Authoritarianism is here

And protest without a power plan is just whining

I haven’t written for a while for many reasons, one of the most important being that I don’t have much to add to the voluminous evidence that we ARE sliding toward (and in many ways evidenced by constant right-wing violence), already living in) right-wing authoritarianism. But since this newsletter is supposed to be about what we’re going to do about that, and I don’t have many ideas, there’s not much to say.

The January 6 hearings are critically important in showing just how perilously close we came to a full-scale coup. (And by the way, fellow Iowans, we must remember and shout loudly that Senator Grassley was apparently prepared to lead that coup — Heather Cox Richardson’s post today finally brings this up again in a way I think is better suited to its importance than most coverage I’ve seen.)

But we shouldn’t let that distract from what I’ve here called the long insurrection, playing out, for example, right now in New Mexico. And Nevada. And I could go on but — you can find the list by a Google search.

So - when the election system is rigged through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and election officials hostile to democracy, what to do? I had no ideas.

And then I realized — the fact that I find this situation new, surprising, and intolerable is an artifact of my privilege as a white person. While my white grandmothers had the vote from an early age, black women often didn’t get it until 1965. If there’s one group of people who know about how to fight violent authoritarianism, it would be black women. And I realized I don’t know much about that history. So, of course, I started reading.

I can’t believe I knew so little about the Civil Rights movement. I had seen the Montgomery Bus at the Henry Ford Museum several years ago, but I hadn’t realized how appropriate that was, since Rosa Parks lost her job and moved to Detroit - where she continued to be very active in civil rights work - after the Montgomery bus boycott.

What I did know a bit about, and am glad to understand better in depth, is the long history of education and training and planning for power that undergirded the bus boycott and the Civil Rights movement — the role of the Highlander School, and the voter education schools, and the nonviolence trainings.

And the strategic, thoughtful planning around how to push the levers of power. This is what seems to me to be completely missing today among those whose values include the notion that that all people are created equal and human rights - of immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, etc. — should be respected.

I’ve been super, super discouraged with the response to the removal of women’s human rights in the US. I’ve been discouraged that the Democrats keep talking about voting, for pity’s sake, when voting has become so difficult, and gerrymandering so extreme, that voting is almost completely irrelevant in many places. Why wouldn’t Biden just say — the Supreme Court has done this, and said the states can decide, but the gerrymandering and voter suppression is so extreme that they’ve decided already who can decide, and it’s people who don’t think women have human rights. Why wouldn’t he just say that? That’s the whole point of the bully pulpit of the presidency (as the first Roosevelt said and the second demonstrated). Why are those who support women’s rights so focused on abortion funds and plans to help women get to states where they have full rights when they need them, instead of having a power plan about the fact that as soon as Republicans retake Congress, they’ll enact a national abortion ban? Because pretending that these folks have any intention of letting anyone but them determine what rights women have is as out of touch with reality as supporting the Big Lie. It’s dumb. It’s dumb, and it’s irresponsible. I’ve been discouraged that the response to the removal of women’s rights has been tepid, and late, and as far as I can tell, composed entirely of protest without any plan for power.

I’ve seen several folks say, “things are so discouraging, because so many things are going in the wrong direction on so many fronts: climate change, women’s rights, democracy, the ability of government agencies to function.” This is wrong. It’s just wrong. Things are going wrong on only one front: the left has completely failed to keep and gain power over the long haul (this includes Supreme Court nominees, Congress, local election officials, etc.) At this point, the radical right-wing authoritarians are so entrenched in some of these places - and will be for such a long time - due to this dereliction of duty on the left, that it’s a little hard to figure out what a power plan would even look like.

So here’s how I’m democracy-ing right now: I’m looking for a group with an actual power plan. Protest might be part of that, but here’s what I’ve learned from reading about the Civil Rights movement: protest without a power plan is just whining and virtue theatre.

Let me know who you’re seeing has an actual power plan.