It’s Time to Get Organized
Your Guide to the Resistance — Day 1 of Seven Days of Action
If I’ve learned anything from my Facebook feed this January, it’s that new year’s resolutions are dead. LAME! say most. Sad! say others. You can’t really mean it if you need an occasion like a calendar change to make up your mind to do something differently. And yet, this year we must resolve. We must resolve to do things differently. We must resolve to make 2017 and 2018 better than the last two years. We must resolve to get organized.
My grandmother Marjorie was born in 1911. She lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. At 27 years old, through a twist of fate and the misadventures of youth, she found herself on a first floor balcony watching Hitler and the Nazis goosestep into Austria. With help from some important friends, she and my grandfather gained passage back to the U.S. in 1939, just before the Allies declared war on Germany.
Upon her return, Marjorie took up her duties as a wartime wife and mother with gusto, until she woke up one morning to find her husband dead on the kitchen floor from a brain aneurysm. A mother of four in 1950, she had few options before her. But in the time I spent with my grandmother in the final years of her life, she taught me an important lesson:
When you don’t know what to do, it’s important to do something.
I have thought often of my grandmother over the past three months, as I have stood captivated by the wreckage that is the 2016 campaign and election, and the horrifying events that have followed it.
If you are reading this post, it probably means that you, like me, live in the echo chamber of progressive America. It probably takes everything you have in you lately not to leave your chin on the floor with horror and awe at the nonstop flow of horrible human waste flowing out of the pile of flaming garbage that is the Republican leadership of America.
But the time for rubber-necking and finger-pointing and hand-wringing is over. Yes, you are right to be horrified, and you should expect the horror and outrage to become the new normal for the next four years. You should not be surprised by the next horrible action being worse than the one before. For the first time in history, conservative Republicans hold all of America’s levers of power and governance simultaneously.
It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
But you and I, friend, must not be discouraged or distracted. The future of America (and even the world) depends on our resolve to make this year different. Over the next seven days, leading up to the election and the March on Washington, I’m offering up seven things you can do to make 2017, and the next four years, different.
#1 Stop Playing the Blame Game and Get Organized
There are so many things to blame for the state of America right now, it can be hard to keep track. Should we blame Vladimir Putin and his neo-Nazi cyber army? Or James Comey and his susceptibility to sadism/blackmail? We can blame white nationalism and voter ignorance and civic apathy and Fox News and Steve Bannon and Breitbart News and sexism and Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Shultz and the Democratic National Committee (and it’s IT department). We can blame John Podesta’s personal assistant and Crowdstrike and President Obama and the FBI and the CIA and Julian Assange, the American media and the internet, and a fucking email server. The truth is, all of these things are to blame. But, that’s all in the past now. Yes, many of these things are big problems we need to fix, to make sure they don’t come back to haunt us later. But we, friend, unlike some other people, are not in the business of denigrating the past. We are on a mission to build a bright future. And we should act accordingly.
So stop crying. No more whining. It’s time to get organized.
Getting organized is not easy, but it’s also not rocket science. It means doing five simple things really well every day. It means maintaining a ruthless focus on one main objective and never wavering in your commitment to do whatever it takes to see it through. Choose your objective — is it healthcare? Reproductive rights? Immigrant justice? Black lives? Political engagement? Choose one, write it on a piece of paper, and put it in your bedside table. Every night, before you go to sleep, ask yourself what you’ve done today to hold your ground. (Optional: wear a rubberband around your finger to remind you!) Create email lists, call people. Hold action meetings. Form a task force, or join one. Know who is on your team. This is the army you will go to war with. Choose them well.
If you’ve read my earlier post, you’ll know I’ve been wearing a rubber band around my finger for more than three months now. It’s a daily reminder of all the work we have to do, how organized, determined, and resolved we have to be to resist the regressive effects of the next administration. I think often of my grandmother Marjorie, the horrors she witnessed in the early days of the Nazi’s expansion in Europe, and the despair she must have felt finding her husband dead on the kitchen floor. We cannot let despair guide us. We must replace it with resolve. Resolve to do something. Now.
Today, I’m kicking off seven days of action, to help people like you and me get organized and make a plan for how we will stay strong in the face of the unknown tyranny that awaits us. If you are resolved to join the organized opposition, but don’t know what team you’re on yet, feel free to join mine. Sign up at this link to receive the next six days of action updates, and a weekly email with ideas and instructions for what you can do to help. If you haven’t, you should read this piece by Theda Skocpol on what we need to do to re-organize the Dem0cratic party — there’ll be a test on this later.
The future starts now. Who’s with me?
If you’re ready, keep reading Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, and Day 5!
