Organizing is organizing. If you have enough people in your corner to win an election, you have enough people to blow up a bridge.
Or has everyone forgotten why we hold elections in the first place? Voting is a proxy for fighting. If they won’t hold a fair election, make them. Remind the oligarchs why we have elections in the first place.
If you have enough people in your corner to win an election, you have enough people to blow up a bridge.
Not if your organization’s membership (and, perhaps more importantly, leadership) is stacked with people who are axiomatically opposed to blowing up bridges. If you intend to blow up bridges in the future, the work on that starts now, not when elections inevitably fail.
If they won’t hold a fair election, make them.
Sure, but you can only make them while they’re vulnerable (aka right now). It’s notoriously hard to make autocrats hold elections after they’ve successfully abolished them. MAGAts know they’ll lose control of Congress in the midterms, so their only hope is to overthrow democracy by January 2027. Do you understand what this means? By the time you’re voting for your “candidates who will fight for us” it will already be too late, and by that point “making them” will be easier said than done.
Ideology is malleable. People aren’t nearly as “axiomatically opposed” to anything as you think they are.
If your organization is already taking direct action (protests, strikes, sit ins, peaceful civil disobedience) then your tactics will naturally escalate as the government becomes more authoritarian. If you pitch extreme tactics now, though, the only people who will join will be the craziest.
You can only make them while they’re vulnerable
They won’t abolish elections all at once. Their strategy for the midterms - or at least what it seems to be - is voter suppression and gerrymandering. Those are powerful tools, don’t get me wrong, but not so powerful that they’re invincible.
Obviously it would have been better to already be organized, but failing that, the best time to organize is now.
People aren’t nearly as “axiomatically opposed” to anything as you think they are.
As history shows, quite a few people will hold onto their flawed worldviews even as everything around them falls apart. It’s entirely plausible for an organization to fail to adapt to changing circumstances and fail miserably at its purpose; it happens all the time.
If your organization is already taking direct action (protests, strikes, sit ins, peaceful civil disobedience) then your tactics will naturally escalate as the government becomes more authoritarian.
Sure, that’s fair, but that only holds if we’re talking about direct action. Direct action and electoral politics are fundamentally different courses, and there’s no guarantee that the latterer will escalate into the former. My point is: If you’ll organize, you have to organize around direct action, not elections. Also just in case, protests only count as direct action when they meaningfully obstruct power; otherwise they’re just parades.
Those are powerful tools, don’t get me wrong, but not so powerful that they’re invincible.
True, but what I’m getting at is: What will happen if/when they lose their majority in either house in the midterms? Will they just turn over power? And risk being held accountable for their crimes? Will Trump allow himself to lose his only shot at becoming a fascist dictator? No, they’ll launch a coup and worry about the details later. I think we’ve seen too many Sieg Heils for “it can’t happen here” to still hold water. They’ll launch their coup and there’s frankly very little in America that can stop them right now. Hence, it’ll be up to popular grassroots resistance to do something about it, and the work to make sure such resistance exists starts now, not after the coup is already a done deal. Also, you know, ICE is still kidnapping people off the street and someone also needs to do something about that.
So we remind them. Preferably by fielding candidates that will actually fight for us, and aren’t afraid to point that fact out. Loudly.
Building up a real base of support takes time. As in, 4-5 years worth of time. Might as well get started while people are pissed.
I’ve been at it for 25 years and it still hasn’t happened
Mamdani won. He seems like the real deal, too.
If he can do it, we can too. We’ll build a whole new party if we have to, but we’ll get people in office who will actually fight for us.
One guy, in an intensely blue city, against universally despised opponents does not a political revolution make.
That’s true, but it’s also intensely pessimistic. Take the opportunity to celebrate the rare wins that come along.
I’m way past pessimism, in part because all I’ve seen my whole life are small victories
Um… at this rate in 4-5 years America will be a fascist hellscape. There is no 4-5 years.
The best time to plant a tree…
Organizing is organizing. If you have enough people in your corner to win an election, you have enough people to blow up a bridge.
Or has everyone forgotten why we hold elections in the first place? Voting is a proxy for fighting. If they won’t hold a fair election, make them. Remind the oligarchs why we have elections in the first place.
Not if your organization’s membership (and, perhaps more importantly, leadership) is stacked with people who are axiomatically opposed to blowing up bridges. If you intend to blow up bridges in the future, the work on that starts now, not when elections inevitably fail.
Sure, but you can only make them while they’re vulnerable (aka right now). It’s notoriously hard to make autocrats hold elections after they’ve successfully abolished them. MAGAts know they’ll lose control of Congress in the midterms, so their only hope is to overthrow democracy by January 2027. Do you understand what this means? By the time you’re voting for your “candidates who will fight for us” it will already be too late, and by that point “making them” will be easier said than done.
Ideology is malleable. People aren’t nearly as “axiomatically opposed” to anything as you think they are.
If your organization is already taking direct action (protests, strikes, sit ins, peaceful civil disobedience) then your tactics will naturally escalate as the government becomes more authoritarian. If you pitch extreme tactics now, though, the only people who will join will be the craziest.
They won’t abolish elections all at once. Their strategy for the midterms - or at least what it seems to be - is voter suppression and gerrymandering. Those are powerful tools, don’t get me wrong, but not so powerful that they’re invincible.
Obviously it would have been better to already be organized, but failing that, the best time to organize is now.
As history shows, quite a few people will hold onto their flawed worldviews even as everything around them falls apart. It’s entirely plausible for an organization to fail to adapt to changing circumstances and fail miserably at its purpose; it happens all the time.
Sure, that’s fair, but that only holds if we’re talking about direct action. Direct action and electoral politics are fundamentally different courses, and there’s no guarantee that the latterer will escalate into the former. My point is: If you’ll organize, you have to organize around direct action, not elections. Also just in case, protests only count as direct action when they meaningfully obstruct power; otherwise they’re just parades.
True, but what I’m getting at is: What will happen if/when they lose their majority in either house in the midterms? Will they just turn over power? And risk being held accountable for their crimes? Will Trump allow himself to lose his only shot at becoming a fascist dictator? No, they’ll launch a coup and worry about the details later. I think we’ve seen too many Sieg Heils for “it can’t happen here” to still hold water. They’ll launch their coup and there’s frankly very little in America that can stop them right now. Hence, it’ll be up to popular grassroots resistance to do something about it, and the work to make sure such resistance exists starts now, not after the coup is already a done deal. Also, you know, ICE is still kidnapping people off the street and someone also needs to do something about that.