On my morning walks, I pass a house with a prominently placed law sign that reads, “The power of the people is greater than the people in power.” I’m not only thankful for that reminder but encouraged by it. Human history informs us that oppressed people eventually turn on their oppressors in desperation and they topple those in power.
We’ve seen the pattern where ego-driven dictators, always greedy for admiration, power, and money surround themselves with malicious sadists to do their bidding. Tapping into human insecurity, they manufacture fears and find scapegoats to punish while simultaneously promising security and prosperity to everyone else. History just keeps repeating itself as if these men are reincarnated. Their determination to remain in power amid their inevitable economic and social failures leads them to punish opposing voices with violence, imprisonment, exile, and economic coercion. In the process of strangling freedoms, innovation suffers, the economy suffers, and the most highly educated self-deport. Lacking economic growth and opportunity, the masses find themselves impoverished, sickly, and gaslighted to the point of outright rebellion.
We are not there yet. However, we are clearly on our way. We see signs of our demise in the cabinet appointments that favor loyalty over knowledge and expertise. We see it in the scapegoating of undocumented “brown-skinned” immigrants as criminals, crazy, or job stealers to feed the bigotry of insecure white suprematists. How is it even conceivable that this administration defies the Constitution and yet expects courts to allow it? Or how cruel to cut access to food and healthcare for poor and disabled people to give tax breaks to the wealthy while simultaneously reducing incentives for charitable giving among those same wealthy people? It’s ludicrous to believe that we can cut medical research and still cure diseases. Or that we can pollute the environment and expect to have clear air and water. Or that we can deport experienced farm workers and still plant and harvest enough produce to feed the nation. Or that we can ignore victims of natural disasters and expect them to recover without assistance. Or that we can scare away the best and brightest students and scholars by cutting Pell grants and denying or revoking F-1 visas without losing the competitive innovation that drives progress and economic growth. And only a simpleton thinks imposing tariffs will bring economic prosperity and not economic hardship.
Before we go any further down this road to destruction of our representative democracy, economy, environment, common sense, and even human decency, we must each find and activate our own path to resistance. Mine is writing this weekly blog, having conversations to educate others, making social media posts, writing to lawmakers, and donating to legal funds and resistance groups. I’ve seen actors perform protest skits, singers and songwriters perform protest songs, cartoonist post protest cartoons, marchers protest in the streets, community members record and post brutal ICE raids, journalists quit corporate media and set up their own podcasts, lawyers file lawsuits, priests and pastors defend the gospel in public, democrats make speeches and show up at detention centers, and community organizers organize strategies. Now is still the time for peaceful protest. Every opposition voice is needed in whatever way it is expressed. Sometimes it may just be imparting information to a friend or loved one. Other times, it might be a simple sign on the front lawn. Or it may be refusal to show up at the military parade.
I’ve also seen a kind of silent protest happening in unexpected places. I stopped shopping at Target on February 1st because of their public rollback of DEI following threats from the Trump administration. However, I pick up my prescriptions from the CVS located inside the store and I’ve noticed an absence of people who look like me. What I also noticed over the past few months is an increase in the photos of black and brown people pasted all over the walls and that the black and brown products remain on the shelves. I’ve also noticed that television commercials continue to feature people of color and that television shows and theatre productions have not slowed their production of shows featuring ethnically diverse casts. Demand for children’s books by non-white authors continues to increase. And a great variety of sports are becoming increasingly ethnically diverse.
We defeat the white Christian nationalist agenda when we stubbornly continue to appreciation our diversity, promote equity in our decisions, and simply include folks from different backgrounds in our daily activities. We win when we succeed at our jobs. We win when we thoroughly educate our children on matters of history, civics, and morality in opposition to the educational agenda of white nationalists. We win when we refuse to stop talking about our checkered history and find ways to insist on being better and doing better than those who seek to belittle us. We can turn their hateful actions into teachable moments. The mid-term elections can’t come soon enough to turn this ship around. So, find your resistance voice, whether loud or quiet, and use it every single day.