We must all do whatever we can to block the Kavanaugh Supreme Court appointment.

Devin Kelly
Sep 7, 2018 · 6 min read

…including occupying the US Senate.

This week, the US Senate Judiciary Committee is holding its confirmation hearing on Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s second appointment to the US Supreme Court. While protestors have disrupted the hearing and Democratic committee members are releasing classified documents on Kavanaugh and grilling him on his history, the majority of the committee will almost certainly vote for confirmation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel wants to fast track the confirmation process, with the full Senate taking a final vote as early as late September, weeks before the 2018 mid-term election. Meanwhile, the Democratic Senate leadership has a naive hope that their entire caucus will vote down the appointment and that at least two Republicans will join them. What they fail to recognize is that this is only possible if there is a mass protest movement pressuring both parties, and working people of all stripes prepared to do whatever it takes to stop the Kavanaugh appointment — including preventing the Republican Senate from doing business. We are not there yet, but we could be.

In this charade of a hearing, Donald Trump and Republican leadership have created a rare moment that is both a potentially irreversible tipping point and an unprecedented opportunity for mass mobilization. If unchecked, the Kavanaugh appointment will drive society further down the path created by the deeply insidious Neil Gorsuch appointment, advancing decades of political regression, the undermining of basic rights, and both local and global strong man politics employing state and environmental violence. It is difficult to quantify how much power the right could hold controlling all three branches of US government, given their regular flouting and now systematic dismantling of basic rule of law. And, as evidenced by this last court session’s vicious attacks on workers and immigrants, it is clear that even a few more hard right court sessions could set society back for many years to come. There will be very real, immediate outcomes for women, people of color, and working people everywhere. This is even if progressives win the 2018 midterms, even if we get rid of Trump in 2020 (without mass-based organizing), and even if Democrats “stack the court” in future years. And those are all big evens. This must not happen.

However, if working people galvanize a mass movement this month, the appointment could legitimately be prevented until after the 2018 midterm election. This would enable voters to hold the Senate accountable and flip the outcome, both in terms of Senate seats and in forcing incumbent Senators to openly resist Trump. This is much more likely to undermine the solvency of Kavanaugh’s appointment, move “moderate” Democrats and some Republicans to disavow appointments for Trump’s duration, and create space for progressives to later reverse the damage. But it’s not going to happen without organizing, nonviolent civil disobedience and direct resistance at a massive scale, up to and including breaking very real laws with very real legal implications throughout the coming month. The Republicans are engaged in a long-game, billionaire-backed coup with some of the highest stakes they’ve ever faced. While it is necessary, voting progressive in November is not sufficient to fight this, and by then it could very well be too late. Anything short of an immediate mass nonviolent movement will be highly ineffective.

The reasoning behind this is simple. Republican elites have rewritten the rules of the game so extensively that they don’t have to play by them anymore. Some Democrats and mainstream voters still seemingly believe that the Republican leadership will somehow follow the rule of law, even though all signs have pointed to no for decades (with the Democrats’ very own strategies and tactics often following suit). But deep in our bones, working people know better. We don’t need long-winded rants about gerrymandering, disenfranchisement through mass incarceration, voter purges or voter ID laws to know that things are wrong. We don’t need stark reminders that the last two Republican Presidents came into power after losing the popular vote to recognize that traditional forms of political participation are increasingly meaningless. We also remember deep in our bones that while they rely on certain strategies, both legal and “illegal,” we have our own. We know that at the end of the day, the only tools we have are our bodies and our abilities to refuse compliance. And we’re almost to the point of a mass movement channeling this feeling into action.

Like many similar historical moments, the Trump assault is unsurprisingly taking place at a time where working people of all backgrounds are more class conscious, pro-union, pro civil rights and liberties, passionate about social justice, critical of Capitalism and willing to organize than they have been in decades. Voter turnout has grown dramatically in special elections. People everywhere are increasingly politicized. Many millions of us have called, written, protested and marched. But people everywhere are also starting to realize these symbolic actions are not enough, that the machine rolls on anyway, and that in order to achieve real change we have to disrupt business as usual. Without economic action, no amount of marching, chanting or calling will be enough. And while voting Democrat might feel good or be a partial Band-Aid, the elites of that party have been dragged further right in the fight of billionaire against billionaire. These standard tactics don’t work in moments like these, and -without the backing of some kind of force- they work far less often than we try to convince ourselves. People have to reassess where their collective power lies, then use concerted action to disrupt the machine, simultaneously recognized that working class identity and solidarity areformed through struggle.

So -with this and much more- we are called to break the law, just as they do. But we don’t have the power to engage in massive financial fraud or corruption, bribe officials, rig elections and economies, and declare ourselves immune from our own legal systems. We don’t even really have the vote in a system this disenfranchising and oligarchic (although this is not a call against voting). All we have is our bodies, our voices, our collective strength and -more than anything- our ability to not comply. This means resisting, this means boycotting, this means striking, this means occupying spaces. These are the things that caused capital to quake in its boots historically, and these are the tools we must use in the coming weeks, months and years if we are to prevent the last vestiges of our functioning Democracy from being stolen and not given back for a long, long time. History shows that mass mobilization strategies can and do work. And while they are almost assuredly to be met with oppression, that state resistance if precisely a sign of their effectiveness. This requires organizers and demonstrators to be rational and strategic, but in no way should be a detriment to action.

So -I present to everyone who cares- the very serious proposal of using nonviolent physical resistance to prevent Republican Senators (and any moderate Democrats who may flip) from appointing Kavanaugh until after the election. This means hounding them at any and all public appearances. This means rolling strike teams occupying their offices in all of their home states. This means preventing them from getting from their DC apartment to their offices. This means a mass action of thousands of people willing to take arrest inside and in front of Congress in the last days leading up to the final Senate approval of Kavanaugh. This means middle class white people with privilege putting their bodies and safety on the lines to prevent them from appointing a judge who will further undermine the rights of workers, women, people of color and immigrants for a generation to come. It means when the time comes, literally occupying the Senate, fully acknowledging that the state response could be swift and violent, but that desperate times call for desperate measures. It is precisely and only this type of action that will truly undermine all aspects of Trumpism and set the stage for a new generation of an engaged, working class body politic in the United States.

In short, we should literally “Occupy the Senate,” then take them on in the other public spaces they have so violently co-opted. I personally live in Tacoma, Washington. But I will gladly make the trek to D.C. to join thousands of others in resisting if we are able to organize. We have very little time, but if we believe, then together we can make capital quake again and truly reinvigorate a movement against Trumpism.