Nobody Back Down.

Resisters, now is our time. We've got them on the ropes. Keep on moving.

Minneapolis ICE protest - Source: Charly TRIBALLEAU

I’m tired. You’re tired. We’ve been after Trump and his greedy, vicious, corrupt band of cronies for a decade now. Ten long years. And the terrible truth—the baffling, astonishing truth—is they’re winning. Though we report and cheer over small victories, they’re winning. Every branch of our government is controlled by a cabal of evil, powerful propaganda masters who will bring in the Big Guns—the corporate deregulation fans, the billionaires, the Russians, and will lie without conscience as long as they think they can win.

The mainstream press is effectively controlled by Republican owners who think their best bet is to go along. And worse, the courts, including and especially the Supreme Court, are no longer the peoples’ courts but are now solely and exclusively under Donald Trump’s delirious, treacherous command.

One man speaks for and controls our country and that man, the current President of the United States, is noticeably unhinged and only getting worse.

On the bright side, millions of us see it, hear it, and we’re out there making good trouble wherever we can. And the best part? They’ve noticed. They’re fighting back—sure they are, we knew they would—but it’s becoming clearer that they’re fighting back because they’re running scared.

This is the way these battles begin. The aggressor attacks and the victims fall back, shocked, as in our case, by unprecedented, unfettered actions never seen before in a country that had previously tried to operate with courtesy, common sense, and some semblance of common good.

It didn’t happen overnight. This took years of planning and propaganda by the Republicans and the Right Wing, with Trump being the final catalyst. And the recipient. We spent too much time analyzing where we went wrong and not enough time mobilizing and gearing up for a fight. For a long time, we wouldn’t even use the words ‘war’ and ‘battle’ and ‘army’. We thought it was too much. We thought we had this.

Then Trump ‘won’ the presidency again and the Republicans swept in alongside him. Shocked again, the enormity of it nearly stopped us cold. We cared too much about the small things—laughably low inauguration numbers, nonsensical slurred speeches, orange hair—and then the memes came. They pacified us, made us feel as if we got this. We were together, no matter what. We could even laugh.

Meanwhile the regime carried on and things got worse. Much worse. In a single year, ICE has become extralegal and it’s not just allowed, it’s encouraged. They’ve attacked, they’ve maimed, they’ve murdered, and there have been no arrests. The regime is building concentration camps to hold thousands of mainly innocent immigrants. They’re holding small children hostage. Rights that seemed constitutionally solid have disappeared, replaced with revenge rules and ruthless power plays. Regulations are no more. We know about shady deals, but they’re still deals and they’re still shady. The rich are getting richer while the poor and what’s left of the middle class are getting poorer. We’re not sure we’ll even be able to vote in November. And if that’s not enough, Trump is trying to turn the world against us.

It’s looking pretty bleak.

But a year has passed and we’ve changed. If we’re shocked now, we get loud. If they do more, we get louder. We march, we protest, and our crowd numbers grow to such proportions we get seen and heard and we can no longer be ignored. (Talking about you, Minneapolis. Nice job, LA and NYC)

But that’s not all. We’re busy building up an independent press and it’s growing fast enough to counter the mainstream, which has slowly and surely let us down. They’ll begin to notice, and any day now they’ll get on the stick and dump Trump. (As long as it looks like he’s losing.) We’re already seeing some signs at the New York Times, where their editorial board has finally, within the last month, shown signs of declaring Trump Big Trouble.

The Democrats, our sleeping giants, are slowly waking up and putting on their Big Boy pants because we got loud, we got persistent, and we made them pay attention. But they’re way behind, both in action and in attitude, and it’s up to us to convince them. We have to get louder, more persistent.

This is how it is now. No going back. There is no Congress that works for all America. There are no courts that can’t be corrupted. There are no unbreakable rules, no regulations strong enough. There is no inviolate Constitution. It looks like there is only us.

We need to become formidable, but first we have to convince ourselves we can do it. So here’s the thing: There are millions of us who care. There are millions of them who don’t. We have to make sure there are more of us, and we have to make sure they know we mean business. We need to drop the inconsequential noise and concentrate on real problems, real issues, real enemies. We have a country to save and we’re showing signs of progress.

So, whatever works.

Should we be emailing and calling our politicians? Okay. Should we be protesting by the tens of thousands? Okay. Should we be putting our smartest lawyers to the test to see what they can do? Okay. Should we be encouraging our growing independent press to keep it up? Okay.

But that’s an escalation of what we’ve already done. Now we need new ideas. What would really stop them? That’s our next step and it has to come soon. I’m tired. You’re tired. Okay. But we can’t stop now.

In any battle there is a plan, the flanks move forward and the job is to take the hill, to disarm the enemy, to destroy the fortress. We know our enemy. They make it easier by telling us what they’re going to do. They show us who they are. They have no good side and that’s by design. The shock is gone. We can expect anything from them.

Now let us shock them by never stopping, never giving up, by getting smarter and stronger by the day. We must concentrate on the real harm. If the small stuff feels good, keep it to a minimum. It’s noise. It takes up space. It gets in the way.

We’re an army now. There has to be ranking, there has to be discipline, there has to be commitment. We have to be a real force, ready and resolved, with one mission in mind:

If our country is worth saving, Americans will have to save it.

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