by Marybeth O’Mara
04-19-2025
Are you feeling stuck? I am.
The last 100 days have been such a firehouse of awfulness that I am having a hard time choosing what to focus on. Digital security? Immigrant deportations? Unlawful firing of federal employees? Defunding of the departments of education and state and health and human services? Labeling workers as deceased so they cannot access the government benefits to which they are entitled? Targeting universities for cultural changes by withholding vast amounts of contracted dollars? Defying court orders? Escalating attacks on trans and other LGBTQ folks? House approval for the SAVE Act to reduce voting access? There is just so much.
And the rest of the world is not normal, either. Bezos’s celebrity girlie space trip. Elon’s nutty legion of babies. Don Jr asking Amazon for a hunting show. Mediocre spring weather. Continued wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Earthquakes. The Kennedy Expressway construction snarling Chicago traffic at all times of the day.
Well, time is marching along, the firehose continues to spew more, and we must stand up-together.
So, how do we do that? How do we get 3.5% of the population to stand up in countable ways, which will lead to the fall of this regime, as Harvard’s Erika Chenowith proposes?
We all have communities and connections and it is time to activate them!
Dan Froomkin of Press Watch and Heads Up News offers suggestions for how to access and activate our inner activists in his most recent Substack post, “ The 250-year-old fight against monarchy never felt so relevant.”
With the cruelty of the Trump/Musk regime seemingly ever increasing, Ben Raderstorf, a policy advocate at Protect Democracy, asked a critical question in a recent piece for the group’s If You Can Keep It newsletter.
So how can we confront dehumanizing tactics in our own country in a way that overcomes, not feeds, the division?
He provides four tips, which I summarize here:
First, lead with humanity. Emphasize the relatable-ness of the lives, dreams, and struggles of the victims
Second, explain why it’s a tactic. Communicate clearly what the autocratic faction is hoping to accomplish with cruelty and scapegoating.
Third, don’t accept or repeat divisive frames. Don’t accept the government’s cover story for the cruelty:
Finally, don’t give up hope and highlight successful efforts to resist cruelty.
Froomkin goes on, citing Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer’s New Yorker article, “So you want to be a dissident?”,
They write admiringly about “communal trainings for nonviolent action.” Many dissidents they spoke to “said that, amid prolonged and cascading political crises, establishing a political home for yourself is a necessary ingredient for nurturing non-cooperation.”
More darkly, they warn would-be dissidents to “write up a plan for the worst-case scenario—what you’ll do if you get fired or audited, or find yourself in legal trouble.” They advise “deleting old social-media posts and using only trusted encrypted-messaging apps.” They even encourage the use of “code words… allowing you to talk about sensitive topics where you might be overheard.”
We can all do something to help, to bring attention to issues we care about, to move the needle a little bit. I dropped the ball with today’s (Saturday, April 19) National Day of Action rallies, and I still have not made it to a Tesla Takedown protest. This resistance is emerging in real time, so it’s still disorganized and rapidly changing. It does look as if there will be nationwide May Day protests on May 1, and Indivisible is tracking and promoting them.
There are lots of other kinds of action to take, from donating money, to writing postcards, to joining phone banks, to talking to friends and family, to contacting your elected officials.
Check the Resources tab at the Council of Crones website for more information on resources that match your needs and inclinations.
Fear is contagious—that is what this administration is counting on by dividing and isolating us. But Courage is Contagious, too. Let’s spread it around.