Building on the Past

There's a lot to learn from previous protest movements. But resistance to this administration will be uniquely our own.

In these early days of resistance to the horrors and chaos of the second Trump administration, it’s easy to become discouraged. The desire for somebody somewhere to do something is overwhelming.

If past is prologue, we are all that somebody. Although this era in the United States is unique, this is hardly the first situation deserving of mass protest. In fact, protest has been a vital part of keeping our democracy healthy and, despite what some in the current administration are saying, it’s legal.

Effective protests against the rise of fascism will require an “all hands on deck” approach. What we’re fighting against is unprecedented in the United States, so we need an unprecedented response.

If we look at some of the protest movements of our own history, we can glean some valuable lessons:

• It takes time. Protest movements of the past didn’t effectuate change overnight. Many years — sometimes even decades — passed before we experienced results:

  • The first recorded gathering for women’s suffrage was in 1848; the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1919. The struggle for women’s rights continues to this day.

  • The Montgomery Bus Boycott alone lasted an entire year, from December 1955 through December 1956. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with Martin Luther King speaking took place in August of 1963. The Selma to Montgomery Marches spanned 19 days in 1965. The Poor People’s March on Washington in 1968 and countless other local and national protests continue to move the objectives of the larger civil rights movement forward.

  • The Stonewall rebellion in 1969, marriage equality at the federal level was established in 2015. Stonewall was hardly the beginning of the LGBTQ+ rights movement and the SCOTUS decision in Obergefell v. Hodges certainly wasn’t the end of it.

  • The SDS March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam (the first large-scale march protesting the Vietnam War) was in April 1965. The massacre of protesters at Kent State took place in May 1970. The war itself didn’t come to an end until April 1975. In that ten year span, hundreds of marches and rallies sprung up all over the nation.

• Think globally, act locally. That’s more than just a bumper sticker. It’s a strategy.

  • We’re already witnessing local activism with the multiple protests focused on Tesla dealerships all over the country. Those protests clearly have gotten Elon’s attention. Tesla sales are down, Tesla’s stock price has plummeted, and more than one analyst has theorized that these financial hits to Tesla run the risk of taking down Musk’s financially precarious “empire.”

  • Long before the MAGA movement, Republicans loved to disparage “community organizers,” with much of that disparagement being racially tinged. But they also like to denigrate community-level protests because they were often effective. Community-level activism is also the germination process for a larger efforts, so from the perspective of the oppressor, it’s better to squelch them early, before they grow into something bigger.

• Protest movements are non-linear. In every movement, there are ups and downs. There are events that get the headlines but there’s work underway long before and long after those headline grabbing moments. There are advances and there are setbacks, both of which are inevitable in any movement. There is often backlash to protests from the targets of those protests. Preliminary court victories are overturned, or early encouraging legal wins are reversed on appeal. As gut-wrenching as those setbacks can be, they should never be enough to prevent us from seeking continued progress.

• Inside/Outside. Effective protests of the past have been the result of working both within the political system and outside of it. It’s more important than ever to keep the pressure on our politicians, whether or not they are sympathetic to our message. Making phone calls to our Senators and Representatives, writing emails or letters, and holding them accountable at town halls are all ways to get the message across. But we can also use other leverage, too — contacting local and national media, participating in boycotts of companies that kowtow to the regime, forming working groups to come up with novel ways of keeping the pressure on.

• Progress is cumulative and interdependent. Any single action — a march or a letter or a meme re-posted or a phone call to a Congressperson or a protest song sung or even a vote — can’t be expected to overhaul an entire system that is powerfully stacked against the average person. But all of those things together, multiplied by the millions, have been the things that have changed history for the better. Momentum increases as the snowball rolls down the hill.

It’s worth acknowledging the function of anger in protest movements. Anger can be a great motivator; collective anger is even more so. Anger at injustice is at the foundation of most, if not all, protest movements.

But anger by itself is neither strategic nor effective. Simply expressing that anger may feel good in the moment but it doesn’t affect change and sometimes even alienates people who might otherwise be sympathetic to the cause.

Today, anger is a common thread among those who object to the rise of authoritarianism in the United States. It’s the logical initial response, but it cannot be the only response. It behooves all of us to figure out, individually and collectively, how to transform that anger into meaningful action that leads to change.

What form that action takes is still unknown in the infancy of our resistance. This will be unlike any movement in the U.S.

In an environment in which our current administration has thrown out all morality in its greed and its lust for power, it’s good to remember that we still have basic human decency on our side.