It’s hard to know where to start this week. ICE murdering VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti just yesterday morning? Or Davos, where Trump and other world leaders made clear in their speeches that the world order as we know it no longer exists? Or my own backyard, where a couple of days after I wrote about being a parent in this moment, several schools in Seattle sheltered in place because of rumored ICE raids? Or how about ICE kidnapping 4 children, including 5-year-old Liam Ramos, who was used as bait to capture other members of his family before transporting him to a Texas Detention Center. (Ramos and his father are documented and seeking asylum.)
The truth is, no matter where you start, it all comes back to the Trump Regime and MAGA’s agenda: destroy America as we know it, kill anyone who gets in the way, and build a fascist hellscape from the ashes. Everywhere you look, from your own backyard to the world around us, there are examples of the Trump Regime making life miserable for us all. Destroying every norm, every system, every protection Americans and much of the world have relied on in real time.
Here in America, ICE reigns as Trump and his enforcers have made it clear they view ICE’s power as limitless. This week, the AP reports that an internal memo “authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities.” The memo wasn’t widely shared, but has been used in training new officers. This is on top of Stephen Miller’s very public communication to ICE agents last week that they have full immunity and that the Trump Regime will not hold them accountable for violence they enact while on duty.
Several friends in Minnesota have described the situation on the ground to me in stark terms. I would characterize what I’m hearing as them viewing ICE as an occupying force. No one has used the phrase civil war to me in conversation, but as I listen to their stories and read the news — especially yesterday — it’s hard not to think in those terms. And if local conversations in other cities are anything like Seattle, where all the chatter online and off is about protecting our neighbors and our children from ICE, I think it’s fair to say that more and more of us are thinking in these same terms about the federal government that’s supposed to be protecting us. They are the occupiers.
It’s important to see clearly what we’re up against. Because you can’t fight an opponent effectively until you do. It’s just as important to recognize our levers of power and to organize to fight back. We’re not helpless, even if it feels that way. It’s not hopeless, even though the Trump Regime wants us to believe their agenda is inevitable. But we do need to scale our resistance and increase the pressure.
Here are five things we can do:
1. Keep pressuring your elected officials and others with influence. By now, you don’t need me to tell you that Congress and other institutions are failing to meet the moment. But we can’t win without more of these same institutions standing up to the Regime and refusing to obey in advance. They need to be more afraid of us than of Trump, and they need to understand the cost of collaborating with him. Our elected officials need to know that if they won’t hold the line, we’ll elect candidates who will. Corporations need to know that if they capitulate, we’ll spend our money (consumer and investment) elsewhere. Other institutions need to understand that silence and complicity aren’t an option, and we won’t continue to support organizations that do either.
2. Be in community with your networks and organize. No matter where you live or who you know, conversations are happening: in coffee shops, on Facebook groups, at school drop off, and in places of worship. Find your people, plug into local mutual aid and organizations. Join the conversation, be an ally, and help organize. Local networks of dedicated individuals can have an outsized impact. Look to Minneapolis to see how communities are rising up to help one another and to oppose the Trump Regime, if you don’t believe me.
3. Contribute financially to the fight. Movements need money, and the less of it that comes from institutional funders and billionaires, the better. Organizations and individuals are accountable to their donors, and the more they rely on grassroots donations, the more grassroots can pressure them to keep up the fight. I won’t tell you where to donate, but if you have the means, I encourage you to donate to mutual aid efforts, media outlets doing the work, organizations doing the work you support, and candidates and elected officials who are stepping up in the way we need them to (especially if they’re primarying elected officials who aren’t meeting the moment.) If you want to help Minnesota, here’s a vetted directory of places to donate. But you can also find need wherever you live.
4. Prepare yourself to scale up your resistance and shut it down. Right now, I don’t see America making it to the midterms, and I’m hardly alone in that view. We’re in the fight of our lives, and the playbook we’ve relied on to enact change isn’t going to cut it any longer. Elections and protests are part of the strategy, but they won’t be enough on their own. Friday’s general strike in Minnesota, which shut down the local economy, was a good starting point and something we can replicate elsewhere. We have to grow our coalition, and those of us who are able need to engage in more direct action and civil disobedience. The cost of opposing Trump will keep rising, and we have to be willing to put more skin in the game.
5. Envision a better future and believe in that vision. We deserve better than this, and personally I’m no longer interested in fighting to preserve things that are now gone. I want to build a better America than the one we live in now. A better America for my children and grandchildren. One of my personal resolutions for this year is to think ahead about what kind of society I want to help bring about. We can’t win if we don’t see a brighter future on the horizon. I encourage us all to think about what that looks like for us and move towards it.
