( Tomdispatch.com ) – On July 17th, I joined a group of Vermonters for a Good Trouble Lives On action in a village near where we were staying that month. Over the past 161 straight days, a small but determined contingent of mostly White, mostly grey-haired, mostly too-polite-to-make-much-trouble residents had been gathering at noon to protest Donald Trump’s policies on a little triangle of land where two streets meet in the village center. Their number had swelled to several dozen on that very hot day, a significant turnout for a community of fewer than 1,000 people. The majority of those driving past us flashed their lights, waved, or nodded in support, including the driver of a giant Pepsi delivery truck. (Since signs asked drivers-by not to honk because the noise upset the neighbors, honkers, I was told, were the opposition.) A young organizer tried to start a chant of protest, but the majority made it clear that they preferred to stand quietly, and she gave up.
It was civil, respectful, and earnest — very Vermont and, as it should have been, lots of fun. In the midst of it, I found myself thinking about a conversation several days earlier with a woman I’ll call Laura, whom I’ve come to know over the summers we’ve spent in Vermont. She’d stopped by to say hello and chat. And though we usually steer clear of national politics, recognizing, I think, that our views on the subject don’t align particularly well, this time we ventured carefully into talk about Trump’s America the second time around.
She told me that she didn’t see much difference. The stock market was still strong, and her groceries didn’t cost her much more when she went to shop.
She probably stands to benefit (as do I) from some of the revisions in tax legislation misnamed Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” She claimed not to pay much attention to political news and she’s hardly alone there. People’s lives are overburdened enough or they simply find the news too upsetting. News about that bill was hard to miss, however.
I told her about the Turkish graduate student at Tufts University (where I had taught journalism) who was nabbed on a street in my neighborhood in March by ICE agents, apparently guilty of nothing more than co-writing an op-ed on Palestine for the college newspaper, which no one reads, including the students there. Laura recognized my distress. ICE was preying on Vermonters then, too. Still, its predatory policies seemed far away from the serenity of our shared afternoon.
Laura is an older woman, highly educated, actively devout, intelligent, resourceful, good-humored, and a long-time resident of a community that struggles to balance its relative wealth with the neediness of surrounding communities. Although she lands on the side of the comfortable, most of her wealth seems to be in land on which taxes keep rising to the limit of what she can afford. She’s deeply invested in local politics when it comes to housing and taxes in her area and particularly the tensions between longstanding Vermonters and newer arrivals. The newcomers — “We call them the stroller mafia,” she told me — pushed through new taxes aimed at curbing short-term rentals to tourists that limit the already-scarce housing available to residents. It was a laudable goal, but bad news for many longtime residents, including some of Laura’s friends who rely on the income from renting out extra rooms in the big houses they bought long ago.
Vermont, for people who have never been there, is cows, multicolored leaves, and Bernie Sanders. Its politics do lean notably progressive, but 10% of Vermonters still live in poverty. The state also suffered devastating floods in two of the last three summers, and it struggles to pay for adequate education and health care for its inhabitants. In other words, it’s like all too many other states, just smaller and with more maple syrup.
I like and respect Laura. Still, while I was patting myself on the back for finding common ground with someone I had classified as “on the other side” — that generous and high-minded territory we’re supposed to seek out in these uncommon and ungenerous times — I had to acknowledge that civility only gets you so far. I struggle to believe that a shared gripe or a joke about the absurdities of American politics brings us closer to agreeing on tax policy or a viable safety net for poor Americans or the humane treatment of immigrants, because common ground is not common cause and that’s what matters now.
It’s not important, maybe not even desirable, that Laura and I agree on everything. Still, in these grim Trumpian times, until reasonable, caring people like her start to reckon with the draconian policies raining down on our heads, as well as on the heads of people without papers and on neighboring Vermonters who stand to lose their healthcare and more in the years to come, I fear that the policies coming out of Washington will only get endlessly meaner and more destructive.
So, there I was, in common cause with those stalwart protesters, cheering the friendly drivers and flashing everyone the peace sign, and all I could think was: this shit is not working.
Beyond Civility
Neither has much else we’ve tried. Letter writing? Laura would toss out mail from someone she doesn’t know. Phone banking? She’d hang up. (So would I, which is why I no longer make those calls.) Door knocking? Vermont’s small congressional delegation is already left of center, and voters tend to like their own representatives, even when they dislike Congress as a whole, giving incumbents a significant advantage. So, while flipping Congress to the Democrats would revive the possibility of checks and balances, I’m leery of putting too many of my hopes into next year’s midterm elections.
I’m cautious, too, about trusting the rule of law when, despite many favorable lower court rulings, the arc of the Supreme Court seems to bend ever more Trumpward. And sure, so many of us can keep harping on the Epstein files, since that scandal is creepy and (let’s admit it) deliciously dirty, but I doubt any new disclosures — no matter what they reveal — will bring about Donald Trump’s downfall any more readily than his other messes have.
How about congregating in some public arena with thousands (tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions?) of people who already agree with me? May such communal resistance continue to grow in size, commitment, and wit. Building a movement takes time and such demonstrations bolster solidarity and help create more resistance. So far, however, even the largest protests appear to have dented Trump’s consciousness only in leading him to want to charge George Soros with racketeering for supposedly financing them.
I can sign every petition and read every email from organizations I admire and others I’ve never heard of, each proclaiming calamities scarier than the last one — and then, of course, asking for a donation. And I am scared. Just hearing the words “Stephen Miller” or “Laura Loomer” sends my blood pressure soaring, but I suspect that neither hypertension nor money are the keys to the sea change our political culture needs. The problem isn’t just the challenge of getting Trump to pay attention. It’s that the kinds of political activism I’m used to (and that have been effective in the past) no longer get enough Americans worked up enough, or inconvenience them enough, to take on Trump and his agenda.
Strategic Thinking
To succeed, a political campaign generally needs specific, clear, and easy-to-grasp goals and a nimble strategy where benchmarks can be set and progress charted. (Probably a good soundtrack too, but that’s another matter.) What we have now, on the other hand, is a sprawling outcry against a slew of unbelievably rotten policies and a wildly out-of-control president. God knows, there are enough rotten policies, not to speak of corruption and mendacity, to keep everyone busy, and a mass movement does need to be widely inclusive. But the misgovernance extends beyond Donald Trump and simply excoriating him and dreading autocracy isn’t faintly enough.
It shouldn’t be hard to come up with some goals that would be widely shared. For starters, a healthy economy, affordable (evidence-based) health care, decent schools, and breathable air are all basic necessities being visibly undermined by this administration. Nonetheless, in this all too strange Trumpian world of ours, it’s proving all too hard to find a winning strategy — especially given that so much of what’s coming out of Washington falls into the category of (to borrow a favorite Trump phrase) never-seen-anything-like-it-before (at least when it comes to both intensity and sheer looniness). It makes little sense to play by the rules when we have a president who doesn’t even think there are rules, except for whatever ones he makes on the spur of the moment to support his own whims, prejudices, and self-interest.
So, what if the strategy is not to change Trump’s mind (good luck on that!), but to change the public’s mind?
Pillars Prop Up, Pillars Can Crumble
Which brings me to the consent theory of power, a favorite of theorists and agitators from way back, updated by Gene Sharp, an advocate of nonviolent resistance. For those who want to change the mess we’re in, that seems to me the way to go, as injury to people — in fact, personal or mob violence of any sort — is counterproductive, not to mention wrong. The recent murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was a distinct reminder (not that we should have needed one) of where extreme intolerance of opposing ideologies from all directions all too often leads.
Add to that the finding of political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan that, historically speaking, nonviolent resistance has been more successful than violent campaigns. In that context, Sharp’s pragmatic strategies for noncompliance can be considered an active, peaceful response to the sense of powerlessness that authoritarians like “our” president aim to foster. According to Sharp, “The rulers of governments and political systems are not omnipotent, nor do they possess self-generating power.” Their power to keep a country functioning, he stresses, relies on the cooperation and obedience of those they govern. And that’s their vulnerability, too, because the governed can undermine the power of their rulers by withdrawing that very compliance and assistance.
In the consent theory, political power is seen as an inverted triangle balanced on its point and kept from tipping over by various supporting pillars, including the police, the military, media organizations, businesses, schools, and civic and religious groups. Dissidents are encouraged to think of ways to get members of those institutions and groups to disengage or defect until those pillars become unstable and cause the triangle of power to at least tilt, if not topple. An obvious barrier to enlisting those pillars to challenge the status quo is, of course, that many of them are the status quo. Just think, for instance, of the tech billionaires in full grovel mode to Donald Trump. But since it doesn’t take every pillar or even universal defiance in any one pillar to weaken a government like his, focusing on the most persuadable of his followers, along with the fence-sitters, is a place to start.
Obvious forms of noncooperation include boycotts or strikes, but that’s just a beginning. (Sharp suggested 198 methods.) For instance, federal government workers withheld their consent earlier this year by ignoring Elon Musk’s time-wasting demand for weekly emails listing their accomplishments. And what began as a kind of unorganized grassroots opposition worked its way up (as such things often do) to a few department heads who, of course, then took credit for the defiance.
Refusal can be powerful, allies are sometimes found in surprising places, and small actions have a tendency to multiply.
Here’s an example from elsewhere: In 2020, after the Polish government stripped its judges of procedural power and independence, they donned their legal regalia and took to the streets of Warsaw, along with hundreds of jurists from 22 European countries and about 30,000 citizens in a mass protest that came to be called the 1,000 Robes March. It took a few more years and additional pressures to unseat the ruling party, but the symbolism was stunning and effective. While it might be hard to imagine berobed American judges marching through our streets in protest, not so long ago it was hard to imagine a president thumbing his nose at their rulings.
Such resistance requires savvy planning and sharp thinking, though not necessarily centralized leadership. And while some challenges to power include individual defiance, Sharp argues that, “If the rulers’ power is to be controlled by withdrawing help and obedience, the noncooperation and disobedience must be widespread.” In other words, what’s needed in America now is a nonviolent insurgency, one that enlists all those folks holding clever signs on that grassy sward in Vermont and all the drivers flashing their lights in solidarity, not to speak of that Pepsi truck driver (as well as Coke truck drivers) and even some modest portion of the drivers who honked in opposition. (Don’t at least a few have buyer’s remorse by now?) And don’t forget those people passing by in embarrassed silence and everyone like them across the country and their friends and relatives, all refusing to go along until their demands are addressed. Think of it — it could happen — as an epidemic of passive aggression against a brazenly aggressive president.
Noncooperation, nonviolent as it is, isn’t without risks, and you can bet Trump would respond to any organized, widespread challenge with a hissy fit of historic proportions and a slew of punitive, repressive executive orders. But he’s also been known to cave in to pushback, as bullies often do. (TACO — yep, Trump always chickens out — anyone?) If the grassroots action is sustained and substantial, if it really is inconvenient enough, he might indeed have to deal. His deal offers are, of course, invariably one-sided and self-serving, but as he loses power, so too will he lose the capacity to make deals solely on his terms.
Sharp’s strategy reminds me of a prediction Charley Richardson, a very good troublemaker who co-founded Military Families Speak Out, made to me long ago. A government changes its behavior, he told me, when a country becomes ungovernable. My question is: When will that happen in the latest version of Donald Trump’s America?
Copyright 2025 Nan Levinson
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