MARIA J. STEPHAN, CANDACE RONDEAUX and ERICA CHENOWETH – With elections four months away, and the rule of law under steady attack, people power could prove decisive in ensuring a constitutional transfer of power without violence.
Tag: Women’s March
By Prioritizing Electability We Hurt the Movements Needed to Beat Trump
GEORGE LAKEY – The trouble with pragmatism these days is that our country is becoming less predictable by the minute. What is going on among the 40 percent of the electorate that didn’t bother to vote in 2016’s general election? How about the new voters who’ve become naturalized citizens in the meantime, or the many who’ve turned 18? How much will the Russians skew the results?
How the Women’s March Gave Us Our Best Grounds for Hope
BRYAN FARRELL – Where do you look for hope in dark times? Longtime organizer and author L.A. Kauffman looks to a chart she keeps on her wall that tracks how many people have participated in protests since January 2017. Right now that number is upwards of 21.5 million. “It’s part of my organizing geekdom,†she says. But it’s also the best visual reminder of a fact that’s easily overlooked: We are living in a time of unprecedented protest.
The Resistance Ramps Up as Pro-immigrant Direct Action Breaks Out Nationwide
L.A. KAUFMANN – Quite suddenly, over the last week or so, something crucial has shifted in the mood of the grassroots resistance to Donald Trump. You can time it, more or less, to the release of that devastating recording of migrant children weeping for their parents after having been ripped from their arms, or the widely circulated photographs of children being held in cages. The unfolding horror of Trump’s family separation policy, and his administration’s plans for indefinite immigrant detention, is galvanizing people to fight back in a way that hasn’t yet happened under this presidency — specifically, with mass direct action.
Protest and Persist: Why Giving Up Hope is Not an Option
REBECCA SOLNIT – I began talking about hope in 2003, in the bleak days after the war in Iraq was launched. Fourteen years later, I use the term hope because it navigates a way forward between the false certainties of optimism and of pessimism, and the complacency or passivity that goes with both. Optimism assumes that all will go well without our effort; pessimism assumes it’s all irredeemable; both let us stay home and do nothing. Hope for me has meant a sense that the future is unpredictable, and that we don’t actually know what will happen, but know we may be able write it ourselves.