Post #3632

Real resistance is not #Resistance. It’s much more than that. If you truly want to stop Trump, you’ll have to go outside, talk to other people, and do hard work. You’ll have to intervene in political events yourself, not wait for someone else to do it for you, because no politician is going to swoop in and save the day. - the Black Panther Party fought racism and deprivation by running extensive mutual aid programs that gave free meals to schoolchildren living in poverty and free medical care to people who couldn’t get it any other way - The Young Lords, a group of militant Puerto Rican and Latino activists occupied Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx to demand better healthcare for their community and launched a “Garbage Offensive” to protest the lack of sanitation services - César Chávez and the United Farm Workers led strikes and marches across the American Southwest for more than a decade, and successfully pressured California’s Governor Jerry Brown into signing the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975. - When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, former Panther Malik Rahim and his comrades organized the Common Ground Collective and held free health clinics for the people George W. Bush was busy neglecting - Latin America has a long and honorable record of resisting dictators: Chileans fought Pinochet and overthrew him. - In Argentina, when President Fernando de la Rúa ordered people to stay in their homes during a 2001 financial crisis, they defied him en masse, showing up to his speeches and drowning out his voice with the sound of banging pots and pans - Today, they’re doing the same to Milei. Plus, the Argentinian labor movement has launched nationwide strikes that shut the entire country down for 24 hours. Local officials, too, have refused to go along with Milei’s agenda. In the province of La Rioja, the regional government has responded to Milei’s austerity cuts by creating a whole new currency, the “chacho,” to fund state services and jobs that Milei refused to provide for - Elsewhere, there are nonprofits like Women on Waves in the Netherlands—together with more secretive and unofficial networks based in Mexico—that smuggle abortion pills into countries that ban them, - In Britain, activists for Palestine successfully shut down an Elbit weapons factory in Tamworth this March. - The uprisings against police brutality after George Floyd’s murder were some of the largest and most impressive in American history, and the protesters didn’t just walk in a circle waving signs - People have been making life hell for Republican school administrators by dumping memes and gibberish into the “snitch line” websites they build to report “wokeness” in schools. - There are the Democratic Socialists of America’s famous brake light clinics, which take away one of the most common excuses cops use to pull people over and harass them. Many of the greatest social movements in American history involved civil disobedience and illegal acts: think of Rosa Parks at the front of the bus, or the Stonewall riots, or the Flint sit-down strike of the 1930s. Unjust laws have to be defied, not followed. Now is the moment to find a socialist, anarchist, green, mutual aid, or anti-war group near you, or to start one. They will be badly needed. Now is the time to unionize your workplace, so you and your fellow workers will have the power to say no to exploitation and abuse. Now is the time to reach out to your friend, classmate, or relative who was deceived into voting for Trump, and help them see through his lies. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/america-needs-resistance-not-resistance