The Skills We Need
Donald Trump has major skills that are useful if you want to build a harsher world, in which the strongest exact more from the weakest. Many people who have been poorly treated in life think that is in fact the world we live in.
That’s not the world I want. It’s not even the world I see. The world I see is already dependent on the ethical acts of innumerable people. We need to build on that. I want a much more cooperative world in which, together, we build the power we need to tackle our vast problems. I want a partnership society, not a domination one [1].
But do I and people like me—left-leaning, middle-class—have the skills we need to counter the dominators? I know I don’t.
LOCAL GROUP IS KEY
In the week after Trump’s Inauguration, my wife and I went to a local meeting of a group called Indivisible. Formed during Trump’s first presidency, it is dedicated to opposing his rule and his priorities. They have put out a guide for action. It states that “leadership in this moment must come from regular people, not just politicians.” I joined a new small group. “Your local group is the basis for everything else you can hope to achieve in this period,” per the guide. We met a week later and discovered that, however smart the Indivisible leaders may be, in our group we were total amateurs. But we were desperate to do something.
A lot of progressives like me have been skeptical of American democracy. For decades we have ruefully said to each other, “We have the best democracy money can buy.” But when it’s under attack, that’s a quite different matter. Trump is boldly trying to gut the power of Congress and is opening the doors to all manner of corruption. If you are not clear why so many of us are terrified, please read Margaret Smith’s excellent review of Trump 2.0 so far, on this site.
If we are very bold ourselves, we can imagine that Trump’s utter disruption will fail, his rabble-rousing skills and authoritarian ambitions outpacing his governing skills and grasp of real-world economics.
If his support collapses, moderates and progressives may be able to build a better America—if we have the skills to do it. We could use an improved Constitution that puts Congress back in charge as the Founders intended, without fostering extreme partisanship as it has for decades now. We know we need a clear pathway to citizenship for all the hard-working, tax-paying, law-abiding, family-favoring immigrants who have been denied it for so many decades. A majority of us want a path towards sanity on climate. In time, America might even begin to grapple with the ongoing toxic effects of genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow: including the toxic effects on white Americans.
“WHAT CAN I DO?”
But that’s a dream. What I want to know is what I and others like me can do now. In the past I have joined demonstrations large and small, I have canvassed, advocated, written letters, the usual things. I want to do more now.
Being the studious type, beyond Indivisible’s guide, I am reading books like How We Win by veteran US activist George Lakey, and websites like Beautiful Trouble with its splendid list of tactics that have worked to bring down authoritarian regimes. I am inspired by a book in which two political scientists compared the success rates of 323 violent and nonviolent campaigns in the last century, and demonstrated that “only 26% of violent revolutions were successful, whereas 53% of nonviolent campaigns were successful.” We have a chance and nonviolence is the way to go.
DIFFERENT MODES
I am also revisiting a training my friend and colleague Sonya Shah, founder and co-director of the Ahimsa Collective, enabled me to attend at the Ayni Institute. Ayni has the best vision of social change I know of. All too often, wannabe world-changers believe their mode of doing it is the best or only way to go. Ayni has identified five major modes. They argue that all of them need to work together for the best results [2]. Only three of those modes involve directly engaging with the power structures of our world:
Inside Game: work within the existing institutions of government
Structure Organizing: build power bases, like trade unions, outside the major governing structures, that can wield influence on them.
Mass Protest: mobilize demonstrations or noncooperation.
Personal Transformation: of many kinds, spiritual, therapeutic, etc.
Alternatives that “prefigure” how society could be: like a communal, organic farm, or a worker’s co-operative.
Modes 4 and 5 are often disparaged by hard-core politicos, but not by Ayni. I have spent most of my life in those modes. The Ahimsa Collective, my home for the last few years, is all about alternatives and personal transformation, though with a sideline in efforts to change state law. Hence my floundering around when it comes to organizing a social movement adequate for countering Trump.
Hopefully, I’ll let you know what skills I learn, as my group gets under way.
*
[1] Thanks to sociologist Riane Eisler for classifying societies on a spectrum from domination to partnership.
[2] There’s an excellent introduction to Ayni’s “social movement ecology” in terms of responding to Trump here.
