14 Ways to Fight Trump
The #Earth2Trump Resistance Guide
As the Center for Biological Diversity took our #Earth2Trump resistance roadshow across the country, we heard this many times: “What can I do to stop Trump?”
Our roadshow speakers and performers, people we met along the way and Center staff — who’ve been in the resistance business for more than 25 years — offered some great answers. Now that the tour’s over and we’ve had a chance to unpack our bags, we’ve compiled some of those answers into this #Earth2Trump Resistance Guide.
But let’s start with a simple recipe for sustained personal resistance during this stressful era: Commit to it, allow yourself breaks, and select the resistance methods that play to your strengths.
Committing to resistance means making a promise to yourself do the work for a sustained period of time.
Allowing yourself breaks means that it’s not just OK, but also necessary, to take a step away from resistance sometimes to work, rest and energize.
Selecting the resistance methods that work best for you allows you to maximize your impact and helps prevent you from getting overwhelmed by options. This approach is based in an understanding that you can’t do it alone, and that you’re not alone. “Individually we’re like fingers, easily broken,” said Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a speaker at our Chicago #Earth2Trump event. “But together, we’re like a fist.”
We’ll each resist according to our resources, abilities, talents and skills. So take a look at all these resistance methods and choose the ones that work best for you:
- Know the phone numbers of your representatives and use them regularly. You have one congressional representative and two U.S. senators, and each has at least two phone numbers for offices in D.C. and in their districts. Find your elected officials and their contact information here. Although any form of communication with your elected officials is good, calling them makes the biggest impact.
2. Attend demonstrations and protests. Our bodies in the streets can and do bring about change. Before you go check out this great how-to on making protest signs and banners by artist Roger Peet of Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and this graphic about staying safe at protests.
3. Attend rallies. Political rallies are gatherings centered on speakers and performers; their function is to teach, connect and inspire. At rallies you’ll meet like-minded people and learn about your cause, local organizations and resources, and resistance methods.
4. Become an online activist. If you’re not able to get onto the streets or don’t feel comfortable there, you can also be active online by signing petitions, writing letters and phonebanking from your home on behalf of organizations. If you’re not already an online activist for the Center for Biological Diversity, sign up here to receive our action alerts and check out our Trump Action Toolkit.
5. Donate to national nonprofits that work on behalf of the people and values that will suffer the most under Trump. We have many options because there’s an alarmingly long list: people of color, immigrants, women, LGTBQ communities, non-Christians, the poor and the sick, reproductive rights, the environment, climate, wildlife, public lands, the arts, free speech and the media. Consider donating to the Center for Biological Diversity, which supports wildlife and wild places and has issued a 100-Day Trump Action Plan.
6. Donate to local nonprofits as the best way to protect the most vulnerable within your community. These organizations include but are not limited to food banks, domestic violence shelters, immigrant and refugee support organizations, civil rights organizations, LGBTQ alliances and arts centers.
7. Get involved in local politics. Get to know local officials and communicate with them. Volunteer for get-out-the vote efforts. Campaign for and otherwise support the candidates you believe in — and consider running for office yourself.
8. Share and learn on social media. Successful resistance cannot take place on social media alone, but social media is powerful, potentially transformative place to learn and teach. Use the hashtag #Earth2Trump and make your views known to your online community.
9. Support journalists and public-interest journalism. If you don’t already subscribe to the publications that you believe are doing courageous, necessary work, now is the time to pony up. Many freelance journalists and writers are set up to receive donations; you can also consider supporting their work, which we need now more than ever.
10. Seek out alternative and independent media. If you’ve been relying on mainstream media for your news, diversify your information sources by seeking out smaller, independent and specialized media sources. Recommended: the new 451 resistance podcast. And follow your favorite reporters on Twitter to find out which stories and writers they’re reading.
11. Vote with your dollars. Through the #GrabYourWallet campaign, you can contact businesses that carry Donald and Ivanka Trump products and ask them to stop supporting the Trump family. At the #GrabYourWallet website you can also find out which businesses have stopped carrying Trump products; consider supporting those businesses as well as others that have taken a strong, clear stand against Trump’s agenda.
12. Work with Sleeping Giants to direct advertising dollars away from Breitbart. The hate-mongering, false news stories–disseminating Breitbart website is one of the online homes of white nationalism. Sleeping Giants on Twitter at @slpng_giants helps online activists petition advertisers to remove their ads (and financial support) from Breitbart. It’s easy to participate in the Sleeping Giants campaign, which by January 2017 had successfully helped over 750 advertisers leave Breitbart.
13. Divest from economies that fund the corporations and practices you do not support. This moment of free-fall and chaos is an opportune time to recommit to your values and express them through action. Does factory farming appall you? Purchase at least a portion of your food from farmer’s markets, CSAs, and food co-ops instead of chain grocery stores. Do you want to see the U.S. significantly reduce its use of fossil fuels? Many large banks fund pipeline projects, so if you have money in a bank like Wells Fargo or Citibank, consider moving it to a credit union. The Defund DAPL campaign has a lot of resources and has achieved some concrete goals in its effort to block funding for the Dakota Access Pipeline.
14. Remind yourself of how much you’re doing by noting your resistance actions on a calendar. Many people who are resisting feel like they’re not doing enough. One way to take a more objective view of the work you’re doing is to track it. Every time you take a resistance action (donate, protest, call, write a letter, etc.), mark it on your calendar. Seeing a record of your actions may help you take a more positive view of the great work you’re doing.
The truth is that resisting Trump will be a long, hard fight. But what’s also true: no matter how dark the road looks, we must resist: for ourselves, our children, and in memory and honor of all those who fought for this country before us. Resisting Trump will take all of us working on every front. But together — in the words of Carlos Ramirez-Rosa — we can be a fist.
This article is part of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Flotsam series of lists. Send us your ideas for Flotsam at flotsam@biologicaldiversity.org.
