Joe Gallina and Call to Activism
Difficult circumstances can sometimes put you in contact with some of the best people, and that is how I met Joe Gallina. I was researching my next book on the changes in political power which were reshaping America, and Joe was one of the go-to sources for what was happening.
He and his wife had started Call to Activism on Facebook in 2017 when Donald Trump began his first term, because they were shocked by the amount of fake news being tossed around. There didn’t seem to be any effective fact-checking being done by established media in those days. So he started tackling as much of the disinformation as he could.
Call to Activism became so popular that it soon spread from its home on Facebook to Twitter/X and onward to Bluesky and Instagram as well as YouTube. There is now a Joe Gallina website with the latest information, and another one for Call to Activism which gives people a direct way to get involved.
Joe Gallina and I were talking about these things when it became apparent that we really saw things the same way. And that writing a book on all of this was a bigger job than either of us could do separately. So we agreed to join forces and pursue it together. A huge amount of poignant material has come to light since then.
Joe Gallina and Current Issues
Out-of-control attacks on immigrants have led to them being shipped off to foreign countries without the “due process” guaranteed by law to everyone in the US. But it didn’t really hit home until American citizens started being swept up in these arbitrary attacks. Now the brutality of the thing has become impossible to ignore.
KFOR in Oklahoma City reported a US citizen and her daughters moved there in April of 2025 while her husband stayed behind in Maryland to take care of a few things. Then one morning in Oklahoma about 20 men burst through the front door armed with guns.
Marisa said the men identified themselves as federal agents with the U.S. Marshals, ICE, and the FBI. She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.
“We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.” She said the agents didn’t care.
How could this be happening in America to US citizens? Literally, it could happen to your family. Or to any of your neighbors. Something has to be done.
But it won’t happen by itself. I think Joe is right. There needs to be a call to activism.
— Sanford Holst
A walk along the road less traveled
With Christos Doumas amid new Santorini frescoes
How can one get to spend time with a person such as Christos Doumas who is sought after by art-and-history lovers all over the world? If something is meant to be, it just happens. And what a marvelous revelation he shared with someone he felt would really appreciate it.
Strange encounters in Alexandria, Egypt
It was just a walk in Alexandria past the heavily-guarded Naval Academy, along the off-limits parts of the harbor, and then into an out-of-control taxi ride down a rabbit-warren of back streets during Muslim prayer time. What could possibly go wrong?
With Ray Bradbury and future worlds
After our chance meeting in a science fiction bookstore, we would get together from time to time to talk about the strange world we live in, and the amazing ones he imagined. His home in Cheviot Hills was a safe refuge in an oftentimes unpredictable universe.
May 5
2025
Location
2999 Pearl Street, Boulder, CO 80301, United States
