So Donald Trump is the president-elect of the United
States. That’s quite the… uh… wow, I’m not even sure what it is. It was an
awful, horrible, hateful campaign. And there is a good chance there will be a
smouldering cavern where the world used to be by the time the 2018 mid-terms
roll around. Women, people of colour (I’m Canadian, there’s a ‘u’ in colour),
LGBTQ people, sane people – they all have a lot of reason for trepidation and
fear. White men too, but a lot of us haven’t figured that out yet. Across the
US, people have turned out to protest.
Protesting is a wonderful expression of discontent and can
often be an agent of great change. (Nicolae Ceausescu can speak – or could have
spoken – to that.) People should continue to protest every batshit crazy thing
that Trump and the (somehow more) looney Republican lawmakers do as they try to
undo all of the social progress made since women’s suffrage. But here’s the
thing – protesting is not going to be effective right now. It is certainly not enough. There was an election two
days ago. Public rallies, held by people who had an opportunity to beat Trump at
the polls this week but couldn’t, are not going to strike fear in the halls of
power (or the penthouse of Trump Tower).
So if you find yourself shocked, disgusted, and / or dismayed
at what transpired on Tuesday, then what are you to do?
Organize. ORGANIZE!
First, a couple of key points to keep in mind:
1. This
election wasn’t stolen from you. The Electoral College may be an antiquated
system, but the rules of the game were known ahead of the contest and Trump
didn’t alter them. If you want to change the rules of the game, you have to
build a movement that can change the system. How do you do that? Organize!
2. This
election wasn’t stolen from Bernie either. I’m not an expert on the American
political system, but political parties are not national governments. They do
not require the transparency of a general election. Generally speaking,
political parties are formed and maintained to accomplish specific goals. Those
goals are developed and shaped by people who have worked for years to bring specific
issues to the national stage. It is perfectly acceptable for the party’s core
to prefer one candidate over another, and it is also fine to have a built-in
safety valve (for example superdelegates) to help ensure that the party
leadership is won by someone who reflects the party’s vision. Hillary Clinton
may not have been a great choice – since she lost, I guess she wasn’t. But if
you want Bernie’s principles to be the Democratic Party’s principles, you have
to shape the party that way from the bottom, not the top.
3. There
is reason for hope. For one, progress is always met with resistance, and if you
take a look at the world now and compare it to the world 50 years ago, tremendous
strides have been made. Two, as Nate Silver points out, a shift of one percent
of Trump’s voters over to Clinton and we would be pronouncing the defeat of the
reactionary right and the death of the Republican Party. (My words, his numbers.)
So it’s not as though everybody in America woke up Tuesday and decided they’d
like to join the KKK.
So bottle up that rage. (The fear – I can’t blame you for
holding onto the fear.) There is only one way to go, and that way is forward.
So, what do I mean by organize? I don’t mean register as a
Democrat and vote in the next round of primaries. I mean get involved in your
community. Join your neighborhood watch. Do you live in an apartment building
with lousy maintenance or rising rents? Form a tenant’s association. (I did
this once, and it was a wonderful way to get to know my neighbors and find common
cause with them.) Participate in the PTA. Unionize! Join or create organizations where
you will be working side-by-side with people who voted for Trump. Get that
pothole fixed. Everybody hates potholes! Find common cause with people that you
currently see nothing in common with. Fight for your common interests, build
community organizations that beget bigger organizations that can grow into a
national movement. Through these organizations take back your statehouses so
that the Democrats may somehow dream again of winning the House of
Representatives. Remember how the Republicans dismissively referred to Obama as
a “community organizer”? Find the next Obama. Hell, BE the next Obama.
Good luck, America. May we all live to see the fruits of
your labour (also spelled with a ‘u’).
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