Picture this. It’s thirty or forty years from now. You’re sitting in your living room with a grandchild on your knee. The kid looks up at you and says, “We learned about the MAGA regime in school today. What did you do when they put people in camps? Was it scary?” Do you want to have to tell the kid that you helped the regime do it? Do you want to have to explain to your grandchild that you were one of the bad guys? Sure, you weren’t really super committed to the whole thing. You weren't the type who got off on tormenting innocent people, though you sure knew plenty of them. You weren't a white supremacist. It was a paycheck, so you went along with it. After all, you had to eat, right? Sure, you threw a few innocent teenagers and college students facedown on the pavement for the "crime" of being undocumented or for writing an Op-Ed in their school newspaper, but it was just the job. It wasn't your fault that things turned out the way they did. You were a cog in a very big, unwieldy machine that was going to keep chugging along no matter what you did. Who were you to rock the boat? You were just following orders. Well, guess what! That defense didn’t hold up at Nuremberg and it doesn’t hold up now. Everyone has a choice. No one in the United States of America has to contribute to the rising tide of authoritarianism. Every one of us has both the opportunity and the obligation to stand up for the values of Personal Liberty that we supposedly enshrine as sacred in this country. We all must do our part, however small, to fight against injustice. So, let's say you're brave, you're one of the good ones, you have the guts to do the right thing. What do you actually do in practice? Well, the way I see it, you have two real options. First, the simplest choice, quit. Stage a walkout. Tell the leadership you won't be a part of their fascist operation, get as many of your colleagues onboard as you can, and get the hell out of there. Denounce the organization publicly, walk away, and never come back. Be a conscientious objector to the violence of the regime. Write essays about your experiences and your stance. Publish them as widely as you possibly can. Get people's attention. Call for justice from the top of the highest mountain! The second option is more complicated. You stay; but, you work against the system. You become the sand in the gears of the machine. You know how the process works, on a day-to-day basis. You know what operations look like, and what tools are available in your immediate vicinity. You know what would slow things down, make things not function quite right. So, take advantage of that knowledge. Take a page from the now-declassified Simple Sabotage Field Manual and make yourself as obtuse and inefficient a part of your unit as you can. Act stupid. Pretend not to understand orders. Quibble over every detail you can. Cause "accidents" that slow things down. Little things. Things that could easily be simple mistakes. Oops! You read a name or an address incorrectly. Oops! You forgot to file the right paperwork. And so on, and so forth. Recruit others to help you. Slow down the machine. Gum up the works. And while you work to hinder operations from the inside, those of us in the public will continue to organize political pressure campaigns to push against injustice from the outside. This is the way. Together we can nip this thing in the bud. We can stop the Trump administration from becoming a full-on fascist dictatorship before it gets too strong a hold on the functions of our government. With your help, we can save countless innocent people destined for onshore or offshore concentration camps. Imagine the look on that grandchild's face when you tell them how you helped to foil the villain's evil plan. You were part of the resistance, like Han Solo or Frodo Baggins. One of the good guys. However small the part you played, it was a good part, a righteous part. You stood up for freedom in the only way you knew how, and in the end, the heroes won the day. Liberty and Justice for All triumphed in America and you were part of making that happen. The poet June Jordan once wrote: "We are the ones we have been waiting for." Those words ring as true today as they ever have in American history. No one else is coming to save us. We have to be the ones to do it. So, let's get to work. Picture this. It’s thirty or forty years from now. You’re sitting in your living room with a grandchild on your knee. The kid looks up at you and says, “We learned about the MAGA regime in school today. What did you do when they put people in camps? Was it scary?” Do you want to have to tell the kid that you helped the regime do it? Do you want to have to explain to your grandchild that you were one of the bad guys? Sure, you weren’t really super committed to the whole thing. You weren't the type who got off on tormenting innocent people, though you sure knew plenty of them. You weren't a white supremacist. It was a paycheck, so you went along with it. After all, you had to eat, right? Sure, you threw a few innocent teenagers and college students facedown on the pavement for the "crime" of being undocumented or for writing an Op-Ed in their school newspaper, but it was just the job. It wasn't your fault that things turned out the way they did. You were a cog in a very big, unwieldy machine that was going to keep chugging along no matter what you did. Who were you to rock the boat? You were just following orders. Well, guess what! That defense didn’t hold up at Nuremberg and it doesn’t hold up now. Everyone has a choice. No one in the United States of America has to contribute to the rising tide of authoritarianism. Every one of us has both the opportunity and the obligation to stand up for the values of Personal Liberty that we supposedly enshrine as sacred in this country. We all must do our part, however small, to fight against injustice. So, let's say you're brave, you're one of the good ones, you have the guts to do the right thing. What do you actually do in practice? Well, the way I see it, you have two real options. First, the simplest choice, quit. Stage a walkout. Tell the leadership you won't be a part of their fascist operation, get as many of your colleagues onboard as you can, and get the hell out of there. Denounce the organization publicly, walk away, and never come back. Be a conscientious objector to the violence of the regime. Write essays about your experiences and your stance. Publish them as widely as you possibly can. Get people's attention. Call for justice from the top of the highest mountain! The second option is more complicated. You stay; but, you work against the system. You become the sand in the gears of the machine. You know how the process works, on a day-to-day basis. You know what operations look like, and what tools are available in your immediate vicinity. You know what would slow things down, make things not function quite right. So, take advantage of that knowledge. Take a page from the now-declassified Simple Sabotage Field Manual and make yourself as obtuse and inefficient a part of your unit as you can. Act stupid. Pretend not to understand orders. Quibble over every detail you can. Cause "accidents" that slow things down. Little things. Things that could easily be simple mistakes. Oops! You read a name or an address incorrectly. Oops! You forgot to file the right paperwork. And so on, and so forth. Recruit others to help you. Slow down the machine. Gum up the works. And while you work to hinder operations from the inside, those of us in the public will continue to organize political pressure campaigns to push against injustice from the outside. This is the way. Together we can nip this thing in the bud. We can stop the Trump administration from becoming a full-on fascist dictatorship before it gets too strong a hold on the functions of our government. With your help, we can save countless innocent people destined for onshore or offshore concentration camps. Imagine the look on that grandchild's face when you tell them how you helped to foil the villain's evil plan. You were part of the resistance, like Han Solo or Frodo Baggins. One of the good guys. However small the part you played, it was a good part, a righteous part. You stood up for freedom in the only way you knew how, and in the end, the heroes won the day. Liberty and Justice for All triumphed in America and you were part of making that happen. The poet June Jordan once wrote: "We are the ones we have been waiting for." Those words ring as true today as they ever have in American history. No one else is coming to save us. We have to be the ones to do it. So, let's get to work.