People are resisting at every level. Tesla Takedowns. Refusing illegal orders. Court challenges. Boycotting. Thousands of protests. (More examples!)
Alongisde grounding yourself in these times, here are some starting points on how to orient and help fight back.
Get with Others to Act
When you’re alone it’s too easy to freeze. While keyboard warriors and protest attenders are important — you’ll feel the greatest strength if you gather with others semi regularly to plan together, share together, and act together.
In Chile under a repressive regime, the “affinity group” model was developed as a way to help keep people safe as they took risky actions. The process is simple enough: gather some people together who share your concerns and are ready to act together. Aim to build trust with this group over time. There are good instructions on creating an affinity group here. Whether your actions are high-risk or low — you’ll all benefit from supporting one another!
Another way to organize? Food and friends! Set a date and invite folks to meet up with a dish to share. Consider having planned actions (like phone calls or letter writing) to take while you’re together.
We need more politicization in these times — to help people navigate what is going on around us and understand how it got this bad. A study group can support learning as you and your people take action together and help to keep you in motion over time. There are plenty of resources across the choosedemocracy.us site you can use for your study group.
Care Calls are often wide-ranging conversations that ensure we are in touch folks in our neighborhoods. It can be walking door-to-door or just calling on people — but this is a way of connecting with people in our neighborhoods to see how they are doing (another version of this is deep canvassing). While these conversations may start as just check-ins, it’s a good way to find some other people who might want to act against the coup in these times — and to show love to your community no matter who you are.
There are thousands of community groups across the country already taking action, waiting for people just like you to get involved. Go to mobilize.us to find local activist groups to join that align with your hopes and priorities. You can also get involved in your workplace union or find a chapter affiliated with an organization taking action in this moment.
Pressure a pillar of support to defect
Authoritarian regimes are only successful when society bows to the orders of the autocrat. We can effectively fight back by identifying and withdrawing our support from the “pillars of support” (military, media, corporations, etc.) that prop up these dangerous rulers.
Watch this video to better understand the ‘Pillars of Support’. Then, pick a pillar you want to pressure and each day do at least one small thing to get them to defect.
Authoritarian regimes need business elites to provide legitimacy, fund operations, and maintain the economy. Corporate boycotts and divestment are not about punishment — they’re about withdrawing the economic infrastructure that makes the regime’s agenda possible.
🚨Most companies are trying to find a non-existent neutral middle ground. If we only cause them pain without reward, they might move away from democracy — so target wisely. Focus on companies actively doing the regime’s dirty work.
How to take action on this pillar
These campaigns target the corporate and financial infrastructure that enables authoritarian policies. Join a boycott or divestment effort, or apply these strategies to companies operating in your region.
💼 Tesla / Musk / DOGE
Tesla Takedown
Active boycott of Tesla + divestment campaign targeting Musk’s economic power base. Coordinated actions now happening in 250+ cities globally.
Host or find a protest at a Tesla showroom near you.
Divest Tesla includes a step-by-step guide to getting your city to pass a Divest Tesla resolution for public pension funds. Template resolution, how-to guide, and organizing kit on the site.
Fill out the Divest Public Dollars From Elon Musk form to indicate how you want to be involved.
Sign this petition to tell T-Mobile to stop funding Musk. T-Mobile is making billions through a Starlink/T-Satellite deal. If you’re a T-Mobile customer, contact them directly.
💼 Palantir
(The surveillance infrastructure of ICE and DOGE)
Purge Palantir
Palantir holds a $30M+ contract with ICE to build “ImmigrationOS” — a near-real-time surveillance system tracking migrants. It also provides AI tools to the Israeli military and holds contracts with health insurers and police departments nationwide.
Note: Palantir fled Denver and moved their headquarters to Miami in February 2026 — partly in direct response to this campaign.
Take the campaign pledge.
Send letters to corporations and hospitals using Palantir software demanding they divest.
Students and tech workers, you can push your university or employer to divest. University of San Francisco did it in 2025 after student pressure.
Track Palantir’s political donors and demand your elected Representative donate any Palantir money to immigrant rights groups (several Colorado Representatives did this under pressure)
Join or organize a local protest: Bay Resistance organizes ongoing local actions. Days of action have been held in Seattle, Palo Alto, Denver, DC, and NYC.
💼 Avelo Airlines
(Win! This is the model.)
Avelo ended its ICE contract on January 27, 2026 as a direct result of sustained pressure. The model is the same framework we want to replicate: local organizing → national boycott → subsidy pressure → win. The same playbook now applies to GlobalX Airlines and CSI Aviation, the logistics backbone of ICE Air.
Send 40 messages to Avelo’s executive team demanding they stay clean.
Boycott GlobalX, a charter airline currently running deportation flights.
Demand your local airport cut ties with ICE Air contractors by using your airport board’s public comment process (residents in Portsmouth, NH used this to halt flights there).
Join DSA’s International Migrant Rights Working Group to get more actively engaged in airline accountability.
💼 Active Boycotts
Find current, verified corporate campaigns at Boycott Central. Here are the campaigns that are active as of early 2026 (a full list of campaigns can be found here):
Boycott Home Depot — major donor to Trump political infrastructure
Target — rolled back DEI commitments after pressure from Trump administration
Quit GPT / Boycott Microsoft — tech accountability, AI enabling authoritarian surveillance
Corporate Greed
Our Revolution: Defund Oligarchy Campaign
Campaign pushing to defund oligarchs and redirect public resources toward working people. Targets the financial infrastructure of the MAGA oligarch class directly. Find local actions and sign on.
ICE is not an immovable institution — it depends on local cooperation, private contractors, airline logistics, and detention facilities run by private companies. Every one of those dependencies is a pressure point that we can organize against.
How to take action on this pillar
The campaigns below focus on disrupting the systems that make detention and deportation possible. You can join national efforts or organize locally to interrupt cooperation with ICE in your area.
🧊Interrupt Ice Operations
Interrupting Criminalization
A menu of tactics for interrupting ICE operations: know-your-rights trainings, rapid response networks, legal observer training, and direct action options. Find the right level for you.
Ground ICE
Targeting Signature Aviation, the largest fixed-base operator in the US and the logistics hub for ICE deportation flights.
Private pilots can boycott Signature Aviation. Contact corporate AND your local Signature branch. Include your tail number.
Popular Democracy: Defend the 14th Campaign
The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection and birthright citizenship — now under direct attack. Campaign fights to stop efforts to undermine who belongs in this country.
Indivisible: Halt the ICE Terror Machine
Specific Indivisible campaign with actions around immigration enforcement funding and policy. Find your local chapter or take national actions.
Know Your Rights Cards
Print and distribute in your neighborhood. Practical infrastructure for ICE and police raids.
MoveOn: Immigrant Defense Hub
Hub of resources and actions supporting immigrant rights, resisting detention and deportation policies.
National Day Labor Organizing Network: Adopt a Day Labor Corner
Go to the places immigrants gather to work or look for work—Home Depots, car washes, delis, day-labor centers, hiring sites—as allies, witnesses, neighbors and friends. Adopt a Corner is an immediate, urgent call to action, grounded in solidarity. We the people need to defend our communities and one another NOW against our government’s campaign of intimidation, assault, arrests and violence.
Common Cause: Demand Accountability From DHS
Campaign pushing back against violent immigration enforcement tactics and calling for accountability at DHS and federal leadership.
🧊Shut Down Detention Centers
Detention Watch Network: #CommunitiesNotCages
Email program@detentionwatchnetwork.org to get connected to local campaigns actively working to shut down facilities. Active local campaigns are taking place in:
Alabama
California
Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Kansas
Louisiana
Michigan
New Jersey
New Mexico
Oregon
Texas
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
When workers refuse to cooperate — through strikes, slowdowns, or simply organizing — the economic machinery that props up authoritarian power grinds to a halt. Labor controls one of the most powerful tools to protect democracy: the ability to stop the economy.
How to take action on this pillar
Labor is a pillar with unique leverage over the economy. These campaigns show ways workers — union and non-union — can organize collectively or support actions that apply economic pressure.
✊General Strike
May Day Strong
Coalition organizing toward May 1, 2026 as a national demonstration of worker power — modeled on Minnesota’s January 23 statewide economic pause where an estimated 1 in 4 Minnesotans participated.
Take this Personal Pledge to commit to participate in a work stoppage, sick-out, or community action on May 1.
Partner your organization by bringing your union, community organization, or business into the coalition.
Strike Ready
If you’re not in a union and want to build capacity for direct economic action:
Join a training to learn how strikes work, community support roles, safety planning, and how to coordinate sustainably.
Build your workplace with tools and guidance for building solidarity before any action is called.
✊Union Organizing
If you’re in AFT, NEA, AFSCME, SEIU, UAW, UNITE HERE, UFCW, the most powerful thing you can do is engage with your local union: show up for meetings, push your local to connect contract fights to the broader democratic moment, and ask about May Day Strong coordination.
✊Social Safety Net Campaigns
MoveOn: SNAP Into Action
Campaign opposing cuts to SNAP benefits and protecting food assistance programs.
MoveOn: Stop the Cuts
Defending Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and essential benefits from proposed federal cuts. Coordinated calls, visits, and pressure campaigns.
People’s Action: Housing Justice
Training tenant organizers, pushing for tenant protections, bringing tenants into federal advocacy. Find your local affiliate.
People’s Action: Health Care for All
Helping individuals fight insurance denials AND pushing systemic reform. Both immediate and structural.
The military is the regime’s most critical pillar — and the one most constrained by its own traditions of apolitical service, constitutional oath, and institutional norms. When veterans publicly contest the militarization of democracy, it degrades the regime’s moral authority to deploy force.
How to take action on this pillar
These efforts focus on veterans, military families, and national security professionals speaking out from inside the institution. If you’re connected to this pillar, these campaigns offer ways to act with credibility and care.
🎖️Veterans
Common Defense
The largest progressive veterans organization in the country.
No War on Our Streets is a campaign for veterans publicly opposing Trump’s deployment of military and masked federal agents to American cities.
Protect VA Healthcare to fight proposed VA cuts.
State organizing through active chapters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina and more.
About Face: Veterans Against the War
Post-9/11 veterans organizing on domestic militarization.
#DroptheMIC (Drop the Military Industrial Complex) campaign exposes relationships between war profiteers, elected officials, and the Pentagon. You can sign on and join chapter organizing.
Join if you’re a post-9/11 veteran.
Secure Families Initiative
Nonpartisan military spouses and loved ones mobilizing on foreign policy, national security, and democracy. Provides issue explainers, calls-to-action, and advocacy training for the military family community.
National Security Leaders for America
For those with national security backgrounds who want to speak out against the politicization of the military. Find and add your name to their public statements; they organize sign-on letters and public appeals.
MoveOn: Stop Forever Wars
Campaign to end endless US military interventions abroad. Direct action toolkit and petition.
🎖️Members Of The Military
Share this guide with active-duty service members you know on how they can refuse unconstitutional orders:
“For Members of Security Forces: A Guide to Supporting Pro-Democracy Movements“
If you know someone in the military or National Guard, speak with them about their right — and duty — to refuse unconstitutional orders. If safe to do so, speak directly to members of the military or National Guard about their complicity in illegal acts.
The civil service is the practical machinery of governance. DOGE’s attack on federal workers isn’t about cutting costs — it’s about removing the people who enforce laws, block illegal orders, and maintain institutional checks on executive power.
How to take action on this pillar
The campaigns below support civil servants resisting unlawful or authoritarian directives. If you work inside the government, these resources help you stay informed, protected, and connected. There are also resources for how the general public can support federal employees in this moment.
🏛️ Federal Employees
Federal Workers Against DOGE
Coordination hub for current and former federal employees.
Civil Service Strong
Coalition of unions, nonprofits, and legal organizations providing current civil servant rights, whistleblower protection guides, and fact sheets on what is and isn’t legal. A full resource guide can be found here.
Key principle: Where possible, staying inside institutions can create leverage. Take account of what’s happening around you. If you see something illegal, say something.
For those prepared for higher-risk direct action: Don’t quit. Don’t obey unconstitutional orders. Blockade to stay. Make them drag you out. Video it.
Government Accountability Project
Legal support for federal employee whistleblowers. GAP can connect you with attorneys and help you understand your protections.
Partnership for Public Service Federal Employee Resource Hub
Offers plain-language context on current laws, executive actions, and proposals.
🏛️ General Public
Show support for workers by organizing deliveries of food to federal employees holding the line. Small, visible acts of appreciation matter for morale.
Re-share posts from Alt Nat Park Service and AltGov — platforms created by federal workers to resist cuts and document what’s being erased.
How to take action on this pillar
These campaigns connect legal skills to movement strategy. Whether you have ten minutes or can offer deeper support, they provide concrete ways to defend the rule of law.
⚖️ Lawyers
The Rule of Lawyers
Connects lawyers with specific, concrete actions to defend rule of law. Meets you where you are — 10 minutes or full pro bono litigation.
Movement Law Lab
Recruiting progressive lawyers into coordinated civic resistance strategy — connecting legal work to movement campaigns, not just individual cases.
⚖️ Legal Campaigns
ACLU: Defeat, Delay, Dilute
208+ legal actions filed against the Trump administration. Join as a member, attend Know Your Rights trainings, or volunteer with your state ACLU affiliate.
ACLU: Defend Your Right to Learn
Stand against classroom censorship, book bans, and restrictions on what can be discussed in schools. Action toolkit included.
ACLU: Systemic Equality
Nationwide advocacy and litigation challenging discriminatory laws and expanding racial equity in voting, education, housing.
Protect Democracy:
Defend Free & Fair Elections: safeguard election systems and keep the vote strong
Defending the Rule of Law: push back against abuses of power eroding checks and balances
29 concrete actions you can take right now — on their site
10 Steps Campaign: historical playbook of authoritarianism with counter-framework and resources
Common Cause: Mid-Decade Redistricting
Effort to respond to threats to fair representation through fair redistricting advocacy.
⚖️ Jury Nullification
Not a campaign with a sign-up form, but an active form of structural noncooperation. In several cities, juries have declined to convict people in politically charged immigration cases, using jury service as a check on government overreach.
What you can do:
Show up for jury duty — don’t try to get out of it. In communities targeted by aggressive federal prosecution, a juror who understands the historical role of juries as a check on government overreach is doing democratic work.
Freedom Trainers’ Jury Nullification Trainings — educate yourself with their training program.
How to take action on this pillar
These efforts apply direct pressure on elected officials and electoral systems. They are designed for sustained participation — from daily calls to long-term accountability work.
5 Calls
Updated daily with specific, localized asks. 5 minutes a day. The most direct individual-to-elected-official action available.
Indivisible
Fight Trump’s MAGA Power Grab of the House — opposing efforts to reshape Congress
Vote Suppression — advocacy against voter suppression legislation
Louisiana v. Callais — acting around a key voting-rights court case
Run for Something
Learn what local offices you could actually run for and get support. This is how the pillar gets rebuilt from the inside.
Protect Our Election
Send letters to local election officials — who face constant harassment and death threats — expressing support and demanding they stand for democracy.
MoveOn: Won’t Back Down
Backing Democratic leaders and candidates pushing back against Trump and defending democratic norms.
NAACP: Fight Against Project 2025
Pushing back against the far-right policy agenda, mobilizing people to organize, educate, and act. Find your local NAACP chapter.
Public Citizen: Campaign Finance & Democracy Reform
Push for reforms to reduce corporate money in politics, empower small donors, and expand ballot access.
Public Citizen: Protect Voting Rights
Defending ballot access and pushing back against voter suppression through advocacy, litigation support, and coordinated pressure.
Authoritarian regimes attack education and information because knowledge about what’s actually happening is a direct threat to their power.
How to take action on this pillar
These campaigns defend education, information, and free expression from political interference. You can plug in directly or organize within schools, libraries, or media spaces you’re connected.
Firewall For Freedom
If you’re a student, professor, or campus worker, this campaign will call on your school to defend students’ rights against attacks on free speech, academic freedom, and DEI. Includes resolution toolkit.
PEN America: Book Bans Campaign
Campaign against book bans in your state or town — even before they are proposed.
Unite Against Book Bans
For librarians and community members. Resources for resisting censorship pressure.
Education For All Hub
Push local schools and universities to uphold DEI policies. Template advocacy materials and organizing support.
Every Day Actions to Correct Misinformation:
Share Snopes.com articles
Write opinion pieces in your local paper
Put up political signs in your yard and window. Downloads and designs at justseeds.org; Stop the Coup designs on Etsy.
How to take action on this pillar
These efforts draw on moral authority and community trust within faith institutions. If you’re part of a congregation, they offer ways to organize rooted in shared values and public witness.
Sojourners: Faith-Rooted Advocates Network (FRAN)
Weekly interfaith vigils at the Capitol every Wednesday, coordinated with 24+ faith-based groups. FRAN provides tools for congregations to engage in civic action, voter registration, and advocacy.
Interfaith Alliance
Specifically fighting Christian nationalism and erosion of church-state separation. Sign up for action alerts.
Poor People’s Campaign
Multi-faith, multiracial coalition doing direct action, voter registration, and advocacy. Find your state chapter.
Ask your faith group
Get your religious group to pass a resolution in support of targeted communities. Faith institutions could also connect with police departments or local officials to learn in advance when community members may be in danger of detention — so they can act to protect people.
Devote yourself to a long-term project
All of us cannot only be on defense. There are many productive projects you might want to be part of that help address underlying problems of rising authoritarianism.
We’re following Daniel Hunter’s categorization from 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won (also available in video format):
Pick a path and then find an action that fits your degree of difficulty (we’ve categorized harder actions as those that require more time, people skills, and often a small group to launch with).
Autocrats don’t want us standing up for each other. An easy step to disobey that is sending signals into your community that you care — that you will publicly stand with targeted communities. Here are some examples:
EASIER TO DO
Partner with a local pride group to ask local businesses to put up a sign acknowledging that all folks are welcome in their stores. The “Welcoming Project” provides free signs and FAQ resources to encourage businesses, health care/service providers, organizations, and congregations to display welcoming signs.
Make sure every location you go to has a sign that says all people are welcome here (such as this work from artist Favianna Rodriguez). Shop somewhere, ask them. Attend a workshop somewhere, ask them. Kids go to little league somewhere, ask them.
MEDIUM TO DO
Partner with a hospital or clinic to start an abortion-support fund, for folks seeking out-of-state medical care. You can find a local abortion-support fund to support/create on the national map hosted by the National Network of Abortion Funds.
Build a bi-partisan coalition to research, expose, and educate the community about white nationalist threats. Examples: Idaho Leaders United calls out extremist ‘culture of permission’
Get your school board, city council, hospital commission or any government agency to affirm that they are a welcoming community to all people. For example, you can get your community to explicitly welcome and celebrate immigrants in the community joining the 300+ communities welcoming immigrants with the “Welcoming Network”.
Get your religious group, school, or little league to make a resolution in support of targeted folks. For example: why vaccinations are good practice or why everyone deserves to play sports, regardless what gender was assigned at birth. Faith institutions could stretch the limits and see if police departments or local officials are willing to inform them in advance what community members might be in danger of being snatched for deportation, so they can move to protect them.
HARDER TO DO
Train volunteers in your city and state on basic safety skills that could be used as white nationalist violence ramps up. Training support on action safety: Action Security and De-escalation with links at the end for further training.
Start recruiting a slate of pro-democracy candidates for City Council or School Board. Run, support, or get involved by connecting with Run for Something.
Campaign against book bans in your state or town — even before they are proposed. Join Pen America’s Book Bans campaign.
Autocrats love weak institutions — because they can twist them to their personal goals. Institutional ethics, values, and bureaucracy can all be used to resist those efforts. We may often think of federal institutions (like the military), but a lot of these institutions are very local: health commissioners, local scientists, schools, election officials. We can seek to defend local civic institutions, particularly when they are doing their job and refusing to engage in immoral or unsavory acts.
EASIER TO DO
As a veteran, connect with other groups who are resisting politicizing the military. Join Secure Families or National Security Leaders for America.
For Civil Servants, download and read “Serve the People: A civil servant’s guide to 2024 and beyond.” Learn strategies for what to do in the future. (And connect with the folks at Civil Service Strong.)
Send supportive letters to people who run our elections, who are facing increasing hatred, bile, and even death threats. Send a letter with Protect Our Elections.
MEDIUM TO DO
Start a citizen campaign practicing random acts of support. For example, order food for over-staffed nurses, blanket yards with signs supporting county health commissioners, or actively give out thank you cards with tips to front-line workers who are protecting us.
HARDER TO DO
Collect a list of lawyers who will pro bono support for first amendment protestors ahead of crackdowns. Communicate these lists to local activists.
Create or support a bail fund for local activists when political repression comes. Here is a link to existing bail funds.
Autocrats rely on people “obeying in advance,” meaning anticipating a more restrictive version of society and behaving accordingly. This shows those in power how far they can go, and it moves the needle of what’s “normal” that much more quickly. Disrupting and disobeying the status quo diverts the autocrat’s resources and puts them on the defense instead of allowing them to plow ahead unencumbered. It also signals to others with less courage that they’re not alone in opposing what’s happening and may inspire them to take action.
EASIER TO DO
Build an affinity group. Simply put, get together with a group of people you trust, build some trust together, and start to talk and plan about what risks you are willing to take.
MEDIUM TO DO
As an affinity group, pick a specific issue to work on. We will need you to support migrant rights groups around deportation defense, for example. We might also need you to stop further climate chaos being wrought by fossil fuel companies and their financiers Reach out at info@disruption-project.org to get some coaching on how to take action.
Join with migrant rights groups to join their need for rapid response deportation defense.
Test the boundaries of the law, just a little. Alternatively to a massive sit-in to shut down a plant, you can have each person just cut one chain in the fence — as practice of resistance.
Call the Resistance Hotline (844-NVDA-NOW) to get coached on how to do an action even more powerfully.
HARDER TO DO
Engage in active noncompliance. Noncompliance is taking bold action against a system that you feel is immoral. Noncompliance can be about a larger way of life that says that the whole system is fundamentally broken and that we need mass numbers of people not participating in it. As documented, authoritarian regimes don’t fall because of protests — they fall because the people refuse to go along with the regime, through mass defections in military and government, strikes that paralyze parts of the normal functioning of society, etc. Read more on Strategic Escalation in the Trump Era.
Jail solidarity. There was not a team of lawyers attempting to bail out Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. They were held until they were released. Think about your team the same way. If you are arrested taking action, why would you pay money into a broken system? Why not stay in jail? This is known as jail solidarity. This serves two purposes. First of all, if enough people engage in jail solidarity it becomes a real problem for those in charge. Where do they house everyone? Second, the story of who is in jail can be pretty compelling too. Folks who are in for multiple days have access (or their friends do) to the press and can tell their stories, why they are there and why they are taking huge risks to support immigrants, or fight for the climate.
Wildcat strikes. If you’re in a union, can you organize your union to walk out in a wildcat strike, at a particular key juncture, when some threshold is crossed around worker protections? Or for undocumented folks? Begin those conversations now.
Organize your workplace. If you’re not in a union, can you organize folks in your workplace? To fight back against workplace raids? To stop work if some threshold is breached?
Organize, organize, organize — especially in neglected places. In 2017, many organizers moved from progressive areas back to where they grew up to start organizing projects in their hometowns. We will need more of these. In the section on protecting institutions, we mentioned some civic organizing that needed to happen. But, there is also the need for people to attempt ambitious organizations, whether it is faith institutions in the Quad Cities, Iowa; tenant organizing in Erie, Pennsylvania; or fighting to raise the minimum wage in Waukesha, Wisconsin. We need a lot more of these local organizing projects. While starting a new organizing project is challenging, we’re not going to dispute that, we are also available to talk with people to assess whether they can start something. We think lots of dedicated people can do interesting and important work. And, you don’t have to start all at once, you can also start with some of the suggestions in the first section on protecting people and see if you can gather some people together or win some smaller victories.
Shut things down. We’re happy to discuss details, but so much of what needs to happen is the shutting down of business as usual. Whether this is a strike at the ports or whether we could shut down finance or logistics, or extraction, this is the kind of mass action we need to be thinking about — not just protests.
EASIER TO DO
Bring community together. Organize a potluck or clothing swap. Get folks together to talk about what they fear or hope in the times ahead. You can see one such agenda at There are More Of Us: Community Gatherings.
MEDIUM TO DO
Build a community garden. Make it a community project to grow food and community.
Start a monthly or weekly mutual aid group. Mutual aid is a way to offer a place for exchanging needs in the community. It’s not a charity model but about the community finding its own resources, like offering unsheltered people homes in a church or community center or setting up ways to exchange meals, naloxone, legal help, pet supplies, winter clothing, etc. etc. (Training on mutual aid here: Mutual Aid 101.)
HARDER TO DO
Help build the future we need by developing community solar or renewable power owned by the people. 350 has one such resource at OurOwnPower.org.
Get your city or state to promote participatory budgeting. Participatory budgeting (PB) is a direct democratic process where community members decide how to spend the public budget. It gives people real power — direct ownership over the decisions with full transparency. Learn more from the Participatory Budgeting Project.
Promote policies to abolish the electoral college, support third parties, or otherwise make this country more democratic. This is a big project — but lots of groups are exploring ways to do this. Because there are so many and many of them are nascent, we don’t have recommendations here — but encourage you to research ones that align with your values and organizing instincts.
Liberated territory. The right-wing militia movement in this country has created some liberated territory, whether that lives in their ranches or in the election of “Constitutional Sheriffs” who do not recognize the federal government, they swear an oath to the constitution. Create similar territories of sanctuary and protection, where folks are able to live free lives.
There is a lot of information here, so take a deep breath. There is a Jewish teaching that says that you are not responsible for completing the work, nor are you allowed to desist from it. We will succeed because millions of people do a couple things well, not because one person does a million things.
While we wish we were not compelled to travel down this path of resistance. We are excited to realize the collective beauty we can and will create together.
You got this.