The Freedom Rides and Resistance to Trumpism Today
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I was thinking more about the death of Charles Person, the youngest Freedom Rider, who we talked about a bit yesterday. People in comments were of course rightfully respectful.
But I was also thinking of the absurdly stupid hopelessness so many liberals today have toward Donald Trump, as if a guy who barely won an election is a godking that simply cannot be stopped. The shrugging of the shoulders is so frustrating. People say they are “tired.” Tired of what? Doomscrolling? Attending a single protest 8 years ago that was in fact quite effective (whether the women’s march or the anti-Muslim Ban protests)? Sending postcards to potential voters that didn’t work? I mean, really, what have you done that makes you so tired?
I have a book coming out later this year called Organizing America, which is twenty stories of Americans who made massive change in the past. One of the points of the book is that anyone can do this. There’s not some magic formula for changing the nation. The first that happens is doing something. The biggest thing getting in the way is hopelessness, especially when that hopelessness is completely unearned.
No one is asking you to be a Freedom Rider here. But what can we learn from Charles Person and other Freedom Riders? What they faced is so far beyond anything that Donald Trump is likely to do that we can’t even begin to compare. I know how much people love to speculate that Trump is going to throw everyone in the camps and all this. And I can’t guarantee that won’t happen. If it does, then, well, we are in a different epoch in history. But there’s no actual evidence to the point. What we are far more likely to face is a government of grifting racists that looks a lot more like the 1890s than it does like Hitler’s Germany.
Was Charles Person tired? Was Eugene Debs? Mother Jones? Rosa Parks? Sure, I guess, they probably were. But they all faced vastly worse scenarios that we are facing in 2025. At the very least, we should read these stories of the past as inspiration and act upon them. Because there’s no reason not to act upon them except for personal cynicism in the face of….losing a close election in a bad moment of inflation?
A big part of the problem is the failure of vision held by many liberals. We’ve seen this over the years here in comments. The people most hopeless right now tend to be the ones who most have argued the voting is the only real political activism that matters. So when the one tool in your box fails, you have no other tools. Of course, the argument that voting is the “real activism” or even the most important form of activism is flawed to begin with, the flip side of those sections of the left who say that voting doesn’t matter at all or that they can’t compromise by not voting for an ideal candidate. Voting is strictly a moment of time that demonstrates if you’ve made any gains or if you’ve suffered losses. That’s it. Engagement with people has to happen in the four years between elections. If you haven’t engaged with folks about your ideas before a month before the election, well, you’ve probably already lost. And we also know from American history that while voting is important, the masses of social change have taken place outside of elections, from the labor movement to civil rights to gay rights. Elections became a way to create the space for legislation and to consolidate power. They are important. But they are one tool. And that’s all.
And at the very least, if you feel “tired” or “hopeless,” well, I think honestly asking yourself what you have done to earn feeling that way is a really good thing to do. Because the answer is almost certainly “next to nothing.” Get off your asses and resist the bullshit coming our way.