A love for those who went before me,” keeps Michele McFadden going after decades of activism. “I can’t let our kids down. The alternative is to allow the most wicked among us to win.”
McFadden was one of nearly 2,000 people attending the Prescott Hands Off! rally on April 5. Prescott Indivisible and the Yavapai Democrats organized the event as part of a national day of protest that drew Americans out in force to over 1,300 rallies across the country; some even took place internationally. The message of the day was to protest the federal administration’s blunt, unilateral actions that are impairing government services and causing economic chaos.
Protesters carried signs: “Hands off Medicare,” “Save our public land,” “Unite against fascism,” and “Give Trump the boot!” Many, including Jean McMahon, have never been active in politics or only became involved after the 2016 election: “I’m really upset about what the administration is doing,” attacking allies, violating the Constitution, trying to erase history, and Congress ceding its powers to the President. Geoffery Carpenter attended “to protest a whole slew of policies …. It’s important that we show up and say this is not okay, we don’t approve of this.”
At 21 years old, Jackson James is looking around at the world and seeing that “It’s pretty terrifying.” One of two speakers at the rally, James expressed the fear that he and his peers feel when thinking about their future. Worthwhile careers are in short supply, the price of a college education is getting ever higher, and the financial security to be able to have a family seems impossible.
McFadden and husband David Tillolson attended as part of a group of eight Prescott Peacebuilders, standing between the knot of Trump supporters and the rally participants to help prevent conflict from escalating. From where Tillolson stood, caught in the middle of a shouting match at one point, he felt the worst of the tension. Fortunately nothing more than shouting took place, though a man on the counterprotest side openly carried and kept his hand on the grip of his gun.
Strength in community
Effective organizers and activists work to bring people together. The size of the Hands Off! rally in Prescott was uplifting to those who’ve thought that they were part of only a handful of progressives in the community. Many attendees told Yavapai Democrats Chair Kathleen Sauer that their experience seeing so many others present was cathartic: “The people collectively don’t support what is being done by this administration,” and were able to come together and share, “feelings of fear, angst and anger.”
Political scientist Robert Putnam highlighted the trend of social isolation in the US in his well known 2000 book Bowling Alone. He showed that since the 1960s community involvement in political parties, religious communities, social groups, and other institutions has been on the decline, and recognized technology as a major factor in it. Social scientists Eric Klinenberg, Donald Kohen, and Allen Mikaelian point to the privatization and disappearance of what used to be public spaces, institutions and goods as another.
This decline of the public sphere can lead to loneliness and loss of civic engagement, creating a social environment ripe for authoritarianism to take hold. In The Origins of Totalitarianism philosopher Hannah Arendt argues that dictators manipulate isolated individuals for their own purposes: “This isolation is pretotalitarian; its hallmark is impotence insofar as power always comes from people acting together …; isolated persons are powerless by definition.”
Yavapai County has a reputation for being very conservative and pro-Republican, but Llama Habern of the Rural Organizing Initiative (ROI) has seen how progressive people come out when they have a place to gather and see they are not alone. By becoming part of a like-minded community, “people have gotten louder, they’re not outnumbered, not alone, and their voices do matter!” This is why ROI holds regular, informal gatherings in the Verde Valley and in Prescott. “Community-building is not just a one-time event. It’s a long-term investment,” Habern said.
Lessons to learn
McFadden was part of the team that organized the Great Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament in 1986, which crossed the country from Los Angeles to DC. Having been a part of activism for decades, she is disheartened to see the way things are now, but wants to pass on the things she has learned.
There are many areas that people can step up and be effective in this movement. Press is important, and contacting media outlets to ask them to cover events and the larger cause can help a lot. McFadden, herself a playwright, says that musicians and artists of all kinds are essential. They can showcase their skills and messages at rallies, and put on shows outside those events to raise awareness and raise support. She also points out the effectiveness of clergy in their vestments taking lead roles at rallies, and the participation of young people is crucial. “The same people who rallied and marched in the ‘70s and ‘80s are still the main people who show up! We won’t be around forever,” McFadden said.
ROI’s Habern points to concrete action steps as a key to successfully harnessing the energy of people who come out. They attended the Hands Off! rally in DC and saw the Indivisible founders end their speech with a call to action. This is critical because “so many people are getting involved for the first time and they don’t know where to look” to do more. “Followup is really important.”
Clear next steps are often lost in the excitement of large events like rallies and protests. There was an absence of direction for next steps at the Prescott rally, which can be detrimental to the growth and future of a movement. As intellectual and political activist Noam Chomsky pointed out in the ‘90s, “what you find all around the country is huge mobs of people showing up … but nobody around with anything for them to do.” At least 20 progressive organizations in the county are working on everything from affordable housing to racial justice to protecting the Verde River, and rallies like this provide tremendous opportunities to sign people up and engage the many who are getting involved for the first time.
Ways to stay involved
It’s a difficult time for many in our community. Layoffs, food insecurity, insufficient fixed incomes, inability to access healthcare, student debt, these are just a few of their struggles. All of these are also parts of our collective civil — that is, political — life. We can work tirelessly to resolve these problems in our own lives, or we can break down the oppression by recognizing the solidarity we have with our neighbors. There are many ways to do this, and local organizations offer many opportunities to plug in.
Prescott Indivisible is forming groups in Prescott Valley, Dewey-Humboldt and Chino Valley. On the organization’s website (prescottindivisible.org) you can learn more about the different chapters, volunteer opportunities and partner organizations.
The Rural Organizing Initiative (roi.vote) is preparing for the Prescott City Council elections that will take place in August, and they will need volunteers to help get out the vote.
The Yavapai Democrats are always looking for volunteers, and particularly need help with communications (yavdem.org). More local events sponsored by Prescott Indivisible and the Yavapai Democrats are in the works going forward.
Gravity of the moment
The Trump administration, parts one and two, is not the beginning, but the intensifying result of an erosion of US democracy that has been going on for decades. Now it is impossible to ignore as those in power gloat over the dismantling of our fundamental rights and liberties. People are being disappeared for speaking against the genocide in Palestine. Military force is being used against civilians practicing their right to free speech. Much of our health care,water systems, schools and prisons have become for-profit enterprises that leave people dying from preventable disease, drinking contaminated water, learning in de facto segregation, and suffering torture in solitary confinement.
The situation we are in is dire and calls for equally intense pushback if we are to have a chance at restoring our democracy. Historian and activist Howard Zinn makes a case for the use of civil disobedience in his book Disobedience and Democracy. This requires us to focus our energy and recognize, as Zinn states, “that laws, when they seriously encroach on human rights, should be violated, that some conditions are so intolerable that they may require violations of otherwise reasonable laws … to dramatize them.” This pushes us to overcome devotion to “order” and what Martin Luther King Jr. called “negative peace, which is the absence of tension.”
What this looks like in specificity can take on many shapes, but we must think creatively and beyond shouting at individual Trump supporters or feeling that our work is done because we walked around and carried a sign. It might not be comfortable, could lead to trouble, will get some people mad, but it could also be a lot of fun.
What would happen if a coalition placedmarkers around town representing each neighbor experiencing homelessness, making their lives harder to ignore? What would happen if tourist season was disrupted with a flash mob calling for an end to state and local support for manufacturers that supply weapons used in genocide? What would happen if buses were organized to take voters to the polls? Or there was a satirical workshop on home-organization methods to use in your prison cell after you’ve been arrested for protesting?
The possibilities are endless.
