Past Outrage: A Resistance Blueprint
Rolling Over Ends Now
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked Americans this weekend: What is to be done?
If you were in Congress, what would you do for the State of the Union?
AOC asked her question on social media. The SOTU speech is in three days, and King Dump is preparing a celebratory tongue bath.
How should allies respond to Trump’s corruption, destruction, and general Nazi death-cult behavior? (Link to a running list).
This Tuesday will be the first presidential speech since the inauguration, and the first major event since Trump and VP Vance all but took a shit on the American flag in the White House with Zelenskyy’s visit.
AOC has received thousands of replies.
The responses were split between:
Don’t go to SOTU at all; Boycott it, hold a separate event that steals the show.
Go to the SOTU in aggressive visible protest, and reject his speech, all business as usual. Turn your backs, catcall him, shout him down, vomit in the aisles, etc.
I just made up the vomit part, but you get the idea.
I have yet to condense my reply to a nugget, but I do have ideas. They are tactics our battle-savvy ancestors1 would endorse, the acts of a loyal opposition.
Never have so many rolled over for so few. Leverage is everything.
It is the moment for wartime consiglieri, for relentless dissent, for courage.
The question the Dems have to answer this weekend: “Are you capable of acting as a unified force?” —No exceptions, no special people who think they’re smarter than everyone else. Whatever they do, it must be indivisible and implacable.
Are you capable of surprise? — Are you, the Democratic Party, capable of stealth leading up to a surprise? No leaking to the press; silence. No telegraphing your best friends stranded in the GOP closet. They will join you without being asked if you do the right thing. It doesn’t matter so much, what the surprise IS— it simply needs knocks the regime and their sycophants off their stance.
A classic list of demands! A list starts as an agit-prop tool, and if you’re successful, becomes a lever. Each demand must be resonant. Like: “Ukraine Yes, Putin No”— “Hands Off Our Money,” — “Stop the Layoffs,” — “Musk OUT.” “Get the Fuck Out of Gaza” and “Measles Are Bad for Children & Other Living Things.”
Some ideas are better summed up in a picture. We need a symbol for the people TrumpWorld is victimizing. Break his yellow-star tactics.
Dems and rank and file got 2 days to work on it.
The aftermath must be as well-executed as the brief window of the event. —It’s how we follow up all that night, the next day, and every day after. The message must keep coming in waves.
As I say to my representatives every time I call on them: “This isn’t all on your shoulders, but you have one job, buddy. Every day you aren’t chained to the courthouse, shouting from the rooftop, on a hunger strike, you are wasting our time.”
Laggards will be primary’d out if we see another election.
It is the moment for wartime consiglieri, for relentless dissent, for courage. Get in formation.