Rise up!

On our feet and in the streets

I’ve got my sights fixed on Saturday April 5 and the “Hands Off” march. This world-wide demonstration needs to show our elected leaders how many of us protest what Trump is doing to our government. Congress, our former allies, Putin, and the whole wide world needs to see on their evening news seas and seas of people, on their feet and in the streets, in city after city after village after town.

Friends, we’re three months into the Trump regime. People are asking me, “but what can I DO?” This Saturday you should find a march in your area, get yourself there, and be one of the mighty many. It is, I expect, the first of many nation-wide (or world-wide) marches to protest what Donald Trump is doing to America, including giving Elon Musk carte blanche to go through our federal government with a chainsaw. The people we’re leaning on aren’t Donald Trump and Elon Musk per se. We’re showing our congressional leaders that we are legion and we expect them to make this plunder and destruction stop.

How things work

We are sitting in the midst of a constitutional crisis in which Donald Trump could and should have been impeached for any one of the myriad unconstitutional and illegal actions committed in his first three months in office. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), who led Trump’s 2019 impeachment, stated Trump committed “dozens of impeachable offenses” within his first 30 days alone.

The fact that this is not what’s happening is smoking gun proof that our Congress is not functioning correctly.

Congress holds the responsibility for keeping the executive branch in check. Our outrage may be focused on Donald Trump, but the actual breakdown is with the legislative branch. Congress is more or less stalled because of the MAGA takedown of the Republican Party and because the Democrats are not filling the vacuum with a vision everyone understands and coherent plans of action. You can blame this Republican MAGA takedown and Democratic hapless nothingness on the logical consequence of money in politics. You can chalk up the money in politics to a societal inequality that is almost to wide to manage.

Before any of that can be taken on and corrected, we must first get out of existential danger, which means stopping Trump, MAGA, Musk, and sundry billionaires from tilting our government so that it gives them more power and resources than the rest of us.

This is where you and I come in. Congress people of all party persuasions need us to LOUDLY DEMAND that they do their jobs. Congresscritters aren’t known for their courage. For them to butch up and lead as they are supposed to, they need to see us in the streets by the hundreds of thousands. We have to show them that the whole country has their back if they do the right things — and will torpedo their re-election chances if they don’t.

We are dealing with lagging — not leading — indicators. We can see evidence of a pro-democracy movement rising up, but it does not become immediately apparent. There is a fairly lengthy lag between when we shout “RISE UP!” and when we see the rise beginning. Here are some of lagging indicators that support my hypothesis:

• All 277 Tesla dealerships and service centers in the United States has seen anti-Musk protests on their doorsteps. Suddenly Tesla’s sales and stock numbers are tanking.

• Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election was won by the Democrat despite Elon Musk’s attempts to buy the election for the MAGA candidate.

• The Florida special election for the two House seats vacated by Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz showed Democrats tightening Republicans’ margins of victory. In the 1st District, Republican Jimmy Patronis won by ~15 points, a 17-point drop from Matt Gaetz’s 32-point victory in November. In the 6th District, Randy Fine’s 14-point margin was roughly half of Mike Waltz’s 33-point win in 2024.

If we can get big enough and loud enough, we can move the needle by pushing Congress in the right direction.

Antidotes for high anxiety

First off, in the “Accepting The Things We Cannot Change” Department:

• No single action is going to stop Trump’s agenda and followers. It will take many actions, sustained over time.

• There will be many times when we feel lost and confused.

That reminds me of a story. In 1974 when they opened the World Expo in Spokane, I sang in a thousand voice choir. It turned out to be really tricky. The way sound travels (or doesn’t, as the case may be), you heard a sort of cacophony of one side of the choir being a little ahead of you and the other half being a little behind. In order to survive the thousand voice choir you had to know your part and sing it, no matter what the sounds around you were. We pulled it off, but I thought it sounded a mess until I saw film of the choir singing together in perfect tone and time. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard.

• You’ll get through this political catastrophe with fewer scars and trauma if you know your part and sing it. This is an exercise in trusting the giant-sized group, knowing that if everyone keeps doing their own part, the effect we will have will be one of shock and awe, in a good trouble kind of way.

Concrete steps

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D - WA) is holding training sessions called “Resistance Labs.” These are training sessions on how to mount a non-violent resistance. It includes trainings on what to do if violence is aimed at you. There are also Resistance Labs emails with pointers of what you can literally DO.

If you’re struggling to translate these principles into specific actions, turn to Pramila Jayapal and follow her lead. Our congresscritters have heard our screams and are mobilizing. Congress needs us to help them rise to the moment. In return, we need Congress to show us the way so we know quite literally what to do. Rep. Jayapal describes Resistance Labs to Rachel Maddow here. If you haven’t seen this conversation, please sit down and watch it. It made me feel all kinds of better.

Go to Pramila Jayapal’s campaign site and see how you can get involved.

Remember

This march promises to be exhilarating. Most of us will come home with a euphoric high. When Sunday comes and nothing has changed, we might get deflated and depressed, thinking nothing we can ever do will ever make a difference.

Remember, this is a feeling — not a fact. One march — however big and broad — is like a pebble making ripples in the water. After we do this, we’ll do the next thing, and after that, the next. We will keep this up, full tilt boogie, until our democracy is out of danger.

I know it sounds simple, but it’s not a bit easy. To stand up, speak out, and keep coming back bigger and louder, it is imperative that you

Take care of yourself.

Take care of each other.

Take care of the place.

Remember, we’re trying to make America (and EARTH, for that matter) a hospitable place for democracy. While much of the talk is about how we fight, we also need to remember that compassion and empathy are vital ingredients of everything we do when we represent America.

Remember, we’re not putting things back the way they were before Trump trashed us. We’re changing the way this country operates. I am convinced that nothing short of that will save us.

Song of the Day

“People Get Ready” — The Impressions

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Keep on keepin’ on,

Cindy