Not sure exactly what it is but I feel like one protest isn’t going to be enough. And are we being clear we want his removal? And the ending of Project 2025?
Not sure exactly what it is but I feel like one protest isn’t going to be enough. And are we being clear we want his removal? And the ending of Project 2025?
Comments
I wouldn’t be worried about it – we’ll need to do a lot of things, in a coordinated way, over a longer period of time than a few hours or days, to meaningfully resist. It’s not a bad thing – there’s nothing to worry about there, that’s the nature of what it means to oppose those in power – you have to do that in an expansive, pervasive, enduring way, not once on a random Saturday for a few hours when it’s convenient. It’s good to show up but that’s not the work. I do think to some extent Americans don’t have a common understanding of what that means – the average person is neither that politically engaged nor have they had a lot of experience with like longer term activism of really any kind – people are more used to discreet and short term responsiveness to specific issues.
That’s not what this moment is, and that short attention span and sense of “well I did something” they’ve learned won’t necessarily get across the finish line in terms of that coordinated, united rebuke that needs to happen to pull us back from this cliff. I don’t know how bad things will have to get before people are ready for that level of organizing, but, I’m hoping it doesn’t take much longer.
You’re going to need to do way more than have one protest to get rid of him. Americans have a lot of work ahead of them. Your fight for democracy will not be won in a weekend.
Greed and self interest will matter far more than protests. Stock market tanking and products getting more expensive will make consistent voters irate. We are already seeing it.
We will. We need massively coordinated action to overcome the inevitable voter suppression that’s coming during the midterms. We need candidates people are willing to show up and vote for in droves.
As a lifelong red state Democrat from a rural Democrat family, I can tell you we know how to do this, and also that the GOP is onto us. Why do you think Georgia banned giving food and water to people in line to vote? I voted for Obama in 2008 in a majority Black county in south Georgia with only one voting precinct. If not for the ladies from the AME Church supporting everyone in line with food, water, holding place for bathroom breaks, etc, I never would have made it through that line (it was 8 hours long and I was very pregnant). That’s only one example. For another, it’s very difficult to qualify to vote by mail in Texas. The voter suppression efforts are not new, but they are at an all time high.
So what do we do?
First, listen to southern Democrats who have had our boots on the ground in this fight for our whole lives and saw this coming a mile away. I hear disgusting things about places I consider home every day from my ideological peers. Any meme that jokes about abandoning us, nuking us, or otherwise othering us gets all sorts of laughs, hearts, and positive reactions. The condescending things people from blue stated often say to me make it clear they have no idea how much work we’ve done in these ways because it is more comfortable to think we are backward hicks who have sat here with our thumbs up our asses and allowed this to happen than that we have been fighting all along and it happened anyway (meaning it could happen anywhere).
Second, understand that yelling at people to vote doesn’t help. What are you doing to actually help people vote? Are you carrying copies of the League of Women Voters guide to hand out to people who don’t understand the local and state propositions on the ballot or where the candidates stand on the issues? How many people have you driven to the polls? Do you even talk in your daily life with people who have obstacles to voting? You should be doing that and actually trying to understand what those obstacles consist of and helping people to overcome them. A great way to do this is block walking for the political campaign of your choice.
You’re gonna have to sit with people who don’t have all the details right but can agree on the important stuff. Yes this means people who don’t understand LGBTQ+ issues, and maybe like guns more than you do, but understand that Trump and the GOP have been bad for the economy. If I, a gender nonconforming lesbian can sit with those people and find common ground, I know you can, too. It’s going to take extending a lot of olive branches and building a big tent coalition of everyone who may not agree on the finer points but know this thing we’ve got right now isn’t going to work. You also meet those people by block walking, or starting uncomfortable conversations at parties. That also works.
That’s not all it’s going to take but it’s a good start. It will take more than protests, but protests are important. I love this round of protests because it’s brought everyone together. It’s not just women protesting for bodily autonomy, or LGBTQ+ protesting something specific to our rights, or any other one issue, it’s people of every age, every gender, and every walk of life. This is the start of the big tent we need to build. Now we need to continue that job.
While this protest has made me extremely hopeful, it’s definitely not the end.
Here’s a resource list of things we can do in the meantime:
PART ONE:
Write / Sign / Donate:
impeachtrumpagain.org
generalstrikeus.com
5calls.org – for folks who may be new to political advocacy. All you need to do is enter your zip code and 5 calls will provide your reps’ contact info and script templates for your calls (you can pick from a menu of topics of concern).
berniesanders.com – Fight the oligarchy tour.
shop.aclu.org – ACLU’s merch store, but you can choose to donate directly instead.
house.gov – Write your congressman, and it also has a list of their numbers. Use Zipcode look up.
gayforcongress.com – Florida’s upcoming election in the swing state. If you’re Floridian, please please please support her. We can all donate to her cause though.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/release-mahmoud-khalil-protect-all-student-activists-2?clear_id=true — Petition to release Mahmoud Khalil, a legal visa holder being detained for protesting peacefully. If they can do it to him, they will do it to others.
Protest / Organize / Meet Up:
indivisible.org
events.pol-rev.com
mobilize.us
nvunheard.org
ourrevolution.com
fiftyfifty.one
Probably, but you have to start somewhere. Millions of people all being mad enough to give up a Saturday is a start
Who says this is the only protest?
This is a marathon, not a sprint. We are practicing for the main event. We are developing organizations, communities, and relationships we will need.
We need to periodically repeat the peaceful protests until the midterms. My fear is he will trigger major unrest just before midterms and try to use it to cancel elections.
The middle finger to the courts is also scary AF.
He might try to enforce his tarrifs in CA since Newsom has other ideas.Does he try to send the national guard from a red state into a blue state?
Another pandemic with US as ground zero?
There are many ways for this to get terrifyingly worse. It will probably be something no one is even predicting.
It sickens me, but the oligarchs are the only ones left who might be able to put a check on him. Despite each of them having more than one human could ever consume, they still hate seeing their value go down.
The oligarchs are what got us into this. They love deregulation and having a free rein, but they don’t like instability. They’d love to go back to quietly distributing all the wealth in the world into their own accounts.
No one is going to remove anyone. Sometimes your side wins, sometimes your side loses. I say this as a libertarian who never wins LOL. We survived four years of dementia we will survive this.
We need a long sustained financial boycott. Similar to what happened during Covid. We didn’t boycott but we were forced to stay In which in turn lowered our spending drastically. So much so that the government freaked the Fvk out,
we need to not spend a dime with ANY company link to Trump and Musk. I don’t understand why tourism dollars still go to states like Florida and Texas. Republicans will, of course. But liberal voters shouldn’t be spending any money in those states. For example,. Back in 2015 or so NC tried to pass a bathroom bill requiring trans-people to go to bathrooms aligned with their birth sex. Every company cancelled their plans in NC. A whole tournament decided to not come here. Businesses decided to not do business here. Guess what the gov lost and that bill didn’t pass.
Texas and Florida are literally trying to make abortion a homicide. That means even if you go to another state, you can still be charged with murder or attempt or accessory. And yet liberals are still going to freaking florida for vacation.
Republicans don’t care if we protest because we don’t vote for them, but if we take their money away they will care. Look at Musk doing his pity party tour. It’s not because of a few vandalism cases. It’s because he’s losing money left and right now. Tesla’s stock is taking an hit and sells are plummeting. We need to keep protesting to keep our base generated but we need a financial boycott.
I’m game. Everything is too expensive to do anything fun, and everyone is getting fired from their jobs, so we have plenty of free time to march in the streets. They took away the bread and circuses, what else is everyone gonna do? I can’t wait to wear one of my new childfree cat lady shirts to the next one.