What happened Nov. 8 is for many of us (especially liberal white people) literally unthinkable — which may be why our bodies are getting involved, with many reporting stomach problems and nausea, or intense cravings for human company combined with irritability. It’s as if we’re reconfiguring ourselves for the awful new world we’re stuck in now, and it kind of hurts.
Big-picture protests against Trump Tower may help with that, a bit. They feel great, and may help build community, while reminding us that we absolutely have to stay angry and never fear “polarization.” (Spilling fake blood on the top floor of a Trump hotel also feels kind of good.)
But that’s not nearly enough. And as the cloud of our bewilderment lifts, we’ll realize there are some more strategic things we need to do, too.
To really achieve anything in these darkest times in American history, we’re going to need to start with strategic battles — that might feel a bit small next to the immensity of what’s happened, but it’s only strategic, winnable battles that can combine into a movement, and it’s only a movement that can change what we’re living.
Remember, it took several decades for the racist virus spread by Republicans, as part of their strategy to win away Southern Democrats, to take over and turn their own party into a fascist one. We can’t reverse all that all at once, but with hard work and strategy, we can reverse it — and make a much better world, just as the Nordic countries did after they’d been through worse than even this. Let’s learn from the Vikings!
Here are a few ways that people are already getting started.
Take over the DNC
We need to pressure the Democratic National Committee to reinvent itself at the top, by electing Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison to chair it.
Whether or not we think that Bernie Sanders would have been a better choice than Hillary Clinton, it’s clear some enormous mistakes have been made, and for a whole lot longer than this election. Like: While Republicans appealed to racism to win over voters, Democrats just left those voters behind, and went from championing working people to championing a consensus technocracy: a beautiful but false vision that you can just let the world run itself thanks to the market’s magic, applying a few polite tweaks here and there. That vision, shared also by mainstream Republicans, left out millions — who, now, have found a sick, dangerous, magic-based vision that exploits their need to be listened to.
Electing Ellison would signify a necessary massive shift in direction for the Democratic National Committee. Many in the DNC already know this shift is necessary, but they need your support — or pressure — to make the right decision.
Stop Bannon
Perhaps the most immediately actionable battle is to stop former Breitbart News chief Stephen Bannon, who Trump has appointed to be his chief strategist. This can be done; several of Bill Clinton’s cabinet appointees were blocked by Republicans way back when.
Sure, Bannon is only one of the most toxic of all the many toxic byproducts of this election, but we need to start somewhere, because, again, we can’t win all at once.
And if the future of the whole planet is more your cup of tea, 350.org has a campaign to stop the demented Myron Ebell from heading the EPA.
Make your city or campus a sanctuary
There’s no need to explain why this is needed. Movimiento Cosecha is a migrant rights group with campus sanctuary, city sanctuary, and other campaigns. Get to work!
Restore the Voting Rights Act
The 2016 presidential election was the first election in 50 years without the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court gutted it in 2013, and Republicans immediately went to work to ensure that people of color would have a harder time casting their ballots. Why? Because people of color vote against white supremacy. And their plan worked.
In Wisconsin, a federal court found that 300,000 fewer voters cast ballots because of new ID restrictions; Trump won there by only 27,000 votes, and similar suppression efforts in other states were equally effective.
In North Carolina, there were 158 fewer polling locations in 40 predominantly African American districts. African American turnout decreased there by 16 percent.
Voter suppression is why Trump won, pure and simple.
Take over the entire Democratic Party (not just the top)
The DNC is one thing (see above) — but we can also just take over the whole party and make it ours. Remember the Tea Party? They drove establishment Republicans crazy. And now we need to do the same.
“Most of all, get offline and get talking,” adds documentary filmmaker Astra Taylor. “Meet with friends and make new ones. Get to know each other, so you can spring into action when the going gets tough, when you need to elect a local progressive leader or fight deportation.”
Fight for universal health care, and other really big things
One of Trump’s first targets is likely to be Obamacare. While our initial instinct may be to defend it, we shouldn’t: We should, instead, think much bigger: single-payer, universal health care, like all the other rich countries have. And here’s where we should take a lesson from the civil rights movement and another health movement: ACT-UP.
“With the disaster of Reagan,” says Waging Nonviolence columnist George Lakey, “almost every significant social movement in the United States went on the defensive — trying to save school reform initiatives, union density and rights to organize, voting rights, etc. — and they all lost ground. The only one that didn’t was the LGBT movement.”
ACT-UP — always on the offensive and always in-your-face — forced the development of treatments that saved millions of lives. And then that segued into a movement that eventually won equal marriage on state and federal levels.
“Multiple victories were followed by increasing intensity by the movement: demanding, demanding, demanding,” says Lakey. “I don’t recall a single time when gays organized a major campaign to save some previously won achievement, like a city human rights commission or that kind of thing. It was always: onward, forward, we demand more!”
The alienated white working-class people who voted for Trump don’t like Obamacare because, well, it isn’t that great. But they would like free health care, and there’s a way we can get it — if we set our sights high.
“Inspired by the LGBT movement, we can enter the game determined to win,” says Lakey. “We can mount a civil rights movement-level campaign, occupy the insurance companies and Big Pharma, the private hospitals, etc. We can go to jail in massive numbers. There’s a target everywhere, and everybody who’s not rich has an infuriating story to tell about someone they know who has had inadequate, delayed, or nonexistent care or are bankrupt because they recovered from cancer.
“We will never deserve to have the society we want if we don’t take charge of the battleground. That doesn’t mean protest and defensive postures — it means assertive nonviolent direct action campaigns of the sort that SCLC and SNCC proved enable people even to take on the Klan and win.”
Get rid of the Electoral College
National Popular Vote wants to finally get rid of the Electoral College. Eleven states have already passed the bill, and even some Republican ones. Yes, it’s nauseating to work on something endorsed by you-know-who, but still.
And finally…
Everything else. These are just a few of the campaigns that are gathering steam, or will be soon. Many groups already getting down to the business of building action campaigns. Join in! This is the time — or will be, anyhow, after your stomach problems get under control.
We do not need to try to reform the Democratic Party, we need to raise up a third party that is a party of the people. The Green Party for instance. As long as we have politics that are dominated by two parties we will have corruption. As long as the U.S. continues to have a faux representative style of Government the Trumps of world and the neo-liberals lead this nation. Currently, in the U.S. there is virtually only one conservative party Neo-Liberals are nothing more than Republicans that use different language to make themselves sound like they are not Republicans. This article made a few good points, but it was dominated by partisan politicking. Like it said we need to aim higher and not try to restore the Old.
If the Green Party truly wants to be relevant and cause change, they should stop wasting money and time running for President and instead put all of their focus on trying to get into Senate first.
But the entire notion that we have to get rid of the two-party system by voting for a third party, simply makes zero sense given our electoral system and logic. It’s from Duverger’s law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
The Green Party collectively spends the vast majority of its time on local and state races. Just because it doesn’t pop up on your Facebook feed doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
If you want Greens to stop running candidates for president, tell Democrats to get onboard with ballot access reform — in many states, GP is essentially forced to not only have a Presidential candidate on the ballot, but to work to ensure s/he gets a minimum % of votes.
I’ve been active to one degree or another with the Greens since the late 1980s. More active in the 1990s into the Nader 2000 campaign than recently. (The local Green chapter in my community has mostly been dormant in recent years, unfortunately.)
I don’t have a Fakebook account and do not want one.
I was disappointed the Greens did little, if anything, to promote Cynthia McKinney, who came in sixth out of six candidates for President.
That said, it’s great that the Greens are trying to get a hand count of the ballots in the rigged swing states, best thing I’ve ever seen the Greens do. If we’re lucky it might point out to millions that the “elections” are like televised wrestling, not democracy. It might result in dispelling the myth that Nader gave Bush the Lesser to the country — voter suppression and rigged ballot counters were the real culprits.
It’s nice to discuss ballot access reform, a parliamentary system instead of winner take all, paper ballots counted by hand — but a deeper problem is we have two branches of the federal government, not three. We have the overt government we were taught about in school and then the covert government, sometimes called the military industrial complex, which has been in charge at least since November 22, 1963. Of the various Green candidates for President Cynthia McKinney was the most informed and courageous to talk about this underlying truth.
You have 2 items here about fighting the Democratic party. This is will only impede progress. In fact, it already has impeded progress and potentially helped Trump get elected by (unfairly) damaging Hillary’s reputation.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/29/why-the-dnc-was-so-much-more-of-a-cluster-than-the-rnc.html
Even Bernie was booed by his own supporters when he tried endorsing Hillary: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/bernie-sanders-booed-convention-226136
This behavior is not new. In fact, people on the far-left protested the DNC in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Democratic_National_Convention_protest_activity
In both cases, the elections ended with terrible Republican Presidents winning by slim margins.
The DNC already made numerous concessions to Bernie and his supporters this year before the convention – $15 minimum wage, public option, free public college tuition for low income families, cut the number of super delegates by 2/3rds, and the DNC leadership resigned. And what was the DNC’s reward for this? Mass protests inside and outside of the convention in Philly. People were booing distinguished speakers and civil rights advocates like John Lewis.
Yet you think the solution is MORE infighting? This is doing nothing more than helping Republicans, and helping the Russian government cause chaos within out politics, assisted by all the leaked emails.
I implore you to rethink these. The Democratic party is not being impeded from passing progressive legislation by their supposed ‘corporatism’ or lack of ideals. It’s impeded by the extremely obfuscating Republican Congress and by cynical leftists who think infighting and scorched-earth tactics will result in anything but far-right politicians gaining power.
Compromise within the Democratic party will have to be accepted. Civil discourse focused on policy must be the main course. No more hasty insinuations of corruption within the party, or ideological purity tests, or character attacks in general. If a $15 minimum wage is better, make the case using data, using reason. Don’t paint the opponent who wants $12 min wage as being a neoliberal corrupt corporatist blah blah blah, because that is precisely what Trump took and ran on. And now if we are lucky, we’ll get a $10 min wage.
The Democratic Party of today is more conservative than Richard Nixon’s administration was. And the Republicans of today are like the John Birch society of yesterday.
The Democrats never recovered from the coup d’etat of November 22, 1963, something none of the national Democrats dare discuss even though privately most of them understand the significance.
Trump was able to steal the swing states because the Clintons ran the worst possible campaign. It was also the revenge of those screwed by NAFTA.
If there was any literacy about the fact we’ve reached the limits to growth on a finite planet Trump would have had a harder time pretending coal jobs could come back (peak coal in the USA was 1999, in terms of BTUs).
The issue is not what level of promise of minimum wage will supposedly win an election (on rigged ballot counters!). Rather how can we avoid scapegoating now that we’ve passed Peak Everything and the economic contraction shatters illusions. I don’t see even the Green Party discussing this, unfortunately.
It’s just as likely that the leaking of Clinton’s emails was via the “Five Eyes” network as by the Russians.
Obama was elected in 2008 because our Vermont’s former Gov., Howard Dean formed a 50- state strategy. There is NO other way our superb black president would have won without Dean’s hard work. Why wouldn’t Dean and Ellison accomplish much more by being Co -Equal leaders of the DNC?
I do indeed that ours needs to be a STRATEGY with a bottom-up movement; and,yes, we do need to me much more communicative and direct.
It seemed obvious in 2007 that the Empire had pre-selected Obama for election – not because of Dean but because Obama had been groomed for the job and had the right faction of the Deep State supporting him. Obama’s first job after college was for a CIA front, something you can find out if you read the NYT very carefully but they don’t highlight it. http://www.oilempire.us/obama.html has details.
In 2008, I voted for Cynthia McKinney, who as a Democratic Representative had introduced an impeachment resolution against Bush and Cheney. The response of the Democratic Party was to campaign to throw her out of Congress.
Obama’s gifts to Trump include silence about faith based voting machines flipping swing states and the massive expansion of the surveillance systems of NSA and other agencies — which will now be in Trump’s hands. That’s not “superb” to me.
—
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/president-trump-national-security-nuclear-arsenal.html
What horrors could be in store for us under President Trump? Plenty | Trevor Timm
Trump will have a vast national security and military apparatus at his disposal, including a nuclear arsenal, to wreak havoc in the US and abroad
Wednesday 9 November 2016
In a little over two months, Donald Trump – after his shocking victory last night – will control a vast, unaccountable national security and military apparatus unparalleled in world history. The nightmare that civil libertarians have warned of for years has now tragically come true: instead of dismantling the surveillance state and war machine, the Obama administration and Democrats institutionalised it – and it will soon be in the hands of a maniac.
It will go down in history as perhaps President Obama’s most catastrophic mistake. ….
This article doesn’t address the main political problem : the corporate oligarchy.
or “The Company” in Langley, Virginia.
The intelligence agencies probably have more power than corporations.
The Democrat Party will lead us to only one place: more Donald Trumps.
History has proven as much.
The Democrat Party’s utter disconnect with reality is, in my opinion, the main reason we now are faced with the obscenity of the GOP and Trump controlling not just the executive branch but all of the federal government. Trump is not fit to be president, he is horrifying, but neither are the corrupt, corporate democrats, they are not even close. What we need an anti-corporate party that leans as far as possible towards socialism as can be achieved. Eventually, we will have one. Hopefully “progressives” and “radicals” and “professional activists” get it together enough to contribute to this process. If not, younger generations are laying the groundwork as we bang our heads together in frustration. They get it.
The Yes Men are a fantastic art project and really amazing and creative activists. They inspired me to get involved with activism many years ago, but that does not mean that they understand social movements or social change, beyond the limited scope of their work, as brilliant as it is (and it really is.)
Serious options for power in the U.S.:
– Occupy the GREEN Party and make that work for the 99%. As weak and disjointed as they may seem from the outside, they are 1000x more likely to deliver what the Yes Men are fantasizing the Dems will ever be able to do in this piece.
– Help ferment a new party of the 99%. There is already a strong coalition emerging among the Greens, Socialist Alternative, ISO, and many other groups.
– Help break the far left progressive Bernie people out of the Democratic party to ferment a new, alternative party. Combine with the above, ideally, or, allow 2 or 3 new parties to emerge, a Blue, a Green and a Red, and then work on coalition building.
The Democratic Party IS THE ESTABLISHMENT. they are not now and will NEVER, EVER be the alternative. Never.
Watch the below films: they are the best depictions of the corruption, racism and literal horror of the War-mongering, criminal, Corporate Power loving democratic party as you will find.
And then peel yourself off social media and help ORGANIZE! Social change will never come about online. It requires grassroots, bottom-up mobilizing and sustainable organizations.
Democratic Party: Graveyard of Social Movements
http://metanoia-films.org/lifting-the-veil
The Corporation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMNZXV7jOG0
Today, Nov. 22, is the 53rd anniversary of the extra-Constitutional removal of John Kennedy from the Presidency by the military industrial intelligence complex. That seems more important than hoping the Greens will somehow take over the country (and I’m registered Green, for what that is worth – not much).
I prefer MLK’s view of socialism to the splinter groups of the left:
I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here,” that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?” These are questions that must be asked.
Now, don’t think that you have me in a “bind” today. I’m not talking about communism.
What I’m saying to you this morning is that communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problems of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together.
— Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where do we go from here?” 1967
“In the Soviet Union, government controls industry. In the United States, industry controls government. That is the principal structural difference between the two great oligarchies of our time.”
Industrialism, whether of the capitalist or socialist coloration, is the basic tyrant of the modern age.
— Edward Abbey
Thanks Mark. I too believe that we have a systemic structural problem in this country. Just fixing the political system is not going to make much of a difference.
To my mind, the entire system of governance in the U.S. needs to be turned on it’s head. All governance must become a bottom up not a top down affair. The decision makers and the laws passed must be made by those that have to live with the consequences in the places where they live, not by those in State houses and on Capital hill.
If you are concerned that the #auditthevote strategy is too precarious, given how crafty GOP Governors will be to do whatever is needed to delay the process, and realize from the evidence Greg Palast has uncovered, already proves that the election was stolen, please let me know if you’d like to help now execute a plan B to better ensure we don’t have yet a 3rd coup d’etat, another illegally elected President, especially now with the planet and supreme court at stake. As quixotic as it might at first seem, if you study the work of Erica Chenoweth,Maria Stephan and Gene Sharp on the success rate of mass civil resistance, of a general strike, you realize that we can in fact have a mass general strike that will, to quote Bayard Rustin, “make the existing system unworkable” and stop all pipelines and give us a new election next spring or summer between candidates untainted by election fraud, candidates that are at least honest. Open to consider and hopefully to help asap? Then check out Bit.ly/FB_RevoteorRevolt and follow us at @FightBackWisely . The fossil fuel industry has long ago declared war on us and is inflicting serious damage. We cannot be sheep any longer.We have to stand up and resist, and no longer lend our bodies to this insanity.
The fossil fuel industry didn’t “declare war on us.”
Fossil fuels are the basis for our agribusiness system which enabled the increase in human overpopulation from under a billion to over seven billion today.
Wanting to break free of that trap would require us all to learn to live with much much less energy – not solar panels (made from fossil fuels) but relocalized production and communities. Permaculture more than protests.
I’m for stopping all pipelines but don’t think even the liberals will enjoy the social consequences of oil rationing on the energy downslope.