Trump
protesters plan to build ‘tea party of the left’
Progressives to
go DINO hunting in bid to primary the party establishment.
The protests that have
roiled American cities since Election Day aren’t going anywhere. But
rather than Donald Trump, the first political casualties they claim
may be establishment Democrats.
Leaders of the groups
organizing some of the first outbursts of direct action in response
to Trump’s surprise election are making plans to take to the streets
through January’s inauguration and beyond. In frantic
behind-the-scenes phone calls, text messages and Slack chats,
they’re also planning to channel the energy unleashed last week into
electoral politics, starting with Democratic primaries, to build
what one organizer called a “tea party of the left.”
“Our big goal is to
support primary challenges against those Democrats who negotiate
with Donald Trump,” said the organizer, Waleed Shahid, a veteran of
Bernie Sanders’ campaign who is working for a group called AllofUs,
launched in September. The approach mimics that of the tea party,
which has used insurgent primary bids to unsettle establishment
Republicans and drive the Republican Party rightward.
“It gave people in the
Republican Party who are upset with the establishment an identity,”
Shaid said. “You could be a tea party Republican. We think there’s a
lot of power in that.”
Progressive groups are
planning to combine that tactic with direct actions like marches and
sit-ins to more seamlessly merge an anti-Trump protest movement with
electoral politicking.
Already, AllofUs —
which draws organizers from the environmental group 350.org and the
Occupy movement — has organized a candlelight vigil at the White
House on Saturday and a Monday sit-in at Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office
that resulted in 17 arrests. Another organizer for the group, Max
Berger, said it was in the process of planning additional
mobilizations over the next several months. And in recent days, the
group’s leaders have participated in informal talks with unions and
other standard-bearers of the progressive left about orienting their
efforts toward Democratic primary challenges while maintaining
protests.
Among the groups eyeing
a stepped-up role in primaries are 350.org’s political action wing
and National Nurses United, which backs Rep. Keith Ellison’s bid for
chairman of the Democratic National Committee and is convening its
board this week in Washington, where its members will participate in
a Thursday afternoon rally with Sanders on the Capitol grounds.
“Time for faux progressives to get out of the way,” said the union’s
executive director, RoseAnn DeMoro. “Change is the only thing that
will save that party.”
Those plans represent a
dramatic shift in strategy for the anti-establishment left, which
responded to the last major shock to the world system, the financial
crisis of 2007 and 2008, with Occupy, a protest movement
disconnected from electoral politics. While Occupy brought the issue
of growing inequality to the forefront of the national conversation,
the movement faded when its physical encampments were disbanded.
That shortcoming has
been at the top of progressive leaders’ minds this week.
“American activists are
finally starting to understand that protest is broken,” wrote Micah
White, an architect of Occupy Wall Street, in an email. “The people
cannot attain sovereignty over their governments by collective
protest in the streets. There are only two ways to achieve
sovereignty in this world: Win elections or win wars. Now that
street protest is not an option, we will see the Trump resistance
split into these two fronts. Some will pursue the strategy of using
social movements to elections while others go down the dark path of
'70s guerrilla insurrection. I advocate winning elections.”
But the left is not
abandoning protests, which have already gotten under Trump’s skin,
prompting an irritated Thursday night
tweet from the president-elect and
a conciliatory Friday morning
walk-back. Instead, mass displays
of dissent — already a distinguishing feature of Trump’s campaign —
are shaping up to become a permanent fixture of the Trump-era
landscape.
On Saturday, White
posted a memo from a newly formed group calling itself Roosevelt’s
Army on the front page of
OccupyWallSt.org calling for the
occupation of the National Mall during Trump’s inauguration along
with “Non-violent disruptions of inaugural events and gatherings,
including banner reveals, flash mobs, and simply standing as one
people in solidarity for the freedoms of all Americans.”
A representative of
Roosevelt’s Army, whose leaders prefer to remain anonymous, said the
group would combine such tactics with electoral politicking. “We
differ from the Occupy folks in that we are slightly more
politically involved,” he said. “There’s a lot that protest
movements can learn from election campaigns and vice versa.”
In addition to new
groups like AllofUs and Roosevelt’s Army, established groups on the
insurgent left are scrambling to adjust their approach in response
to Trump’s election.
One Black Lives Matter
leader said he had spent the past week on “endless calls” with other
progressive leaders pondering how to turn the movement into one that
goes “beyond the protests.”
“Nobody has ever pulled
off organizing at scale outside of an election,” he said.
One question that
remains is whether such organizing will occur under a single
anti-Trump banner or through the loose ad hoc coordination of
progressive groups.
Representatives of both
AllofUs and Roosevelt’s Army suggested their groups could be the
banner around which the Trump resistance rallies.
But the prospect of
unifying disparate opposition groups under a single command
structure remains a daunting one. And Ben Wikler, a representative
of the liberal group MoveOn, whose members organized protests on the
Wednesday following Trump’s election, predicted the resistance will
remain fragmented.
“There will be massive
both organized and disorganized opposition to Trump’s extremist
agenda,” he said. “And there won’t be an epicenter.”
from Politico
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