to do business the most recent example saudi arabia But starting with the muslim ban, which you know, he tried three times and that was the court standing up to him Finally, he threw in a couple of countries that weren't muslim countries like venezuela and north korea Because you can just see them lining up in the airport in north korea to come here And then he got it through the supreme court Um, and and so that's the importance of these court system and what he's doing and how they've Restacked judicial branch, which up until now has been the only balance on him But if you look at the countries in our muslim ban, guess who's not in it Any of the countries that have actually carried out terrorist attacks against the united states The muslim countries that are in our muslim ban I don't care what he calls a travel ban our muslim ban are all countries where trump doesn't have financial dealings None of the countries in the muslim ban have attacked the united states or had their sovereigns attack the united states So that's just an example and there are many of how our foreign policy Is dictated by where trump and his family want to do business and we can talk more about that as well So i'll i'll just talk briefly about our media and then we can take questions And this is a complicated question a complicated question about like how is the media doing? Um Right now not so good. I mean there's been periods of time where I think they've done better I think initially they were caught flat footed But something interesting happened as I was as I was starting to record things Reuters and international press Reuters very specifically their editor-in-chief said once trump took office We're going to cover him as an authoritarian regime And the foreign media has been vastly more effective than the u.s. Media If you look at my book and you look at or if you look at the weekly lists or follow what I do The people that really get it and are covering it are Reuters the guardian mclatchy toronto star They have been able to distance themselves and they have some understanding of authoritarian regimes because they cover things on a global basis That our media just does not appreciate and there's been times our media has gotten better But right now they're doing a really bad job Um, I mean they've allowed trump to take this caravan story Perpetuate lies and instead of staying in the like last night the toronto star said false false false Instead of doing that they report these things and then they're out in the public domain for consideration that there are middle easterners in the caravan and and You know ms. 13 By repeating these things and this thing about the middle tax Middle middle class tax cut when congress is out of session Our media doesn't know yet how to cover him as an authoritarian Which is unfortunate because one of his main goals Is to silence them And to threaten them and if you think about what's happened in the short period of time last week's list had two examples You know that sort of the how How jamal kushogi how we've not condemned that whereas all the other Democracies I guess we're sort of in many ways the former democracies have publicly condemned it but trump has business interests and he has Supposed to jobs with this contract which literally last week went from 50,000 jobs to 450,000 jobs to 600,000 jobs by saturday For a non-existent contract, but our media just keeps reporting this stuff as oh he says 450,000 jobs um you know that and We look at examples of him talking about the The media being the enemy of the people the shooting at the capital gizette The potential shooting at the boston globe if not for the fbi intervening um Our media is in danger physical danger danger of being Disbelieved and that's part of what the hallmark of authoritarianism is to deconstruct the media and our institutions Which you know going back to what we started with marcia gessin's quote about the supreme court I think we've all lost some trust in the supreme court based on what's happened here and the politicization of the supreme court As well as what the damage trump has done to the fbi the department of justice and so on But when all those things don't look trustworthy then the strong man takes power So we are two years down the road You know in a very difficult situation headed into these midterms, so So, thank you so much. Amy siskin for joining