By George Lakey
Breathe deeply.
The July 13 shooting attempt to assassinate Donald Trump may be a symptom of desperation in our country. Loners can be symptoms of growing despair. Whether he emerges a victor in November or a defeated candidate claiming he was robbed, movements for justice and peace need to offer something more specific than what they’re presently doing in order to take account of the deepening anxiety around how to deal with Trump.
While issue-based organizing campaigns need to continue, our climate, economic and racial justice work don’t sufficiently address this rising anxiety. On my recent 20-state book tour, visiting over 50 towns and cities across the country, I observed more anxiety than I’ve seen in decades. Even while climate disasters are bringing new people to awareness and action, the possibility of a dictatorship — or an angry loser flailing at us — is worrisome. We activists need to signal preparation for dealing with Trump, however the November election turns out.
The challenge can be met on the level of organizing as well as with psychological empowerment. I found in my half-century of training experience (starting with the civil rights movement) that when facing uncertainty, we need training. Training workshops can go beyond facts and discussion. They provide a format for transforming anxiety into action and — just as important — a solidarity that offers protection.
Training as an emotional as well as strategic preparation
While the kind of training deployed during the Montgomery bus boycott in the mid-1950s spread throughout the civil rights movement, its power was perhaps best demonstrated during the Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign of 1964. Northern volunteers — mostly students — were recruited to go to that state to do grassroots activism.
I was on the training staff for the preparatory training held in an Ohio college. Half the volunteers were assigned to be trained the first week, and the rest in the second. It was almost a thousand in total — an extraordinary number of volunteers, I thought, given the terrifying prospect they were facing.
We relied heavily on bonding activities as well as role-plays of situations the students needed to learn to handle nonviolently, especially the likelihood of violent threat. At the end of the first week students boarded the buses bound for the South, and we on the staff got a short break before the next group of students arrived.
On the second day of the second week we were abruptly called into the college auditorium. There we were told that three volunteers had already disappeared and were presumed dead. At that moment I looked around the auditorium at the students and — seeing the shock on their faces — pictured most of them gone by the end of the day, called home by frantic parents.
Our present situation is not as threatening
Racist whites in Mississippi in those days felt they were defending an existential challenge: a deeply rooted, historic supremacy intensified when they lost their bloody civil war. The threat they experienced from racial justice was multi-dimensional. It felt like the end of social life as they knew it.
The stakes for Trumpists are not nearly as high, despite right-wing militias preparing for violence.
Nevertheless, the Trump threat is serious enough to need the power of training. Fortunately, we know more now about training for nonviolent conflict than we did in the ‘60s. Many people — activists and educators eager to increase the power of their methods — have experimented and found reliable methods for preparing people in conflict skills. We’ll need those skills, whether Trump is elected president and tries to rule as dictator or whether he’s defeated and we experience some form of grassroots violence on his behalf.
Four years ago I led a defense-against-Trump training effort for Choose Democracy via Zoom that reached tens of thousands of people. We focused not only on methods of action, but also the strategy question of what makes the timing and location for using those methods more (and less) effective.
I’m glad we included the latter! After Trump’s defeat, he directed his followers to make trouble at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. Anti-Trump activists wisely avoided showing up and getting caught in the fracas — a move they might have made had they not gone through our training. Trump and others were certainly angered by this, judging by their initial (and ultimately failed) attempt to blame the storming of the Capitol on antifa.
Now, another election cycle later, Choose Democracy is back. See our new website WhatIfTrumpwins.org, where you can go through our interactive “pick-your-path adventure” manual designed to meet the Trumpist threat head on. I’m also conducting a series of interviews for Waging Nonviolence with people who’ve successfully faced an authoritarian threat — in one case successfully overthrowing a dictator, and in another (soon to be published) overthrowing the long-established racist Apartheid regime of South Africa.
Meanwhile, other organizations are getting into this preparation phase, including the Horizons Project, the 22nd Century Initiative and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.
Hands-on training needed
I’m welcoming the resources that are now arriving to help us to prepare our minds for a serious nonviolent struggle with the Trump forces. I also know from my experience on multiple continents that reading cannot fully substitute for in-person training. We all benefit from in-person workshops that prepare us to defend our communities, and the degree of freedom presently experienced in the U.S.
Zoom is a helpful channel but not, I believe, as valuable in preparing for prolonged intense struggle as in-person training workshops. In addition to learning more deeply what works, we’ll also need courage and creativity. Both of these are hugely strengthened by bonding with others. In-person trainings offer bonding, the chance to find or solidify buddies or comrades when the struggle erupts nearby.
I suggest you identify an experienced trainer (or, better, a team) in your area and ask them to facilitate workshops. It’s helpful if they have direct action experience, but not strictly necessary. Ask them to read the literature now coming out about the Trumpist threat, as well as “Facilitating Group Learning,” my book on training that shares a half century of experience in conflicts. One reason to use my manual is that it pays particular attention to training people for meeting challenging and even anxiety-provoking situations.
It helps to ask someone you know to go to the workshop with you — and, of course, to then share all the tips, perspectives, articles and other helpful resources you come across on defending your future.
George Lakey has been active in direct action campaigns for over six decades. Recently retired from Swarthmore College, he was first arrested in the civil rights movement and most recently in the climate justice movement. He has facilitated 1,500 workshops on five continents and led activist projects on local, national and international levels. His 10 books and many articles reflect his social research into change on community and societal levels. His newest book is the memoir Dancing with History: A Life for Peace and Justice.
This article was published on July 16, 2024 at WagingNonviolence.