I WILL NOT OBEY IT, BY GOD!
The following was written for the Washington Post by Linda Hirschmann a labor lawyer and philosophy teacher. I’ve butchered it for space. Question: does her centuries-old model work for us?
“But what can anti-Trump liberals and progressives actually do to conquer despair?
One episode from history reveals reasons to hope.
In 1850, like the Democrats and their allies in 2016, the abolitionists took a terrible hit. They had worked for 20 years to bring down slavery but Congress basically handed those territories to the pro-slavery forces. And with a new Fugitive Slave Act it forced every Northern citizen to become a slave catcher.
And yet, a little over a decade later, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a road map away from the election of 2016.
Indeed, by marching and making street theater, forces of resistance to the Trump and GOP victories have already started emulating the abolitionists.
In 1854, the federal government tried and convicted fugitive Anthony Burns, sending him back to slavery. But on the day of Burns’s rendition, 50,000 anti-slavery protesters lined the streets as federal troops marched the fugitive Burns to the ship that would take him back to his Virginia master. Opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law spiked. Boston’s Ralph Waldo Emerson said of the Law: “I will not obey it, by God.’’ Today it’s deportations. Trump has threatened to overturn the amnesty that has protected “dreamers” — immigrants brought to the United States as children.
What would the abolitionists do? They would gather in huge numbers every time federal agents came for an Hispanic student. They would compel those agents to use force if they wanted to proceed. They would document every moment. And they would use the media — back then it was the penny press, the Twitter of its time — to spread the images. Every vulnerable dreamer should be carrying a cellphone with a number to text if the feds come.
But resistance movements need the support of permanent infrastructure that changes minds and behavior.
In 1831, faced with hopelessness, William Lloyd Garrison and friends formed the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the first of thousands of such societies.
Of course, the Democratic Party is an established network. But it reaches out to people only at election time. Why not go back to good ole community organizing not with TV ads and Twitter but by actually talking to friends, relatives and even strangers?
It must have seemed like a permanent failure for the abolitionists when they heard about the Compromise of 1850. But the end of slavery wasn’t as far off as they feared.
#
CLANCY'S TAKE: the Abolitionists, bless ‘em, had a single understandable cause. We’re whacking a mole, running hither and yon from deportations to the latest disaster, a public school hater as Education Secy. What do today’s Abolitionists do?
“But what can anti-Trump liberals and progressives actually do to conquer despair?
One episode from history reveals reasons to hope.
In 1850, like the Democrats and their allies in 2016, the abolitionists took a terrible hit. They had worked for 20 years to bring down slavery but Congress basically handed those territories to the pro-slavery forces. And with a new Fugitive Slave Act it forced every Northern citizen to become a slave catcher.
And yet, a little over a decade later, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a road map away from the election of 2016.
Indeed, by marching and making street theater, forces of resistance to the Trump and GOP victories have already started emulating the abolitionists.
In 1854, the federal government tried and convicted fugitive Anthony Burns, sending him back to slavery. But on the day of Burns’s rendition, 50,000 anti-slavery protesters lined the streets as federal troops marched the fugitive Burns to the ship that would take him back to his Virginia master. Opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law spiked. Boston’s Ralph Waldo Emerson said of the Law: “I will not obey it, by God.’’ Today it’s deportations. Trump has threatened to overturn the amnesty that has protected “dreamers” — immigrants brought to the United States as children.
What would the abolitionists do? They would gather in huge numbers every time federal agents came for an Hispanic student. They would compel those agents to use force if they wanted to proceed. They would document every moment. And they would use the media — back then it was the penny press, the Twitter of its time — to spread the images. Every vulnerable dreamer should be carrying a cellphone with a number to text if the feds come.
But resistance movements need the support of permanent infrastructure that changes minds and behavior.
In 1831, faced with hopelessness, William Lloyd Garrison and friends formed the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the first of thousands of such societies.
Of course, the Democratic Party is an established network. But it reaches out to people only at election time. Why not go back to good ole community organizing not with TV ads and Twitter but by actually talking to friends, relatives and even strangers?
It must have seemed like a permanent failure for the abolitionists when they heard about the Compromise of 1850. But the end of slavery wasn’t as far off as they feared.
#
CLANCY'S TAKE: the Abolitionists, bless ‘em, had a single understandable cause. We’re whacking a mole, running hither and yon from deportations to the latest disaster, a public school hater as Education Secy. What do today’s Abolitionists do?
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