Weeks 27, 28, and 29 (Heck, just call it August): Back Burn--Use the Fire!

August 17, 2025

by Marybeth O’Mara

I purchased this poster at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, many years ago, and hung it in my classroom for my entire time as a social studies teacher. Students would occasionally notice it and ask, when we discussed current events, whether we were moving in the direction of any one of the items on the list—complaints about election security, identifying common “enemies”, or the decline of organized labor. I am relieved to be retired because I don’t know how I would answer those questions today. I recognize many more of them in action than I did earlier, even in the first Trump administration. I am sure there are many teachers across the country who would not be permitted to hang this poster in their classrooms today.

I saw this video last week and it piqued my interest. Tad Stoermer is an historian of resistance history, and teaches at Johns Hopkins and University of Southern Denmark. He has an active and interesting TikTok channel. Take a look.

For those of you who cannot (or choose not to) connect to TikTok, here is my summary of this video. He describes the search for effective resistance and works toward an analogy that is easy to understand. He hits on wildfire. He says, “You don’t fight a wildfire with a prayer. You do it with back burn. You use the fire against itself. You do it with a plan, with clear lines, and with a bigger purpose, which is to stop the bigger blaze from consuming everything. It’s dangerous, and it’s ugly, and you will get burned. But the alternative is just standing there and watching your world turn to ash. Stakes. So the question isn’t how they stayed pure in a firefight. They didn’t. But the question is how do you win it and still be able to live with yourself when it’s over? History has shown it can be done. It’s just never been clean.”

What does our own back burn look like? Chicagoan Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, who I follow on BlueSky, posted the following last week, a repost of an essay she wrote last November, days after the election. https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/organize/

Her list of actions includes these (mostly) common-sense principles.

1. Look to the experts. She cites, as I have frequent.y, Erika Chenowith’s “3.5 Percent Rule,” where she contends that any resistance movement that has consistently engaged 3.5% of a nation’s population has been able to overturn the authoritarian control being resisted. Tad Stoermer, cited above, contends (in a different video than the one posted above) that Chenowith’s research is not necessarily a predictor of future successes with resistance movements, as it studied them in the rear-view mirror to discover patterns. It is not a shortcut to a successful outcome, but merely a way to examine past movements and pull out some patterns, the most significant one (from this academic) being that we need at LEAST 3.5% of the population engaged to have a chance of defeating the current regime.

2. Do Your Research. No, not in the MAGA way that has convinced too many people that vaccines cause autism and processed food caused mitochondrial disruption, but in the “go look it up AND validate your sources as genuine experts (ie, not TikTok influencers.) My go-to’s tend to be academics, or journalists with a track record I can recognize.

3. Relationships. Find people that feel the way you do. Have coffee with them. Chat at protests. Join organizing sessions. Talk to neighbors. Relationships will sustain us through this era in the same way that they have sustained people in tough times throughout history. There is a reason that authoritarian regimes seek to divide and isolate us—there is real power and strength in relationships.

4. Don’t do anything alone. Working with others tends to be multiplicative rather than just additive. More gets done with more people. It just makes sense.

5. Nothing about us without us. This is a slogan from the disability rights movement, and it applies to all movements—include and CENTER the people most impacted by the objectives of the movement—both good and bad. Working with the people who have a bigger stake both assures relevance and works to check our (perfectly natural but not ideal) Savior complexes. Seek out or create groups that are diverse and authentic.

6. Education matters. More urgently than ever. It is hard work to keep ourselves educated—about what is going on now, on what is most important now, on how to stay engaged.

Staying engaged has been a challenge for me, as you might be able to gather from the inconsistency of the newsletter’s publication. In the future, I plan to release issues less frequently than the weekly pace I originally envisioned. I hope that this frees up some more energy and willpower to go do stuff. Stuff like attending the Labor Day “Workers Over Billionaires” Rally at Haymarket Square (Monday, September 1, 11:00-1:00, 151 N. DesPlaines. (Contact me if you want to join me!)

I also plan to get back into being a pen pal to my state, city, and federal elected officials. I have been proud of the Chicago and Illinois officials who have taken strong stands against Trump, especially as he plans to send federal troops into Chicago.

Meanwhile, I have purchased the sticker shown below, and put it on my car. I am inspired by a grassroots movement of white women in Los Angeles, who have posted Mexican flags on their vehicles in order to entice ICE enforcers to pull them over and consume their time instead of pulling over and deporting migrants.

Happy September!