Protest is necessary but not sufficient

Protest pressure drives all other tactics

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I went to my local No Kings protest in Durham on Saturday!

Millions turned out at thousands of protests around the country in one of the biggest protests in U.S. history. In Durham, it was a warm, sunny day. People were smiling and talking as they walked to Central Park from all directions. I could feel the energy. By the time I got to the park 15 minutes after the start time, it was packed. I managed to find a spot far up the hill in the shade on some pine straw, and I started chatting with my neighbors. There was a pleasant breeze, and it was joyful and the skies were blue, and it felt like it did before everything got so complicated and horrible. Things are still complicated and horrible, but I really needed that.

I was happy to see American flags waving all around us. It has irked me for years that the far right has co-opted our flag into their movement of fear and hate. In my book, this flag stands for liberty and justice for all, and it’s time we take it back.

I’ve seen a lot of naysaying, but it’s super clear to me that protest is important for at least two reasons:

1. Protest is the wind in the sails of the resistance. Is it sufficient to stop a slide into fascist authoritarianism and to claw our way back? I’m certain it isn’t. Is it necessary? Hell yes. Protest provides the pressure that drives the entire movement and makes other tactics possible. Social momentum is everything here. We humans are the herdiest of herd animals.

2. Protest feels energetic and optimistic. This is the feeling of solidarity. This is the feeling of community. It’s contagious. I’ve been struggling a lot in recent months with feeling overwhelmed, and soaking in these good feelings recharged my batteries in a way I really needed.

The protests were peaceful, not the chaos projected by the far right. There were no deaths, unlike the last time they “protested” on January 6th, 2021. In New York, the official report from the police was hundreds of thousands of people protesting peacefully and no arrests. (Which also seems like a big, surprising middle finger from NYPD to this fascist regime, very heartening.)

In response, Trump posted an astonishingly embarrassing AI-slop video of him wearing a crown while flying a fighter jet and dropping huge quantities of brown lumpy fluid onto U.S. citizens. Can’t America pick a better president than one who’d love nothing more than to dump literal shit on Americans? What’s going on in the bizarre, infantile, self-hating, collective subconscious of Trump-voting America here? Who actually hates America here?

The media coverage was disappointing to me, but not a surprise considering how most of our media is now owned by billionaires. The New York Times briefly posted a story late in the day. The top comment there: “Such an inspiring, hopeful day. A question though: why exactly are these historic protests displayed as the third story down on the Times’s website, while George Santos of all things is at the very top?” (The Times chose to give no additional coverage whatsoever on Sunday.)

When I was a kid, we learned about the Nazis. Throughout my life, I’ve often wondered how that could have gone down, how everyday people could have been so spineless and conformist to allow it all to happen. I no longer wonder this. These days, like you, I’ve been learning how this all works in real time. One thing I’ve learned: There is no bottom to either the cruelty or the stupidity of fascism. Another thing I’ve felt for decades, but now feel ever more acutely: Gratitude for my fellow protesters and activists. I wish far more people were like you.

While marching through the streets, I met a woman handing out pamphlets and putting them under windshield wipers.

I took one, and we chatted for a while as we walked, our discussion interrupted every few strides as she turned toward the next parked car. The pamphlet was a single sheet of printer paper, carefully folded, and titled “We marched! Now what?” It had inspiring quotes and suggestions for further resistance. Here are my favorites (edited a bit for brevity):

• 1. Building trusted community connections. Fascism depends on isolation. The more we can connect with one another IRL, the more resilient we become. So talk to people. Invite people to take action with you. Silence becomes tacit consent, so get loud.

• 2. We protect us. This regime’s vision of the world is cruel and selfish, but we’re building a better world that reflects our interconnectedness. Create and sustain communities of care and mutual aid wherever you can. Join a rapid-response group in your neighborhood. Use your constitutional right to record and document ICE activity.

• 3. Public displays of disaffection. Noncompliance is contagious. When we express our values boldly and publicly, we remind others that they’re not alone. Join the Visibility Brigade movement and spell out a message on a bridge or overpass, or put resistance stickers around your neighborhood.

Such scraps of paper were also the main tactic of a tiny underground resistance in Nazi Germany called the White Rose. Starting in 1942, five courageous students and one professor from the University of Munich, started writing and distributing leaflets. This was a desperate, underground tactic made necessary precisely because there was no protest as Hitler rose to power, and then without protest to stop the fascist slide dissent eventually became a deadly risk. By early 1943, all six had been executed by guillotine after a show trial. We are not yet at the stage of summary execution of dissidents here in the U.S., but we also must not see it as impossible. It can happen here. Humans are humans, the good and the bad.

So, what else can we do?

First, I’ve been a climate activist for two decades, and I can tell you that there is nothing more devastating to a movement than for people simply to not show up. The number one priority, then, is to bring more people into the movement of movements. This means it must be fun, it must be inspiring, and there must be an easy on-ramp. That easy on-ramp is joyful protest. Again, protest powers everything else.

Second, we need to keep our batteries charged. For many years in the climate movement, I powered my way through with sheer force of will. But eventually I burned out. I now know how important it is to build battery-recharging into a movement’s DNA. We are humans, not robots. Simple protests are a huge help in doing this. With charged batteries, we can then engage in other actions, such as civil disobedience.

So push back against the cynical naysayers who say “what’s the point of marching with signs, we need to do more.”

However, protest isn’t enough, and the movement also needs more advanced tactics. I think these tactics will emerge and become possible as more people protest.

The core problem we face is astronomical wealth disparity. This is the problem from which all our other problems flow, and it’s a feature - not a bug - of colonial-extractive capitalism. To address planetary overheating and also authoritarianism, we will need to address wealth disparity, because right now the billionaire class controls pretty much everything - our politics (and therefore, state violence), our media, and increasingly our food supply, our healthcare, our education system.

This is why asking politely, stuff like “call your representative” (one of the handful of practical suggestions my pamphlet recommended) no longer works: they represent the billionaire class, and have for some time. They care what their donors think a whole lot more than what you think. And the tiny number of good ones - the ones who care more about making the world better for as many people as possible than about their own careers and bank accounts - already know what they need to do without your phone call.

We need to win our democracy back from the billionaires somehow so that we can do all the things we all know need doing, things like overturning Citizens’ United and getting money securely out of politics, eliminating the Electoral College and the Senate, preventing media corporations like Fox News from spreading lies and propaganda, outlawing gerrymandering and other election-cheating tactics, raising taxes and billionaires and corporations, and passing common-sense climate legislation.

The billionaire class seems to understand two things: money and violence. So as for tactics, I would like to see a general strike, for starters. I’m not an expert in strikes, but it doesn’t feel like we have enough protest pressure to pull it off yet. Imagine if the protest on Saturday was even bigger, say four times as big. It’s like a buildup of electricity. As protest pressure builds, the lightning strike becomes increasingly possible. It also becomes far easier to elect and support politicians who put the people first, and far easier for judges and institution leaders to take a stand against this regime.

I’m not a violent person, and I hope this doesn’t come to violence. The billionaire class will use its media assets to try to ensure working class people fight working class people across the political divide, likely through the channel of fascism, since it allows them to maintain control throughout. This is why it’s critical to communicate to all that the real reason our lives suck and are getting worse, on both the left and the right, are the billionaires - not our fellow workers! I could never be a billionaire, because I don’t have that particular mental illness. But I feel like it would be a kindness to tax them out of existence at this point.

Anyway, I don’t have an exact recipe for how we get out of this mess. But I am certain that without protest, we’re sunk.

With rage and love,

Peter