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Trump, Inc. out to turn Washington into a plutocratic Heart of Darkness - ANTIDOTE
The antidote? Think small, act local, scale successes. Like this:
Or imagine this: Instead of constantly conniving to stop poor people, minorities, students, et al. from voting, Oregon officials choosing to make democratic participation easy with automatic voter registration and mail-in ballots. Or a rich, white suburb and a neighboring urban community of mostly poor families (Morris Township, NJ) merging their school districts in a deliberate attempt to establish some racial and economic balance and striving to be "a model of diversity and togetherness." Or cities around the country rejecting the tar sands and fracking wells of Big Oil's climate-changing fossil fuels and following the energy/environmental sanity lead of Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, by committing to move steadily away from fossil fuels and produce 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources within the next 15 years (a goal already achieved in 2015 by Burlington, Vermont).
The place to focus our intense activism is where the action is already happening—right in the communities and states where we live. Yes, Trump, Inc. is out to turn Washington into a plutocratic Heart of Darkness and, yes, we must rally together to resist the horrors it promises. But our greatest strength is not in Washington rallies and protests—it's in our ability to organize and mobilize masses of local people around issues of populist justice and progressive solutions, mounting campaigns all around the country to elect candidates, pass initiatives and enact reforms in city halls, school boards, legislatures, and regulatory boards.
If we commit to steadily amassing a people's movement—bigger and bolder than what the corporations and media deem possible or desirable—that movement can become the government.
The place to focus our intense activism is where the action is already happening—right in the communities and states where we live. Yes, Trump, Inc. is out to turn Washington into a plutocratic Heart of Darkness and, yes, we must rally together to resist the horrors it promises. But our greatest strength is not in Washington rallies and protests—it's in our ability to organize and mobilize masses of local people around issues of populist justice and progressive solutions, mounting campaigns all around the country to elect candidates, pass initiatives and enact reforms in city halls, school boards, legislatures, and regulatory boards.
If we commit to steadily amassing a people's movement—bigger and bolder than what the corporations and media deem possible or desirable—that movement can become the government.
In the same way that Brownback tried to turn Kansas into a laboratory for godforsaken Conservative ideology, Progressives must prove the rightness of our ideas in local government. We must create states with quality of life and economic engines that put their neighbors to shame.
We need to create Progressive ideological successes vs. Conservative ideological shambles.
Hightower: This Is Our Only Hope to Stop Trump and the Corporate Assault on Our Democracy
http://www.alternet.org/activism/activism-only-hope-restoring-americas-democratic-principles
