[Map of a New World: Part One]
We can’t “stop fascism” in America.
It’s already here. Run down a checklist; I’ll wait. You’ll find every attribute of fascism, staring back at you. The time to worry about overstating the crisis we face is long since past.
The barbarians aren’t at the gates. They’re inside our walls, gerrymandering our elections.
We Americans cherish a Christian narrative arc: salvation and messiah figures dominate our mythology from Sunday lecterns to Marvel comics. We demand an anointed leader. If it can’t be Batman, we’ll settle for a new Martin Luther King, Jr., or perhaps a Gandhi. It’s not like our standards are high. We have candidates.
Of course we do!
Newsom trench-fights to cheers—but our trans siblings have valid fears. AOC and Bernie educate stadiums full of people on complex issues—but both sides of the “Gaza debate” think she’s a sellout. J.B. Pritzker empowered Texas state senators to walk out—by leveraging his billions.
Clay feet, one and all.
MLK, Jr. wasn’t the man we remember, of course. In his own day, he was criticized for sending elementary-aged children to face police brutality, ridiculed for a campaign that was cast as asking white power for permission, and rivals whispered about his close friendship with gay civil rights visionary Bayard Rustin. Today, Zionism alone would disqualify him.
History selects with the full benefit of hindsight, curating flawed humans into heroes. Wait for a leader with the post-apotheosis halo of MLK, and you’ll miss the revolution. If he’s not your guy, I promise your heroes were also burnished, after the fact.
Besides, we don’t need a savior. That’s not how democracies are (re)built.
Not every culture centers this savior mythology—that’s Christianity’s arc. In Judaism, we teach that if the messiach comes while you’re planting a tree, you should finish planting the tree before going to greet him.
Your actions matter; no one else can do the work for you.
When I first heard that story, I imagined the caring, hopeful work of digging a large hole, amending it with minerals, and loosening the tree’s roots. That’s how Grandpa installed prized new trees. He watered them for a summer, too.
Then I went to college in the Pacific Northwest, long enough ago that some of my peers paid tuition by planting trees all summer. There’s a grinding rhythm to reforestation: strike the hoedad, pry open a slice of earth, slip in the sapling’s roots and step hard on the fresh wound. Many will die but plant enough, one shoulder-destroying strike at a time, and eventually a young forest grows.
If your goal is forest restoration, you’ll need faith. No one lives out the centuries that old growth succession requires. The analogy to activism is distressingly direct.
The work of resistance is similarly mundane, dirty and exhausting. The No Kings protest you attended required hundreds of hours of planning. Someone pulled permits, rented Porta Potties, and planned the sound system. Tens of thousands of us spread the word. Millions of us braved transit or parking to show up. Famous moments in resistance like the Montgomery Bus Boycott involve Herculean feats of organizing. Rosa Parks became a flashpoint after the plan was made.
We fight fascism by striking at the fear, learned helplessness, and despair that root inside us when we do nothing. We defy paralysis by taking a step. Hope is not a benediction or passive prayer. Hope is the result of action, and action is birthed in discipline.
If you want to see a general strike, put your shoulder into it. Collect strike card pledges, one conversation at a time. If that doesn’t sound glamorous, that’s the point: everything feels too small in the moment. Most of it won’t bear fruit, but somewhere, something unexpectedly will. That’s how resistance grows.
Every successful movement involves a smorgasbord of actions. Picking winners is for historians. Let’s hope our grandchildren spend long hours bored by ivory tower professors debating which actions mattered most.
That’s the goal.
Today’s task is easier than that: we do something. Everything matters. Some of you will post a flyer marking the break room off limits to ICE, buying the precious minutes someone needs to escape. Others will make dissent palpable by protesting even after ICE hardens, eventually detaining the white folks, too. Some will form cells that help transgender people hide, or escape. Simply being doggedly yourself as conservative social standards re-assert, then become law, is a form of resistance.
Normalize dissent, not oppression, in every way you can devise. We need it all. Endless arguments about whether a general strike, even-more-massive protests, or armed resistance are most effective need to end. They bog us down before we strike a blow.
While some men—it is usually men—argue that armed rebellion is our only option, the Allies might not have won at all without widespread, persistent resistance. Certainly thousands more would have died.
Possibly millions.
Other activists—they are often white women—insist that the slightest violence, or even the word “fuck” on a protest sign, dooms us by justifying the regime’s excesses. You need look only as far as D.C.’s years-long plummeting crime rate to understand that oppression is its own excuse.
I encourage non-violent resistance (a broader category than many realize) because research says it’s our best path back to democracy, and because it’s the right choice for nearly all of us. I don’t condemn armed resistance, though. I doubt Hitler, once in power, could have been stopped by protests and pamphlets alone. A military that openly forces prisoners to dig their own graves is not one you can shame or scold out of power.
Armed resistance is underway. [1] As it escalates, remember that fascists aren’t responding to violence—they caused it. Masked men kidnapping our neighbors require a robust response. Avoid battles over the “right” way to resist.
The right way is to resist.
Petitions and protests are the public face of resistance, so that’s most of what you’ll see while you stand outside wondering where the resistance is. You’ll have to join community and built trust to go beyond open-call actions. It won’t be fast work, but the bad news is you have time.
This is a long fight we face.
Courage is a muscle that grows with use. Activism is a skill you can learn. Democracy requires the vulnerable position that our small, singular vote matters. We may have to fight our way to the polls, but democracy exists only as a collective power. We have to risk believing we matter.
To be effective, your resistance needs to align with your values, personality and lifestyle. While you find your footing, take small steps. Volunteer, donate food, or drop by a local protest. Small kindnesses, services, and competencies make us stronger, together. Visibility encourages others to stand up, and helps us find community. The person who joins an immigration group grows the tools to divert traffic around a checkpoint. Build your courage, community, and skills. Opportunity comes to those who prepare. Start where you are, no matter how afraid, or isolated, and take the first step. Do something.
The best time to plant a tree isn’t twenty years ago. It’s now.
Strike deep, pull open the earth, and plant a seed.
[Hoedads: the movement] https://eugeneweekly.com/2023/11/02/planting-a-movement/