5 Easy Ways to Resist Donald Trump & the Republicans in 2018

The election on November 8, 2016 left our world and us reeling with the consequences of electing Donald Trump as president and empowering his cronies. While these are certainly difficult and trying times we find ourselves in, there are incredibly powerful things that you can do to have your voice heard and defend the causes you care about as the Trump administration rages (chaotically) on.

How to resist Trump and the Republicans

When Trump was campaigning, he said things that were all over the ideological map and it was difficult to see how he’d actually govern as president. Today, it has never been clearer. Donald Trump has completely hijacked the Republican party, and control of all three branches of government, (judicial, legislative, and executive) are under conservative control. While we cannot choose which judges we want to be part of the judicial branch of government, Trump can. He has the power to nominate conservative judges for lifetime appointments and has already nominated dozens of judges, including Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Their rulings will impact generations and last for decades.

Republicans in Congress have had ample opportunities to push back on the Trump administration’s terrible decisions, but instead, have hitched their cart to his wagon and are all in on the Trump Train. Gone are the days when we could hope that a sane, rational legislative body would reject openly racist and cruel overtures. If we want to stop the onslaught from Trump and the Republicans, we need to vote them out as soon as we can in every election that happens. Let’s make our voices heard.

With every new controversy and disgusting policy that his administration rolls out, we don’t need to just sit and feel useless, there is a way forward. Here’s a list of 5 of the best things you can do right now to stand up for what you care about, sorted in descending order from most effort to least effort.

5) Run for Congress

As Gandhi famously said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It’s never been easier than it is now to build a following and run for elected office. In the recent past, Democrats didn’t even contest many congressional districts at the both the federal and state level, giving Republicans an easy path to victory. Well, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take and now that Democrats are competing all over the map, they’ve been vastly over-performing relative to their benchmark performances in the 2016 election. More people than ever are not only throwing their hat in the ring, but are winning races. Just look to the elections in 2017 where 50% of first-time candidates won! Republicans and conservatism are unpopular right now, it’s a good time to be on the right side of history.

If you’re at all interested in running for political office, you’ll want to do the following:

• Check filing requirements: Each state has different filing deadlines for becoming a candidate as well as other intricacies that are crucial to making sure that your candidacy is valid.
• Raise money: You can never have enough. Money allows you to conduct better and more research, perform more testing, bring on more people, and get your message heard. It also can work as a psychological tool for dissuading other potential candidates from entering a race or giving someone the hope that he or she could compete against better-funded competitors.
• Build your team: Between message testing, social media outreach, focus groups, scheduling and everything else, the team behind you is invaluable to crossing the finish line victoriously. No one does it alone. Start small and expand, but know that you will need help, so start prospecting for volunteers or employees.
• Speak with Run For Something: Founded on Trump’s inauguration day in 2017, Run for Something was founded with the simple idea of recruiting and supporting progressive candidates in elections at all levels of government. For too long, Democrats have ceded races to Republicans without so much as even contesting a district. No more, Democrats are competing in more and more races, putting Republicans on the defensive.

4) Support those who are running

Not ready to jump into the deep end and run for office? Not a problem, that’s a big commitment. However, behind every successful campaign is an army of dedicated volunteers who are out on the ground calling phones and knocking on doors. There’s no substitute for speaking to someone and letting them know how things actually are and why he or she should support your candidate.

Get out the vote (GOTV) campaigns since Trump’s election have been vital in turning the tide against Republicans at the ballot box and helping Democrats achieve huge wins all across the country, but especially in New Jersey, Virginia, Alabama and most recently in deep red areas of Pennsylvania.

Here’s how you can help:

Organizations like Flippable and #KnockEveryDoor have tremendous resources for recruiting, connecting, and training people to canvass across the country and have conversations with people about generating the progressive change our country so desperately needs.

As coordinating a canvassing effort can be a complicated endeavor, #KnockEveryDoor is working to pilot a lightweight training program to teach new volunteers and have volunteers be in communication with each other to have maximum success. This effort was originally founded out of members of Bernie Sanders’ team, but has grown to include volunteers from the Clinton campaign, local community groups, SwingLeft and some state Democratic parties. Flippable on the other hand, has been one of the leading organizations of the resistance helping to generate voter enthusiasm on the left.

3) Protect voter rights

Conservatives everywhere know that they have a serious, serious numbers problem. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election by almost 3 MILLION votes, and that was before the massive backlash against this Republican-led government really began. In the past, Republicans could win in races when Democrats and liberals didn’t turn out, either for reasons of voter suppression or voter disinterest.

There is no excuse for voter disinterest, if you’re unhappy with the current state of politics, it’s your duty to get up and go vote. But this whole concept only works if everything functions as it should and everyone can actually go vote. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case as Republican-led legislatures across the country have done everything in their power to entrench their politicians in gerrymandered districts to dilute Democratic voting preferences as well as suppress the vote of typical liberal voters including those that are: of color, low-income, elderly, and young. Taking steps to ensure that every lawful voter has the opportunity express their voice at the ballot box not only is the constitutionally correct thing to do, but will help Democrats win in November 2018.

Here’s how you can help:

Groups like Let America Vote are dedicated towards defending voter rights and have produced lots of documentation and tips for how to help. You can:

• Write to your elected officials
• Write letters to editor of your local newspaper
• Canvass, perform outreach, and knock on doors to spread awareness
• Donate to groups such as Let America Vote and the ACLU to defend voters’ rights in court

2) Communicate with your elected officials

There’s nothing that scares a politician more (and rightly so) than losing the support of their constituents. Politicians do what they can to please those who voted them in, so if you’re unhappy with the position your elected official is taking, or want him or her to maintain a position, make sure they know.

There are many ways to possibly communicate with your elected officials, but unsurprisingly some are more effective than others. Let’s begin with some of the more ineffective means of speaking with your elected officials:

• Tweeting
• Facebook messages
• Thoughts and prayers

Now, let’s get to the more effective ways of communicating with your elected officials:

• Phone calls to your representatives’ offices
• Use Resistbot to transmit your messages to your representatives
• Sending emails
• Going to local town halls and asking questions
• Engaging with your representatives at public events

Here’s how you can help:

At the end of the day, political engagement is deeply personal. Some people are willing to stand in the rain and have doors slammed in their face in order to convince one person to vote for their preferred candidate or issue, while others are only comfortable liking a tweet; only you can choose what works best for you.

Calling your elected officials and meeting with them face-to-face where possible are the most effective ways of conveying your feelings, but these aren’t always possible nor are they mutually exclusive from also tweeting, messaging, and/or emailing your representatives. The main point here is to alert your representative what your view point is and how you hope they will act, if they are to earn your vote again.

1) Donating to Democrats in swing races

Republicans currently are in charge of both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, in addition to the executive branch and numerous state legislatures. When the final votes were counted after the 2016 election Democrats had overseen a net loss of 1,042 seats at the state and federal level. While there have been some Democratic gains since the election in 2016, Republicans currently own 26 “trifectas” at the state level, which means they occupy the governorship and majorities in the state house and senate, while Democrats currently have 8. A split between Republicans, Democrats and Independents makes up the rest.

(source: www.govtech.com)

In order to reverse these losses and protect the issues we care about, we need to help elect Democrats up and down the ballot. To stop Donald Trump and the Republicans at the federal level, Democrats need to take back at least one house of Congress in 2018.

The problem is that most people aren’t aware of which races are in the most dire need of support or how they can even help out at all in the first place. GroundUp seeks to solve that problem. GroundUp is a grassroots fundraising platform that allows people to round up the change from their daily, cashless transactions (made on a credit or debit card) to the nearest dollar and contribute the difference to Democratic candidates in the most competitive swing districts across the country. For example, if you purchase a coffee for $2.70, GroundUp would round up $0.30 and donate it towards the candidates you want to support. Check out our explainer video here.

GroundUp uses data and advanced statistics to identify the most competitive races where Democrats have the best chance of flipping a Republican-held seat. It does not choose who gets supported based on ideological purity, but by the underlying trends of a district such as polling data, voting history, funding levels, and education levels. First, GroundUp selects the races in play and when a winner of the Democratic primary of each district is announced, we will deploy the funds to each Democratic candidate to help them defeat their Republican challenger.

GroundUp is one of the easiest and most effective ways to resist the Trump agenda because it:

• allows people to donate to Democrats in the races that need it the most, based on data, not opinion
• has widespread impact strengthening many campaigns, including ones that are relatively unknown, not only helping a few candidates with tons of name recognition
• requires no recurring effort on a user’s behalf. Sign up once and go about living your life, #treatyourself
• is affordable! Trying to fund 30 swing state candidates with a $25 donation each month is $750! With micro-donations spread between various candidates, your impact is felt in a way that doesn’t break your piggy bank

Interested to find out more and sign up? Visit our website for more information. Do you have other tips for how to resist in the age of Trump and the Republicans? Please share tips below or feel free to reach out to us on social media (@GroundUpChange) or via email (info@groundup.net).

Happy resisting! It’s always a good time fight for what’s right.