Social Activism in the Age of Trump: What To Do and What We Are Doing

Yeah, beyond the itch I'm feeling to volunteer I'm starting to think I need to figure out a way to transition my frankensteined hodgepodge of skills into an actual nonprofit career. I'm growing increasingly frustrated about wasting my time and energy and halfway functional brain on a dumb bullshit job that doesn't mean a damn thing. And I don't have any dependents so a potential pay cut won't make that profound a dent on my life. You can contribute the money I don't have, Puffin, and I'll put in the legwork you don't have time for. Everybody does what they can and nobody has to kick themselves!

frankenstein hodgepodge can go a long way in a nonprofit, especially a smaller one. generally your job description is only part of what you end up doing

i'm going to work "frankensteined hodgepodge" into my next cover letter, thank you.

Wasn't he the bad guy in Mystery Men?

We have recurring donations for

ACLU
Southern Poverty Law Center
National Immigration Law Center
UNHCR
Planned Parenthood Foundation

This is great. I'd like to also put in mentions for the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Brennan Center, two really great and slightly less well known organizations that do a lot of important work on voting rights, among other things. Really important right now.

frankenstein hodgepodge can go a long way in a nonprofit, especially a smaller one. generally your job description is only part of what you end up doing

― global tetrahedron, Thursday, December 8, 2016 9:42 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hi, I know SQL and how to use an oxy-acetylene torch, what do you need me to do today?

hi i'm a squid who eats dough out of oxy-acetylene torches!

i just read about micro-volunteering the other day, seems like a good way to put specific skills to work while keeping your dayjob.

btw folks i'm partway into a smart, rousing book: This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty-first Century, by Mark & Paul Engler (2016 Nation Books). Looks carefully at the craft of nonviolent resistance, and the complicated relationship of "movement" vs "organization-building" activism.

Yeah, I'm starting that book, too.

Also what I've done: donate here and there. Went to local organizing/group chat meetings for everything from Matt Hern talking about his book on modern city planning and displacement at the local neighborhood business assoc to a friend's social justic reading group she started up.

I figure; we're still at the starting point for a lot of this so just showing up to meetings is the best we can do.

Not to diminish the more tangible/long-term effects protesting and organizing can and does have, but I was struck by a conversation a friend of mine had on her FB wall, where she mentioned she was going to one of the post-election protests, and her dad said "please be careful" or something to that effect. A day or two later, she replied with "thanks for the concern, but that was the safest I've felt all week." Just taking time to surround yourself with like-minded folks has value in and of itself as a coping/energizing move.

yeah, isolation is pretty much the worst thing right now and strength in numbers is the best

Fighting at the bureaucratic level isn't going to fix the belief system and framework that's led to what we have with Trump.

― larry appleton, Thursday, December 8, 2016 9:16 AM

i agree with a lot of what you're saying but i have a different interpretation of it. i agree that trump's presidency is the culmination of a lot of historical trends that have been going on for most of my adult life. i agree that many people, myself included, have in the past been complicit in these historical trends.

but i think what we have here is an opportunity to not be complicit, in a manner which was not practical or effective with gwb. since this is a convergence of a galaxy of occurrences, each of these occurrences can be opposed individually by those who are best positioned to do so. bureaucrats can obstruct implementation of executive orders. lawyers can sue. religious groups can do things like north carolina's "moral mondays". all of these things would absolutely be more effective if they were centrally coordinated, but certain types, though not all types, of uncoordinated opposition, or opposition which is coordinated at a very low level, can be effective.

systemic change is absolutely necessary, but nobody is in any position to implement systemic change. right now our only option is resistance, resistance in a fashion that can win immediate minor victories and gain public acceptance of our beliefs. honestly the stuff we need to do now is going to be the easy part.

yesterday we got a letter from our township democratic party talking about having a meeting for organization. my wife wanted to respond to them with a "too late, we're getting the hell out of dodge" reply (we are), but i looked at what they wanted and it's ten bucks. surely i can give them ten bucks and go to one of their meetings and _then_ get the hell out of dodge.

i just read about micro-volunteering the other day, seems like a good way to put specific skills to work while keeping your dayjob.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, December 8, 2016 10:57 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was this online, and if so do you have a link?

So far since the election I have:

Made a bunch of small donations to a number of minority-rights organizations
Set up a recurring monthly donation to Planned Parenthood of Ohio
Contacted PP's local volunteer coordinator (but haven't heard back yet)
Signed up to go with my wife to the Jan. 21 Women's March on Washington
Called and faxed Gov. Kasich's office over the execrable OH HB493

I want to do a lot more but barely know where to begin.

systemic change is absolutely necessary, but nobody is in any position to implement systemic change.

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status

If your state isn't already in red on that page then you I recommend you reach for the telephone

http://www.volunteermatch.org/

i haven't looked through the site myself. it was referred to in this article:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/jacob-colker-explorer-moments-web-based-micro-volunteering-matching-nonprofits-for-social-good/

systemic change is absolutely necessary, but nobody is in any position to implement systemic change.

i disagree. every single person is a participant in the system. every day we affect change. this isn't something that suddenly needs to happen, it's something that has been happening for a long time.

it is important to keep perspective on this. in the 60s leaders and organizers for hope were assassinated, alongside a contested war, 10+ years of national tragedies.

people didn't give up hope. look how far we have come. Obama. decriminalization of weed. gay marriage, with victories state-by-state during the Bush years. we didn't wait for someone to become president and fix everything. it was the daily nonviolent efforts from ordinary people that got us here. imagine what they could have accomplished in the 60s if they had the internet.

I already work on community events and beautification things with my block association, pay them my dues, support them with volunteer labor like working merch tables, doing kids' workshops, making food for gatherings, etc. I love my block/community, and working together on the fun stuff makes you strong and ready if you ever have to organize AGAINST something. If we ever have to mobilize, we can come together as ppl who know and trust each other, not as strangers.

I'm a dues-paying member of the Brooklyn Movement Center (http://brooklynmovementcenter.org/), and support with monthly donations and my time & strategic advice because they are my loves and everything they do is amazing. BMC = Black-led community organizing of Central Brooklyn around police accountability, food sovereignty (they're about to open an affordable members' co-op!), street harassment, educational justice, and more.

Donate $10 a month to Brooklyn Deep (http://brooklyndeep.org/category/podcast/), a citizen journalism platform that in particular puts out the monthly podcast "Third Rail" featuring Brooklyn residents on lots of issues.

For my job, I work in a school coordinating public-private and community-based programs that can benefit our families and students. This includes grant management & program coordination stuff, but in reality I'm doing the Parent Coordinator's job as well, so my time largely goes to family engagement instead of the corporate relationship-building that it should technically involve. I reach out to interested parents, put them on an advisory board, give them opportunities to take on projects to effect changes in the school community, and then either coordinate or carry out what they've proposed.

Our families are like 80% recent immigrants from all around the world, so there's a lot of cultural mixing and richness! I've been able to bring in free adult ESL, immigration legal assistance by special request, some health care services, boost our translation & interpretation efforts (laughable--we weren't doing ANYTHING even though like 80% of families couldn't understand any speeches or sent-home information), start supporting parents as interpreters, connecting them with social services, and generally trying to make them happy & secure so they can gradually build power as a block. It's exhausting!

I also drink a bottle of wine a day so I'm supporting some very nice vineyards somewhere in Spain and Italy I'm sure.

yeah, isolation is pretty much the worst thing right now and strength in numbers is the best

Fuuuuuuuuuuck yeah, completely agree on this.

Moods and panics and anxiety are sociogenic, right? We copy a lot of stuff from those around us, and I think can get real demoralized real fuggin' quick, depending on the tone of a message board or thread or chat room. Online space can connect, but it's the in-person stuff that can heal, shelter, and most importantly invigorate us.

I increasingly feel that the only point of mass street protests is collective therapy for the participants. their immediate political impact is basically nil.

in ages past huge crowds of people in the street could be interpreted by the powerful as imminent potential threats of violence but that's basically over.

Not for nothing, but I've finally switched from beer to rum or vodka consumed at like 50 ml or a jigger per large Tumblr of Diet 7up or A&W.

I think it's ultimately cheaper. Far less WeightWatchers points, I've found, at least.

the right/trump basically just want/need us all glued to our twitter feeds, alone, and feeling despondent

yeah definitely, and getting worked up and terrified over every little twitch

Bannon has made it pretty clear he wants to scare and confuse people.

I increasingly feel that the only point of mass street protests is collective therapy for the participants. their immediate political impact is basically nil.

You're not the only one. Micah White from Occupy just came out with a new book about this, and wrote a lot about it on his site. Dude moved to Nehalem, OR(about 90 miles W of Portland on the Coast) to run for mayor, figuring that you gotta start somewhere to get access to the lowest rungs of power.

Here he is talking about it on "This is Hell."

I increasingly feel that the only point of mass street protests is collective therapy for the participants. their immediate political impact is basically nil.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 8, 2016 2:03 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in ages past huge crowds of people in the street could be interpreted by the powerful as imminent potential threats of violence but that's basically over.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 8, 2016 2:05 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah not just due to nefarious machinations of the unreachable power elite, but because polarization (and the near-tie of the election) means that policymakers can always look out the window and say "eh, the opposite point of view would get just as many people marching; why should I do anything different because people are marching? It's always something with those people and they'll never be happy, so fuck them."

This is probably true and yet I will probably still do it. I remember being out on the national Mall on some very cold days in 2001-2008 without any hope that W. would look out the window and say, "oh, shit, guys wait - there's a nonflattering puppet of me; maybe I should reconsider!"

Where do you think polarization comes from? Did people, who share similar interests, all of a sudden decide to divide themselves because of unproveable bullshit?

These machinations aren't "nefarious", they're just business. I grew up with one of these people, propaganda guy in the military, did PR for energy companies. He published climate change denial material, and he didn't believe any of it, he just liked money and power, his employers hired him for that, and he had zero care whatsoever for human life. and I mean zero care, he had to maintain a fake persona to cover up his utter contempt for humanity just so people wouldn't throw him off a cliff. He was most certainly a blackhearted piece of shit, and if you could get inside his mind, it'd be like a Lovecraftian nightmare. This is some of the stuff you're up against.

It seems hard for people to understand that there are people out there who really, seriously do not give a flying shit for human beings the way normal people do, and they like money and power, and there's a lot of for the taking in the US. Don't think these Trump types will have mercy on you or our country, because it's not gonna happen, they'll turn us into a field of ashes if it somehow benefits them. The only thing that works, in my experience, is using power to screw around with their cost-benefit analysis somehow.

And what power do we, average peons, have nowadays? No fucking idea. Smart move to sort-of disempower us and take away our leverage as employees, as informed and educated citizens, as community members in solidarity, as having voices in the public sphere, and as consumers... almost like each aspect of our power leverage has been tampered with and taken away from us. And now here we are. Whether or not it's intentional, it's what things are like now, and it works.

Maybe I'm being too cynical here, I hope so.

These machinations aren't "nefarious", they're just business. I grew up with one of these people, propaganda guy in the military, did PR for energy companies. He published climate change denial material, and he didn't believe any of it, he just liked money and power, his employers hired him for that, and he had zero care whatsoever for human life. and I mean zero care, he had to maintain a fake persona to cover up his utter contempt for humanity just so people wouldn't throw him off a cliff. He was most certainly a blackhearted piece of shit, and if you could get inside his mind, it'd be like a Lovecraftian nightmare. This is some of the stuff you're up against.

― larry appleton

wait, you start off your paragraph saying that the machinations aren't "nefarious" and you end up describing the people who perpetrate them as a "Lovecraftian nightmare". i'm not sure i'm completely following you here, larry.

There is something to what Larry says -- money and power dictate. Money is a form of power, and when you lack that the alternative is organization. That's what unions are, that's what civil rights organizations are. Masses of people are a form of power too, when organized.

And yes, we have reached a somewhat dangerously atomized state, although the internet provides some opportunities for reorganization.

> wait, you start off your paragraph saying that the machinations aren't "nefarious" and you end up describing the people who perpetrate them as a "Lovecraftian nightmare". i'm not sure i'm completely following you here, larry.

What I meant with that is what's "nefarious" is subjective.

ftr record I still enthusiastically go to protests, because I find them therapeutic just like everyone else there does

I just don't hold any illusions about their tactical effectiveness

There is something to what Larry says -- money and power dictate. Money is a form of power, and when you lack that the alternative is organization. That's what unions are, that's what civil rights organizations are. Masses of people are a form of power too, when organized.

Yeah, this is where community and solidarity come in. But how can people be brought together when they're isolated and divided from each other, taught that everyone's competition or their enemy, and they get all of this information from outlets and leaders feeding them this bullshit?

How are these divisions bridged among people? How are people going to be "deprogrammed", so to speak? If not that, then maybe organize people who already share similar views into a well-coordinated and effective force of their own. What constitutes that I have no idea, but street protests wearing juggler's hats probably won't help.

The question here is: how do you become a danger?

the bullet or the ballot ennit

Yeah, the legitimacy of our country depends on representative government, and Trump and his crew are attacking *that* now openly, and it's been under attack for a long time now. Shit's deep.

Ok, but we still have it. How about getting people to turn out for non-presidential-year elections for starters.

I think you mean how about getting Democrats to turn out for midterm elections

Yeah, this is where community and solidarity come in. But how can people be brought together when they're isolated and divided from each other, taught that everyone's competition or their enemy, and they get all of this information from outlets and leaders feeding them this bullshit?

I already work on community events and beautification things with my block association, pay them my dues, support them with volunteer labor like working merch tables, doing kids' workshops, making food for gatherings, etc. I love my block/community, and working together on the fun stuff makes you strong and ready if you ever have to organize AGAINST something. If we ever have to mobilize, we can come together as ppl who know and trust each other, not as strangers.

That's true. So much of what we're saying here, a lot of people agree with it. There are a lot of people who are goodhearted, and civic minded, and think what's happening is total bullshit. It'd be great if there was some way to find them, recruit them, and organize them to action. Regular people who aren't politically active.

There are no media outlets or politicians who really talk about the points of view of these people (which include me), though. Bernie Sanders was the first I remember being anywhere even close to this, and he was shut out by the media, mocked on SNL, and is still getting trashed by the Democratic establishment. It has to come from somewhere.

xp

in orbit, what suburb/rural town is that? I'd love to see more of that happening.

xpost I think the regular people are becoming politically active. I personally have never borne witness to so many people who were previously content to be armchair liberals (myself included, sadly) and who are now like, no fuck this shit, it's time to do something.

^^^yeah this is my experience too. this has been something of a shock to the system. I think this is borne out in some ways by the anecdotal evidence of things like the ACLU currently having more money than they ever have in history.

That's promising. It'd be nice to organize people who agree with these things into a political/power force outside of the usual liberal/Democratic establishment, because those people have proven themselves to be very much against this. They don't seem to give much of a shit about what Trump's doing. If that's already happening, I'd like to know what it is.

People need to start talking to people again, I think... a campaign of outreach, human being to human being. But there has to be some kind-of banner, and system, and strategy to follow under. I don't know, I'm talking out of my ass here. I know the socialist parties are experiencing booms, but there's so much baggage with that stuff it makes me wary.

xp it's a little suburb called Brooklyn.

I don't know exactly what the solution to that is, but like...flyering, maybe? Activism fairs? Something along those lines? There are existing groups who want to build their numbers and newly-politicized people who are maybe not quite sure where to direct their energies. Maybe like a political Tinder where users swipe through until you find the local charity or political group that best suits them. It's that eternal problem of helping people bridge gaps to opportunities they aren't even aware of.

you mean something like this posted on this very thread

http://www.volunteermatch.org/