39 minute read
Why They Did It
TIM MILLER
TIM MILLER SAYS THE GOP
started down a path to disaster in the early 2000s. He now seeks to answer a simple question: “Why did normal people go along with the worst of Trumpism?” Excerpted from the July 11, 2022, program “Tim Miller: Inside the New Republican Party.”
TIM MILLER, Writer-at-large, The Bulwark; Political Analyst, MSNBC; Host, “Not My Party” on Snapchat; Communications Director, Jeb Bush 2016; Author, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell
In Conversation with DAN PFEIFFER, Co-host, “Pod Save America”; Author, Battling the Big Lie: How Fox, Facebook, and the MAGA Media Are Destroying America
DAN PFEIFFER: I’m pleased to be joined by my friend Tim Miller, who is a longtime Republican consultant— TIM MILLER: Former. [Laughter.] PFEIFFER: —former Republican consultant, and author of the new book Why We Did It. Tim cuts through the past few decades of political shifts, compromises, and decisions made by the GOP and how it set us on a collision course for 2016, Donald Trump, and everything that happened on January 6. Tim’s book is great; it is a funny, raw, accurate diagnosis of politics, the Republican Party, and really more than almost anything I’ve read over the last few years, helps explain how we got to this moment right now, from the point of view of someone who was there to see it all in the front row. Tim, . . . you’re a former Republican consultant. You have been about as vocal against your party as any member of the Republican establishment not named Liz Cheney has been over the last many years. But before we get to the former part, let’s ask: Why did you become a Republican in the first place? What led you down that path to current Republican politics? MILLER: Yeah, I was a pretty dorky child, and I was attracted to politics at a young age. My interest in politics began when I had a bet with my grandmother. She thought that George H.W. Bush would beat Bill Clinton. I just sensed that was not going to happen; I don’t know why. So we had a $1 bet, which I won—and that kind of got me addicted to politics.
Frankly, if you look back to ’96 and 2000, which are the first campaigns that got me into politics, I was attracted to this notion of the Republican Party as being one of free markets and free people, one that helped get rid of the limits on individuals’ ability to achieve success.
My father was—sorry for the cliche—an up-from-his-bootstraps kind of guy [who] gained success. So that part of it appealed to me, this notion that we were a shining city on a hill—remember when Republicans thought we were a shining city on a hill and people might want to come here, and that it would be appealing to be here because of our freedoms and our society? PFEIFFER: Reagan never mentioned the wall around [the city]. MILLER: With moats with alligators. [Laughter.]
So that [openness] appealed to me.
And then, I think once I got into politics, it very quickly went from those kind of earnest reasons of being drawn to the Republicans, to really enjoying the game and enjoying the sport of it and wanting to win and to beat the other side.
I think that during our era, that kind of comment was more common on my side of things than on your side. But this notion that, oh, you know, we liked The West Wing; and for whatever reason your family was Republican or Democrat, you ended up on a team and now you’re in Washington. And once you’re on a team in Washington, it’s hard to get off it. You know, you’re not going to get hired by the Democrats.
I interviewed one guy for the book who is a very high-level Republican now, who said he’s never voted for a Republican for president in his life. [Laughter.] That’s a pretty odd little fact about something in politics. PFEIFFER: Did he vote for Democrats or did he vote for independents? MILLER: In 2008, Palin freaked him out, and he thought it was cool to vote for the first Black president. He sat out 2012; and then Trump came around and all of a sudden, he’s working for a Republican governor at the top levels of the party. He voted for the person he worked for. I asked him, “Could you have worked for Obama, do you think?” He said, “Yeah. I kind of barely fell on this one side of the line in 2008 when the stakes just didn’t feel as high.” I know that you probably didn’t feel that way in 2008, but if you look at McCain and Obama, I think it’s easy to understand how people rationalize that, right? John McCain was a person of dignity and integrity, serves the country. He believes that climate change is a problem and that we should have a cap-and-trade deal. He wanted to welcome immigrants. He didn’t think that we should
The True Confessions of a Former Republican Hitman
torture people. The notion that there were these like huge fundamental differences between those two—there were real differences. But you can see how someone kind of wrapped up in the sport of it might decide, okay, I’m a person who has a job to do and I enjoy that job, and that’s what I’m going to do first and foremost. I definitely found myself in that camp. PFEIFFER: You obviously have been on cable a lot over the last six years. You’ve been part of many political groups attacking Trump. You have been very vocally critical of other members of your party on Twitter.
But writing this book is like a different step, right? The first half of the book is about you and your journey, about how you ended up at this point. But the second half is really about some of the people who you know, you have worked with, some were maybe mentors to you or people you trusted, who have gone on to sort of debase themselves in service of Trump. To write about them in these explicit ways burned some bridges; maybe they were burned already.
But just talk to me a little about the process of deciding to write the book and maybe if there’s been fallout or blowback from some of the people you have written about? MILLER: I felt like there were two elements of the book that kind of represent this first half and second half, that also represent my motivations for doing it.
One is, I felt there was a sense of atonement, right? Even though I had fought Trump, I still kind of felt icky looking back on some of the stuff that I did. You know how the publishing business goes; I got a call from an agent, “I want you to write a book that’s like the ten [worst] Trump grifters in America; it will sell a million copies.”
I was like, That’s kind of appealing. But then I thought, Oh man, I don’t think I can really write that book in good conscience without reckoning with my complicity and how I was a part of this. I feel like for readers of good faith, if I’m going to get anyone who is persuadable—like maybe some “Pod Save America” listeners would like that book— but if I was going to get anybody that is persuadable, I need to take some accountability.
So the first half of it was really kind of reflecting on myself. If I’m going to understand how my friends and mentors went along with something that’s immoral or unethical or evil, I have to look back at how I did. That was kind of the motivation for the first part.
The second part was really a curiosity. Rather than write about, you know, the Stephen Millers and the worst of the worst, I wanted to write about people that I felt there was a little bit of a gray area, like the people who knew better, the people who told me they knew better because, despite having lived all this for six years, I still didn’t feel like I fully understood why literally all of my friends and colleagues went along with that. I mean, 97.5 percent of the people that I worked with went along with us. PFEIFFER: When you say went along with it, that is degrees of people who you write about, like your friend Caroline Wren, whose name is on the January 6 Stop the Steal permit, to people who just stayed in the party and worked for random members of Congress or leadership, right? MILLER: Yeah, exactly. I think that there’s different gradations of how they justified it. Somebody like Caroline, obviously, which we can talk about, got basically sucked up into the cult and fully believed all of the MAGA nonsense.
So my other friends, many of whom are not on the record in the story, but who I wanted to speak to me honestly, decided that they couldn’t work for Trump. But that wouldn’t stop them from working for random senators [like] Cory Gardner—you can list all of the different Republican senators who are varying degrees of normal.
I kind of got it, right? At some level, you’re like, [they’re making] money and they have a job and a career. So it’s a surface level. I got it. But I felt like I really wanted to dig deeper and understand [if] maybe there were things that I didn’t know about them. Maybe this whole time I thought I was playing this big game and I was kind of this moderate Republican, and they were way more conservative than I realized and I was just kind of filling in the blanks in my head.
One of the things I discovered in those conversations was a lot of them did have a much deeper well of hatred for the left and for Obama in particular. I thought this was maybe an interesting insight: [Those]of my friends who went along with Trump to a person hated Obama much more than the few of us never-Trumpers.
So I think the whole time I was like, I disagreed with Obama. Obamacare could have been better. Solyndra wasn’t that great, right? But me and you could have gone to the bar afterwards and have a beer. I didn’t hate him. I would love to go sit at a basketball game with Obama.
The people that I interviewed, what I discovered was this whole kind of kayfabe, this fake show of performative fighting that I thought I was doing; for a lot of them, it was more real than I realized. PFEIFFER: And why did you think they hated Obama? [Laughter.] MILLER: Why do you think? PFEIFFER: Well, I think there’s a broader question about race in this. That is the animating part of a lot of obviously how we get to this point, how the Republican Party gets here. But I don’t want to assume that’s the only or primary reason these people who work in politics feel that way. MILLER: No, race obviously was a part of it. You hear the things that maybe don’t sound racist on the surface, but it’s like, “Obama was so condescending.”
It’s like, was he? I didn’t feel that way. More condescending than your average politician? I don’t think so. So there was clearly a racial [element]—with the base, there was clearly almost an explicit racial element. You look back at the Tea Party movement, and this notion that that was about government spending I think is preposterous in retrospect. At the time, though, it seems like, okay, maybe it’s about government spending, but it’s clear that, had Obama’s first bill been, whatever, cap-and-trade, they would have pretended they were mad about that. It was this sort of racial and also cultural—which race is an element of, but also this sort of elite coastal versus “real America”—element. So I think that is part of the reason for sure.
PHOTO BY SARAH GONZALEZ/SMGFOTO
Also for a lot of these folks, it is unfortunately just this base annoyance with liberals in their life that gets kind of projected onto everybody, not just Obama, not just Black Democrats, but like Elizabeth Warren, which could be a little bit of sexism. But Joe Biden now even gets it. Lindsey Graham famously in Jonathan Martin’s book said on January 6, “How could people get mad at Joe Biden? Maybe this will be a good moment for the country to come together.” Well, they found things to be mad at Joe Biden about. [Laughter.]
What kept coming up in the Caroline conversation that I got to put on the record, that really kind of— PFEIFFER: Maybe just tell people a little bit about who Caroline is. It’s the framing part of the book, I think. MILLER: Sure. Caroline Wren is a good friend of mine, and a really personal friend. You have DC friends—me and Dan are D.C. friends; we’ve never had dinner together. [Laughter.] But Caroline is like a personal friend. We would talk about our life options or relationship troubles.
She was a very moderate Republican, worked with me on Jon Huntsman’s campaign, worked for a lot of RINOs [Republicans in Name Only]. I tell in the story about how she on her own flies to Germany to bring gifts to refugees. This is a person that is not a hateful person in their heart, at least in my experience. And she gets sucked up into Trumpworld. It’s kind of by accident. She’s the finance director for the RNC convention. You don’t think Trump’s going to win; Trump wins the convention and then you get in this bunker mode. She becomes very defensive of him and of his people.
Then you start to enjoy the access and the star power of it. All the sudden you’re hanging out with the family, you’re backstage or on Trump Force One. This all makes me sick, but I can understand how somebody might get sucked up in this. Eventually she just kind of gets caught up in the accoutrements of being around the president, being in the inside circle. She ends up, as you said, on January 6, having her name on the permit for the mall, because she was doing advance or whatever, setting up the chairs for the VIPs.
So we went and had drinks in Santa Monica for like six or seven hours. I was like, “I didn’t understand this. How did we grow so far apart? I thought we were the same. We were both moderate Republicans. How can you be fully Trump cult and me be a never-Trumper?” There are a lot of revelations in that conversation, because we had so many tequilas. PFEIFFER: I was hungover just reading that. [Laughter.] MILLER: But the one thing that really stuck out to me, that just kind of stopped me short is, we kept going back and forth on all the various issues and why are you mad at this and what do you think about this and that?
Finally, I get to: “I just don’t get it. Is there something about him you really, really like, or is all of it just you’ve come to hate all of the people that hate Trump?”
She thinks about it for a second and then says, “I really think it’s the latter.” She’s like, “I’m just so sick of these liberals and their Priuses with their coexist stickers drinking their coffee coladas and wagging their finger at me and making me drink out of my paper straw.” I’m like, I hate paper straws too, but what does that have to do with Donald Trump? Nothing.
That was the most stark example of a conversation that I had 20 of when writing this book. Every normal Republican that I talked to, the conversation would go and go and eventually you get to a point where you get under a layer and they’d have this grievance. Sometimes it’d be about their kid’s school and the DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] packets, and sometimes it’d be about the media’s being mean to them. Sometimes it would be that their friend won’t talk to them anymore because [they say] they’re racist because they work for Donald Trump. And whatever it is, these various grievances and hatreds of the left ended up allowing them to rationalize what they did. PFEIFFER: Try to unpack that a second. Is that because they think he will fight harder against these forces, or he is a more effective fighter or he’s tougher than the other Republicans, or he just can be sort of their a--hole aide in public. MILLER: For some, it’s a--hole aide. Rich Lowry said this; Lowry is the head of the National Review, which is supposed to be like the erudite journal of conservative thought. PFEIFFER: Now it’s Polysyllabic Federalist. MILLER: Yeah, exactly. [Laughter.]
He wrote an article like two weeks before the election this year. It’s like “Donald Trump is a middle finger to all the people that you hate in America.” I’m just like, “Really, this is why you’re voting for Donald?” It just seems so childish. And he’s supposed to be the editor of the [journal founded by] William F. Buckley, you know, the inheritor of conservative thought.
But they’re just varying copycats of that. For some people then I think it was, like Caroline, it just tickled something inside them. It’s like emotion, they are mad at the
left or the changes in the country. I think for people out in America, for some of them, it’s like they’re mad about the changing racial dynamics, and when they watch their movies, the white people aren’t the heroes anymore, like things that are as simple as that.
Then for a lot of my friends that I focused on in the book, I really think for them it was more of a rationalization. One guy stands out to me. He says to me something like, “You know, I hate him. And there’s not much I like about him. But the way I’m treated”—he was a white guy, obviously—“the way I’m treated by woke culture, it just has left me no option but just to really grab onto the one or two things I really agree with him on and focus on that while I continue along.” PFEIFFER: The they made me do it strategy. MILLER: Yeah, they made me do it strategy. I was just like, you just admitted that to me on the telephone and I know we’re off the record, but I’m going to know who you are. [Laughter.] But I think the interesting thing is that in that culture, which I’m not in anymore, I just think that that’s kind of conversation, right? Like at the bar around the other Republican political types who know better, who know about Donald Trump, who know how dangerous he is, that’s how they make themselves feel better. PFEIFFER: In your political journey, working for McCain, working for Huntsman, trying to help Romney beat Obama, Jeb Bush—let’s go before Jeb Bush, that’s when you were dealing with Trump. But were there some moments on that journey where you saw the party turning in ways that were alarming, whether it’s stuff in the Tea Party or elsewhere, there were sort of warning signs to you, even if it didn’t mean that Donald Trump [would] be president one day, at least a dangerous undercurrent within the party that made you uncomfortable? MILLER: Yeah. This book starts in Iowa with Sarah Palin with McCain. And I’m sure this stuff goes back further than that. [If someone wanted to] write a history book, you can go back to Goldwater, whatever. But I was in Iowa in ’07, I guess, in this primary. And McCain at that time is working with Ted Kennedy on an immigration reform bill, which shows that as bad as the party has always seen, like there was some good stuff happening back then. There has been some change.
So he’s doing that. And every question at the town hall we’re getting is about immigration, amnesty, and it’s like weird conspiracy theory about the NAFTA super highway. And they’re all mad at him. They all hate him. McCain’s poll numbers tank and I’m off the campaign after he has to fire everybody. He can’t afford a staff.
Then he has this rebound, mostly because none of the other candidates are very good. During his rebound, he shifts his immigration rhetoric a little bit and McCain-Kennedy dies. He doesn’t become Donald Trump, but he starts to sort of do the thing like, “Well, we can’t do any immigration reform until we have a wall.” He does that; later goes on to do the “[complete] the danged fence” ad. And then in the general [election], Palin happens, and the crowds at the Palin event were like that McCain caucus crowd but like on steroids. It’s all the deplorables 10 years later.
At the [Palin rallies], they’re feral. The McCain rallies are like very staid. The Palin rallies are people shouting like how Obama is a Muslim. So obviously in ’08 it was all there, which is like why I felt I had to do the mea culpa part, because I saw it. I knew it. And I slowly get sucked back in because Jon Huntsman’s a moderate. And then, you know, you’re on the career ladder. So I think it was super-clear in ’08.
I think frankly, Trump probably could have won the 2012 primary and probably frankly could win the 2008 primary; or Palin could have won the 2012 primary; and the inevitable takeover of the populist wing of the party, the crazy wing, was only delayed four years because there were no good vessels for it. You know, these opponents like Rick Santorum— PFEIFFER: —and Newt Gingrich MILLER: —and Newt Gingrich. PFEIFFER: Who almost beat him, right? MILLER: Yeah. Who still almost beat them despite the fact they are horrible candidates and has-beens and were really bad at channeling the populist rage that Palin and Trump were so good at channeling. So yeah, I think it was super-clear from ’08. PFEIFFER: Do you think there were things Republican Party leaders could have done? Like you write in the book about how they begin this dance, particularly after—to give a little history here, Bush wins in ’04. Two well-known political reporters wrote a book called The Emerging Republican Majority. MILLER: Yeah. PFEIFFER: The view was Democrats would never gain power again. Republicans were making gains with Latino voters and Black voters are moving to their camp, and Democrats were screwed.
Then all of a sudden, George Bush—between Iraq [and] Katrina—goes in the toilet, Democrats win the House and Senate. Obama wins by a margin no one ever possibly expected, and no one thought someone who looked [like him] or was named Barack Hussein Obama could get elected. And then the [Republican] Party is trying to scratch its way back to relevance. MILLER: Right. PFEIFFER: As you write in the book, they get in bed with the Tea Party far right elements. Was there a point, do you think, where someone in the party could have said—like McCain did in his rally famously in ’08 to the woman who called Obama Muslim—could have said no, and could have maybe put a stop to this, or were we inevitably on this path? MILLER: I think we are inevitably on this path. It could have been healthier. So the Tim Miller autopsy, compassionate conservatism yay, climate change, gay marriage, let’s be nice to immigrants party was never happening, okay? That was never going to happen. That was just wishcasting by us in 2012.
We’re all so myopic in America, but if you look globally, every conservative party in the world right now in first world countries is a nationalist, populist, conservative party. These trends are not unique to us.
I’m interested in the counterfactual. This is like the “real Marxism has never been tried” [claim]. Good faith, conservative populism has never been tried.
I’m intrigued by—let’s say instead of trying to force feed the base, we’ll be nicer to immigrants and gays, we would have said Bush screwed up with Iraq; we’re going to stop with the globalism, and stop with the adventurous wars and we’re going to stop with the trade that’s sending your jobs to China or whatever; and we’re going to do more of a kind of protectionist, nationalist, genuine policy shift in the party that tries to meet some of these voters’ grievances—the legitimate grievances. Some of their grievances, as we’ve talked about, are based on race and bigotry. Some of them are legitimate, like their communities have been hollowed out, that it was the people that got sent to the war were not people from my neighborhood. So they have reason to be upset.
Could that have happened? Could there have been a Republican pivot, more like a responsible party? It wouldn’t have appealed to Tim Miller. But could that party [have come about]? I don’t know. There’s no responsible populist GOP right now.
Let’s say that, hypothetically, had the [au-
thor and U.S. Senate candidate from Ohio] J.D. Vance, before he turned into a conspiracy theorist freak, the J.D. Vance who wrote the book [Hillbilly Elegy], and then said, “Okay, I’m going to just offer these more protectionist, nationalist policy agenda items.” Could that person have offered a Republican Party that looks more like—this is a bad analogy this week—like Boris Johnson has? Maybe; I don’t know. That would have been better than what we have, where our democracy is in threat right now.
I still would have left the party probably over that. But I think that that’s an interesting counterfactual. PFEIFFER: It’s interesting to think about that, because probably the reason that did not happen is not just the magic of Donald Trump; it’s also that it’s the incredible and probably irreconcilable tension between, even to this day, the sort of Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan economic agenda and the economic beliefs of the base. You have this working class base that, generally, even though as long as they don’t know it’s from Barack Obama, they want government health care; they want Social Security; they want Medicare; they don’t think it’s great that Amazon is paying zero dollars in taxes.
That sort of was one of Steve Bannon’s ideas after 2012, we can’t talk about that stuff. So we’ve got to go tickle the culture wars sides of their brain. You have to sort of reshape the GOP electorate to get there MILLER: They just had to dump the Ryan agenda. Someone could have instead of Donald Trump could’ve come into the 2016 primary and said, “I’m going to try to run a quixotic campaign where we dump the Paul Ryan trickle down agenda,” and that person might have won. PFEIFFER: Which Trump did sort of do. MILLER: Yeah, but he also added all the cruelty and the bigotry and the freak show and the conspiracy. Okay, so can you decouple those two things, is the question.
I kind of think [you could] now. In my original joke about Marxism, the reason why conservative populism in genuine policy terms can’t really work is because you’re always going to get beaten by somebody that can go onto Fox and go into cable and offer something that’s more red meat, that tickles people’s grievances at a deeper level. There’s no infrastructure for this kind of thing. The Fox suits are not interested in a genuine populist like an anti-Wall Street party. That’s not what they’re interested in. They’re happy with the tax cut agenda, and like throw in some red meat about the Ground Zero mosque or the caravan or whatever to people. So I think the conservative media complex probably makes it impossible. PFEIFFER: One thing you and I certainly had in common was we thought there was very little chance Donald Trump would win the election. MILLER: That was a miss. [Laughter.] PFEIFFER: Yeah, we were wrong about that. Not to do hypotheticals, but I was wrong about who was going to win the presidency, but I was sure Donald Trump was going to win the primary. Working for Obama, I got to see how these people reacted to Obama. I got to sit in a room where a Republican congressman called [Obama] “boy”— you sort of know what is happening there. MILLER: Is that congressman in leadership now? [Laughter.] PFEIFFER: That congressman is not in Congress right now—because he got beat by someone more conservative, more racist, someone who would say that in public. His problem is he kept his racism in the privacy of a conference room.
But I’ve been operating under the theory that the Republican Party was going to burn itself out and would theoretically reform or change after losing ’08, ’12 and ’16. What did you think would happen if Trump, as you and I had both thought, had lost in ’16? MILLER: I don’t think it would have changed much, to be honest, because this is a bottom-up thing. I just thought Trump was too boobish to win the primary in 2016. So I was wrong about that.
But I did [think] if it isn’t going to be Jeb, it’s going to be a crazy person. I thought it was more likely to be Cruz than Trump, but I thought that it would be one of those two.
The night I realized it was going to be Trump was after one of the debates and I met Reince Priebus, who [was] the RNC chair, my former boss, in a bar after the debate. I was like, “You need to quit your job. Trump’s about to win. You should just get out before it gets crazy for you.”
He promised me, he said, “Don’t worry, we need to have a good person in the room. And if things get out of hand, I’ll quit. I promise you.” He ended up getting fired by tweet.
Robert Greene is the CEO/ Principal of Cedar & Burwell Strategic Consulting, specializing in the application of DEIBA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity, Belonging, and Accessibility) technologies in broad-scale organizational development consulting. Prior to Cedar & Burwell, Robert served as a teacher and administrator in educational organizations, department leader in for-profit organizations, and trustee and director for non- profit and social entrepreneurship agencies. He brings insightful thinking, writing, and consulting to issues ranging from organizational development and leadership design; diversity and inclusion leadership and management strategies; wealth and social class disparities; the impact of identity differences in employee culture; and bias awareness and bias resistance training.
He’s partnered with an extensive and varied list of leaders and organizations including Berkeley Law School; BlackRock; Capital Group; The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Harvard-Westlake School; Marin Country Day School (CA); Media Rights Capital Studios; Occidental College; Phillips Academy Andover; St. Mary’s College; SFFilm; and YPO among many others.
Robert earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Brown (econ/political science) and Harvard (administration, planning, and social policy) respectively. Sunday, March 19 Independent arrivals in Jackson. Transfer to the Westin Jackson. Afternoon visit to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. This museum provides an honest and painful account of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, beginning with the back story to the civil rights period – the European slave trade. Evening welcome reception and dinner at the hotel. R,D
JACKSON
Monday, March 20 Our morning begins at the Medgar Evers Home Museum, where Evers lived and was later assassinated in 1963. Walk past the home, which has been restored to the way it looked in 1963. Continue to Malaco Records, an American independent record label based in Jackson, that has been the home of various major blues and gospel acts. Continue to COFO’s Civil Rights Education Center and meet with Dr. Robert Luckett, Director of the Margaret Walker Center. We also meet with Hezekiah Watkins, a civil rights activist from Mississippi who became the youngest Freedom Rider nearly 60 years ago.
After lunch drive to the former Greyhound bus station, a prominent site from the 1961 Freedom Rides. Continue to Farish Street, a thriving center of African-American life in the Jim Crow era and pass by the Collins Funeral Home, where a throng of 4,000 mourners marched after the death of Medgar Evers.
Stop by the Big Apple Inn, where we will meet with the owner, Geno Lee, whose unique delicacy, Pig’s Ear Sandwich, has attracted the likes of BB King and even President Obama.
Dinner tonight at Johnny T’s and after enjoy a private performance by a local Blues musician. B,L,D
Tuesday, March 21 Depart Jackson today for Little Rock, stopping by the BB King Museum.
Drive to Greenwood and the Museum of the Mississippi Delta where we have an authentic delicious barbeque lunch prepared by Mary Hoover, who catered for the movie “The Help.” Continue to Baptist Town with Sylvester Hoover who shows you their store and the Back in the Day Museum. Tour the community museum which explores the history of African-American culture in the Delta. Continue on to the nearby town of Money to see the remains of the Bryant’s Grocery, the site associated with the murder of black teenager Emmett Till.
End the day in Sumner at the Emmett Till Interpretive Center and meet with Benjamin Saulsberry where we will learn of the apology resolution written by the community. Enjoy dinner at Sumner’s Grille before continuing on to Little Rock and the Burgundy Hotel. B,L,D
MEMPHIS
Wednesday, March 22 Today begins with a visit to Little Rock High School, a national emblem of the often violent struggle over school desegregation. The crisis here forced the nation to enforce African-American civil rights in the face of massive southern defiance during the years following the Brown decision, a major triumph of the movement. Here we will have the opportunity to meet with Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine.
Continue on to the William J. Clinton Presidential Center housed in a gleaming modern space overlooking the Arkansas River.
Continue on to Memphis and check-in to the hotel before dinner at a local restaurant. B,L,D
Thursday, March 23 Begin the morning at the Lorraine Motel, now the home of the National Civil Rights Museum. Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed at the motel on April 4, 1968, the day of his assassination. Enjoy lunch at The Four Way, one of the oldest soul food restaurants in Memphis whose regulars included Martin Luther King Jr, Isaac Hayes and Aretha Franklin. This afternoon, we will focus on Memphis’ music history with a visit to the Stax Museum of American Soul, located in Soulsville. End the day with a visit the
Slave Haven Underground Railroad
Museum, where dark cellars, hidden passageways and trap doors were used by runaway slaves attempting to flee north to freedom. Dinner is at your leisure this evening. B,L
BIRMINGHAM
Friday, March 24 This morning, travel to Birmingham and stop at the 16th Street Baptist Church where a bomb killed four young girls as they prepared to sing in their choir on September 15, 1963. We have asked Rev. Carolyn McKinstry, who was 14 and inside the church when the bomb exploded, to join us on our visit. Across the street is the historic Kelly Ingram Park, site of civil rights rallies, demonstrations and confrontations in the 1960s and now sculptures provide visual reminders of the past. We have invited Rev. McKinstry to join us for lunch.
After lunch, visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, an interactive museum that tells the story of the Civil Rights Movement. The institute is also home to an expansive archive of nearly 500 recorded oral histories relevant to the period.
MONTGOMERY
Saturday, March 25 Drive to Selma and stop at the Brown
Chapel African Methodist Episcopal
Church, the site of Malcolm X’s address in support of voting rights. Three marches from Selma to Montgomery began here and it served as the temporary headquarters for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Continue to the Selma Interpretive Center for a conversation with Foot Soldier, Annie Pearl Avery whose civil rights work spans decades. Walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge where we will walk in memory of those who were beaten while seeking the right to vote.
Enjoy lunch in Selma at the Selma Cen-
ter for Nonviolence, Truth and Rec-
onciliation. The lunch will be based on MLK’s favorite food and prepared by Ms. Callie Greer who founded a nonprofit organization, Mothers Against Violence in Selma (MAVIS).
Continue on to Montgomery via the
Selma to Montgomery National His-
toric Trail and check into the Renaissance Montgomery Hotel. Dinner this evening is at your leisure. B,L
MONTGOMERY
Sunday, March 26 Morning drive to the home of Richard and Vera Harris with their daughter, Dr. Valda Harris Montgomery. Located four doors down from MLK’s parsonage, the house was a haven for freedom riders. Enjoy a short walking tour.
End the morning at the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass
What to Expect
Please note that our itinerary involves some time driving from city to city, as well as a fair amount of walking around the sites including climbing up and down stairs. Most days have an earlymorning start and include a full day’s schedule of activities, lectures and special events. Participants must be in good health and able to keep up with an active group. The temperatures in the region average in the 60s - 70s (°F) and can be slightly humid. This program will be covering topics that include violence, and that may be difficult for children. Lectures and discussions are geared to an adult audience. Therefore, we do not recommend this program for people under 16.
Incarceration. Focusing on the history of racial injustice, the museum is situated on the site where enslaved people were once warehoused.
Enjoy lunch at local restaurant before visiting the deeply powerful National Memorial for Peace and Justice, created by the Equal Justice Initiative. End the day with a debrief led by staff members of the Equal Justice Initiative.
Enjoy a farewell dinner at the Central Restaurant. B,L,D
DEPART
Monday, March 27 Independent transfers to the airport for return flights home.B
Itinerary is subject to change
Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma
Tour Price Per Person: $4,995 • Single Occupancy Room: $6,205
Based on a minimum of 15 travelers
Tour Price includes:
• Accommodations and meals as per itinerary • All sightseeing in an air-conditioned coach • Bottled water on the bus • All entrances and events as listed • Discussion Leader to accompany the group • Pre-departure materials and reading list • The services of a professional tour manager to accompany the group • Gratuities
Does not include:
• Airfare to Jackson and back from Montgomery • Alcoholic beverages except for wine and beer at welcome and farewell events • Excess luggage charges • Trip Insurance • Items of a purely personal nature
Phone: (415) 597-6720 Fax: (415) 597-6729
_______________________________________________________ Traveler Name 1
_______________________________________________________ Address / City / State / Zip 1
_______________________________________________________ Home and/or Mobile Phone 1
_______________________________________________________ E-mail Address 1 _______________________________________________________ Traveler Name 2
_______________________________________________________ Address / City / State / Zip 2
_______________________________________________________ Home and/or Mobile Phone 2
_______________________________________________________ E-mail Address 2
SINGLE TRAVELERS ONLY: If this is a reservation for one person, please indicate:
_____ I plan to share accommodations with ___________________
OR _____ I wish to have single accommodations.
OR _____ I’d like to know about possible roommates.
I am a _____ non-smoker / _____ smoker
We require membership in the Commonwealth Club to travel with us. Please check one of the following options:
_____ I am a current member of the Commonwealth Club.
_____ Please use the credit card information below to sign me up or renew my membership.
_____ I will visit commonwealthclub.org/membership to sign up for a membership.
PAYMENT:
Here is my deposit of $________ ($1,000 per person) for _____ place(s). ___ Enclosed is my check (make payable to Distant Horizons) OR ___ Charge my deposit to my credit card listed below.
________________________________________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ Card Number Expires Security Code
____________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ Authorized Cardholder Signature Date
Mail completed form to: Commonwealth Club Travel, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105 or fax to (415) 597-6729. For questions or to reserve by phone call (415) 597-6720.
_____ I / We have read the Terms and Conditions for this program and agree to them.
____________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ Signature Date
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
The Commonwealth Club (CWC) has contracted with Distant Horizons (DH) to organize this tour. Reservations and Payments: A $1,000 per person deposit, will reserve a place for participants on this program. The balance of the trip is due 60 days prior to departure and must be paid by check. Tour Price Includes: Accommodations in hotels as outlined in the itinerary based on double occupancy, prices listed are based on two persons sharing a twin room. Distant Horizons reserves the right to substitute hotels for those named in the brochure when necessary. Distant Horizons will do all possible for single participants to satisfy requests to share rooms. On occasions when it is not possible, the single room supplement will apply. If Distant Horizons assigns you a roommate and your roommate cancels or changes their mind about sharing a room, you will be liable for the single room supplement. American breakfast (B), lunches (L) and dinners (D) are included as specified in the itinerary. Soft drink is included with lunch and one with dinner; welcome and farewell receptions include beer and wine; educational program of discussions; entrance fees to monuments; bottled water kept on the tour vehicle; the services of a Distant Horizons tour manager; special activities as quoted in the itinerary; and gratuities to the local guides; tour manager, driver, and waitstaff for included meals. not specified in the itinerary; transfers to and from airports; chambermaid gratuities; alcoholic drinks at included meals except for welcome and farewell receptions; rinks other than soft drinks at meals; porterage; personal items such as laundry; email; fax or telephone calls; liquor; room service; independent and private transfers; luggage charges and private trip insurance. Cancellation and Refund Policy: Notification of cancellation must be received in writing. At the time we receive your written cancellation, the following penalties will apply: • 120 days or more before departure: no penalty • 119-90 days before departure: $500 of the $1,000 deposit • 89-61 days before departure: $1000 deposit • 60 days before departure: No refund The tour can also be cancelled due to low enrollment. Neither CWC nor DH accepts liability for cancellation penalties related to domestic or international airline tickets purchased in conjunction with the tour.
Trip Cancellation and Interruption
Insurance: We strongly advise that all travelers purchase trip cancellation and interruption insurance as coverage against a covered unforeseen emergency that may force you to cancel or leave trip while it is in progress. A brochure describing coverage will be sent to you upon receipt of your reservation. restrictions make them known to us well before departure. Dietary restrictions must be known well in advance as we may not be able to accommodate all requests and restrictions.
COVID-19: We understand that travelers have concerns about booking trips due to COVID-19. The Commonwealth Club has instituted a vaccine requirement for their departures. Guests will be required to show proof of vaccination. During the trip, we will follow the recommended precautions from the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), state and local agencies at the time of travel. Our aim is to protect our travelers, guest speakers, local staff and communities we visit.
Itinerary Changes & Trip Delay: This itinerary is based on information available at the time of printing (July 2022) and is subject to change. We reserve the right to change a program’s dates, staff, itineraries, or accommodations as conditions warrant. If a trip must be delayed, or the itinerary changed, due to bad weather, road conditions, transportation delays, airline schedules, government intervention, sickness or other contingency for which CWC or DH or its agents cannot make provision, the cost of delays or changes are not included. The minimum group size of this departure is 15 paying participants. Should the number of guests drop below 15 a small-group surcharge will be proposed to guests. Limitations of Liability: CWC and DH its Owners, Agents, and Employees act only as the agent for any transportation carrier, hotel, ground operator, or other suppliers of services connected with this
program (“other providers”), and the other providers are solely responsible and liable for providing their respective services. CWC and DH shall not be held liable for (A) any damage to, or loss of, property or injury to, or death of, persons occasioned directly or indirectly by an act or omission of any other provider, including but not limited to any defect in any aircraft, or vehicle operated or provided by such other provider, and (B) any loss or damage due to delay, cancellation, or disruption in any manner caused by the laws, regulations, acts or failures to act, demands, orders, or interpositions of any government or any subdivision or agent thereof, or by acts of God, strikes, fire, flood, war, rebellion, terrorism, insurrection, sickness, quarantine, pandemics, epidemics, theft, or any other cause(s) beyond their control. The participant waives any claim against CWC/DH for any such loss, damage, injury, or death. By registering for the trip, the participant certifies that he/she does not have any mental, physical, or other condition or disability that would create a hazard for him/herself or other participants. CWC/DH shall not be liable for any air carrier’s cancellation penalty incurred by the purchase of a nonrefundable ticket to or from the departure city. Baggage and personal effects are at all times the sole responsibility of the traveler. Reasonable changes in the itinerary may be made where deemed advisable for the comfort and well-being of the passengers.
Registration
Commonwealth Club of California CST# 2096889-40 Distant Horizons CST# 2046776-40commonwealthclub.org | THE COMMONWEALTH 33
