One Million Rising
INDIVISIBLE Auburn
One Million Rising
"Strong people stand up for themselves, stronger people stand up for others." Suzi Kassem
from Ezra
Last week, in response to Trump’s escalating authoritarian overreach, Indivisible launched the first of a three-part training series on strategic non-cooperation. We had 150,000 people register. We broke Zoom. The next day, Leah and I talked about it with Erica Chenowith (of 3.5% fame) on What’s the Plan.
The gist of the threat is this: Trump and his allies aren’t satisfied with just dominating Congress and the courts. They want to dominate law firms, universities, businesses, and media institutions as well. This is textbook authoritarian overreach, and we can organize against it -- but we have to pay attention to it rather than just to Congress and the courts. The most recent and public is the firing of Stephen Colbert to get on Trump's good side so Paramount can get the merger deal they want.
Sign up for the One Million Rising call on July 30 to learn strategic non-cooperation strategies and stand with one million Americans organizing their neighbors. As our slide toward authoritarianism accelerates, it falls on us to lead the fight against fascism and force vital institutions off the sidelines. In our July 30 call, you’ll be trained to organize others and lead active non-cooperation in your community.
When the zoom presentation of One Million Rising reached capacity, the zoom call was put on YouTube . You can catch up and watch it here.
The key to stopping any momentum toward authoritarianism isn’t to attack the would-be ruler at the top, but to chip away at the vital institutions and communities that uphold their power, causing the entire house of cards to come tumbling down. Trump cannot consolidate power without well-maintained roads to transport his military muscle, vendors who sell to his detention facilities, and educated workers to fill in for his decimated federal workforce, just to name a few.
These pillars of support are much closer to us as everyday Americans than Trump is himself, which means we have the ability to shift them from compliance to defiance.
This is how we fight back against Trump’s authoritarian takeover -- by identifying our influence with the pillars of support his regime depends upon and convincing them to participate in strategic non-cooperation. For example:
Harvard teachers, students, and alumni pressuring the university to continue to reject Trump’s demands
Naval academy graduates convincing the school to return access to books removed during an anti-DEI push
How We Get Started
This approach gives us a historically effective means to fight back against Trump’s power grab with a simple tool all of us have access to: people power. There are thousands of ways to go about chipping away at his support, but they all involve activating those around us. As Maria Stephan said last night:
“Mass movements with millions of workers, teachers, lawyers, truck drivers, farmers, merchants, and students who are engaged in active defiance are very difficult to repress… More tactics means more opportunities to get new people involved, more ways to create leverage over an authoritarian regime, and more ways to generate and sustain momentum. And momentum is key to success.”
This is the critical moment to build the opposition we need to fight back. It is vital that we recruit, train, and mobilize a critical mass of people now before Trump’s authoritarian regime has fully consolidated power. And that’s what we need you to do.
Community gatherings
We are asking you to host a Community Resistance Gathering -- a meeting of a small group of people, who have some relationship to each other, who come together to build their connection, knowledge, and resilience against fighting authoritarianism.
Who should I invite? People you already have some connection to (e.g. friends, friends of friends, neighbors, colleagues), not strangers. Aim for ~10 people.
Where should I host it? At home, a public space like a library, or somewhere else -- wherever makes sense for you and your connections.
What will we do at this gathering? Using our toolkit that we’ll train you on at the July 30 session, you’ll share the ideas we covered last night to get them aligned on the best tactics to fight back.
When should this happen? You should start scheduling now, and ideally hold your gathering between July 30 and August 13 (our next two sessions), with a potential second gathering in the future.
You don’t need to be an expert. If we wait for one million experts to lead community conversations and communal learning, we will be waiting forever. The point is for you to share with your connections as you learn together.
We’re asking that you register your gathering on Mobilize. This will provide you with an easy way to contact all of your attendees, share details, and have a central place for information about the event.
This will also be how we know who is holding events. We want to make sure we are supporting folks who will be hosting with opportunities to ask questions and share knowledge. **We will be offering special office hours to event hosts who are registered through Mobilize.**
Over 100,000 people registered for our first One Million Rising call. If each of you hosts a gathering with 10 community members, we reach our goal of training one million people in strategic non-cooperation.
This moment, as the regime attempts to sprint toward an authoritarian breakthrough, is exactly when we need to stand together and fight back against the momentum Trump is attempting to build -- but we can’t do that if we don’t activate a critical mass of people. These community gatherings are a crucial step in opposing Trump’s would-be dictatorship.
If you have any questions, feel free to email us at onemillionrising@nokings.org, and don’t forget to register for our next training on July 30.