Why Isn't Anyone Doing Anything?

We find each other when we show up.

My heart sank when I saw huge crowds out in the streets last night celebrating the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory. The feeling caught me off-guard, since I have nothing against the Eagles and no special affection for the Chiefs, Taylor’s boyfriend notwithstanding.

It took me a moment to understand the source of my disappointment.

I’ve been wanting to see people in the streets, I realized, but not for a football game. Seeing the huge crowds of Germans who gathered recently to protest the resurgence of right-wing extremism, I kept wondering where our crowds are.

They’re coming, right?

Pixabay

Or are well-intentioned people too preoccupied, or in too much denial? Will people realize too late? When they do, will they be too frightened to do anything? Are they already too frightened?

And then I worry that worrying about people not doing anything perpetuates the problem.

For all these reasons, I found Sherrilyn Ifill’s latest post heartening. I met Sherrilyn a few months ago at a Faith & Democracy event hosted by Georgetown, where we were both speaking. A Civil Rights lawyer who has headed up the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, she has been in the fight for a long time.

Knowing Ifill and the work she has done, I was encouraged to hear her say that the idea that there is no resistance this time is “patently untrue.” Here’s more:

Now I agree that most Democrats were unconscionably slow out of the gate until last week. And it’s true that we no longer have the central social media space of Twitter to reliably keep one another informed about campaigns as we did during Trump’s first presidency. But what I hear in the repeated insistence that “no one is doing anything” is the underlying belief that there is nothing that can be done. And this troubles me deeply.

I have come to wonder whether these expressions of despair and surrender are really masking an irrational longing for a magical way out of this nightmare. A hope that some deus ex machina will swoop down and spare us what we are facing. But this moment we find ourselves in is the result of the reckless voting of our fellow Americans in 2024, the failures of our media over decades, the critical political mistakes of our leaders, the short-sighted greed of the corporate community, and the longstanding lack of urgency about repairing the gaping cracks in our democratic infrastructure over far too many years. There is no magical way out.We are reaping what has been sown by many, many years of inattention to the eroding foundations of our democracy and we must face it.

To overcome or even slow the momentum of the forces arrayed against us will require our resolve, and an ecosystem of resistance – litigation, activism, organizing, direct action, communications, political pressure, and our voices raised to speak truth to power. We may not be able to score a knock-out punch, but we can score a series of technical knockouts against our opponents to reduce the intensity of their efforts. This will take all of us, committing to do what we can.

To insist that nothing can be done is to surrender to the pull of inertia. To numb ourselves and settle for watching our country’s demise, rather than fight it. If this seems like an option to you it is only because you are unable to imagine how truly bad it can get for our families, our friends, and our communities. I am clear that it can and may become not just worse, but intolerable for many, many people, and that none of us will be immune. That recognition makes it clear to me that there is no option but to fight.

Despair and believing that you are powerless is a form of “obeying in advance” (Timothy Snyder’s term) which ensures the victory of autocracy. I understand the exhaustion, anger, the feeling of being overwhelmed and the grief that those of us who believe in democracy, equality and justice are experiencing right now. And painful as it is, I have accepted that there are no guarantees that we can overcome all that we are facing. But I do know that unless we fight, we cannot prevail.

What is being done? More than you may realize:

Three of Trump’s Executive orders were halted at least temporarily by federal courts last week. A federal judge in Massachusetts issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the enforcement of Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship, a critical and founding principle of our Constitution since the end of the Civil War. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/trump-birthright-citizenship.html Another federal judge halted Musk’s access to Treasury department systems https://www.npr.org/2025/02/08/g-s1-47350/states-sue-to-stop-doge-accessing-personal-data or ordered the destruction of any data Musk and his minions And another federal judge temporarily enjoined the effort to fire thousands of employees of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/02/07/g-s1-47224/usaid-freeze-judge-trump .

New litigation is challenging the so-called “Department” of Government Efficiency, Musk’s cost-cutting operation, as violative of the Federal Advisory Committees Act https://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action/lawsuits/doge-sued-to-follow-the-law-or-cease-operations/ . FBI agents have sued to block dissemination of the names of agents who worked on the January 6^th case. https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-fbi-justice-department-8460829a0874f91a95bc4a9d22e36fce Other cases are being developed that are challenging the illegal actions of the Trump administration, as well as anti-democratic measures that are being undertaken at the state level.

State Attorney General Tish James issued a letter informing medical facilities in New York State that New York State Law forbids discrimination against classes of people and that denying of care to transgender individuals to comply with Trumps’ anti-trans Executive Order will violate their obligations under state law. https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/letters/ag-james-to-hc-providers-re-tro-letter-2025.pdf

But the courts and law are not where all the action is happening. Last week alone there were rallies throughout the country – in all fifty states -- against the actions of Elon Musk and his team at Treasury, his actions against USAID, and his attempt to fire public service employees. https://apnews.com/article/50501-protests-project-2025-trump-state-capitols-ddd341171a54ba9b498cbfe7530e18ab; https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/protests-erupt-as-elon-musk-moves-to-gut-government-agencies ; https://apnews.com/article/50501-protests-project-2025-trump-state-capitols-ddd341171a54ba9b498cbfe7530e18ab Federal workers protested Musk’s insulting and illegal “buyout” offer. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/politics/federal-employees-musk-protest-spoon.html. Other rallies were held in support of the rights of transgender people. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/nyregion/nyc-trans-health-care-youth-protest.html . Democratic members of Congress showed up at rallies and demanded entry to federal office buildings where Musk’s team was working. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/us/politics/trump-department-education-democrats.html

People are doing things. You will meet those people when you start doing things.

The easiest form of advocacy is for you to pressure your representatives to oppose the Musk takeover and destruction of our federal agency infrastructure. In an IG Live this week Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shared that the calls made by voters to members of Congress last week – both to Democrats and Republicans – is beginning to have effect. Note, for example, Republican Senator Moran public expression of concern about the effect of Musk’s actions against the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Kansas farmers. https://www.yahoo.com/news/kansas-moran-davids-sound-alarm-195901729.html So folks in red states or districts, you especially need to make these calls. We need to help open up a wedge between Trump and congressional Republicans. That can only happen if they feel pressure from their constituents. If you are in a blue state or a Democratic district, you need to push your representatives to engage the battle relentlessly, to “leave no power on the table,” and to use all of the tools available to them to resist.

Democratic members of Congress began to increase their presence at rallies and outside federal agencies targeted by Musk in response to pressure from their constituents. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced his support for Democratic Senators who have urged opposing all Trump nominees, after increasing calls and pressure from Democratic voters. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/politics/chuck-schumer-democrats-trump-nominees-protest.html . We need to demand that Democrats create a real, dynamic, top-notch communications campaign. We need more Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), AOC (D-NY), Jamie Raskin (D-Md), Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), our two new Black women Senators, Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE). New faces, new voices. Short videos. Action items. Tutorials on Senate rules and committee jurisdiction. Teach, Listen and Act.

Fortunately, there are easy tools to help you reach out to your representatives. The organization Indivisible https://indivisible.org/coup has information about how to reach your representatives including talking points you may wish to guide you, and a toolkit on how to show up at your Senator’s home office in your state. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cru6DBkH5gadq3S-mVhiSU72mC2ZeDHXG93jeiemFH0/mobilebasic

There is even an app now, called 5 Calls: Contact your Congress https://5calls.org/ that you can download to keep the information available and at your fingertips. It is available in the App Store on Apple I-phones. Want to call your Governor every week? You can find contact information here. https://www.usa.gov/state-governor

There are rallies, marches and other direct action planned for the coming weeks in your states and in Washington, D.C., sponsored by an array of good organizations. Beware of phony orgs. Do a quick online search or make a call before showing up anywhere. Remember that marches must be non-violent. I fear that Trump would relish an opportunity to respond violently to incidents of unrest where violence breaks out.

We will not be able to stop everything, Ifill concedes.

Elections really do have consequences – as many of us tried with tremendous urgency to make clear last year. But we can slow things down, win some battles, throw sand in the gears of others. If we save some lives, some jobs, some critical government agencies, some measure of press freedom, some medical and subsistence benefits, academic freedom for some schools and universities, and protect the dignity, safety and constitutional rights of some of our most vulnerable fellow Americans, it will be worth it.

And it will be from whatever remainder of democratic structure, values, and policies we are able to protect that we will have the space and platform on which to do the work of building an urgently needed new democracy in our country. So our fight today is worth it.

Ifill has several more suggestions for how to plug in, and it’s worth reading her post in its entirety and subscribing to her Substack for more insight into where things stand.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed right now. It’s easy to feel despair. Some also feel genuine fear. There are good reasons for all of these emotions. But fear and despair have a way of generating more of the same.

Courage is also contagious.

Joining with others—and putting a little skin in the game—is the only way forward.

There are tens of millions of us. We find each other when we show up.

**Quick note: I don’t mean to write quite so many posts and I worry about spamming your inboxes these days. I trust you can all exercise agency in deciding which posts to read and which to ignore. I confess that part of the reason for the frequency of my posts is a gnawing feeling that there may come a time when I am not able to write as freely as I am now. Until then, I want to use the opportunity I have to say the things that need to be said.

***Please share in the comments what you’ve been doing, helpful apps, ideas, sources of information, etc. I always appreciate what you all bring to the table.