Tuesday, July 22, 2025

The Movement Has Choices to Make

A Successful Rally

The rally at Houdini Plaza last Thursday evening was a great success, and the organizers should be proud of what they accomplished. The rally was part of a national movement to “make some good trouble” and to express resistance to our Grifter-in-Chief’s campaign to destroy our democracy. An article in The Dairyland Patriot expressed the goal of the rally well in the words of John Lewis.

My philosophy is very simple. When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, say something! Do something! Get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.

The article also quoted Emily Tseffos, one of the organizers of the rally and one of its speakers.

There’s a bridge in Selma, Alabama. … [It is] just concrete and steel. But in 1965, it became sacred ground. John Lewis – just 25 years old – led hundreds across it. They were met with tear gas, horses, and clubs.  And they kept walking. That’s good trouble. Necessary trouble. The kind we’re called to right now.

So let’s march like Selma, … Rise like Stonewall (the 1969 protests that marked the beginning of the modern gay rights movement). … Strike like Amazon workers. … Dream like the people who know this country has always been remade from the bottom up. Because good trouble isn’t history – it’s a mandate.” 

A Weakness Revealed

These are beautiful and powerful words, and in my view, they are completely correct. We must organize and act. However, Emily's words also reveal a key weakness of the rally and of the movement it represented. The movement is an expression of national revulsion against the policies and actions of the Trump administration, but a successful, political movement cannot be only against something. It must be for something as well. The march across the bridge in Alabama had a goal, which was true freedom for Black people in the United States. The Stonewall protests, and the strikes at Amazon also had clear, positive goals.

The movement represented by the rally has no such clear goals. The people who attended the rally have goals: some are fighting for fair treatment of immigrants; others are fighting for fair treatment of women; still others are fighting for Medicare for All or affordable childcare; other goals were represented, as well. But the movement itself has not coalesced around a set of clear positive goals, and it must do so if it is to succeed.

Hard Choices to Make

Selecting a clear set of positive goals will require some hard choices. A movement cannot fight for everything at the same time. It must demand a small number of clearly defined specific changes. So, this movement at this time and in this place will have to choose, and it will have to put some worthy goals aside for another time

Moreover, an effective American political movement should also link somehow to our electoral system, which means that the demands of this movement should point to policy positions that congressional candidates can run on in 2026. It also means that the movement's demands should be capable of being presented in a way that will allow them to attract broad support from the voters.

If the movement’s demands do not point to policy positions for candidates, the movement must expect to reach its goals through civil disobedience. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is an example of the successful use of that strategy as is Gandhi’s March to the Sea to make salt. However, effective civil disobedience is very difficult, and civil disobedience that extends over a long period of time requires an enormous commitment from its adherents. A movement that can make use of the electoral system can achieve its goals much more easily.

So, the movement to “make some good trouble” has choices to make. What will its demands be, and how will it pursue them? It must make those choices if it is to be effective in bringing about change.

1 comment:

  1. Very good point!. When I drove the lead car for the march back in May (April?), we got as far as the court house before the police stopped us (I got a warning for driving too slow). After the hub bub, I’m standing there talking to a cop and he asks “what are you protesting for tonight?” I said I was supporting democracy. I wish I had said I was protesting for him - that the rule of law was under attack. That his time and effort to put his life on the line to investigate and arrest criminals who broke the law and provide prosecutors evidence and judges and juries evidence in order to hold people accountable for their actions was under attack. That allowing all Jan 6 criminals to go free was disgusting, despicable, and disrespectful to him and that’s why I was protesting.
    You are right IMO- these protests need to get more defined!

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