Americans aren’t waiting for the Democratic Party to take on Trump
You can feel it everywhere you turn. Shock and despair are starting to give way to rage and action.
It’s not just Kamala Harris voters who are riled up by President Trump’s assault on our country’s institutions. So are many voters who helped put Trump back in office because they wanted cheaper groceries, a ceasefire in Ukraine or lower inflation but had no idea they were endorsing Trump’s increasingly tyrannical approach to co-governing with his fellow billionaire Elon Musk.
Democrats, as a party, have not yet figured out how to meet the moment.
“What leverage do we have?” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries complained last month about Republican control of the House, the Senate and the presidency. Hardly the rousing call to action that one might expect from an opposition leader.
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And where to start with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who sided with Republicans and allowed passage of a horrendous Republican spending bill, a.k.a. continuing resolution, rather than risk yet another government shutdown?
Schumer claimed a shutdown would hurt Americans and enable the Trump/Musk depredations. Really? Musk and Trump are already burning it all down.
Even the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents more than 750,000 federal workers, pleaded with senators to vote against the continuing resolution, saying it, not a shutdown, would worsen the destruction already wreaked by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The good news is that many Americans aren’t just sitting around watching their 401(k)s shrink.
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In February, anti-Trump demonstrations took place in all 50 states, part of the of 50501 movement (which stands for 50 protests, 50 states, one day).
On March 15, thousands of people marched in New York City under the banner of public employee unions against the Trump/Musk cuts to public services.
The arrest of pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card-holding Columbia University graduate who played a prominent role in anti-Israel protests last year, has sparked an uproar over whether the Trump administration is violating the 1st Amendment by targeting immigrants for their political beliefs.
And God bless New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 35, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 83, who are on the road in Western states with their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, which has drawn thousands of people to arenas this week in Arizona, Nevada and Colorado.
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There’s more. “Missing member” events, for example, where voters are holding their own town halls because their Republican members of Congress are too afraid to face them.
In some cases, constituents step up to a microphone and pose questions to an empty chair. In Wisconsin, Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden did not show up at a town hall, so a Democrat from a nearby district, Rep. Mark Pocan, came instead and spoke to 300 people next to an empty chair with Van Orden’s name on it.
Hundreds of healthcare workers demonstrated outside the Anaheim Hills office of Republican Rep. Young Kim the other day to protest expected cuts to Medicaid, the health safety net for more than 72 million low-income and disabled Americans.
And millions of Americans all over the country may answer the call on Saturday, April 5, for a “Hands Off” protest organized by Indivisible, the progressive grassroots group that got its start in 2017 when a handful of congressional staffers put together a handbook about peaceful, effective resistance to right-wing power grabs.
The “Hands Off” motto: “They’re dismantling our country. They’re looting our government. And they think we’ll just watch.”
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On Thursday, I, along with some 4,500 others, tuned in to one of Indivisible’s weekly Zoom meetings led by its founders Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg. There are about 1,600 local Indivisible groups scattered around the country, and more are springing up each day.
“Throughout history,” said Levin, “there has been no solution to creeping authoritarianism other than all of us — mass, broad-based organizing from people all over the country, from all walks life.”
“If your ideas are popular and you have a mandate for change,” Greenberg said, “you do not hide from your constituents. We are the ones who are out there, who are unafraid and organizing and showing up in public because our ideas are popular. When people hear what we have to say, they want that, not them.”
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The April 5 protests are meant to be a show of strength. “‘Hands Off,’” said Greenberg, “is a message about everything that is happening, right? It’s hands off Medicaid, hands off our democracy, hands off Social Security, hands off our environment, hands off veterans benefits.”
Now, for those who think that firebombing Tesla dealerships is a better tactic than nonviolent protests, I would remind you of the world-changing work of Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. And I would also tell you about the work of Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues. To Chenoweth’s surprise — shock, actually — she discovered that over time, nonviolent protests are far more successful than violent ones.
Between 1900 and 2006, she says, campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance were twice as successful as violent campaigns. She also came up with the so-called 3.5% rule: No government can withstand a challenge from around 3.5% of its population without accommodating the movement.
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Examples? In 1986, millions of Filipinos peacefully protested the entrenched Marcos regime, which folded after four days. In 2003, protesters in the country of Georgia stormed the Parliament holding red roses, which led to the peaceful overthrow of the country’s President Eduard Shevardnadze. In 2019, after decades in power, leaders in both Sudan and Algeria were forced to step down after peaceful popular uprisings.
To hit the magic percentage, about 11 million Americans would have to rise up. In 2017, nearly half a million people protested Trump at the Women’s March in Washington. Around the United States, between 3.2 million and 5.2 million people joined in, which amounts to between 1% and 1.6% of the population.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that twice as many Americans are now upset enough to take to the streets.
The goal is not to overthrow the government. The goal is to awaken the small-d democratic instincts of a Republican-dominated Congress that has actively ceded its power to Trump. And the only way they’ll snap to is if they begin to fear for their jobs.
Americans appalled by Trump’s wanton destruction of American democracy — and, yeah, OK, the high price of eggs — must be willing to show it before it’s too late (and it’s getting perilously late).
As Trump himself once said, “What the hell have you got to lose?”
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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