The Wild Reed: 2026

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

March Vignettes

Monday, March 30, 2026

Celebrating Kiki

Before the month ends I want to give a shout-out to Kiki Dee, one of my all-time favorite female vocalists. The English pop/soul singer-songwriter turned 79 on March 6th.

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Kiki!

If you're unfamiliar with the phenomenal Kiki Dee, the following by Brian Penn provides a helpful introduction.

Where do I start a review for the Queen of British Rhythm ‘n’ Blues?

Kiki won her first recording contract in 1963 but, inexplicably, a run of singles missed out on the charts. She later became the first British artist ever signed to Tamla Motown. An album called Great Expectations followed but still no commercial success for Kiki.

Elton John saw her potential and signed her to his Rocket label in the mid ’70s. This proved to be her most fruitful period in the charts, duetting with Elton on “Don’t Go Breaking my Heart,” a chart topper in the U.K. and U.S. As a solo artist, she hit with “Amoureuse,” “I’ve Got the Music In Me,” and “Star,” all cracking the Top 20.

Following starring roles in the West End in the ’80s [most notably in Blood Brothers], Kiki teamed up with Carmelo Luggeri in the mid ’90s, producing [four] albums – Where Rivers Meet (1998), The Walk of Faith (2005), A Place Where I Can Go (2013), and The Long Ride Home (2022) – as well as a highly respected live show.

In celebrating Kiki’s birthday at The Wild Reed, I share Lewis Nicholls’ 40-minute interview with Kiki from 2024. It’s a great interview, one of the best out there. Here’s how Nicholls introduces it:

The legend that is Kiki Dee joins me for an episode of Life Stories to talk about her amazing career, her friendship with Elton John, performing with Queen, and being on stage at Live Aid. Plus some fab stories.

Kiki’s about to go on tour in the U.K. with her longtime musical collaborator Carmelo Luggeri. If you get the chance to see this “classy duo” in concert, go for it! By all accounts, you won’t be disappointed.

For more of Kiki Dee at The Wild Reed, see:
• Music Legend Kiki Dee: “I’m a Down-to-Earth Person”
• Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri
• “A Classy Duo”
• Celebrating the Proverbial “Soulman”
• Classic Kiki
• Elton and Kiki: Together Again
• Deeper Understandings
• The End Is Not the End
• Amoureuse
• Honoring the Darkness While Remembering the Light
• The Light of This New Year’s Day

Related Off-site Links:
An Interview with Kiki Dee – BBC Breakfast (February 1, 2026).
Kiki Dee’s Forward Motion – The Strange Brew (August 2023).

Sunday, March 29, 2026

No Kings 3.0

Yesterday I participated in the nationwide “No Kings” protest in St. Paul, Minnesota – not at the big march and rally at the Capitol but at one of the hundreds of smaller events that took place throughout the metro area and the state.

This was the third “No Kings” protest organized by the Democratic Party-aligned Indivisible coalition. This alignment is important to acknowledge as it effectively defangs this protest movement, as many have noted.

Take, for example, the following from John Ross and Nathan J. Robinson’s October 2025 article, “'No Kings’ Protests Are Just Not Enough”:

Some activists and commentators on the left have characterized No Kings as a kind of cringey carnival of liberalism, and they aren’t totally wrong. Chris Smalls, founder of the Amazon Labor Union, asked, “No Kings Day is big ass parades; when are we going to withhold our labor for, I don’t know, maybe genocide?” Butch Ware, Jill Stein’s former running mate and current Green Party candidate in California’s gubernatorial race, observed that “mass mobilization without any specific demand and without any organization is actually detrimental because it wastes potential energy that could be directed into effectively organizing against systems.” Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of the Grayzone, points out that No Kings messaging “does not include opposition to U.S.-Israeli wars” despite officially referencing Ukraine.

It’s understandable why people feel cynical. Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have personally endorsed No Kings, with Pelosi posting a video of herself ripping up a paper crown, echoing her theatrical tear-up of Trump’s State of the Union speech in 2020. Cory Booker and Adam Schiff showed us what democracy looks like. Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, unironically posted a photo of himself holding a sign that reads “If Kamala had won we’d be at brunch!” Undoubtedly, many of the attendees would indeed be at brunch if Kamala had won.

More recently, journalist and activist Lauren Steiner observed the following.

There are no announced steps to be taken after this march and not even any demands, except that we don’t have kings. But it doesn’t matter whether we have an autocrat or not, if we still have an oligarchical, monopolized system. We need to get rid of the whole system. The only way to get rid of the whole system is to shut down the economy via a general strike.

If these organizers were calling for a general strike, instructing people how to organize one and raising money for a strike fund, that would be useful. If everybody only gave $10, they could raise $90 million just today and then more online and at other actions. But they’re not doing that.

Even though I agree with everything said above, I still chose to attend yesterday's “No Kings” protest, but with a sign and message that, hopefully, made people think about beyond the liberal talking points that are, in the words of Fights Back! founder Chase Linko-Looper, “bold enough to touch the systems that crown kings in the first place.”

Above: My friend Christine displaying the reverse side of my sign. Christine is the mother of Butch Ware, Green Party candidate for California Governor. For more about my sign, one that I created for the first “No Kings” protest in June 2025, click here.

Following are more images of the “No Kings” protest I attended yesterday at Fairview and Randolph Aves in St. Paul, MN. They are accompanied by the insightful words of Chase Linko-Looper.

The “No Kings” framing carries real weight. It digs into something ancient and angry, something abolitionists and grassroots fighters have always understood. But right now, too many liberal organizers are wearing that language like a costume. Bold enough for a sign. Not bold enough to touch the systems that crown kings in the first place.

Here’s the truth: if you’re actually serious about confronting authoritarianism, stop treating a rally like a photo op. A march that doesn’t disrupt anything, and doesn’t interrupt business as usual or squeeze the flow of money and power, that’s not strategy. That’s performance. It builds community. It feels good. But on its own it won’t stop a damn thing.

And let’s be direct: these protests are being turned into a recruitment pipeline for the Democratic Party. They co-opt radical, anti‑monarchist language, then strip it of anything militant. The goal shifts to funneling people into electoral work instead of building independent power. That’s not harnessing the moment. That’s defanging it.

I’m not here to tear anyone down. I want bodies in the streets. But I’ll say it honestly: mobilization without disruption is a hobby. If we’re not willing to halt the flow of capital, to make it more expensive for the powerful to ignore us than to listen, then we’re organizing for comfort, not for change. The “No Kings” energy is real. I’d love to see it not end up as another fundraising list. But I already know how this goes.

– Chase Linko-Looper
via social media
March 2, 2026

Above: My friends Kathleen and Dee lead the crowd in song at yesterday’s “No Kings” rally.

Above: Dee and my dear friend Jane McDonald, CSJ. To read about my long-standing connection to the CSJ community, click here.

Above: With my dear friend Kathleen at yesterday’s “No Kings” rally.

Friday, March 27, 2026

Butch Ware and the Gatekeepers Within the Democratic Party

Writes Craig Seeman . . .

Democracy for some, or Democracy for all?

California Democrats love to talk about “saving democracy” – until a candidate like Butch Ware shows up to actually challenge the status quo.

While they preach about voting rights on the national stage, here in California, the machine is working overtime with the Secretary of State and the courts to narrow your choices. They aren’t afraid of a “spoilt” election; they’re afraid of a Green Party voice that can’t be bought.

When you use the courts to block ballot access, you aren’t protecting democracy – you’re practicing gatekeeping.

It’s time to stop the lawsuits and start the debates. Let the people decide, not the party lawyers.

Caitlin Johnstone on the “No Kings” Protests

“The problem is U.S. presidents, not kings.
The problem is the U.S. empire, not Trump.
The United States needs drastic, revolutionary change,
not daytime protests designed to be
as inoffensive as possible.”

– Caitlin Johnstone

The third “No Kings” protest takes place nationwide tomorrow. Here in Minnesota, the "flagship" march and rally of “No Kings 3.0” takes place on the grounds of the State Capitol building in St. Paul. Special guests include Bruce Springsteen, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Organizers are hoping that over 100,000 people show up. I’m still deciding whether I'll attend the rally at the Capitol or the one at Fairview and Randolph Aves in St. Paul as I did last October for “No Kings 2.0”

To be honest, I continue to feel ambivalent about the “No Kings” movement, and for the same reasons that I shared last October. Added to these is the fact that the movement, one organized by the Indivisible coalition, is refusing to address the war on Iran, even as it cites a multitude of other reasons for the protest, including ongoing ICE raids across the country.

“Given how much Trump’s attack on Iran is rapidly escalating and the stakes involved, it seems now would be a good time for No Kings and Indivisible to marshal their tremendous resources and hold an actual antiwar march with clear demands, not more partisan pep rallies,” tweeted media critic Adam Johnson. “The U.S. is not under any threat of a ‘king’ nor do I have any sense of what this even means,” he added. “It is however in the midst of an imperial murder spree and the largest opposition movement in the county, such as it is, should probably center this fact at some point.”

Journalist Caitlin Johnstone shares a similar perspective in her most recent piece, one that I share in its entirety below.

_________________

The Problem Isn’t “Kings,”
the Problem Is U.S. Presidents

By Caitlin Johnstone

March 24, 2026
There’s another giant “No Kings” protest scheduled for this weekend, and right now all I can think about is how disgusting it is that this is the closest thing to a mass-scale antiwar protest in the United States right now.

The problem with the “No Kings” protests is right there in the title. They’re saying “We don’t want a king, we want a president!” But Donald Trump is not a king. He is a president. And that’s the real problem: U.S. presidents are extremely evil men who do extremely evil things.

Donald Trump is a U.S. president who is doing U.S. president things. U.S. presidents consistently murder people with unforgivable acts of mass military violence, mistreat immigrants and marginalized communities, and promote tyranny for the benefit of corrupting special interests in defense of the U.S. empire and the capitalist status quo. That’s what their job is. If they weren’t willing to do these things, they wouldn’t get the job.

Trump is not some freakish aberration; he is the product of the same American political status quo as his predecessors. He became president the same way they did, and the powers he now wields were given to his office via mundane executive, legislative and judicial decisions and precedents before he was ever elected.

But because the “No Kings” protests are organized by liberal defenders of that same political status quo, the demonstrations cannot address any of this. The whole thing is designed to be as large and inclusive as possible while also ensuring that it doesn’t disrupt the established order in any meaningful way. They make no real demands. They coordinate the demonstrations with police and government officials. Protesters show up for a few hours with their brunch signs and their orange guy shirts, and then they go home without inconveniencing anybody.

They are not protesting against the U.S. empire. They just want a more polite, photogenic empire.

They are not protesting the corrupt oligarchic political system which gave rise to Donald Trump. They just want the corrupt oligarchic political system to give rise to presidents who make them feel less uncomfortable.

The problem is U.S. presidents, not kings. The problem is the U.S. empire, not Trump. The United States needs drastic, revolutionary change, not daytime protests designed to be as inoffensive as possible. As long as Americans are protesting against fictional monarchies and easily replaceable oligarchic puppets instead of resisting the actual imperial machine, the abuses are going to continue.

The war in Iran is the most obviously evil American war in generations. People should be flooding the streets in every major U.S. city. Washington DC should be on fire. Soldiers should be deserting en masse. Instead we’re seeing these stupid fluffy lib theater conventions where people get together to do nothing.

Americans of conscience should be feeling deeply embarrassed right now.

– Caitlin Johnstone
“The Problem Isn’t 'Kings,’ the Problem Is U.S. Presidents”
Caitlin’s Newsletter
March 24, 2026

_________________

As with my participation in “No Kings 1.0” and “No Kings 2.0,” I’ll be carrying at tomorrow’s “No Kings 3.0” a two-sided sign, about which I wrote the following last June:

My message seeks to acknowledge and convey a deeper awareness of what’s being protested. Yes, Donald Trump has clear authoritarian tendencies and is taking actions that are undermining and dismantling the democratic and humanitarian institutions of the U.S. This needs to be highlighted, resisted, and stopped. For the vast majority of people, this will be their message tomorrow. I support this message. Yet at the same time, many of us don’t see Trump himself as the sole or even primary problem; we see him as a symptom – an undeniably extreme and terrible one – of a deeper reality which for decades has undermined and made a mockery of democracy in this country.

I’m referring to the corrupting influence of corporate money, of special profit-obsessed interests. I’m talking about the corporate capture of our political system; the rise and devastating influence of a corporate aristocracy, an oligarchy to which both major parties bow.

Although such subservience benefits these parties’ coffers, it has proven profoundly detrimental to the well-being of their constituents, the environment, and democracy.

In choosing to appease their corporate donors at the expense of the needs of the people, both parties can be said to be oligarchic; both parties comprise a corporatist/oligarchic duopoly, the policies of which created the economic conditions of profound inequality that make the authoritarian populism of Trump so appealing to so many.

The oligarchy we’re up against is every bit as anti-democratic and thus un-American as any king. Indeed, it’s sadly accurate to say that in the U.S. “money rules,” that “money is king.”

“King” Trump could keel over tomorrow, but the kingship of the oligarchy would remain. It’s this “money is king” reality that I’ll be highlighting and protesting at the “No Kings” rally.

Thursday, March 26, 2026

Butch Ware on the Hard Knock Radio Show

Hard Knock Radio is a talk show on KPFA 94.1 FM in Berkeley, California. Yesterday, host Davey D interviewed Dr. Butch Ware (right), Green Party candidate for California Governor.

This 50-minute conversation can be heard here, while following is how Hard Knock Radio describes the segment.

On this episode of Hard Knock Radio, host Davey D sat down with Green Party candidate Dr. Butch Ware for a wide ranging conversation about ballot access, voter suppression, the crisis facing third party candidates, and the larger political climate heading into the California governor’s race. The discussion centered on Ware’s lawsuit against the California Secretary of State after officials attempted to remove him from the ballot over what he described as a minor clerical redaction issue in his tax documents.

Ware argued that the case against him was never really about paperwork. Instead, he framed it as a deliberate effort to sideline a growing third party campaign that is beginning to gain traction. He said both major parties play different roles in undermining democracy, with Republicans trying to challenge results after elections and Democrats working before elections to narrow the field and eliminate candidates who threaten their power. He rejected the long standing claim that Green candidates simply “spoil” elections for Democrats, saying the evidence does not support that argument and that many Green voters come from non-voters, independents, and people alienated by both parties.

Davey D pressed Ware on the fear many people feel in this political moment, especially with rising authoritarianism, attacks on voting rights, repression of dissent, and the weaponization of labels like “domestic terrorist” against radicals and progressives. Ware responded by saying that neither major party can be trusted to stop fascism because both have helped create the conditions for it. He insisted that only a real left opposition rooted in organizing, anti-imperialism, and working class politics can offer meaningful resistance.

The conversation also dug into Gaza, the influence of AIPAC and the Zionist lobby, media blackouts, and the pressure placed on candidates who speak openly against genocide and war. Ware said his anti war, anti corporate message is resonating precisely because so many voters are tired of being forced to choose between what he described as two compromised parties. He closed the interview by linking politics and Hip Hop culture, even delivering a fiery rap aimed at the political establishment, underscoring his belief that the fight for political change is also a fight happening through culture.

To listen to Hard Knock Radio’s interview
with Dr. Butch Ware, click here.

And if you’re in the Sacramento area today . . .

Above: Standing second from right with Dr. Butch Ware (center) and members of the Green Party of Minnesota at an iftar, the fast-breaking evening meal of Muslims during Ramadan – Tuesday, March 3, 2026. This iftar was hosted by the Muslim American Caucus of the Green Party of Minnesota, and Dr. Ware was the event’s special guest.

NEXT:
Butch Ware and the Gatekeepers
Within the Democratic Party

UPDATE: Judge Rejects Green Party Candidate Butch Ware’s Bid to Appear on California Governor Ballots – Yue Stella Yu (CalMatters.org, March 26, 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

BUTCH WARE
• Introducing California’s Gubernatorial Candidate Butch Ware
• “People Really Want New Options in Politics”
• Butch Ware on “Red & Blue vs Green Politics”
• “We Have the Power to Stop the Flow of Money and the False Legitimacy Upon Which Empire Depends”
• Photo of the Day – March 3, 2026
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – November 26, 2025
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – June 5, 2025
• Butch Ware on His Run for California Governor and the Wider Goal of Disrupting the Duopoly
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – January 30, 2025
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• “This Is a Tragic, Heartbreaking Moment in the History of Humanity”: Butch Ware on the Gaza Genocide
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis
• Butch Ware: “You Can Actually Vote Your Conscience”
• Butch Ware: “I’m Not Here as a Spoiler”

GREEN PARTY
• “Green Wave 2026 is Global”
• Meet Some of the “People-Powered” Green Party Candidates for 2026
• An Opportunity for Organizing Against Duopoly
• “It Is Our Responsibility to Make a Third Party Viable”
• Something to Think About – December 8, 2024
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• “We Give Reasons for People to Come Out and Vote”
• We’re Witnessing a Liberal Meltdown Over Jill Stein
• The “Green Smoothie” Option
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis
• Butch Ware: “I’m Not Here as a Spoiler”
• Jill Stein: “Americans Deserve Choices”
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Howie Hawkins: “The Democrats Are Not the Answer to the Trump/Fascism Problem”
• Demolishing the False Narrative About Jill Stein and the 2016 Election
• Cornel West: “The Next Step Is a Green Step, a Progressive Step”
• Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein: Is a “Historic Collaboration” in the Making? (2016)
• Voting Green: Hope Over Fear

Do Nation States Have the “Right” to Exist?

The question, “Does Israel have a right to exist?” is frequently posed by those who unconditionally support the destructive and death-dealing actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, the Occupied West Bank, and elsewhere. According to filmmaker and social commentator Matthew Cooke, this question is “a little rhetorical trick designed to make the rights of certain people [i.e., Palestinians] disappear.”

Cooke them goes on to ask, “Does any nation state have a right to exist?” In responding to this question, Cooke notes that “the concept of nations, with standardized language, culture, and identity, is brand new – less than 250 years old.”

The entire nation-state concept is an ideology we call nationalism, which Albert Einstein (right) called a disease – the “measles of mankind.”

“Instead of providing human rights and protections,” says Cooke, “nationalism has locked the world into an escalation trap, at a time when we need to cooperate more than ever.”

Cooke’s full 14-minute video commentary on the “death cult” of nationalism and alternatives to it, can be viewed below. It’s well worth watching. (NOTE: For the transcript, click here.)

Our survival depends on cooperation between our cities, neighborhoods, communities – the places human beings actually live.

The word “nation,” which comes from the word “natio,” means a people born together. So for this concept to actually reflect reality, we have to recognize that the earth is the home of humankind. This world is our nation, where we are born together. Our individual identities are a patchwork of interconnected cultures whose family lines trace back hundreds of thousands of years.

All of us are related, one bloodline. All the land, holy. All the people, chosen. All of them, our people, with a right to exist.

– Matthew Cooke
Excerpted from “Does Israel Have a Right to Exist?
Does Any Nation?”
Films for Action
March 26, 2026

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

Quote of the Day

The problem with [liberal] moralism is not its concern for ethics as such, but its tendency to replace structural analysis with moral judgement. It creates a sense of having acted, of standing on the “right” side, while sidestepping harder questions of organization, power, material interests, and the conditions of real intervention. The result is a form of pseudo-activity such as loud and morally self-satisfied, yet ultimately safe for the very order it imagines itself to be opposing.

– Sally Mju
via social media
March 25, 2026

Monday, March 23, 2026

Jim Palmer on the 10 Things About Christianity That Jesus Would “Vehemently Dispute”

Jim Palmer is an author, spiritual director, and the founder of the Center for Non Religious Spirituality. He recently shared the following on social media which caught my attention.

As someone who is less and less involved in organized religion and yet drawn to the life and message of Jesus, I find much meaning and insight in this particular piece. Perhaps you will too.

_______________

What follows is a refusal to keep pretending that the system built in Jesus’ name still resembles the life he lived or the vision he proclaimed.

If Jesus walked back into the room today, he wouldn’t recognize much of what claims his authority, and he wouldn’t be polite about it.

What follows are the assumptions that would likely provoke his sharpest rebuke.

1. That a vision meant to upend the social order was converted into an afterlife distraction

What began, in Jesus’ own language of the “kingdom of God,” as a concrete, this‑world confrontation with injustice, exploitation, and dehumanization was slowly evacuated into metaphysics. Liberation was postponed. Accountability was deferred. The future became a convenient place to store promises Jesus clearly expected to be enacted in the present.

2. That a movement of practice became a religion of admiration

Jesus did not call people to admire him, invoke him, or build systems around his name. He called them to follow. Yet a way of life was replaced by loyalty to a symbol. The question shifted from How shall we live? to What must we affirm? and belief became a substitute for transformation. Devotion replaced courage. Orthodoxy replaced responsibility.

3. That the core message centered on repairing a separation rather than exposing it as a fiction

Jesus lived and spoke from an unbroken sense of intimacy with God, inviting others into the same awareness. Instead, an entire narrative was built around distance, estrangement, and reunion. Alienation was treated as metaphysical fact rather than psychological and social condition, and then monetized with solutions Jesus never proposed.

4. That abstract theories overshadowed embodied truth

Jesus taught with his body as much as with words – through meals, touch, conflict, and solidarity. Yet second‑hand explanations gained authority over lived demonstration. System builders inherited the microphone, and the life Jesus actually lived was reduced to footnotes. Consistency of doctrine mattered more than coherence of character.

5. That one life was elevated beyond imitation instead of offered as a model of possibility

Jesus’ life could have functioned as an invitation into shared capacity – what a fully human life animated by love, courage, and justice looks like. Instead, it was reframed as ontological exception. The gap between “us” and “the ideal” was widened, not bridged, safeguarding reverence at the cost of empowerment.

6. That access to truth was narrowed rather than expanded

Jesus consistently pointed beyond himself to lived experience, moral imagination, and transformed relationships. But wisdom that once opened outward was domesticated into a closed epistemological system. Mystery was replaced with certainty. Inquiry with answers. Dialogue with defense, all in the name of protecting what Jesus never tried to possess.

7. That humanity was defined primarily by guilt and condemnation

Jesus’ posture toward people affirmed dignity before repentance and belonging before correction. Yet a fear‑based anthropology replaced one rooted in dignity. Wrath became foundational. Punishment became redemptive. Moral development was subordinated to appeasement, and people were trained to see themselves as problems Jesus supposedly came to manage.

8. That responsibility for healing the world was outsourced to future intervention

Jesus sent people out – to heal, to feed, to reconcile, to confront injustice. Instead, people were taught to wait – for rescue, for resolution, for Jesus to return and do what they were unwilling to do themselves. Passivity was baptized as faithfulness.

9. That words were mistaken for power

Jesus consistently exposed the emptiness of religious language divorced from action. Yet names, phrases, and verbal rituals were treated as if they could do the work that embodiment, risk, and love require. Meanwhile, the unsettling truth Jesus trusted – that humans already possess the capacity to effect change – was quietly ignored.

10. That the original vision became associated with institutions, influence, and control

Jesus aligned himself with the vulnerable and confronted systems of domination. Yet what once stood for courage, justice, beauty, and love became entangled with hierarchy, ideology, and power. The symbols survived. The substance was neutralized.

If this feels uncomfortable, good. These aren’t minor missteps, they’re fundamental reversals of what Jesus actually called people to live. If his life still matters, then so does the responsibility it demands. Everything else is just avoidance dressed up as faith.

– Jim Palmer
via social media
March 23, 2026