Neighbors will do what they see you do
Rebecca Solnit flagged a September podcast she missed, as I did:
Acts of non-coöperation are very powerful,” Merriman, the former president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, says. “Non-coöperation is very much about numbers. You don’t necessarily need people doing things that are high risk. You just need large numbers of people doing them.”
I missed this The Political Scene podcast (link at bottom of post) when it came out in late September, but DDaniel Huntersteered me to it and I’m listening for the second time because it’s such extraordinarily good (and encouraging) insight into how resistance can and does work in general and in our current crisis in the US: “The Washington Roundtable discusses how, in the wake of the reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, public resistance has a chance to turn the tide against autocratic impulses in today’s politics. They are joined by Hardy Merriman, an expert on the history and practice of civil resistance, to discuss what kinds of coördinated actions—protests, boycotts, “buycotts,” strikes, and other nonviolent approaches—are most effective in a fight against democratic backsliding”
Conventional wisdom has it that Trumpism is going to win and prevail for a long time and there’s not much we can do, but it’s conventional because it’s informed by status quo/centrist notions that power is something that resides in those people we call ‘the powerful,’ the elite few, that the rest of us have none, and that most people are narrowly self-interested and won’t stand up on principle (leaving aside that we don’t need ‘most people,’ just a lot of people). Which is just wrong and ignorant and extremely disempowering and a story some of all of us get fed all the time and some of us swallow. Especially as people are standing up in a thousand ways. Do not forget that the Trumpists are weak and scared and rushing to destroy as much as possible before we stop them.
As an aside, one of my frustrations about moderate Democrats, some socialist-y people, and too many pundits is their insistence that ‘people’ other than themselves, the people they’re patronizing, only vote for narrow self interest, aka ‘kitchen table issues.’ In fact, people often choose the candidate they agree with ideologically over their immediate material well-being or there wouldn’t be this right-wing stuff to begin with. The whole idea that when you’re financially insecure you don’t care about democracy and human rights is an insult to poor people and a total miss of the rich people who would sell democracy and human rights and their mom to add to their billions.
George Lakoff insists that people don’t vote their self-interest. They vote their identities. I’ve ranted on this before: Thank you for not voting your best interests. It’s not that people don’t worry about the cost of living. They do. But people are more than balance sheets. Democrats would be well advised to treat them as more.
Professional soldiers don’t serve for the money. Plenty of others sold out their love of country and the Constitution for the thrill of seeing Donald Trump stomp their enemies. Some would rather go without eating than see their “lessers” get a leg up on the American Dream.
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Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
No King’s One Million Rising movement
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense