Maintaining the Momentum

Hi Friends,

How are you holding up? What have you found so far that brings you joy, something to counter the increased chaos and uncertainty of our world? How are you maintaining your engagement?

The Hands Off and May 1 protests have been huge successes for public opinion demonstrations so far, but even record breaking millions only represents just over 1% of the US population so far. The goal is not to change the minds of those in power, but to change the minds of everyone else and to keep the momentum moving forward. Boycotts are working. Telsa profits have dropped by 71%; Target stock is down 57%. A website intended to support MAGA-friendly businesses is being used for boycotts instead. You can find more ways to use your economic power at Choose Democracy's Boycott Central.

Garrett Bucks rightly points out that "the 'keep going' moment is trickier than the 'get started' moment. We are even more tired than we were a few months ago. Now that we have other people’s actions to analyze, it’s easy to be seduced into the religion of reaction and pontification. The calculus hasn’t changed, though. If we are to survive this moment, we still have to focus on the same three tasks that revealed themselves in January:

• "Make life harder for this administration: protest, raise ruckuses, gum up the works, in a million different ways.
• "Keep our arms open and focused on outreach— we still don’t have the sustained numbers we need, and we should be grateful for all who choose to join us.
• "Build and deeper networks of community care (the attacks will continue, the federal safety net has been ripped to shreds, and we already needed each other desperately long before Trump took power)."

I want to acknowledge the misguided conversation about how the public protest movement so far is not as representative of our communities as in the past. Anand Giridharadas enlightens in his amplification of Joy-Ann Reid in this interview:

The diversity has been reduced because of this sense of betrayal that Black people feel, that we keep trying to lead this country toward a more perfect union.

And white people keep saying no. They keep saying we want the devil, because the devil will protect our supremacy. And our supremacy matters to us much more than even our own economic survival. Our supremacy is so central to who we are as Americans. We need to be the central characters in the American story. We need to be the main character. And we want that so badly that we're willing to punch ourselves in the face economically… We're willing to lose our livelihoods, our jobs, our businesses, our farms, our whole lives — and including maybe our physical lives — to protect our supremacy.

…I think there is a genuine inflection point that's happened. But Black folks at the moment are in self-protection mode. We've got to protect our treasures. We've got to protect because we can't trust y'all. We can't trust the federal government to not sell the Birmingham bus station, to not sell Medgar and Myrlie’s home, to not sell off everything inside the Blacksonian, the Smithsonian Museum where the Black stuff is. We don't trust y'all to not elect the guy his own VP called “maybe Hitler.” If y'all are going to elect “maybe Hitler,” we don't trust you. And so we're going to let you do the protesting and we're going to brunch.

Of course, protesting is not the only form of action. Errin Haines at The 19th makes this abundantly clear. Aria Bell at Blavity points out the power of economic resistance that many are already engaged in. It is worth uplifting that the current administration's willingness to target all of us means that more of us are waking up to existing systemic oppression that historically marginalized communities have experienced for generations. Are the harms of these oppressive systems becoming more clear now that more and more of us are directly impacted? Those of us who haven't been historically marginalized might as well get to work fixing what we have ignored and stop taking BIPOC leadership in these spaces for granted. Let's earn that trust.

Maintaining momentum can be exhausting, especially when we are being worn down by the news cycle, the constant barrage of harm, the never ending exhortations to "do something." There are strategies for maintaining a manageable level of engagement and disengagement.

Lyz Lenz writes "But living in an information age, when we’ve never been able to know so much nor cared so little, requires a delicate balance of knowing and understanding. I do not think we should look away. I think looking away is a privilege afforded to only a few. And yet, I do not think a steady diet of early morning rage that reaches all the way down to the depths of the internet helps either."

Daniel Hunter shares Kurt Lewin's force field analysis that "To shift the status quo, you don’t necessarily need to move everything at once — you can focus strategically on specific forces or actors that influence the whole."

Kelly Hayes addresses the challenges we face in choosing to respond to this current moment by reminding us that "After all, the people whose actions we have admired during historical moments of resistance, rebellion, and rescue were not simply born into heroic collective action. Many of them witnessed harm and wickedness for years, or even decades, before something moved or enabled them to participate in constructive moral action. Some were slow to join the struggles they eventually helped to enliven. Some were afraid. Some initially supported moderate, reserved actions. Some were complicit until, one day, they could bear their complicity no more. Others didn’t believe change was possible until they were recruited into strategic projects. Many were moved to action by profound loss or the threat of profound loss. They had to find their way, just as many of us must now find our way through this moment."

Stay curious about how other communities have resisted authoritarianism. Our culture of American exceptionalism interferes with this understanding, but this is not the first time this has happened and we can learn from the strategies that have worked elsewhere. Marilyn Kunce reminds us that "Democracy can be defended; it can even emerge stronger. But it won’t happen if people keep clinging to the idea that this country is too exceptional to fail. It’s not. If anything, the comfort of that idea—the sense that America is somehow beyond the reach of history—makes it more vulnerable."

Rebecca Solnit reminds us that "All we can do is keep showing up, keep speaking up, keep donating, keep connecting, keep our values close and our courage strong and keep an eye out. And not give up, including not settling into this as though it's normal or permanent or we're helpless. I think I said here before that it's like we can pile up the fuel for the bonfire but it's lightning that will ignite it." She continues to say that the lightning "...comes from us when we find ourselves, our values, our courage say no more to the crimes and harm, it comes from us when we come together as civil society, it comes from us when like the countless droplets of a wave we wash over government and institutional power to show that greater power that can start it all over again."

If you're looking for ways to take action, check out this list. Rashida Tlaib shared this list of actions you can take (from a recent email newsletter):

• Volunteer at and donate to local food banks. (You can find many by entering your zip code on Feeding America’s website.)
• Go to a demonstration or a training near you.
• “Work your backyard”: Connect with your neighbors and loved ones, and invite them to attend a protest, training, or meeting.
• Join and support community-based organizations or local mutual aid groups.
• Join your local Democratic club, or your local Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapter, or your state or local Working Families Party (click “filters” at the top of this page to search events by location).
• Join national organizations taking direct action like https://moveon.org or https://indivisible.org/.
• Find and share resources from the National Lawyers Guild’s mass defense program or connect with your closest NLG chapter to learn about trainings and how to get involved in protecting protesters’ rights.
• Find and share resources for activism from https://beautifultrouble.org/.

If you're interested in learning more about "Calling In," check out Loretta J. Ross's offerings starting in June. Please also make plans to take part in the next national day of action on June 14, called No Kings Day. Reclaim the flag as a representation of what you want America to be (June 14 is also Flag Day).

Emily
Listen. Amplify. Follow. In Solidarity.