Rethinking the Resistance?

Posted on November 26, 2024 by David S. Meyer

The New York Times suggests that Trump’s second electoral win represents a defeat for the protesters who mobilized against him, and demands a severe rethinking of strategy. The Times presents a simplistic vision of the recent past and a naïve view of how protest works.


Let me explain:

When Donald Trump was first elected, opponents spilled out into the streets almost immediately. Inauguration day 2017 was marked by confrontational protests in Washington, DC, where demonstrators scuffled with police and broke some windows. Some cars were burned and more than 200 protesters were arrested. (I started writing about it here.) The next day saw the Women’s March, the largest DC demonstration in American history. Plus sympathetic sister marches around the country. I wrote about it here and elsewhere.

Both styles of protests featured the common laundry list of demands, and the Saturday demonstration was the product of a particularly broad coalition addressing abortion, climate, immigration, labor, and science—among much else. Opposition to Trump linked them all together. The big question was whether any of it would matter. (Short answer: it did. It does.)


The inaugural demonstrations were the opening act in the Resistance, which included a weekly parade of protests on specific issues, virtually every weekend in Washington, DC. And not just in DC. The following week, when the Trump administration suddenly attempted to implement a poorly considered

travel ban for Muslims, tens of thousands of Americans assembled at virtually every international airport, voicing opposition to the ban and support for travelers. It was easy to spot the trademark pussy hats that appeared throughout the Women’s March crowds. Organizers used contact lists collected at each event to organize the next one. The Resistance continued in different forms throughout the first Trump term, and repeatedly confronted and confounded the Trump agenda. (Sid Tarrow and I edited a book about it, and thought we were done when Joe Biden got elected. Sigh!)

The Resistance didn’t lose, even if activists didn’t get near all they wanted. The protests accompanied and inspired other acts of resistance, including lawsuits filed by ambitious politicians challenging the legality of the ban. Washington’s Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, was one of them. The protests were one demonstration that Ferguson could count on a base of public support for his challenge and sustain a political career. He found legal support as well. The courts twice forced the Trump administration to pare back the ban and limit its scope. Ferguson, by the way, was just elected Governor. Summary: the aiport protests helped stall, if not stop, the policies they challenged, and built support for institutional challenges.
Protest movements can matter, but not by themselves, and not on a timescale that makes for easy stories. And protesters never get all they want.


Simpler, shorter stories limit how well we understand the politics of protest. Grade school accounts of Rosa Parks, for example, tell about her courageous refusal to move to the back of a segregated bus. But the decade of siimilar protests and Parks’s own long history of activism often get edited out of those stories. We often neglect the year of bus boycotts in Montgormery, Alabama and the court decision that eventually desegregated buses. And that effort marked an acceleration of the Freedom movement that continued for a decade, even as some goals still remain on the horizon. (Read some of Martin Luther King’s speeches and see the much broader agenda he articulated.)


The Resistance didn’t get nearly all the activists demanded, but try to imagine how politics would have played out without it. Trump was unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), for example, and it’s hard to think he would have been stopped without widespread opposition to his much larger agenda. Democrats recaptured a majority of the House in 2018, and won the Senate and the presidency in 2020.


It’s heartening to remember that things could always be worse.

And it’s critical to recognize that even when activists don’t get what they want, they can still stop some things they don’t want. Successful social movement stories are much longer and more complicated than the dramatic event that can be recounted in a movie, a song, or around a campfire.

Donald Trump’s second term will surely face another round of Resistance, with higher stakes and more difficult circumstances than the earlier rounds. No one will miss where those rounds fell short, but it’s essential to remember the accomplishments as well.

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Greater and Lesser Evils

Posted on November 3, 2024 by David S. Meyer

The cliché about picking the lesser evil always recirculates around presidential elections, so frequently that it can almost pass for a nugget of wisdom.

It’s not.

Why would you want to vote for the greater of two evils?

We expect so much from the person in that office—and think we learn so much about them—that we’ll inevitably find something distasteful in the political program or persona. As major party candidates try to pander broadly, all sorts of inadequacies become visible.

Really, Donald Trump’s abundant intellectual, temperamental, and moral deficiencies are all part of his brand.

Because we often expect too much, our choices—and electoral politics more generally–will always disappoint. There’s a temptation to treat our vote as a sacred expression of self and vote to “send a message” through pulling the lever for a third party candidate standing on a shorter and sharper platform that feels more authentic.

And it represents a fundamental misunderstanding about electoral politics.

No matter how much we infuse our deliberations and debates with moral concern, elections are about choosing a person to do an extremely difficult job, knowing that they are bound to let us down—at least a little.

Of course, people will infuse their misunderstanding with strong moralistic language, and maybe even get a feeling of self-righteous affirmation by refusing to compromise their ballot in any way. Speeches and writing infused with purist polemic are always more powerful rhetorically than assessing the compromises and disappointments associated with pragmatic choice.

“Don’t vote, it only encourages them,” makes for a great tee shirt—but not much of a political strategy.

They don’t need your encouragement; the election will take place and someone will win and take office.

As the major party candidates work to assemble extremely broad coalitions of support (Chomsky to Cheney for Kamala Harris), they’re likely to fudge the issues you care about. A major party candidate isn’t going to attack capitalism, military spending, or the automobile industry. And this year, there’s the war—or rather, US support of the Israeli military, as it devastates civilian life in Gaza.

On television and the internet, we can see horrific pictures demonstrating the power of American weapons wielded by the Israeli Defense Force: houses reduced to rubble, maimed children, and starved families. We hear the numbers.

Vice President Kamala Harris has basically affirmed the Biden administration’s policies: supporting Israel’s right to defend itself with weapons and urging, apparently ineffectually, the Netanyahu government to protect civilian lives and provide humanitarian aid.

Trump has blamed the Biden administration and encouraged Israel to finish the job faster. Ulp.

Neither major party candidate has a strong claim on peace and restraint.

This is hardly the first time the American electorate has faced such an apparent lack of choice on such an important issue.

In 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey supported Lyndon Johnson’s conduct of the Vietnam War, kind of. And Richard Nixon offered a “secret” plan to end the war quickly, a plan that turned out to be comprised of extending US air forces and bombs more broadly through Southeast Asia. Maybe that’s a bad choice and a worse one.

The worse one won.

I can think about two arguments for refusing to vote, pragmatically, for the less dangerous and offensive candidate.

The first refusal is a self-righteous assertion of personal pride: I don’t want to throw my vote for someone who doesn’t live up to my moral standard or political principles. Maybe it’s easier to sleep through the night when you can ignore the consequences of your actions.

The second is a kind of political argument: voting for a third party or staying home is a way to send a message and “heighten the contradictions” spurring a reinvigorated protest campaign.

The argument has recirculated since at least 1968, and was particularly salient and damaging when likely Democratic voters chose not to vote for Humphrey in 1968, for Jimmy Carter in 1980, and for Hillary Clinton in 2016. It’s only partly wrong, but it’s a big and tragic part. You may get bigger protest movements—but less impact.

The election of conservative and or crazy presidents has spurred intensified protest movements. Nixon faced massive demonstrations against the Vietnam War, including a half-million protesters during the

Moratorium of 1969. Ronald Reagan grappled with very large popular movements against the nuclear arms race and US military intervention in Central America. And Donald Trump’s presidential term was punctuated with even larger protests on all kinds of issues. (I edited a book on this with Sid Tarrow.)

But in all case, the political center of gravity shifted to the right. Liberals and those further on the left engaged powerfully, but on defense, trying to stop things (wars, climate change, immigration policy, etc.) from getting much worse. The successful Democratic presidential campaigns that followed were more conservative.

It’s less difficult to mobilize large protest movements against more provocative administrations, but it’s much harder to get the kinds of policies you want.

Successful movement politics sometimes means taking very modest victories in the moment, and trying to push the political center.

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It’s been a minute, campus protests

Posted on October 11, 2024 by David S. Meyer

I’m on this show, discussing free speech and new restrictions on campus activism imposed in the wake of last Spring’s protests about the war in Gaza.

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/11/1210935820/its-been-a-minute-campus-protests

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A day for Labor, 2024 (repost)

Posted on September 2, 2024 by David S. Meyer

(2024) Joe Biden walked a picket line earlier this year, the first president to do so. His appearance was successful effort to show his commitment to organized labor, and labor has reciprocated; large unions have endorsed the Democratic presidential ticket, even though Biden is no longer on it. Sean Fain, leader of the United Auto Workers, spoke at the Democratic National Convention. Shawn O’Brien, leader of the Teamsters, spoke at the Republican Convention, but was emphatic in explaining that it didn’t mean the Teamsters supported Donald Trump. Both leaders have adopted a more aggressive posture than their predecessors in dealing with contemporary politics. We may be entering a new era of effective labor militancy–a recurrent, and usually wrong, prediction. Labor Day is a good time to take stock, and a full accounting starts with the origins of an odd American holiday.

Successful politicians exploit, buy off, and sell out the movements that sometimes buoy their campaigns. This American story is an old one, and it’s one that leaves activists disappointed, wary, and cynical, often especially about the politicians who do the most for them.

So, why is the American day to commemorate Labor held at the end of the summer, months after May Day, the workers’ celebration day virtually everywhere else in the world? How do you respond to a movement by creating an occasion for a cook-out?

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President Grover Cleveland, a hard-money Democrat, and generally no friend to organized labor, signed a bill making Labor Day a national holiday at the end of June in 1894, at the height of the Populist movement, and just after the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, had launched a boycott and strike, starting in Pullman, Illinois. Protesting the Pullman Palace Car Company’s treatment of its workers, including harsh wage cuts, railway workers across the country refused to handle any train hauling a Pullman car.

The Federal government used an injunction, then troops, to battle the union and get the trains moving.  In July, just after announcing a national day to celebrate the contributions of American workers, President Cleveland ordered federal marshals–along with 12,000 Army troops, into Chicago to break up the strike. Workers fought back, and 13 workers were killed, and at least several dozen injured. Debs was tried for violating an injunction, and went to prison, where he discovered the writings of Karl Marx. Clarence Darrow provided a vigorous, but unsuccessful, defense.

Debs would go to prison again, for his opposition to US entry into World War I, and would run for president five times as a Socialist.

But I digress. President Cleveland created a distinctly American Labor Day, emphatically not on May 1, which had already been the occasion for vigorous and disruptive workers’ activism.  (Read about the Haymarket affair.)

May Day remains the day for international workers mobilization.  Instead, our Labor Day is a time to mark the end of summer by cooking outdoors and shopping for school supplies.

The  US Department of Labor’s website gives credit for Labor Day to the American worker, but makes no mention of the Pullman Strike or the Haymarket demonstrations.

So, commemoration can actually be a way to neuter the historical memory.  See our discussions of commemorative days for Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Fred Korematsu, all significantly more difficult characters than what they’ve come to represent.

P.S. Organized labor’s cumulative difficulties and declines have begun to lead to new strategies. One involves organizing workers that unions in the past had largely overlooked. Established unions have tried to expand their reach by organizing in retail stores and in fast food outlets, working to unite less skilled workers. Most recently, as example, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that graduate teaching assistants at private colleges could organize unions and bargain collectively. But I’m not quite convinced that graduate students are the new vanguard for the working class.

Members of the Wisconsin Jobs Now group, representing Fight For 15, which favors a $15 an hour minimum wage, march down E. Chicago St. shortly before entering the Summerfest grounds for Labor Fest in 2015.

Likely more promising are efforts to use politics to improve the fortunes of American workers. Collective bargaining is one way to raise wages. Another is to mandate higher minimum wages for everyone. The Fight for $15 has had claimed some important successes in new ordinances in generally liberal cities, and has shifted the debate elsewhere. Bernie Sanders campaigned for the Democratic nomination by endorsing the proposal for a new minimum wage, and Hillary Clinton, competing for his voters, essentially endorsed the effort.

This past year, all of the Democratic hopefuls endorsed dramatically increasing wages. One future for labor is through Democratic Party politics.

2019: Reading over something I initially posted in 2011, I fear that the big story is basically the same: 1. Economic and political equality has generally increased, with the fate of less educated workers substantially worse; 2. government has done more to slant the slope of the political battlefield against workers generally and organized labor in particular…esp. see Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; 3. the current political battle pits conservative politicians against government workers.

But,

When well-honed routines of organizing are no longer working, organizers have to innovate. The Fight for $15 has made substantial inroads, particularly in the Democratic Party, and organizers now see immigrants as allies rather than competition, mostly. Family Leave campaigns provide a route to build bridges between different classes of workers which, ultimately, could have large payoff. Most generally, the campaign for workers welfare is transforming to a larger concern with political and economic inequality: it’s what’s left as viable strategy.

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Protest politics in the primary season

Posted on August 21, 2024 by David S. Meyer

Pro-Palestine and antiwar advocates have done a good job of staging dramatic events outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. By commanding media attention, convention protest is a good way to reach the broader public. But it’s unlikely to have much effect on candidate Kamala Harris’s policies, much less what President Joe Biden actually does.

Plus: The Biden administration’s announced optimism about ratification of a cease-fire agreement complicates the public politics of everything. Even well-informed experts are unlikely to have reliable information about who’s gumming up progress. There is, of course, every reason to distrust public announcements from Israel and from Hamas.

But the presidential primary process is a great place for movements to execute influence…under normal circumstances.

If we go back to the 1968 Chicago convention, we can see both the extent and limits of protest influence in the OLD party system. Eugene McCarthy, a quirky senator from Minnesota challenged incumbent president Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Campaigning specifically on stopping the Vietnam War, McCarthy won 42 percent of the primary vote–4,000 fewer votes than Johnson won, but enough to shake up Democratic politics.

It was shocking. Johnson announced that he was dropping out of the race, and many other candidates, most notably New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy,* hopped in. By the time Chicago came around, Kennedy had been assassinated and it was very clear that the primary process wouldn’t influence the selection of the Democratic nominee nor the policies he would advocate. That frustration and lack of representation is one reason (of many) the streets of Chicago and the politics of the convention were so chaotic and crazy.

After Republican Richard Nixon narrowly defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic Party set up a special commission to boost the representation of rank and file Democrats, particularly young people, women, and minorities. The McGovern-Fraser commission set up all sorts of rules to make the delegates representative and to make the primaries the main game. (Republicans followed with similar reforms.) George McGovern, senator from South Dakota, understood these new rules very well, and won the Democratic nomination to challenge Nixon in 1972–without ever gaining substantial support from mainstream party leaders. He lost the November election in an historic landslide.

But the primary process held. Below much national visibility, activists recognized great opportunities to present their issues to primary candidates hungry for attention and support. Movement activists were the ones who would actually show up for events, and they came prepared with pointed questions. In low visibility, low turnout events, they got to ask those questions….over and over again. Candidates eager to distinguish themselves responded to grassroots passions with commitments that most of the party regulars had no interest in.

In the Republican Party, social conservatives quickly became a valuable constituency, one successfully cultivated and exploited by Ronald Reagan, who took strong positions for prayer in schools and against abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment. The primary process made it critical for ambitious Republicans to sign pledges against all taxes–positions they would have avoided taking in the old system.

Democratic candidates took the opposite side, strongly, on those social issues, and sought to win activist support on new issues that came up in each election cycle: opposition to the B-1 bomber, support for the Nuclear Freeze Resolution, decriminalizing border crossing, and so on.

Often, strong positions were liabilities in the general election, but smart politicians knew that they had to get to the general election first–and then they could try to find some way to blur the strong positions they had eagerly endorsed not long before.

Issue activists quickly learned that a trip to Iowa or New Hampshire to shout questions at candidates could pay large dividends.

But not in 2024.

Donald Trump never really wanted to run on issues, and his challengers in the primary focused more on his persona. in an odd symmetry, Biden’s only challenger, Rep. Dean Phillips, ran a short-lived candidacy praising Biden on policy, but (prematurely!) arguing that Biden was too old to run an effective campaign. No issues here either.

Pro-Palestine activists ran “Uncommitted” slates of delegates in several states, trying to ensure a real debate at the convention, but Biden won sufficient delegates very early on. By the time Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris, the primary opportunity was long gone.

For all of her energies and charms, Harris scooted to the Democratic nomination without any of the baggage that the primary process usually hangs on the ultimate nominee. She hasn’t had to offer sharp responses to the movements that would certainly demand them. And she hasn’t had to say no. She has been able to roll out her positions at a rather leisurely pace–surely an edge in most elections.

For oh so many reasons, the 2024 election will be very different than those of the past 50 years or so.

  • *Yes, it’s Senator Kennedy’s crazy son who has mounted an odd campaign for the presidency this year.
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Protest at the Convention? Of course.

Posted on August 19, 2024 by David S. Meyer

People always show up to protest at the national conventions of the Democratic and Republican Parties. The protests span the political spectrum, often including local and national issues. In looking through old reports for the second edition of The Politics of Protest, Amanda Pullum and I found protest at almost every major party convention in a presidential election year between 1948-2012. I bet there’s even more now.

The attractions for carrying signs and chanting in the streets–or more–are very clear. Usually located in major cities, it’s relatively easy to generate crowds and, more importantly, attention. Delegates include party activists, elected officials, and aspiring candidates for office. They are obvious targets and, sometimes, potential allies.

But the local audience is the least of it. Media outlets of all sorts swarm the national conventions looking for news and usually there isn’t much. Although party conventions are charged with selecting candidates for the presidency and vice presidency, since 1972 the nominees are well-known in advance. Reporters looking for stories might drift outside and see protesters for (or against) abortion rights, civil rights, immigration reform, organized labor, and peace, and war–and so much else.

Protesters demonstrate their concerns and their commitments, projecting everything to a broad national and international audience. They attack the Party opposing their positions, and demand the Party closer do more. And movements are far more likely to engage with distant audiences than those wearing funny hats inside.

And there’s a paradox here: Although the people inside the convention hall are better positioned to make policy, they are least likely to be responsive to pressure from most campaigns. By the time the national conventions take place, delegates and candidates are far more concerned with the November election and imagined swing voters than persistent opponents or putative allies in the streets.

The Chicago protests at the Democratic Convention of 1968 focused on the Vietnam War more than anything else, and one reason they were so disruptive and dramatic and dangerous was activist frustration at being unable to influence what was going on inside. Party insiders chose Vice President Hubert Humphrey as their nominee. Humphrey had difficulty sketching out a clear position on the war while demonstrating fealty to President Lyndon Johnson and had skipped all of the primaries. Activists locked out of the convention focused their efforts–and their rage–outside.

After the Chicago debacle, both parties executed reforms of the primary process that guaranteed issue activists more meaningful influence much earlier in the process.

By the convention, partisan positions are pretty clear, and leaders work to blur those that might hurt them at the polls.

Now look at the Gaza war–as demonstrators in Chicago urge. Protesters want the next president (and this one, as well) to put more pressure on Israel to stop the killing and reach some sort of settlement. They offer a range of remedies, from more forceful rhetoric to an embargo of arms to Israel.

President Joe Biden has adopted a policy mostly offering abundant arms and quite diplomacy to Israel, which clearly has been ineffective at ending the carnage. To the extent that we can derive a policy position from Donald Trump and the Republican Party, it’s one of more vigorous support of Israel.

In an electoral calculus, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris has every incentive to avoid a strong position on the issue. She called for a cease-fire months ago, and brokered meetings with the Israeli opposition to the Netanyahu government, but has been unwilling to risk a stronger stance.

Demonstrators will demand more from Harris, to be sure, but the real hope for influence is the audience watching from afar.

The prospects for influence in a presidential campaign are much better much earlier in the process.

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Protest can build political capacity: The Case of Ferguson

Posted on August 15, 2024 by David S. Meyer

Representative Cori Bush’s primary defeat last week gave The New York Times an excuse to look at the infrastructure that supported her surprise primary victory in 2020.

Audra D.S. Burch’s excellent article starts with the police killing of Michael Brown in 2014 and the waves of Black Lives Matter protests that followed. Cori Bush was one of many effective organizers who demonstrated commitment, savvy, and organizing skills in the protests, and one of more than a few who turned their attention to elective office. Burch notes that over the decade that followed, Ferguson elected its first Black mayor, hired its first Black police chief, and St. Louis County elected its first Black prosecutor. Veterans of the protest marches made their way into Boards of Alderman and into citizen action groups. (This, by the way, is nothing new in American politics. Many politicians start a political career in protest politics.)

None of this was visible during the disruptive protests of 2014, but staging those protests built the infrastructure and networks that made a different kind of politics and political leadership possible. People who were willing to come out to the marches were willing to walk the wards in an electoral campaign, and they were far more likely to campaign for those who marched beside them. Activists learned how to organize events, influence government, and manage interviews with the press. Organizer training provided a good foundation for electoral and institutional politics as well.

Cori Bush, who defeated a non-responsive incumbent in 2020, lost in 2024 to Wesley Bell, St. Louis County prosecutor, who also cut his political teeth in the response to Michael Brown’s killing.

Now, here’s the twist: Cori Bush still had citizens willing to walk the wards and knock on doors, but she also had new vulnerabilities, including a federal investigation for misuse of campaign funds. More than that, Bell got more than $8 million for his campaign from AIPAC’s (American Israel Political Affairs Committee) political action committee. Bush’s justice advocacy in Congress included harsh criticism of Israel, and well-funded and well-organized AIPAC made an example of her–and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who also lost a Democratic primary in a mostly suburban New York district. AIPAC picked incumbents with vulnerabilities who were critical of Israel to send a message to everyone else.

Israel/Palestine is not a particularly salient issue in Ferguson, Missouri, but $8 million is a lot of money to raise a profile and attack an incumbent. Other prominent critics of Israel were able to fend off primary challenges. (Ilhan Omar [Minnesota] held her seats by a margin of 13 points!) But be sure that every Democrat in Congress who considers crossing AIPAC on Israel will know just how much money the group put into taking Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman out.

There’s a double lesson about the outcomes of protest politics: Sustained mobilization can build the networks, experience, confidence, and skills needed to navigate institutional politics. But those networks need to be nurtured in order to sustain themselves and their champions.

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Randy Kehler’s life

Posted on August 5, 2024 by David S. Meyer

I met Randy Kehler a couple of times, but knew him mostly by his public actions and reputation. The picture above is from my last entry in PoliticsOutdoors, posted a little more than a year ago, a comment on Daniel Ellsberg’s death.

The picture features Randy on the right and Daniel Ellsberg on the left. Ellsberg said that he never would have released the Pentagon Papers had he not learned of Kehler’s commitment and his sacrifice. Kehler had returned his draft card during the Vietnam War, eschewed conscientious objector status, and spent nearly two years in federal prison for his acts of conscience.

Randy died last month at the age of 80, of chronic fatigue syndrome.

There’s no small irony here, as Randy Kehler was a tireless organizer for peace and democracy. He came up with the idea of putting the nuclear freeze proposal on the ballot in a few Western Massachusetts Congressional districts for the 1980 presidential election. The freeze passed by large margins, even as the districts went for Ronald Reagan, part of a Republican landslide.

But the referenda demonstrated the nuclear freeze proposal’s strong appeal. The wins pointed progressives to a viable issue and a workable strategy. Every place the freeze appeared on a ballot over the next several years, it won decisively, and a national movement took off, with Randy Kehler among the key leaders. He served as the first national coordinator of the freeze campaign and testified before Congress.

And, though Reagan–the movement’s prime target–was reelected in another landslide in 1984, it was a different Reagan, one who acknowledged the horrors of nuclear war and offered arms control proposals to the Soviet Union to try to take the steam out of the movement. When a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev accepted America’s grossly asymmetrical proposals–offers intended to be rejected–Reagan said yes. Agreements on Intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe (INF), and then strategic weapons (START), gave reformers in the East space to work, leading to the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Today, the global total of nuclear warheads is about less than 1/5 of what it was in the 1980s. That’s still plenty, but it could have been much worse. (Ulp, it could still be.)

Randy Kehler was a great strategist, but his actions weren’t all strategic. He and his wife, Betsy Corner, lost their house to the federal government because they refused to pay taxes supporting preparations for war. The story is told in Clay Risen’s good obituary in the New York Times, in another obit by Diane Broncaccio in one of Kehler’s local papers, the Amherst Bulletin, and in a documentary, An Act of Conscience. The local papers quote Kehler’s neighbors who testify to his engagement and his kindness.

I’m reminded that Henry Thoreau, who got more mileage out of war tax resistance with far less sacrifice, announced that he would always pay local taxes because he wanted to be a good neighbor.

Randy Kehler’s life was consequential in ways that he could not have anticipated, and even after his passing, it remains a model.

Clay Risen picked exactly the right Kehler quote as an epitaph:

“Don’t ever, ever assume that anything you do, particularly if it’s an act of conscience, won’t make a difference.”

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Convictions and convictions (4): how sacrifice (sometimes) works

Posted on June 17, 2023 by David S. Meyer
Daniel Ellsberg and Randy Kehler in 1971, photo from Kehler papers at UMASS

Daniel Ellsberg died of pancreatic cancer at 92, having lived a long and contentious life.

As the obits everywhere tell, he started by touching every base on the career trajectory of an elite military analyst: an academic start in prep school, through undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard, interrupted by a stint as a Marine Corps officer, and then a job at RAND and service as an adviser to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

In 1971, Ellsberg jumped off the inside track and leaked The Pentagon Papers, a secret study of US involvement in Vietnam commissioned by McNamara. Photocopying thousands of pages–before autofeed existed, Ellsberg tossed away his career and any prospect of future government jobs to show, among many other things, that successive US administrations lied to Americans about the war, offering an optimistic vision of a potential victory that high level officials knew was impossible.

Why did he do it?

Years later, Ellsberg told different versions of the same story: he was moved and shamed into action by the stories of young men who went to prison for resisting the draft. There were more than a few names, but one that came up in every story was Randy Kehler, a star student at Harvard–like Ellsberg–who returned his draft card, rejecting the conscientious objector status he’d been granted, and served nearly two years in Federal prison.

Ellsberg spent the rest of his life campaigning against nuclear weapons, war, and government secrecy.

Randy Kehler has spent his life organizing against war and for democracy. A founder and national coordinator of the Nuclear Freeze campaign, Kehler launched many citizens’ campaigns and staged a very visible tax resistance campaign that cost him his home. (Kehler’s papers are collected and available to researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, not far from where he lives.)

“No Randy Kehler, no Pentagon Papers,” Ellsberg wrote in a copy of one of his books, given to Kehler.

Kehler said that he didn’t think his stint in prison would end the war, but resisting the draft was the right thing to do. It’s hard for me to imagine that he didn’t entertain doubts about his efforts during his time in prison. Certainly, there were few visible signs that a very costly personal sacrifice was changing the conduct of the war at the time.

But protest sometimes works in odd and unanticipated ways, and inspiring others to action can matter.

Ellsberg certainly thought so. In the decades after leaking the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was arrested 90 times at protest actions.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/mar/21/hundreds-rally-at-base-holding-wikileaks-suspect/
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Convictions test convictions (3): Principle, strategy, and loyalty

Posted on June 13, 2023 by David S. Meyer

Arraignments test convictions too. So do the bursts of detail revealed in charging documents.

A few hundred* Trump loyalists, many in costume, appeared to show their support for the former president, newly indicted in the classified documents scandal. Although the Trumpist turnout in Florida was much bigger and more vigorous than the showing in New York City earlier this year, it’s far smaller than what local police obviously prepared for, and not near the demonstration of division Trump’s allies threatened.

Every charge, trial, and blurted insult provides a chance for supporters to get off the Trump train, and Republican politicians are still trying to figure out how long they can safely ride and walk off in time before…..steaming off into the sea.

Of course, some Republicans never boarded that train for reasons ideological or strategic. Trump was clearly unprepared to be president, departed from Republican orthodoxy on a batch of important issues, presented a substantial drag on the Party’s electoral, and daily displayed considerable character deficits. Still, Trump won the Party’s presidential nomination in 2016, representing its only hope of gaining the presidency. Most Republicans got on board rather than risk being left behind, and the Never Trumpers were marginalized within the Party.

Early defectors among national Republicans fared worse. Senators Jeff Flake (Arizona) and Bob Corker (Tennessee) cited principles (civility and foreign policy, respectively) in explaining their reasons for breaking with the sitting president of their party. They were isolated in Washington, DC, and ostracized at home; neither could mount a viable campaign for reelection.

The impeachments provided additional reasons and opportunities to stand up for something other than Trump. In the House of Representatives Justin Amash (R-Michigan) said that he read the Mueller report before deciding to support impeachment. He was basically forced out of the Republican Party, joined the Libertarian Party, forfeiting any chance at reelection or any kind of political career. Utah Senator Mitt Romney (Utah) was the lone Republican to vote for the first impeachment, surviving politically only because of the strong loyalty he commanded from the Mormon community in his state.

Of course, other Republicans supported Trump less enthusiastically, occasionally explaining differences on one issue or another, or just left office. But when the 2020 reelection campaign commenced, the crowds got in line. Although Joe Biden’s electoral victory was real and substantial, Trump somehow pulled millions more votes than in his first campaign.

Trump’s defeat at the polls was another long stop where Republicans could have changed trains. Most didn’t. The January 6 insurgency was another stop, this time unexpected, and more than a few appeared ready to leave Trump and find other vehicles for protecting themselves. Notably, Senator Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) announced that he was done with Trump, who had just gone too far. But the break-up didn’t take.

Strategic actors, trying to read a room, looked to see how many were ready to move away from Trump, and who they were. Waiting for someone else to move first, politicians in the national party found a way to continue supporting Trump, despite repeated defeats and increasingly egregious claims.The two House Republicans ready to publicly challenge Trump, Liz Cheney (Wyoming) and Adam Kinzinger (Illinois) were isolated in the institution and unable to win reelection.

Strategic considerations–keeping a job, political allies, or golf invitations–trumped principle. Republicans in office were willing to abandon their political stances on everything but Trump, who demanded loyalty. But be sure that most Republicans were still watching and waiting for another moment to break. Among those NOT running for office, including a long line of former Trump staffers and Cabinet officials, pointed criticism was much easier to find.

The presidential campaign, in conjunction with what will surely be an extended set of legal dramas, may have changed the strategic calculus. Fearful of alienating Trump’s electoral base, most of his opponents have been unwilling to criticize the former president on matters of policy or principle, even as they hoped that something else would take Trump out of the race. The challengers have, however, suggested that he might be an electoral liability for the Party. As the details of the most recent indictment appear, eager defectors can proclaim that loyalty to country supersedes commitments to Trump. Tentatively, at first, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, have suggested that–if proven–the charges against Trump are serious. They’re testing the response.

Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity Action (funded by the Koch network) has begun running ads that focus on Trump’s electoral liabilities, even asserting that Trump may be the only Republican who would be unable to defeat President Joe Biden.

It’s not a Never Trump movement so much as a not Trump now campaign. Principled early defectors suffered for what we can call premature prescience. But now, each new Republican Trump opponent coming out makes it a little less risky and a little less difficult for the next pragmatic politician to follow.

It’s certainly not most Republicans, at least not yet, and be sure that there will be some dead-enders who will cling to Trump through their last breath. But the pragmatic case for defection is getting stronger and stronger.

When politicians reconsider their political commitments, the deliberations and decisions eventually become public–and they have to explain their choices. But at the grassroots, no-longer-loyal Trumpists don’t have to explain their decisions to anyone.

They just stop showing up.

* The total number of demonstrators was initially reported as in the dozens, before I posted. Since then, later reports identified hundreds of protesters.

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