#and the internal support. who's arranging rideshares. if students are walking out is someone cooking them meals

[clonerightsagenda]

I'm really grateful I have a group I'm already involved in right now, because I'm seeing a lot of despair and "I don't know what to do" and "I'm the only one in my community who feels this way", whereas we're like. well. we know what to do. It's going to suck, it might not work, people are going to get hurt in the meantime no matter how hard we try to limit the damage, but we do know what we need to do.

The reality is, this is not a mobilization problem. It's not going to get fixed by convincing more people to go to the polls, or if a few third party voters had held the party line, so you might as well stop blaming them. Actually unfortunately the next steps rely on stopping blaming individual people, but go ahead and take however long you need to get it out of your system. I get it.

As I said, it's not a mobilization problem. A large portion of the population voted the way they did on purpose, and a big reason for that is because for a large portion of the United States population, life kind of sucks and has been getting worse. The Democratic party has failed to run on a coherent narrative of why this is and how they're going to make it better. The Republican party, on the other hand, has run on a very strong narrative of how they will make it better by getting rid of all the things and people who are to blame. It's a narrative that has worked for a lot of groups in the past. It's working now, in the increasingly polarized social media landscape, even in demographics Democrats have typically considered safe. Everyone loves the luxury of having someone to blame.

Unfortunately, the fix to this is long, and slow, and hard. It's not begging politicians for scraps. It's getting offline and going outside. Talking to your neighbors about their lives, their fears, their needs, and what kind of world would meet those needs. Even the one with the Trump sign in their front yard. Some of these people are in it for the racism and the cruelty and siphoning everything to their rich cronies, but a lot of them are struggling and desperate and grabbed for the life preserver someone threw them, even if it's secretly stuffed with arsenic. If thrown a different life preserver, they can be convinced to grab it.

And no, it's not ok that they decided to shove vulnerable minorities' heads under water just so they could theoretically get theirs. You're allowed to be angry! But unfortunately further isolating these people only pushes them deeper into the fascist movement ready to embrace them. They need to interact with real representatives of the groups they've been trained to blame and fear. They need to be given a different narrative with real solutions, but screaming it at them on Twitter won't do it. Long conversations where people take their hardships seriously but direct them more constructively might.

That's not going to be easy. You may not like or forgive them. And not everyone can do this work! It's going to be safer for white, not visibly queer/gnc folks to make some of these initial contacts. (At one of our meetings, a femme woman of color was talking about canvassing transit riders and dealing with misogynistic comments and having to decide, ok, where do I personally draw the line saying I cannot work with this person versus being aware that a lot of people are not steeped in politically correct language and can change. It's a tough line to walk!) People also aren't interested in answering their doors for canvassers these days, so organic social connections work best. Maybe you're talking to people in your workplace. Your apartment complex. Your neighborhood. Your own family. Maybe you join a book club full of seniors at your public library. Many people want positive change! My state notoriously always votes for progressive ballot measures and then turns around and votes in conservatives who try to dismantle them. There's a logic gap there, but in that gap is a potential for conversation, because we have places where we already agree and want to work together.

The theory here is, if we can talk to enough people, if we can build genuine real world offline connections where we agree on our shared problems and our shared desires for a better world and come up with solid solutions beyond pointing fingers, we can build a large enough coalition to start making demands, most likely through targeted disruptions (strikes, walkouts, etc.). The handy thing is, if you can get that many people demanding something, it doesn't actually matter which party is in power.

Is that possible? I don't know! Organizing that many people is really really hard. It's hard reaching out to people who've just punched you in the gut. Some people will not change. Some people will have hard lines that don't mesh with your hard lines. And I'm certainly really scared myself about the likely takeover of all three branches of government and probable draconian measures against dissent. We're going to have to carefully consider risk/reward when planning actions and disruptions. We're going to have to fight through fear and exhaustion and apathy and pain and betrayal, and I don't know if we can. I don't know if I'll see something like this happen in my lifetime (although the UAW sure is gonna try in 2028). Hell I don't know if we'll have elections 4 years from now. But that's the path. If you're not up for walking it right now, that's fine. If you're not up for walking it ever, ok. But I don't think there are any shortcuts or miracles. This is what we can try, and if it fails, at least we did what we could.

(If you see this post and your instinct is to reply with some variation of 'nice speech but we're all fucked and might as well give up', I understand why you feel this way. It's a feeling a lot of us are struggling with right now. Take the time you need to take care of yourself, and when you're ready, you can come back and we'll be happy to have you.)