Guide to resistance

Keeping these links here, for reference. The first two are the most useful.

Indivisible—The Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda has become the essential resistance how-to manual.

Trump Cabinet Confirmations Blockade uses spreadsheets to corral an amazing amount of info into one place.

Wall of Us sends you four concrete acts of resistance to your inbox each week. One of those, for Inauguration Day, is #TakeTheOath, started by several actors, writers and directors. The details are here.

For those who are new to civic activism and for those feeling overwhelmed, My Civic Workout is your personal trainer.

penamerican:

“Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.”—Montesquieu, born on this day in 1689

1669!!

futurismnews:

New York Taxi Drivers Call for a 50-Year Ban

Maybe the drivers’ associations wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss driverless vehicles if universal basic income was implemented to offset job loss due to automation.

Here’s what I think would be more effective.

Calling my representative (Yvette Clarke) to complain about Trump’s agenda is pointless. She is one of the original anti-Trump resisters in the congress. Both of my Senators are democratic, too, and they are on Trump’s sh.t-list already.

But there is a (slim-majority) republican district pretty close. What if I asked my friends who live in Bay Ridge if it’s ok for me to call their congressman (Dan Donovan) on their behalf every time something controversial (i.e. everything) is up for a vote in the Congress. I can easily and half-sincerely fein libertarian-esque objections to pretty much everything Trump would want to do. I already signed up for his mailing list, and if he has town halls in Brooklyn, would show up there, tea-party style. With the baby. I think it’d be more effective than demonstrating and preaching to the choir in Manhattan.

It’s too bad this guy just got re-elected (after his crooked predecessor got kicked out for graft) so he’s feeling safe for at least 4 more years.

As it is, demonstrations in the red Staten Island or Long Island republican districts would be far more effective. Too bad no one is organizing them.

Americans can have a soft spot for “revolution,” since our war of independence from the British Empire was so nifty. But most revolutions are not. They are usually overtaken by their most extreme elements, spiral beyond the control of the principled, and lead to the collapse of social order and gratuitous and senseless bloodletting. “Reckless audacity came to be understood as the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice,” Thucydides described, recounting conditions on the eve of the corpse-strewn Corcyraean Revolution. “In this contest the blunter wits were most successful.” Thucydides, in his commentary regarding the deterioration (and ultimate collapse) of Athenian democracy, hits too close to home: “Men now did just what they pleased, coolly venturing on what they had formerly done only in a corner” — this, more than anything, seems like the hallmark of the emerging Trump regime, replete with norm-trampling transgressions. We are in the hands of an ignorant, amoral, petulant authoritarian who has been handed the keys to the most powerful office on the country, and the world.

Jonathan Kirshner, America, America

Revolutions are ‘usually overtaken by their most extreme elements, spiral beyond the control of the principled, and lead to the collapse of social order and gratuitous and senseless bloodletting’.

(via stoweboyd)

La révolution dévore ses enfants.

There are no conditions to which a man may not become accustomed, particularly if he sees that they are accepted by those about him.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (via stoweboyd)

climateadaptation:

theweekmagazine:

Why the Women’s March on Washington has already failed

Demonstrations serve a useful function in a democracy — but only when they have clarity of purpose. That is not the case with the Women’s March on Washington, which will be held in Washington, D.C., the day after Donald Trump is sworn in. Instead the march is shaping up to be a feel-good exercise in search of a cause. And if it fizzles and fails, it’ll make it harder, not easier, to fight genuine rights violations under the Trump presidency.

A must read.

This expresses my ambivalent feelings about this march better than I ever could. We are no longer going to DC, and it looks like little L is not going to the local March either (wearing his “pantsuit nation” onesie), and I will stay with him – potential teargas is not good for babies (and I keep thinking of that Battleship Potemkin scene). There is way more work ahead, and this march can only make it more difficult.

Today is gray, I am sick with pinkeye and cold and working at home, so color at breakfast was necessary.

ithelpstodream:

Here’s a MLK quote I’d love to see white people share.

One thing I might add – immigrants of every race should know the context of what they are getting themselves into when coming here. And make it a part of the citizenship exam.

If there is a trade war with Europe, I would not be surprised if they, like Russia, ban the import of food products.
No more French cheese and Italian wine. That will make the despised “coastal elites” suffer and eat Kraft cheese slices.