The Commoner Call (1/23/17)
On Inauguration day filmmaker Michael Moore – who not only predicted Trump’s win, he prediced the Midwestern state flip to the GOP – gave a talk to ctivists and provided the following advice for the resistance to come.
It’s all good advice:
- Admit: We have to admit that the Republicans are good at what they do. They are strong, we are weak. “We look like such wimps,” Moore said, with a shake of his head. We have to admit it and then start standing up and getting some steel in our spines.
- Be A Thorn In Their Backside: Moore said we all need to act: “Be a thorn in the ass of congress.” Make a commitment, he said, to make part of your daily routine to call congress. “They do pay attention to these phone calls; this is no BS.” Moor told everyone to commit this phone number to memory: (202) 225-3121, the congressional switchboard. Moore explains how that worked with the recent attempt by congressional Republicans to kill off the congressional ethics office.
- Use Trump Against Trump: Trump’s thin skin can be played to our advantage, Moore said, explaining, “He’s in his own delusion.”. We need to raise up an army of satirists. Everybody has a sense of humor and so do your friends, so take the risk of being funny; poke fun at Trump. “When the humorist and the satirist goes after the politician, the politician loses because it’s impossible to respond to ridicule and when it is sharp and it is smart it’s powerful and it is devastating and to him it is the most devastating. We want him discombobulated. We want him confused.”
- Create “regions of resistance”: These can be townships, villages, cities and even entire states. Moore notes that before Roe v Wade New York and California legalized the full range of women’s health care and permitted them to have control over their own bodies. State bills permitting safe abortion were signed by Republican governors: Nelson Rockefeller in New York and Ronald Reagan (yes, that Ronald Reagan) in California. Voting reform, immigration, clean energy and transportation innovations, criminal justice reform can all be experimented with and perfected in creative “regions of resistance”.
- Time For Each Of Us To Act: The Trump era means it is a whole new ballgame. “Individually, you all have to take a stand,” Moore notes. “The individual actions you need to take are going to have to be profound and you are going to have to do some serious thought to putting yourself on the line. I have never been arrested. I am willing to be arrested if it means to protect my fellow Americans from this abuse. I will do that. We have to do that; nonviolent, peaceful civil disobedience. It’s a must; an absolute must. …If Trump creates a Muslim registry I will be the first one to sign up saying I am a Muslim. …We’re all Muslin; we’re all on the registry. …Put us all down as Muslim.”
- Put Your Game Face On – We Don’t Have Time For Tears & Despair: “Don’t sound like a liberal,”Moore says, giving a hilarious impression of a wimpy liberal (30-minute point in the video). “We all have to have our game face on; it has to happen.” He goes on to remind everyone that Trump is a vote-deficient president. He lost by 3 million popular votes. “The majority of Americans are with us. Please take heart in that. There is no time for despair. There is no time to be paralyzed by this. There is no crying in politics.”
Link to Story and 39-Minute Video