What’s the next step for the resistance?

It’s called noncooperation. Read on.

Anti-Trump protests continue apace, but I think a lot of us are asking the same questions: What next? How do we take things to another level? Because protest alone doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

As it happens, an answer to those questions began to emerge in a widely-attended Zoom call hosted by Indivisible last week and now available as a recording on YouTube.

The occasion was the kick off of Indivisible’s “One Million Rising” campaign, a national effort to train one million people “in the strategic logic and practice of noncooperation, as well as the basics of community organizing and campaign design.”

So far, the numbers are impressive. Organizers said that more than 150,000 people have signed up to take part. The Zoom call was maxed out at 20,000, with overflow crowds watching it on YouTube and MeidasTouch.

But what exactly is this “noncooperation” of which Indivisible speaks?

Listen to veteran progressive activist Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson explain. (It starts here on the video.)

“I assume that many of us signed up for this training tonight… because we want to figure out what we can do in addition to hitting the streets with our signs,” she began.

Then she provided some examples of noncooperation:

• “Maybe… we decide to boycott corporations that are building wealth for billionaires who harm our community and buy elections for folks like Donald Trump and his minions.”

• “Maybe we build the infrastructure to support those boycotts and hold them long term.”

• [For teenagers:] “Maybe you walk out in defiance of the terrible things that they are doing to you and to your teachers.”

• “Maybe we all call in sick to work on the same day.”

• “Maybe we make our social and faith spaces sanctuaries for marginalized and targeted people like undocumented folks or queer and trans people… Maybe we use those spaces to build support for our neighbors in need.”

• “Maybe we make it socially and politically toxic for billionaire broligarchs to be in proximity to the services that we need.”

• “Maybe faith communities pressure the sheriffs in their communities to not cooperate with ICE.”

And as she spoke, organizers shared a slide showing different kinds of noncooperation:

Social noncooperation:

• Military doing the least possible to give Trump a triumphant parade

• Local neighborhoods offering sanctuary for immigrants or activists

• Businesses putting up signs supporting “no Kings” or “No ICE”

Political noncooperation:

• School districts refusing to purge acts and values of diversity, equity, and inclusion

• Pressuring local governments (or businesses, like hotels) to not provide services to agencies involved in political repression

• Giving encouragement for civil servants who are refusing to carry out illegal, wrong orders

Economic noncooperation:

• Boycott of Target and Dollar General

• Avelo Boycott

• Tesla Takedown

• T-Mobile Boycott

Notably left out of both lists is the idea of some sort of general strike. But I think that’s where the embrace of noncooperation ultimately leads.

The call’s organizers asked participants to make a pledge to hold “community resistance gatherings” later this summer, where they would invite 10 other people they know “to build the strategy, skills, and people power it will take to stop Trump and his enablers from seizing more power.” They offered a toolkit.

That’s how Indivisible plans to get to a million: with 100,000 people hosting gatherings of 10 people each.

By the end of last week’s call, 5,000 people had made that pledge.

Will you? And what do you think about noncooperation? Is it for you? What are you ready to do? What do you think of Henderson’s examples? Please share your thoughts in comments.

The next two calls in the Indivisible series are on July 30 and August 13.

MoveOn Is Moving Onward, Too

MoveOn is launching a national “Won’t Back Down” tour to “hold Republicans’ feet to the fire for backing Donald Trump’s despicable, anti-American, pro-billionaire agenda!”

The goal is to “be in the hearts of swing districts currently held by Republican members of Congress, so we can expose their cruel records of ripping away health care from their own constituents. “

Speakers will include Sens. Chris Murphy and Elizabeth Warren and Reps. Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, and Yassamin Ansari. The first two events are in Phoenix and Omaha.

Making Good Trouble

Attendance at “Good Trouble Lives On,” the national day of action last Thursday in honor of the late civil rights hero John Lewis, was in the tens of thousands -- not millions like the “Hands Off” and “No Kings” weekend protests. But the events were seemingly everywhere – in over 1,300 cities and towns. And the spirit was strong.

The flagship rally was in Chicago. “There are times when we have to march forward, even when it’s difficult, even when the risks are real,” Mayor Brandon Johnson told the crowd, the Chicago Tribune reported. “Let me tell you that time is now. Tonight, we follow in the footsteps of making good trouble. Trouble that will engender confidence across this country that ‘liberty and justice for all’ is not just a tagline.”

Here’s some video of the Chicago speakers. “We are here today because the world needs to know that when it comes to righteousness, when it comes to protecting our neighbors, when it comes to making sure that everybody in this country is able to eat, to be housed, to live, that we will stand up,” said Barbara Arnwine, president of the Transformative Justice Coalition. “And when the next election is held, you’re going to see the voice of the people, you’re going to hear the voice of the people. We’re not going to stand for this. No autocrats. No wannabe dictators. It’s time for us to make sure that, as John Lewis said, that we redeem the soul of America.”

Atlanta was another protest hotspot. “The things [Lewis] gave his life for are under attack and being eroded away,” said the Rev. Jay Augustine, the pastor of Big Bethel AME church.

Augustine explained: “In the last few months we have done everything we can to erode inclusiveness by vilifying DEI, by vilifying CRT [Critical Race Theory] and by pushing those who otherwise should be our neighbors to foreign countries and locking them up in the name of a farce called immigration reform.”

By contrast, Augustine said, “John Lewis dedicated his life to inclusiveness, so people who were pushed out into the margins could have a place…. We’ve got to get into some good trouble to make sure that legacy is preserved for generations to come.”

There were protests and rallies in more than 100 cities across California alone, the USA Today Network in California reported.

"We're seeing our freeways in our communities with military vehicles, ICE raids in cities, sanctuary cities being targeted across the desert, families being torn apart, children being left behind, people being too terrified to leave their homes,” civil rights attorney Anyse Smith said at a rally in the Coachella Valley.

Then she asked: “What will your good trouble look like? Will you speak up at the workplace? Will you stand with your neighbors when masked bounty hunters come to take them? What about when you're at your favorite restaurant and they're taking people — will you speak up? Will you stand with our community members? Will you show up at school board meetings, at city council meetings and at the ballot box?"

Rilla Askew, 74, was among those protesting in Oklahoma City. She told The Oklahoman: "There are no checks and balances. And if you ever study where authoritarian regimes have taken over, they're just following the playbook, word for word. And that is different than the 1960s, and it's different than anything that we've ever experienced, and that's why it's so terrifying. I think the window of opportunity for us to change that, through nonviolent civil disobedience and resistance, is fairly short, and so that's why these types of demonstrations and the support that we get are so important."

In Phoenix, AZCentral reported, Donna Roscoe, a 26-year-old PhD student in biomedical engineering, held a sign that read “stop turning me into a mad scientist.”

In Palm Beach (see photos and video) marchers carried a coffin representing the death of democracy. Police stopped them before they could cross a bridge to Mar-a-Lago. Protesters also engaged in some shouting matches with a handful of Trump supporters, according to the Palm Beach Post.

Several hundred gathered in Annapolis, where civil rights activist Carl Snowden was among the speakers, Maryland Matters reported. “You’re part of what John Lewis had once dreamed of: A multiracial group of people who understand that America at its best is America that’s diverse,” he said. “America is at a crossroads. But for some people who are pessimistic, I want to tell you, this is not the time for pessimism. This is not the time for apathy. This is a time for action.”

WPLN interviewed 15-year-old Isla Baquero, one of about 70 people gathered at a rally in deep-red Hendersonville, Tennessee. “If I just sat around and did nothing and let the people in power do whatever they want, I don’t think I could live with that,” she said. “So I feel like I need to be out here and say what I believe in.”

Hundreds attended marches and protests in Columbus, Ohio, Omaha, Nebraska, Morris Township, N.J., Louisville, Kentucky, Greenville, S.C., Elgin, Illinois, and Troy, Michigan. A church in Fenton, Michigan, held a teach-in.

USA Today put together photos from rallies in Washington, D.C., Phoenix, Lansing, Mich., Stockton, Calif., Louisville, Oklahoma City, Chevy Chase, Md., Mount Kisco, N.Y., Portsmouth, Maine, New Bedford, N.J., Indianapolis, New York City, Houston, and Huntington Beach, Calif.

Getty Images has photos from Houston, Palm Beach, Los Angeles, and New York.

Stopping ICE

The Washington Post published an article about the online activists trying to stop ICE from making arrests. The article says StopICE.net, has over 470,000 subscribers nationwide.

Rolling Stone reports on a San Diego group that patrols neighborhoods watching for ICE activity, and has become “something of a model for other similarly inclined groups around the country.”

The magazine explains: “Many lean socialist or focus on workers’ rights. Their efforts, largely unconnected to the apparatus of the Democratic Party or mainstream progressive organizations, have formed the backbone of the public response to the shocking sight of masked government agents snatching people off American streets in broad daylight.”

The Week in Lawsuits

• Twenty Democratic states sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency for terminating a long-running grant program that helps communities guard against damage from natural disasters.

• A U.S.-based juice company is suing to stop the imposition of 50 percent tariffs on orange juice imports from Brazil, arguing that there is no emergency sufficient to give Trump the power to do so.

• The California High-Speed Rail Authority is suing the administration for terminating grant funding for the California high-speed rail program.

• A federal judge granted Protect Democracy and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington a permanent injunction in their cases against the Office of Management and Budget, ordering OMB to restore public access to information showing how it actually directs agencies to spend taxpayer money.

• A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking the termination of a program that provides legal counsel for those in immigration proceedings who are found mentally incompetent.

• A federal judge ordered the administration to reinstate former Federal Trade Commission commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, finding that her firing violated the commission’s founding documents. But the judge stayed the order pending appeal. (This one is likely to go to the Supreme Court.)

• Back on June 13, a federal judge blocked the government from halting grants to programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion or acknowledge the existence of transgender people. Lambda Legal announced last week that $6.2 million in funding to LGBTQ+ and HIV organizations has now been restored.

• A small trickle of refugees (other than white South Africans) has resumed thanks to a July 14 court order.

Odds and Ends

• More than two weeks after the Trump regime inexplicably announced it was withholding $6.8 billion in education funding, it announced it was releasing part of the money – about $1.4 billion earmarked for summer and after-school programs. A coalition of 22 Democratic attorneys general and two Democratic governors has sued to get the full amount.

• Hundreds of current NASA employees and thousands of their former colleagues signed a public letter deploring the deep budget cuts sought by the Trump administration. “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety, scientific advancement and efficient use of public resources,” the letter said.

• Over at the National Science Foundation, 149 current employees signed a letter raising “deep concern over a series of politically motivated and legally questionable actions by the Administration that threaten the integrity of the NSF and undermine the civil service protections guaranteed under federal law.” All but one of them signed anonymously out of fear of retaliation.

• Protect Democracy’s Ben Raderstorf gives some thought to how the Justice Department can regain trust after Trump – if it can.

• Police in Scotland are “bracing for large-scale protests” during Trump’s visit there, which starts on Friday.

• The Washington Post wrote about how some fired federal workers are bringing their children to Capitol Hill once a week over the summer, to “both introduce their kids to the democratic process and provide those in power with an opportunity to learn about the ripple effects of the slash-and-burn cuts.”

• Labor and other groups are holding “Families First” protests around the nation on July 26. “Americans in every corner of the country will rally together to make one thing clear: Our families come first—not billionaires, not corrupt politicians, and not authoritarians.” Sign up here. A 60-hour vigil to honor the 60^th anniversary of Medicaid and Medicare begins tonight at 9 p.m. on the National Mall.

• This afternoon at 3 p.m., the Progressive Change Campaign Committee will lead a solidarity rally at the New York studio of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” followed by a delivery of over 130,000 petition signatures to the CBS/Paramount headquarters.