Protest Like Your Life Depends On It

Letter to the Future: Quiet opposition is not opposition

Dear future,

You’d better believe I’ll be protesting tomorrow, Saturday April 5 20-fucking-25. And as long as there is injustice in this world, as long as I am free, as long as I am able, I will keep protesting.

To protest is to be a citizen. To protest is to be a fucking American, goddamit. To protest is to show up for others. To protest is to show up for life on Earth. To protest is to show up for myself. If I gave in to these fascists, if I conformed, if I complied in advance like way too many have already done, if I rolled my soul up into a little ball in a cowardly attempt to “stay safe,” I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I would rather die.

I pity the fools who made the choice to comply in advance. They’ve revealed themselves to be soulless.

On Fridays, I’ve been joining protests at the local Tesla showroom in Raleigh along with a few hundred other people. We line up in the grass on the side of the arterial road. People bring signs that say things like “Overthrow the Oligarchs,” “Stop the Coup,” and “Tax the Motherfucking Rich.” There’s a constant stream of honking and thumbs up from the cars and trucks passing us. Occasionally, we get a middle finger. Once, a guy stopped to yell horrible things at my friends (essentially “You should all be killed”), his face so red it reminded them of a tomato about to burst. Overall, though, demonstrations of support outnumber demonstrations of hatred by a lot, maybe around twenty to one. On the one hand, these protests are a small thing: a small investment of time and energy; and low risk, no counter-protesters, no menacing cops, no arrests. On the other hand, they feel both important and inspiring. Protest hits different under an emergent fascist regime.

This is a critical time to visibly oppose this administration, which has been testing to see how much they can get away with. Will this or that unconstitutional or illegal action* be met with opposition or compliance? So get out as often as you can, as loudly as you can, and in as many ways as you can.

Democratic backsliding is the erosion of democratic values. It can be fatal to democracy, leading to the installation of an authoritarian regime, such as occurred in Nazi Germany or in Putin’s Russia. One recent sociological study found that in 96 cases of democratic backsliding between 1900 and 2019, 68% ended in authoritarian rule and 8% were inconclusive. Another recent study looked at 35 cases of democratic backsliding, and found that with no opposition movement, there’s less than an 8% chance of saving democracy; but with a movement there’s a 52% chance of saving democracy.

I’d say we’re now well into a democratic backslide here in the US. We’d better build up our movement fast in order to stop this fascist coup.

As always with grassroots movements, it’s a numbers game. If enough of us visibly oppose the coup, we will save our democracy.** Otherwise we will very likely slip further and further into fascism. Being visible is critical, because it gives permission for others in quiet opposition to link up in vocal opposition. Quiet opposition is not opposition.

Meanwhile, the planet keeps getting hotter and hotter and hotter, and the damage is irreversible.

Obviously, we have a billionaire problem. Right now, the active front of the fight against billionaires and the fight for saving as much of Earth’s habitability as possible is the fight against this emerging fascist regime. I hope that the “right” and the “left” of the working class can wake up and realize that this overarches the ideological wedges the ultra rich have been using to divide us so effectively for so long. This is class war, it’s only just beginning, and it’s life or death. Indeed, at stake is the future of life on Earth for a very, very long time.

We’ll be getting out into the streets tomorrow. It’s good for the soul.

Warm regards,

Peter

p.s. I know that there’s an incredible amount of crazy horribleness happening now, so much that it’s hard to pick what to write about…

* Where is the running list of all unconstitutional or illegal actions compiled by, for example, the New York Times? They ought to be keeping track with the same level of rigor with which they tracked COVID data at the beginning of the pandemic.

** Obviously, the US has always been a very, very imperfect democracy. Maybe this could turn out to be an opportunity to improve it somewhat.