The AOC-Sanders anti-oligarch tour is all about organizing
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2, and in BLOOMINGTON on Apr 4. More tour dates here.
It's hard to imagine today, but Barack Obama ran as a populist outsider, buoyed into office by a grassroots organizing campaign that used an incredibly innovative online organizing tool called MyBarackObama.com, which directly connected rank-and-file supporters so they could self-organize, creating an unstoppable force.
But as far as Obama was concerned, MyBarackObama.com was a campaigning tool, not a governing tool. The last thing Obama wanted was a clamorous electorate jostling his elbow while he made the grand bargains that defined his presidency: secret drone killings, immunity for telcos that profited from in illegal NSA spying, impunity for CIA torturers, bailing out bankers, complicity in the foreclosure epidemic, and, of course, unlimited free money for health insurance companies through the ACA.
Obama ran like a populist, but governed like Chuck Schumer. Meanwhile, the GOP of his day was dominated by its own "grassroots" groups, the Tea Party movement that was funded and organized by the Kochs but who quickly slipped the leash and became an ungovernable force that conquered the party. It turns out that the kind of people who get really involved in party activism are, well, passionate (a less charitable term might be cranks – and I say this as a certified, grade-A crank). They really believe in the principles that bring them into party activism, and the only people they hate more than the other party are their own sellout leaders (oh, hi, Senator Fetterman!).
For a leader whose theory of governance involves a lot of back-room favor-trading and Extremely Grown Up compromising, an activated, organized base represents a powerful obstacle. Obama's seeming genius was his ability to awaken a grassroots campaigning force that he could then hit pause on once he attained office, then re-activate on demand (Obama "revived" MyBarackObama.com for his second presidential campaign):
But ultimately, I think we have to conclude that Obama's strategy was a losing one. By putting his own organization into an induced coma between elections, Obama lost an important source of discipline and feedback that would have told him when his compromises overstepped the tolerance of the electorate – and the fact that Obama didn't have an organized base meant that his Democratic Party rivals and his Republican opponents could force him into bad compromises, as with the ACA.
Contrast Obama with another "populist outsider" in the Democratic Party: Bernie Sanders. Sanders has never been afraid of his own base or their passion. Members of his staff disproportionately come from community and union organizing backgrounds. Think of the difference between Sanders' "Not me, US" and "Our revolution" slogans and Obama's dotcom URL, "MyBarackObama.com." Sanders' presidential campaigns were always organizing campaigns, and he's kept those going in non-election years.
Since Trump/Musk's shock therapy assault on American democracy, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been made headlines with a series of gigantic rallies across the country. The two Democratic Socialists have turned out vast crowds in Republican strongholds: 11,000 in Greely, CO; 15,000 in Tempe, AZ – and even bigger crowds in traditional Democratic turf: 34,000 in Denver.
Writing for The American Prospect, Micah Sifry describes the larger strategy behind these rallies. According to Faiz Shakur, the Sanders staffer who's organizing the events, the point of these events is to build a massive, grassroots organization that gets shit done:
The campaign is hiring full-time organizers in "Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and several Western states," and they're already actively fighting in state-level battles, like a Colorado bill to make it easier to form a union:
These people-powered movements are mobilizing directly against Musk's dark money operation, like the Wisconsin Supreme Court election where Musk is paying people $100 each to vote against Susan Crawford, a progressive candidate:
The campaign is using online RSVPs to build out mailing lists. One interesting fact from Sifry's article: 65% of the signups are from people who are new to Sanders' mailing lists. 107,000 people have RSVPed so far. You can sign up here:
https://berniesanders.com/oligarchy/
Rationalization is easy to slip into and impossible to avoid. Politicians who make themselves beholden to organized supporters who really care about the issues are armoring themselves against the enormous pressure on elected representatives to make compromises. Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have made compromises in their careers that I disagree with. I don't support them because I think they're perfect or immune to self-serving justifications. I support them because they are deliberately putting themselves in a position where it's much harder for them to make excuses and get away with it.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
[Image ID: Photo of a map of the US dotted with red, showing locations of Hands Off! rallies planned for Saturday. Text says: This is the Hands Off! map for Saturday. Nearly 400,000 people have signed up to attend over 1,000 events in all 50 states. We hope to see you in the streets in two days to let Trump and Musk know they can't intimidate us into submission. [/end ID]
This is a calling-in for anyone who went to a 50501/No Kings Day protest. Please - we need y'all, and we need you to stay informed and engaged about what is needed to *actually* pull our country back from fascism and work towards liberation.
#Repost @theconsciouscitizens:
If you are a 50501 supporter, listen up. History already tells us what works and what doesn’t, so let’s reflect, because if we aren’t careful we’ll waste our time walking in circles.
Over the first half of 2025, the situation has worsened significantly. We’ve seen the capture of government by the most radical and fascistic elements of our political class. We’ve seen a tremendous erosion of civil liberties, and rights and resources for marginalized groups. We’ve watched as masked men abduct and deport our neighbors and loved ones for the crime of not being white.
And yet we’ve done next to nothing. For the vast majority of those on this continent, business continues as usual. Everyone who is paying even the slightest attention knows that the situation is dire. In reality we are stepping forward into a fascism more ugly and naked in its bloodthirsty intent than we’ve seen in many years. It is distressing, then, that there is a seeming collective paralysis among the so-called progressives and radicals, from liberal social democratic types all the way up to the socialists, communists, and even the anarchists. There has never been a more pressing time for direct action against the state and capital, and still we remain impotent, constantly on the back foot, and dangerously uncoordinated. We still debate the ethics of property damage, looting and rioting, we still think within the bounds of permits, compliance, and constraints.
Every single one of us has a little cop in our head. He’s been cultivated by years of reinforcement from the day you’ve been born, by every teacher, parent, cop and politician keeping you within the bounds of acceptability. you learn to follow the rules at the cost of personal and social fulfillment, bodily autonomy, and even life and limb. the system is a force of nature, it need not be considered or justified, merely obeyed. a culture of fear and obedience becomes the norm, allowing us to then shirk our collective responsibility to each other to resist.
This deference to authority is pervasive throughout society, and restrains us from liberating ourselves. it kneecaps our potential revolutionary movements, it constrains our imaginations, and it breeds despair and disengagement.
What, then, is the solution to this predicament?
This is where the concept of Anarchist Calisthenics, first coined by James C Scott in his book Two Cheers For Anarchism, becomes relevant.
Resistance is a lot like a muscle. It needs to frequently be exercised in order to build its strength and capacity. It can atrophy with disuse, and, like any fitness routine, it requires time and consistency to work your way up. Anarchist calisthenics then, is the practice of small everyday rule breaking, in order to build resilience and ability for larger acts of resistance.
It is popular to think of a revolution as one discrete event with great clashes and heroic acts of bravery. This ignores the fact that revolutionary transformation takes place first socially, as a culture of resistance becomes pervasive enough to foment wide spread insurrection. Revolution is not only in the big moments of rupture, but in the small cumulative individual acts of resistance that take place every day, and in the spread of this every day insurrectionary culture among our communities.
Revolution is to confer upon yourself the autonomy to judge for yourself whether a rule is justified, whether to abide by or to break it, and if so, how.
We can practice our small daily resistance in many different ways. Wander off the official path, hop over fences, and cross the road wherever suits you. Scrawl your tag where people will see it. Steal those supplies from your work and share them freely. Evade the fare, sneak in through the exit. Ask questions they discourage you from asking, and speak up against small injustices when you might have otherwise remained silent. Confront that creepy guy and make him leave. Steal that american flag and light it on fire. Take a five finger discount at the corporation’s expense. Do whatever you can get away with. In these small acts of resistance, you teach yourself how to be free, how to act in courage, despite being in fear, and you come one step closer to manifesting liberation here and now. Anarchy is not just our goal and our method of liberation, but it is also a life to be lived, and a mode of existence. do your anarchist calisthenics, train the militant inside your soul.
This is a call to confront your fear. Each act will make the next one easier. Each risk will make the next risk easier to confront. You will find your inner flame and fan it into a roaring fire.
“One day you will be called on to break a big law
in the name of justice and rationality. Everything will depend
on it. You have to be ready. How are you going to prepare for
that day when it really matters ? You have to stay ‘in shape’ so
that when the big day comes you will be ready. What you need
is ‘anarchist calisthenics.’ Every day or so break some trivial
law that makes no sense, even if it’s only jaywalking. Use your
own head to judge whether a law is just or reasonable. That
way, you’ll keep trim; and when the big day comes, you’ll be
This moment with Squad 451 is such a great example of what allyship/co-conspiratorship looks like in a diverse movement. Because you see Messala say something silly that reveals the privilege he has compared to his District companions who lived in abject poverty, but he catches himself. And importantly, he doesn't need the District folks to explain his privilege to him. He realizes it, shuts his trap, doesn't get defensive, and hopefully learns something.
And likewise, Finnick, or Katniss, or Gale don't make him feel silly or ashamed. They recognize the unique knowledge he has due to his privileged position (the layout of Capitol apartments), and he uses it to help them move forward toward their collective liberation.
When a dancer or piece of choreography lacks harmony, a body of literature centuries old can offer guidance. Zapatismo and Jineology, Black Power and Indigenous stewardship, AIDS activism and situationism have so much to teach us about community organizing across time and space, yet somehow we lack the pedagogy to apply their teachings in our day-to-day activism. What do these movements have to teach us about choreographing for the long haul? What does Ste-Émilie have to contribute? What does it mean to approach movement building as an artistic practice?
There is a "deafening" media silence on protests around the world protesting against the elites, according to Webster University Assistant Professor Ralph Schoellhammer.
Tiffany Hammond discusses why “Disability Rights” aren’t intersectional and the current social model is failing.
Blogging this article I found via that other article on black autistic folks, because... it does have a point about the issues inherent in focusing on just “autistic rights” as an isolated thing rather than focusing on the larger unfair system.
Like, that really does show another problem with Temple Grandin’s accomodation = assimilation view of things, even putting aside the fact that the economy of stable long-term jobs for which it was created basically no longer exists
Because it ignores autistic people who get screwed in other ways, in a way that squares... uncomfortably with her statements on how the 60s apparently hurt autistic people because the lack of mandated conformity/concrete enforced rules made it more difficult for people on the spectrum to assimilate (FarquaadWHITE.jpg) and... that ain’t right!
Like, as much as I do gripe about the broader leftist movement’s failures at intersectionality regarding us, the reverse should also be true, because dear god the thought of the autistic equivalent of “girlboss feminism” terrifies me...
