Fear is not an option
This country is not approaching fascism, leaning toward fascism, or at risk of fascism. We’re there. When masked agents are abducting thousands of people off the streets and imprisoning them and/or disappearing them to third countries without legal process, we are living in a police state. At the Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans over the weekend, progressive activists were not closing their eyes to that reality. To halt the MAGA movement’s march toward dictatorship, Americans who still believe in the country’s ideals cannot be shy about standing up and fighting back in the country’s defense.
In a chance meeting at brunch on St. Charles Avenue, a fellow diner shared that she is keeping her progressive head down for the next three and a half years. She has relations who support Donald Trump and neighbors she doesn’t want to rub the wrong way. I recounted that I have a neighbor who months ago began flying the American flag in his yard upside down as a distress signal. When I mentioned noticing it, he responded that it would stay that way for the same three and a half years.
Clicktivism and casual criticism in the face of fascism is not enough. Direct action is a necessity. If it pisses off some it will inspire others. We must build a community of opposition to the authoritarian overthrow of the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. For many, they will need their neighbors’ permission to take their first baby steps. Deeper commitment comes later. That’s the ladder of engagement.
Behold an example from a Sunday tweet:
Thousands join protest against ICE—link arms to form human chain 8 miles long.
Protesters lined High St from Worthington to Columbus in deep red Ohio.
“Wake up, Columbus!” yelled woman waving an upside-down flag. “Today is about democracy over a dictatorship.”
“Trump’s actions on immigration are a major reason, but everyone involved has different reasons for showing up,” said event organizers.
Organizing groups included Indivisible Central Ohio and the Westerville Progressive Alliance.
“It’s the corruption, the cruelty, and the incompetence,” another man explained. “It’s the masked men swiping people off the street and sending them to God knows where.”
Many had never protested before Trump was elected—and did not want to give full names fearing for their safety. #DemsUnited
When Doug Jones ran successfully in an Alabama special Senate election in December 2017, his campaign distributed 15,000 yard signs to supporters “under strict orders to plant them outside their home and nowhere else.”
the campaign needed to show Republican voters — some of whom hadn’t voted for a Democrat in decades — that it would be OK to support one this time around. And what better way, they thought, than letting the average Alabamian see rows of Jones signs in their neighbors’ yards?
Social proof. Non-activists will need “permission” from you to “join the club.” They will do what they see others doing. Only you have to show them the way. Like with simple street protests. Regular protests.
When Jon Ossoff ran unsuccessfully for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in a 2017 special election, his supporters found and built community that invited neighbors to take direct action:
This surge of progressive activity marks a social sea change in an area when many Democrats said they once kept their political sympathies quiet, assuming they were alone among their conservative neighbors. “I felt like I was a closeted Democrat,” said Rebecca Sandberg, 43, who I met on Monday as she stood with a cluster of other women holding Ossoff signs near a busy intersection. “The label ‘liberal’ always seemed like a bad thing. And now I’m realizing, the more we have this community, that it’s actually a good thing. Being surrounded by all of these ladies in this area—and men, too—has really empowered me to be more involved.” She’d joined Pave It Blue and become a precinct captain for the Ossoff campaign.
[…]
A private, invite-only Facebook group called Liberal Moms of Roswell and Cobb, or LMRC, [swelled] to 1,700 members. You see LMRC magnets on cars and minivans all over town, and its members have developed a ritual: When they come across an LMRC decal on a parked car, they turn it upside-down, so when the driver returns, she’ll know a friend was there.
The message: You are not alone. We see you. We stand with you.
Fly that flag upside down. Hold a protest beside the road at drive time. Will it change anything? Not overnight. That’s not the point. The point, as my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio says, is to provide social proof to others that it is normal for normal people, decent people, moral people to stand up and publicly oppose the crimes and intimidating cruelty of the Trump administration:
The thing is, people need to see, “Oh, that’s what my kind of a person thinks.” Humans are social creatures. We’re tribal. We want to find cues in our environment that tell us what our category subscribes to.
So simple actions matter. They build the community and mutual trust we will need later to implement actions like general strikes that will have more teeth.
You already know how this works and that it does.
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