Jan.20

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

One Year, One Walkout

Today marks the 12-month mark since Trump v2.0 began. Feels like it's been far longer than that, at LEAST 12 kalpa.

Who knows how Trump will commemorate the occasion. An invasion of Greenland? Arresting every single resident of Minneapolis? Taking over another South American country, like maybe Val Verde? Slapping 1000% tariffs on every Chinese restaurant in the U.S.? Renaming the White House as Trump Tower, Pennsylvania Avenue? Posting AI-generated videos of him flying a plane and dropping manure on Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and JB Pritzker (D-IL)? Launching a new crypto venture, $RUBESONLY? Forcing J.D. Vance to do a one-man performance of The Pirates of Penzance, highlighted by an a capella rendition of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General"? Your guess is as good as ours (though we'd pay good money to see that last one).

What we do know is what the resistance, or at least part of it, is planning today. Various activist groups are working together to organize the Free America Walkout. The higher-profile element of the plan is protests; there are going to be at least 1,000 of them in various cities across the nation. The potentially much-further-reaching element of the plan is, in effect, a brief general strike. The organizers want people to stop whatever they are doing—school, work, commerce—at 2:00 p.m. local time today, and take to the streets, even if only for a short time. If readers are interested in finding a local action in which to take part, the link for that is here.

This event will not put up the gaudy participation numbers that the No Kings protests have; those attracted millions of folks to protests around the country, while today's protests will be fortunate to make it to hundreds of thousands. After all, today is a weekday AND the day after a holiday. Also, those counts of participants can only ever include the folks at large-scale events; anyone who gets up from their desk and goes outside in a solo act of resistance will never be included in any sort of overall total.

This weekend, we answered a question from reader M.O. in Metamora, wondering why there isn't more pushback against the Trump administration. Our answer, in so many words, was that there has been some, but that resistance movements tend to pace themselves, because it's a marathon, not a sprint. We got a lot of pushback in response to that answer. This letter from reader R.O. in Providence, RI, is representative:

I could not disagree more with your response to M.O. in Metamora. I see organized pushback being virtually nonexistent. I lived through the civil rights and Vietnam eras, and the pushback to this administration pales in comparison. Why aren't there thousands of people surrounding the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court building all day, every day? Just stand there silently, so there cannot be any allegations of misconduct; the sheer numbers would certainly be a more effective protest than the little that is going on now. An even better example of a lack of effective pushback is this: I have been an immigration lawyer for over 30 years. I have heard Trump on hundreds of occasions call the people he is persecuting criminals, rapists, drug dealers, insane asylum escapees, etc. over and over and over again. I have yet to see united Democratic officeholders get on TV over and over and over again and say no, 99% of these people are good people who came here to make a better life for themselves. They are not committing crimes, they are cooking your food, caring for your elderly parents and young children, cutting your lawns, cleaning your bathrooms. Virtually crickets in this regard. We need a coordinated, much, much stronger resistance before the battle is lost.

Again, we got quite a few e-mails like that.

The pushback we got from readers has not caused us to reconsider our view that successful protest movements tend to be slow and steady (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement), nor our view that expecting large numbers of people to make protest a full-time job right now is not realistic. However, if we could go back, we would have added the following observations to our original answer:

1. The people serving in elective office are rarely the driving force behind grassroots activism. Such activism is bottom-up, not top-down, and always has been. The politicians might sometimes come along for the ride, but they are virtually never in the driver's seat. So, anyone expecting radical resistance from the politicos, outside a few outliers, is setting themselves up for disappointment. That was true in 1966, and it's true in 2026.
   
   
2. One protest is news. A protest every day, for 100 straight days, is not. One strong statement on Trump immigration policy, say from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), is news. A statement every day, for 100 straight days, is not. The current level of pushback might not be to the liking of some readers, or some Americans, but do keep in mind the possibility that there's a fair amount of pushback you're not hearing about, specifically because it's become regularized.
   
   
3. Undoubtedly, folks who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s look at protest through the lens of how protest was done in that era. Maybe that is the correct lens, maybe it's not. It's at least possible that, in the Internet Age, the battle for hearts and minds is fought at least as much online (TikTok, Instagram, etc.) as it is on the streets. If that is true, then someone who is looking ONLY at the streets is missing a big part of the picture.

All of this said, boots-on-the-ground protest requires a lot of preparation and a lot of practice. It takes time to grow the movement. It takes time to determine what participants are willing and able to do. It takes time to figure out exactly what works, for your particular context, and what does not. It takes time to develop a vocabulary of protest. That is clearly happening in Minneapolis (see above), and it's happening nationally. Axios spoke to Dana Fisher, who works at American University and studies protest movements, about today's events. And Fisher said: "The vanguard in this are starting to think about how... one day, peaceful, legally permitted marches are not enough to push back. And they're starting to think through what types of tactics are ones that people are comfortable with and would be willing and open to participating in to expand the toolbox."

In short, even if readers like M.O. in Metamora and R.O. in Providence are not happy with what they are seeing out there right now, they do at least have some reason for optimism. (Z)