My goal in this oddly titled and rather short episode is to suggest a near universally applicable strategic measuring stick for choosing among different progressive actions and choices those we wish to undertake. In some respects my observations are quite elementary. In others, though, regarding actual day-to-day choices we make, I suspect they are pretty foreign as if beyond our ken. 

Three questions I have recently been asked about strategy for resistance that might shed some light on this matter are: 1. What should one write or talk about? 2. What should one do? 3. Who should one do it with? 

I contend that answering the three questions should all involve the same kind of thinking, the same method of assessment, to decide one’s choices. Let’s see.

I have felt the first question myself in my own choices. How should I choose my words? How should others choose the words they use? The question haunts me because I very often find it hard to see what people’s positive, constructive purposes are.Why do people write what we write, or even say, in political exchange, what we say?

Look at the comments attached to articles (when comments are even allowed). Look at social media messages that people post. Look at substantial articles that people write. What propels our choice of words? Do we actually think about our choice, or just rush out whatever pops into our heads? Does the time and effort we commit to speaking and to writing make sense? Does it accomplish what we seek, or even just something we are happy to have accomplished? 

Put differently, do speakers and writers have clear positive purposes? Or are our efforts sometimes instead cries released with little thought for broad consequences? Do our words sometimes mainly say look at me, admire me? 

From another angle, do our words too often mostly report? And report, at that, stuff that is already well reported? Do we mostly pile on? Mostly repeat what anyone likely to hear or read our words already knows or believes? Do we choose our words simply to demonstrate our righteousness, knowledge, or perhaps just what tribe we favor? Or did wee do that at some point, and now we just do it by habit, or to be consistent with our past, or because it is easier than to do otherwise? Or do we choose our words to build resistance?

I wonder about the above questions. Are they unfair? Perhaps they are. Sometimes. But regardless of that, can we agree that we should write and speak to bring ourselves and others forward? Our words should seek to expand current aims and methods or to challenge and refine them. Our words should mainly advance prospects for positive change. 

I understand there can sometimes be great value in uncovering unknown or barely known truths about the world and how it works. But to repeatedly uncover what is already known? To repeat and not reveal, to state but not propose? How does that help? And don’t we very often do that? Write what’s been written. Over and over. Say what’s been said. Over and over. And do it literally to the people and with the people who already know what we say? 

Don’t our listeners and readers more often lack clarity about what people want and how to get it. And about personal obstacles and motives. And not lack clarity about what’s wrong around us? If that is so, shouldn’t our words deliver more vision and strategy and more about personal motivations, and less repetition of how painful and harmful things that we all already reject are? 

Shouldn’t our words seek change and not merely to reiterate that what we have sucks? And if so, doesn’t that mean our words ought to convey new ideas, new thoughts, new proposals. Does repeating, literally piling on, even make progress with an audience that doesn’t agree with us, supposing we are talking with such an audience or being read by such an audience, unless we offer new reasons for the views and perhaps even new values to support the views?

Do the points we seek to communicate aim to help the audience we are able to reach become more effective at actions that will help resistance? Do we write as complexly as is necessary to convey our points, but no more complexly that than?

I think a strategic idea worth consideration lurks in the above questions. I hope we can all agree that we who resist Trump, MAGA, and fascism, and we who seek positive changes, we need for our current collective choices to help our resistance become steadily more committed and powerful. We need our choices to cause steadily more informed and militant participation. And if to attain more commitment, more power, and more people is our main measuring stick for judging our words, shouldn’t our words emphasize aims and means more than they now do? 

What we say or write affects us and whoever hears of reads us. The consequences for us as resisters and the consequences for others as potential resisters matter, and the effect on elites obstructing us matter as well. To choose our words, we ought to assess their consequences. But do we?

Consider a second question. ICE kidnaps or kills someone from your community, workplace, or school. What should you do? One friend says let’s attack ICE. Let’s stone and burn their cars. Let’s stand tall to fight fire with fire. Let’s scare them. Intimidate them. Run them off. 

Another friend says let’s overcome ICE, yes, of course, but violence only begets more violence. We get tough, they will come back more tough. They can trump any violence we can muster. And, more, when the toll rises, our attendance tends to eventually decline locally, and certainly at a distance. 

One side says, we need to get tough. Evil will sucomb. The other side says, our violence adversely distorts us. More, evil will come back still more violent. 

One side says, the public will be drawn in by our courage and strength. The other side says, the violence, including ours, repels potential allies. 

One side says we should resist ICE as militantly and aggressively as we can. The other side says we should resist ICE but not engage on their terms. Different strokes for different folks, different situations, and different times, yes, of course, but our strokes ought not replicate theirs. We ought not use the strokes they are best at. We ought not use strokes that diminish our numbers and distort our personal inclinations. 

How, then, is one to think about such an overarching choice? Should we attack including with violence? Or should we resist and challenge, but without violence? That is the second question I have recently encountered. 

Given that we need to grow resistance numbers, that we need our steadfast informed collective commitment, empathy, and solidarity to also grow, and that we need costs elites who control decisions feel to grow as well, while their opportunities for using their favored tool, violence, diminish, can we agree that a clear criteria for making our choices emerges? 

We should consider consequences of contending options for our mindsets and even for our personalities. We should also consider their consequences for Trump and ICE, for the costs they worry about and for what they see coming in the future. And we should consider their consequences for those who see or hear about our struggles from the sidelines or in media reports for how our choices affect their likelihood of resisting along with us, or of by-standing or rejecting us. 

But then it follows that we should choose not in light of what mainly feels good. Choose not in light of what mainly best demonstrates our personal energy or passion. And choose not in light of what one’s friends mainly favor or admire. 

No, we should choose what we believe will add to the trajectory of resistance’s growth. We should choose what we believe will enlarge movement insight. We should choose what we think promises to propel growth. And this is just like our criteria for choosing our words, isn’t it?

Consider the third question I have been encountering. Demonstrations occur. Audiences await communications. Who should organizers relate to? Who should activists support and seek support from? For that matter, if some organizers are engaged in some sort of activity, should we choose to agitate along with them? Should we welcome and support or dismiss and even ridicule their efforts? 

I hope by this point the criteria for thinking about this set of questions, like the criteria for those questions earlier addressed, is clear. Who should we try to attract? Obviously, whoever is needed to grow the resistance. Thus, certainly those who are not already participating in resistance. Certainly those who are cynical and even those who disagree with us. 

And who should we support and seek support from? Certainly whoever can expand and deepen resistance. And likewise, how do we react to those who are already resisting, to those who call for and plan resistance? How should we react to them if they seem to us weak on what most matters to us even if they are strong on much else that also matters? Maybe they are weak on issues or race, or gender, or class, where we are strong. Should we dismissively turn away? Maybe they have some good demands, but not our preferred demand. They are upset about upsetting things, but not so much about what upsets us the most. Then what? Dismissively turn away?

Of course there can be concerns. If someone is calling for or engaging in activity that will weaken resistance, we should question their choice. But if someone is seeking to win worthy change and to grow capacity to win still more change, and if what they are doing can have just that effect but they don’t yet share all our views, they don’t yet include our agenda as we would like it included, and we think it would be much better if they did, that difference is nonetheless no reason to dismiss or avoid them. It is a reason to augment them, to converse with them. Perhaps to learn from them, or perhaps to teach them. But not to ignore them. It is a reason to communicate, not a reason to avoid.

So the bottom line is trivially simple and since we have already covered it twice, we can do so this third time less effusively. We should say/write, do, and also support and welcome whatever and whoever opposes existing relations, seeks worthy improvements, tries to grow resistance, and tries to strengthen movement capacity. Nuance can certainly affect how we think this or that word, this or that act, or this or that group does those things or can be refined to do those things. 

But nuances aside, even ones that matter greatly, can’t we share the basic logic of assessment? Differences that arise should be about assessments of consequences. We can each and all try to apply a shared logic of strategic choice as best we can with the information we have at hand. To differ over choices need not be a sign of sell out, or of having a different ethos, or being ignorant. It will usually instead indicate that we disagree about facts of the matter. We disagree about expected consequences. And therefore such differences should not be a basis for hostility. They should be a basis for conversation, exploration, and hope that one or another set of facts about consequences proves accurate.

For example. One writer/speaker chooses words to mainly highlight the ills of society. This writer tallies and explains the pains society’s ills cause. He reveals and he feels good about expressing his understanding and the truth of his views. And he does this all in places or via venues where many such words are already appearing. Another writer/speaker chooses her words for those same places and venues but mainly to propose paths forward. She offers new takes. Her views may be right, they may not be right, but they hope to propel discussion that may generate informed unity. What is your assessment of the likely consequences for each type speaking/writing? Which would you choose?

Or, one activist wants to burn ICE vehicles to clog the road and thereby show opposition and prevent access to targeted immigrants, or wants to organize to get to that point. Another activist wants large numbers of seasoned demonstrators, welcomed neighbors, and outraged citizens to sit in the road to clog it and thereby show opposition and prevent access to targeted immigrants, or wants to organize to get to that capacity. What is your assessment of the consequences of each activist’s preferred choice?

Or, one organizer wants to rouse and turn out people who agree, or wants to join others in their work who share his priorities. Another organizer wants to rouse and turn out people who agree but also and even mainly to reach out to those who don’t agree, and wants to join with others who in their work share all her priorities but also join with those who differ in some respects that should be addressed. What is your assessment of consequences for these contrasting preferences? 

And so, in the three mentioned cases, which side are you on?

It may feel like I have oversimplified real situations. You might say context and nuance can change your answer. Fair enough. It could be one way sometimes but another way other times. But does the measuring stick change? And do we take it out and use it to make our choices? To clarify our differences and agreements so as to try to resolve them? When we talk, or write, or act, or join or not join with others who are acting, have we got reasons based on considering consequences, or on some other contrary criteria?

If we mostly opt to explain the system around us, capitalism, racism, sexism with our spoken or written words, or we instead opt to mostly propose changes in the system we suffer, do we do so because we believe and we can give reasons why we think that our choice is what’s most needed for progress to occur? Because we think it is what we can best contribute to so that our choice will have the best movement consequences? 

Similarly, if we want to employ violence or not, is it because we think violence or non violence will have better consequences for progress and we can argue for that belief? For example, we think burning cars will deter state violence and grow our own numbers and commitment. Or we think organized nonviolent resistance will better deter state violence and grow our own numbers and commitment.

And likewise, if we want to reach out to doubtful or hostile audiences or not, or if we want to join actions that don’t have all our priorities quite the way we feel them, or not, is it because we think the path we prefer will have better consequences for movement growth, continuity, and comittment and we can argue for that belief?

What do you think? Is that what you see when you look at how the resistance proceeds? Is it how you operate? 

Two last comments. First, I guess it is now roughly a week ago that there were over a thousand demonstrations most of which were simultaneously against ICE and against imperial assaults on Venezuela. It is critical to notice that those efforts occurred with a few days preparation. Does that mean the resistance can now hold a major demonstration once a month, with multiple targets? And can hold intermittent demonstrations between those major events, as well? And if that was done, might each kind of demonstration grow from one effort to the next? And might they begin to cause the resistance to be about a wide ranger of intersecting issues that in turn overcomes a degree of atomization of different priorities? I am not in position to know wether this is possible, but it seems like it might be worth considering. 

Second, what the hell is stopping we the people from turning out in far greater numbers and with greater passion and wider focus? Full fledged Fascism is literally around the corner. And it will be far far worse than anything we have seen so far. Do we want that? For ourselves? For others? Of course not. So what holds us back from saying so, everywhere, all the time? With words, actions, and solidarity? What stops us from rallying, marching, boycotting, sitting in, creating encampments, striking? And also, from organizing all that? 

Is habit in the way? Fear of repression? Fear of repercussions, fear of being looked at askance? Fear of looking dumb, of being shunned by employers, teachers, family, friends, or neighbors? Is lethargy in the way? Cynicism? Feelings of hopelessness? Probably in different people, different places, different situations, all the above play a role. 

But, roughly 100,000 volunteers went door to door and otherwise supported Zohran Mamdani in New York City. In one city. Why did that happen there, then? It wasn’t just because Mamdani is eloquent and compelling. It wasn’t even just that he had excellent program. It was that people thought working for him would matter. Working to elect him would move the needle of opinion. It would – win gains and prod winning more gains. But how did 100,000 people get to feeling that way? Earlier fewer people worked for him, and earlier again, still fewer people did. But the efforts people undertook increased confidence, increased numbers, increased commitment. Still, in the early days of building movements, It is hard to build momentum that then leads to more growth. It is hard to be seen. Hard to be heard. Hard to overcome the cacophony of noises and pressures that say to those you want to reach that they should stay home. That they can’t win. That it can’t be done. That they are fools to try.

Okay, so it is hard to get going. But then what can help in those early stages, which is where most to the country now is. What can seriously raise the legitimacy and efficacy of resisting right now in cities and towns all over the country? Slow building can proceed, everywhere. But slow has a hard time multiplying and accelerating until it gets big enough to be widely visible. So is there something that can ease the initial difficulty, something that can push itself into visibility and inspire, urge, or even cajole hesitant folks into a mood to resist? Think of it this way, perhaps. There is Team Maga. There is Team Resistance. And in between there is Team Leave Me Alone. What can propel a condition or a feeling or a logic that pushes toward Team Resistance as the worthy place to be?

Probably, there are a few such things. For one, big progress in particular places. Thus, for example, Mamdani’s victory in New York is not only pushing people in NY forward, but also across the country and perhaps even around the world. For another thing, big resistance that keeps growing in particular places that are running out in front of most of the country but says to those still not yet as aroused, come on, you can see that we are doing it, you can do it too. Both those are organizing that leads to more organizing. They are the heart of the matter.   

But here is another thing which can at least help propel participation and is in some respects when getting started quicker and potentially easier. It is for particular individuals with huge audiences who are able to speak through countless venues to do so really really loudly. Not timidly, but really up front and aggressive to support, urge, and take actions. 

So, for example, how about Taylor Swift, Steph Curry, and Caitlin Clark? They each know what is going on. And they can know much more with a day’s effort or less. Lots of people hear them. Indeed, if they speak and act sufficiently aggressively, everyone will hear. Or how about some old folks, Bob Dylan, Morgan Freeman, Beyonce and Lady Ga Ga. Take your pick. Enlarge the list. I don’t know who all should or could be on it. But in any event, I am not talking about a mild rebuke to Trump. Or calm disavowal of MAGA. I am talking about loudly, militantly, acknowledging that the country is slip sliding toward full on fascism or, if we all participate, we can resist fascism and instead move toward increased equity and participation. I am talking about loudly saying it is time to resist. Taylor, can’t you say that? I have heard you talk. I know you are aware enough, smart enough, to see that it is true. Steph you work for your community. You can see, I am sure, that it is time to organize to resist our slip slide to hell. You can say so. Loudly. And Caitlin, though barely out of school you are all over sports and beyond. If you wait until you are forty you will no longer have the courage you now have. So, stand now. Take sides now. The same holds for the older set. Or would you rather die quiet? And I want to add another constituency to the mix. Shawn Fein and Sara Nelson and so so many other union leaders who may lag well behind those two but could easily give more voice than they have. Indeed, how about picking it up a bunch of notches. To wait may well be to become voiceless. So use your voices now. 

I get that you all have things to lose. Indeed, there is a sense in which you have way more to lose than everyone else. And I get that given your world, to lose those things may seem to you like too much to risk. But if you don’t use your wealth, your visibility, your voice and your body too while you have so much, what good is what you have? Down the road, if resistance fails, then under full on fascism what are you gonna say about your lack of resistance? That you had too much to lose?

Why not say now, to your audience, in your own way, something like “You like me. You like my work. Well, I am telling you we have got to get it together. We have got to stop acting as though Trump is just some crackpot or minor disruption, or laughing at him, or politely calling him out or applauding when someone else does, or ignoring him completely. We have to have our eyes on more than self, on others who are getting blasted. We have got to stop saying we don’t like what is happening to prices, to international relations, to the court system, to the soul of the country, but all without doing anything to change it and helping others to change it.” How about you say, “I have too much money. So I am donating these very large sums to these out front, effective, in your face militant activist and electoral efforts?” 

I have to wonder, why does an asshole like Musk and the other billionaire bros fight for what they want, cough up for what they want, and you don’t? Why don’t you say something like: “I have more visibility than anyone deserves to have. But I am going to use my visibility to speak out. Not once. Not twice. But over and over, louder and louder. You like me in Minneapolis. Thank you. Now support the fight against ICE. Indeed, wherever you are, give some time, give some energy, to preventing Trumpism from becoming all we have.”

Why not say something like: “You have seen movies about thugs, about bullies, about Nazis. When you watched did you identify with the thugs, bullies, and Nazis? If you did, you better think again. But if you wanted evil to lose, if you identified with the light, then now is the time to stand up and say so, not about those Hollywood villains, but about the real villains running our country and the world, and about the systems that entrench them.” 

Why not say: “Time to find unity. Time to take a real stand. Time to fight. And I am ready, eager, and willing to help.”

And if you think that is asking too much of you, think again. 

And P.S. If you are not an athlete or actor of singer but instead, a professor or for that matter a high school teacher, and you are horrified by Trump, RFK Jr., and the like, and particularly if you are even teaching radical topics, isn’t it time, really way past time, for you to say to your students what is obviously the case. So why not say: “Knowledge, learning, the value of education, your future prospects, your lives, your parents lives, your future kids lives, it is all under assault. It is time for you to fight for yourselves and for others and I want to join with you. Let’s organize. Let’s show Trump and Co. we’re coming for them. Schooling, without recognizing and addressing on-rushing climate, racial, gender, economic, and political calamity is not schooling at all. It is warehousing you unto calamity.” 

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