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How to Resist Trump and Musk? Become Ungovernable
For a day, a week, or as a rolling walkout, we could shut down the economy and most governmental functions and bring the country to a standstill.
Mar 14, 2025
Not even two months since Inauguration Day and it’s already been quite a trip. Ping-ponging between vindictive pettiness and unconstitutional overreach while using everything in his power (and much that isn’t), U.S. President Donald Trump has served up a goulash of dubious orders with a slathering of venom on top. He’s been abetted in the upheaval he promised on the campaign trail by the richest man on Earth, a cabal of lickspittles, and a cabinet filled with people who appear to have answered job ads stipulating, “Only the unqualified may apply.” As it became clearer what the battles to come would be, a friend wrote me: “I feel now like we’re watching it all happen. It being that thing that can’t happen here.”
There would be something strangely exhilarating about the frenzy of activity in Washington, if only it weren’t so careless, mean, dishonest, and destructive. Some of the most egregious actions have indeed been temporarily halted by the courts, but there’s no guarantee that trend will hold up—if, of course, Donald Trump and crew even pay attention to court decisions—especially when cases arrive at what’s potentially “his” Supreme Court. Meanwhile, insidious ideological purges encourage citizens to rat out their neighbors and coworkers, as leaders of industry, the media, and other institutions rush to appease the president before he dissolves into a hissy fit of revenge. (The speed with which many corporations complied with the order to axe DEI programs illuminates how shallow their commitment to that effort really was.)
In the months after the election, I mourned, ranted, resorted to magic thinking. I reminded myself that, while Trump did (barely) win the popular vote, democracy isn’t something that only happens every four years. Then, after my umpteenth conversation diagnosing how the hell we got into this mess, I had had enough. Okay, I said to my friends (who didn’t deserve my impatience), now what are we going to do about it?
Bedlam or Bust
Of course, I’m anything but the only person to ask that question. My inbox is crammed with notices of newsletters, podcasts, videos, and Zoom meetings full of rallying cries and, increasingly, suggested responses like the growing “economic blackouts.” With the executive branch already a kleptocracy, congressional Republicans in a state of amnesia when it comes to the Constitution’s separation of powers, most congressional Democrats waiting all too quietly (with the exception of Sen. Bernie Sanders (-Vt.) and a few others) for the midterm elections or for Trump to screw up irremediably, and the courts tied up in rounds of Whac-A-Mole, it falls to civil society—that’s us—to try to check the slash-and-smash rampage of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the rest of that crew, while offering a different vision for the country.
Such responses will undoubtedly involve a variety of approaches. These are likely to range from the immediate to the long haul; from small, local acts to ease individual lives—accompanying immigrants through the legal process when their residency is imperiled, for example—to more traditional activities like lobbying, petitioning, and supporting civil liberties organizations, or even movement-building and large-scale actions aimed at challenging the power of Trump and changing our very political situation.
When I allow myself to dream big and boldly, I envision a nation of Bartlebys, the title character in a Herman Melville story who replies to all work assignments with the impenetrable refrain, “I would prefer not to.”
We’ve already seen individual acts of principle, along with small communal acts of subversion. When someone in the Air Force took the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion purge literally and cut a video about World War II’s Black Tuskegee Airmen from a training course, a senator decried it as “malicious compliance.” In Silicon Valley, there was a “quiet rebellion” when Meta workers brought in certain sanitary products to replace those removed from men’s bathrooms by order of their boss, Mark Zuckerberg. A DOGE hiring site was besieged by mock applications from well-qualified Hitlers, Mussolinis, Francos, and a Cruella De Vil. Then there was that World War II anti-fascism Simple Sabotage Field Manual, downloaded at least 230,000 times since 404Media made it accessible online. Ways to gum up the works suggested there include, “Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks,” and my fave, “Act stupid.”
Traditional forms of lobbying—emails, phone calls, petitions, or attending town hall meetings—have also proved to be important options, but in one of the kinks in democratic representation, the legislators we most seek to influence are often the ones with the least reason or desire to listen to us. My representatives are all outspoken, progressive Democrats, so all I can say is, thanks or try even harder. Meanwhile, good luck getting through to swamped legislative offices, which generally accept messages only from their constituents.
And finally, marches and performative protests are photogenic and build solidarity, but because they seldom disrupt much of anything, they are often all too easy to ignore. Moreover, in Donald Trump’s topsy-turvy world, it’s hard to know not just where to direct your protest, but even at whom to direct it. On February 5 and again on a frigid Presidents’ Day, sizable demonstrations against Trump, Musk, and their policies took place across the country. If you didn’t notice, no surprise there since they barely made a blip in what passes for the news these days (and apparently not even that in Donald Trump’s consciousness).
May I Have Your Attention!
“Attention, not money, is now the fuel of American politics,” writesNew York Times columnist Ezra Klein. MSNBC host Chris Hayes, whose most recent book is about attention as a valuable and endangered commodity, has called Trump’s skill at commanding it a “feral instinct.” He noted that, while the president excels at getting the public’s attention, he’s not all that great at holding it. Still, give Trump credit for his remarkably relentless pace of presidential threats, orders, and mind lint to keep our synapses sparking and, while he’s at it, overwhelming any opposition with the enormity—and folly—of resisting him or his administration.
Always leading with his chin, Trump employs a variety of tactics, including:
- Stating something as fact when it isn’t. He did not win a mandate last November with just 49.7% of the vote; Panama did not agree to a freebie for U.S. ships in its canal; and Ukraine did not start a war with Russia.
- Repeating and embellishing half-baked ideas—including annexing the Panama Canal and Greenland, turning Canada into the 51st state and Gaza into a golf resort—until they become articles of faith or at least possibilities worth considering. By then, of course, he’s already corralled the discussion.
- Drowning us in verbiage, belligerence, and hollow proclamations—or, as Steve Bannon put it, “flooding the zone”—until it’s impossible to respond. In his first week in office, Trump typically talked so much that even official stenographers scrambled to keep up.
- Confusing everyone (probably himself included). Take the inherently illegal directive that froze massive amounts of federal funds already appropriated by Congress. Except it was utterly unclear what money was being frozen and, according to the White House press secretary in her first press briefing, it was legal because the relevant Office of Management and Budget memo said it was. Oh, and then came that other directive rescinding the first one. Except it turned out to apply only to the memo announcing the other directive, not the directive itself. Except… no, wait! That non-rescission applied to previous executive orders. Except… oh, never mind.
- Whining about “unfairness” to the United States and—yes, of course—him(he often conflates the two) as a cover for bullying people, organizations, and countries into submission.
- Not giving a damn if he’s caught in a lie or an error or simply sounds nuts as long as the focus remains on him or, these days, on his stand-in, Elon the Enforcer.
Ultimately, the last of these may be Trump’s greatest menace, but also his greatest weakness, because what he does give a damn about is his image. It doesn’t take an armchair psychologist to recognize why Trump preens and puffs himself up or a master strategist to know how easy it would be to make him lose his cool (which may be the only time the words “Trump” and “cool” appear in the same sentence). And boy, can he not take—or make—a joke!
So, one simple way we could resist is by denying him our full attention. Of course, we can’t ignore him completely, since willful ignorance is self-defeating and, like an adolescent testing parental limits, he’ll just keep upping the ante to see what he can get away with. But it’s necessary not to be derailed by every inanity or outrage. I’m choosing to concentrate my attention on two or three areas I know something about, while counting on my fellow outragees to attend to other issues.
Not that I think Trump cares what I do, but if enough of us focus less on what he says and more on his actions that have discernable policy outcomes, we might indeed be able to cover all the bases and have enough energy and attention left over to push back more quickly and effectively.
Disrupt the Disruption
As for the longer range, I’m tired of being told resistance is futile, not to mention a bad strategy. The Democratic Party may be in disarray and protests probably were more impressive during Trump’s first term, but enough already! It’s time to focus on the majority of the electorate who didn’t vote for Trump and who still think democracy is worth working toward.
Which leads me to Gene Sharp, an unsung but influential theorist of nonviolent resistance, whose pragmatic ideas about peaceful protest were picked up by popular liberation movements around the world in this century. He argued that the power of governments depends on the cooperation and obedience of those they govern, which means the governed can undermine the power of the governors by withdrawing their consent. “When people refuse their cooperation, withhold help, and persist in their disobedience and defiance,” he wrote, “they are denying their opponent the basic human assistance and cooperation that any government or hierarchical system requires.” While his suggestions for challenging power included individual resistance, he advocated a nonviolent insurgency big enough and sustained enough to make a country ungovernable and so force the governors to truly pay attention to the governed.
How big? Political scientist Erica Chenoweth has suggested that about 3.5% of a country’s population participating actively in nonviolent protest can bring about significant political change. If that’s accurate, an effective resistance would need about 12 million Americans taking to the streets. And yes, that’s a lot, but keep in mind that the women’s protest march early in Trump’s first term gathered more than 5 million Americans on a single day, many of whom were part of a political protest for the first time.
Imagining change is a crucial step to achieving change.
When I allow myself to dream big and boldly, I envision a nation of Bartlebys, the title character in a Herman Melville story who replies to all work assignments with the impenetrable refrain, “I would prefer not to.” We Bartlebys, then, would withhold our cooperation by staging a massive national strike. For a day, a week, or as a rolling walkout, we could shut down the economy and most governmental functions and bring the country to a standstill. But unlike the systemic disruption going on now in Washington, the change would be at the will of millions of Americans cooperating with each other.
The United States hasn’t seen a major general strike since 1946, when workers from multiple unions shut down Oakland, California for 54 hours, but there have been recent, small-scale versions, notably, A Day Without Immigrants this February, when businesses across the U.S. closed in solidarity with the approximately 8.1 million undocumented immigrant workers in this country.
Recent actions of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are reportedly driving more workers to unions and, well before the last election, the United Auto Workers invited other unions to align their contract expiration dates in preparation for a giant general strike planned for May Day 2028. But 2028 is a long way off and a lot of damage will be done in the meantime. What I’m envisioning would go beyond organized labor to include anyone who contributes to the economy and civil society, be they employees, managers, owners, government workers, freelancers, independent contractors, retirees, students, homemakers, volunteers, or whomever I’ve missed.
Pie in the sky? Probably. I can easily envision 20 things that could go wrong. For starters, even the most grassroots of actions require coordination and a means of communication beyond the capacity of TikTok, while preserving the requisite element of surprise. And some work can’t be safely left undone, even for a day. Worse yet, those in power tend to respond harshly to challenges from below, so it’s not without risk. But there is some safety in numbers and Sharp believed protesters could turn retaliation to their advantage by continuing to struggle nonviolently—he called it “political jiu-jitsu”—only increasing sympathy and support for their cause.
Of course, in the era of Donald Trump, organizing millions of people across the country could prove a breeze compared to getting them to agree on a set of demands or even a central goal. But recent polls show that, in what should be Trump’s honeymoon period, his approval rating is 15 points below the historical average for presidents since 1953, when Gallup started keeping track. Overall, the polls indicate that the majority of Americans are not okay with much of what’s going down in Washington now and there are signs that some who voted for Trump are already starting to feel betrayed, if not by him directly, then by Musk, who excels at pissing people off.
Twenty years ago, a young veteran who had fought in Iraq and then turned against the war there explained to me why he became involved in the anti-war movement of that time. As he put it, “Someone sees [me] and says, I agree with that guy, I just didn’t have the courage to do it alone. So now he comes and stands next to me. I’m not alone, he’s not alone, and more people come. It just takes one person to start a movement.”
To which I would add that imagining change is a crucial step to achieving change. Without it, we’re stuck with Donald Trump and Elon Musk in an untenable present.
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Solidarity Lessons: Western MA Stands With Smith College Students for Justice in Palestine
We hope that communities and non-academic organizations across the country find ways to stand with all college and university students on the vanguard of the movement for a free Palestine and an end to the ongoing genocide.
Mar 06, 2025
Even before the extraordinary activism for an end to the genocide in Gaza and the liberation of the Palestinian people at Columbia University last spring, the students of Smith Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP, set a high bar for the coming wave of campus unrest across the U.S. with their 11-day occupation of College Hall, Smith’s administration building.
For us as residents of Northampton, Massachusetts, it was awe-inspiring to watch Smith students’ activism as those first days passing sleeping bags through the windows of College Hall turned into weeks and months of creative actions demanding the school’s administration end its complicity in genocide.
Outdoor student and faculty teach-ins in the snow and mud of early spring set the stage for ongoing pro-Palestine cultural and political education events as the lush grounds of the college responded to the lengthening days and warming temperatures. Local media covered the occupation of College Hall, and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! noted the intense dedication of Smith SJP’s occupation.
You claim to be a school that encourages activism, and yet, when it comes to opposing genocide, not only do you not celebrate your courageous students, you seek to silence, question, and condemn them.
During a memorial service for Gaza martyrs in front of College Hall, in somber silence amid flowers and flickering votive candles, we gazed up at the uppermost tower of the hall, to see that the flag of Smith College had been replaced by students with a flag bearing the Palestinian colors that read, “Smith Divest Now.” The tall, ornate, iron gates in front of College Hall were decorated with small Palestinian flags; flowers; and red, black, green, and white streamers. Despite increasing animosity from Smith’s administration, campus activism to end the genocide in Gaza continued through graduation, only fading as students dispersed for the summer months.
As on so many campuses across the U.S., students returning to Smith last fall were met with a new set of policies hammered out by the administration over the summer in an effort to prevent further activism for Palestine. Only after the new policy was leaked to the college community did Smith College President Sarah Willie-LeBreton concede that there was a new set of rules governing, in minute detail, the “time, place, and manner of expressive activity” on campus.
In a College-wide message, Willie-LeBreton claimed that her new policy was simply a response to urging by the U.S. Department of Education and national organizations (and unlikely bedfellows) such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Zionist organization at the forefront of efforts to suppress anti-genocide activism and speech by equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism; the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), that campus protest policies be revisited. (For those familiar with the Palestine Exception, it was crystal clear that the new policy was designed to quell continued pro-Palestine activism.)
On October 24, Smith students walked out of classes to protest the new policy, which states, “Speech is not protected when it is libelous, slanderous, threatens violence, incites riot, intends to cause personal injury, infringes upon the rights of others, or is otherwise unlawful.” The policy included a time frame within which students are allowed to make noise while protesting, banned face coverings to conceal identity, forbade protestors from “interrupting academic life,” and more.
As fall deepened into winter, community advocates for an end to the genocide concluded that Smith’s administration needed to hear from us in support of Smith SJP. Shortly after a discussion with a community organization called “Northampton Neighbors” in which President Willie-LeBreton emphasized the importance of ties and communication between “town and gown,” organizers with Demilitarize Western Massachusetts and 16 other local and state-wide groups called for a rally and press conference—Western Mass Stands with Smith SJP—for February 27, on a public sidewalk on Route 9 in the heart of the campus.
As the rally began, in cold showers between snow banks, we made the two statements provided below in describing the three demands of the rally—that Smith College must:
- Divest from Israel’s genocide,
- Issue a public statement condemning genocide and scholasticide in Gaza and throughout Palestine, and
- Rescind the draconian “expressive activity” policy clearly targeting pro-Palestine student, faculty, and staff activism.
After our description of the community demands, a slew of speakers from community organizations supportive of Smith SJP, including Smith Alumnae for Justice in Palestine (AJP), spoke to the press and assembled community members and students.
A college spokesperson responded to a reporter with the Daily Hampshire Gazette with the following statement: “Smith is a strong supporter of free speech and the right to assemble. However, it is important to note that this gathering was held on Northampton city property and was not a Smith-sponsored event.” The reporter noted, “Officials did not address the demands made at the protest.”
In addition to faculty and student groups from UMass-Amherst and Hampshire College and many community anti-genocide organizations, we were gratified to secure public endorsement of the rally by the Peace & Justice Committee of First Churches of Northampton, by Interlink Publishing (the only Palestinian-owned publishing company in the U.S., located in Northampton), and two state-wide organizations—Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA) and Pax Christi MA.
We hope that communities and non-academic organizations across the country find ways to stand with all college and university students on the vanguard of the movement for a free Palestine and an end to the ongoing genocide—until Liberation and Return. We echo Smith SJP’s chant: “Disclose, Divest, We Will Not Stop, We Will Not Rest.”
Community Demand No. 1: Divest from Genocide
We residents of Northampton, western Massachusetts and beyond are here today to demonstrate our support for the courageous Smith College Students for Justice in Palestine who are demanding that their school join the global struggle to stop the hideous, unchecked genocidal slaughter of the Palestinian people.
What can Smith do?
Smith SJP has been pleading with Smith President Sarah Wille-LeBreton and the Smith Board of Trustees for more than a year to DIVEST, to sell every single penny of stock that the school owns in so-called defense corporations, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, RTX/Raytheon, General Dynamics, Hexcel, and Northrup Grumman. Also on the list is L3 Technologies, which has a plant in Northampton, less than a mile from here.
The students selected these stocks because all of these corporations are profiting tremendously by providing a wide array of weapons and military services that the Israeli government is using right now, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year to kill, maim, and terrorize Palestinian people and to drive them from their land.
Smith President Willie-LeBreton says Smith will not sell these stocks because Smith has such a small investment in genocide, about $67,000 worth.
If the amount is so small, why not sell the stock?
Is it because if Smith, seen as one of the prestigious “Seven Sisters,”, divests, it will put a stink on these blood-soaked genocide stocks that might hurt their value on Wall Street? Would selling these stocks cast shadows over the careers of members of the Smith Board of Trustees who are in the investment business?
We implore Smith College to lift itself out of the vile quagmire of genocide and honor SJP’s call to DIVEST.
Community Demand No. 2: Condemn Genocide and Scholasticide in Gaza and Throughout Palestine
United Nations experts and many others have expressed urgent concern over Israel’s scholasticide in Palestine. Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian scholar and emeritus fellow in politics at Oxford, coined the term in 2009. Nabulsi has described scholasticide as the systematic destruction of educational institutions and points out that Israel has a long history of attacking education in Palestine dating back to 1948. The transnational organization Scholars Against War has since built on Nabulsi’s definition, listing 18 acts as scholasticide, including killing students, teachers, and other school-related personnel; destroying educational institutions; blocking the construction of new schools; and “preventing scholarly exchange in all of its forms.”
In addition to the injury and deaths of tens of thousands of students, teachers, and university professors and the destruction of all 12 university campuses and the majority of schools in Gaza, Israel has deliberately targeted mosques, churches, libraries, the Central Archives of Gaza, cultural heritage sites, and UNRWA. A U.N. report states: “These attacks present a systemic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society. They have a devastating long-term impact on the fundamental rights of people to learn and freely express themselves, depriving yet another generation of Palestinians of their future. When schools are destroyed, so too are hopes and dreams.”
As with all other activities conducted by Israel with impunity, indeed with the full partnership of the United States, scholasticide throughout Palestine is being normalized, in part through the silence of educational systems in the West.
Smith College? Silent on scholasticide. The trustees of Smith and President Willie-LeBreton have such a mutilated and truncated understanding of ethics that they apparently believe their silence on Israeli scholasticide is some sort of elegant neutrality. We call it what it is. Complicity. Partnership in destruction of education, of culture, of history, of a people. A component of full-scale genocide. President Willie-LeBreton and Smith College Trustees, we DEMAND that you issue a public statement categorically condemning Israel’s scholasticide and work actively to support, in consultation with your students and faculty and following the leadership of the Palestinian people, the rebuilding of Palestine’s educational system.
Community Demand No. 3: Protect Free Speech on Campus
The third demand of this community rally in support of Smith SJP is that President Willie-LeBreton immediately rescind her new “Policy Governing Time, Place, and Manner of Expressive Activity.” Did Smith College actually believe that we as a community would see the beautiful, vigorous, anti-genocide advocacy for Palestinian liberation on this campus last year, and not notice the muting of that advocacy this year? We know, in fact, that like so many other U.S. colleges and universities, Smith used the summer months to devise ways to shut down the activism that was so vibrant at Smith last year.
We see you, Smith College. We see you, Palestine Exception. We know it is no coincidence that a new “Expressive Activity” policy has been imposed on students the semester immediately following the brilliant activism the preceding spring. You claim to be a school that encourages activism, and yet, when it comes to opposing genocide, not only do you not celebrate your courageous students, you seek to silence, question, and condemn them. We see you, Smith College. We see that you comfortably fit in with those institutions of higher learning that say, to quote Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in her apt paraphrasing of so many university administrators, “We want ALL students on campus to feel safe. The pro-genocide and the anti-genocide ones.”
President Willie-LeBreton: Rescind your draconian “Expressive Activity” policy. Celebrate your anti-genocide students. Learn from their humanity. Protect them from external attack, arrest, deportation. We community members implore you: Wash clean your blood-soaked Ivory Towers by following your students’ lead in opposing a historic genocide.
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How Would Gandhi Have Faced Down Trump?
Whatever injustices, cruelties, and evils you seek to end, Gandhi’s life and message are worth studying and emulating.
Feb 22, 2025
On Inauguration Day, I was flying home from India, where I had attended Gandhi 3.0, a retreat that brought together 40 people from around the world to explore how Gandhian principles can be meaningful in today's world. I returned to the U.S. just as my country was erupting in turmoil.
My emotions were all over the place. Having just experienced the most heart-expanding nine days of my life, where I witnessed the most extraordinary acts of generosity and heard some of the wisest of voices, I felt strangely grounded with a deep sense of love for, well, everyone. But I was also aghast, frightened for so many, and startled by those who were delighted by the sledgehammer upheavals, the head-spinning international proclamations, and the unconstitutional decrees.
I certainly understand the desire to upend “the system”—something I’ve been trying to do with multiple unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane systems my entire adult life—but what was unfolding was inchoate, cruel, and chaotic destruction rather than carefully considered interventions that would reduce waste and corruption.
What could Gandhi teach me and us?
Like Gandhi, ask yourself how you can tend your time carefully knowing that ineffective—and potentially destructive—efforts will waste your precious energy and could also backfire.
Studying Gandhi helps me put my country into perspective. Gandhi spent decades endeavoring to free his country from British rule using only nonviolent methods. He worked to end the evil of untouchability embedded in India’s caste system. He led a movement toward Indian self-reliance. And all along the way he made inner work—the cultivation of love and wisdom; inquiry, introspection, and integrity; and meditation—foundational to everything he did.
Gandhi once said:
I hold myself incapable of hating any being on Earth. By a long course of prayerful discipline, I have ceased for over 40 years to hate anybody. I know this is a big claim. Nevertheless, I make it in all humility. But I can and do hate evil wherever it exists. I hate the systems of government that the British people have set up in India. I hate the ruthless exploitation of India even as I hate from the bottom of my heart the hideous system of untouchability for which millions of Hindus have made themselves responsible. But I do not hate the domineering Englishmen as I refuse to hate the domineering Hindus. I seek to reform them in all the loving ways that are open to me. My noncooperation has its roots not in hatred, but in love.
I posted this quote shortly after my return to the U.S., and a friend commented: “Waiting for your solution? Do we just be still without any action to what is happening in this country?”
Gandhi would hardly want us to keep still. After all, he worked tirelessly. He also worked strategically, wisely, and forcefully, with force embedded in his guiding principle of satyagraha, often translated as “nonviolent resistance.” But satyagraha means so much more than this. The word combines satya, meaning truth, and agraha, meaning insistence, firmness, and adherence. In other words, Gandhi’s force for change was an unshakeable commitment to opposing injustice with truth. And truth for Gandhi meant never doing evil to combat evil; never using violence to oppose violence; and never succumbing to hate to resist hate. It meant no less than living, acting, and teaching with an abiding core of love.
Gandhi is famous for responding to a reporter’s question about his message by jotting down, “My life is my message.” Those five words aren’t just one man’s story. They represent a universal truth. Each of our lives is our message. The question thus becomes: Am I modeling the message I most want to convey?
None of us is or will be Gandhi. Nor will we have the megaphone to the world that he came to have through the power of his character, his resolve, and his at the time unique nonviolent approach to resistance. If you or I declared, as Gandhi did on several occasions, that we were fasting until and unless violence among our citizenry ended, we would surely die of starvation, and that violence would persist after we were gone. But that doesn’t mean that Gandhian principles have nothing to teach us today. They absolutely do.
Here are Gandhian teachings I am taking to heart right now:
- Avoid rash acts and angry outbursts; these will not bring about any positive change.
- Learn from the changemakers who have brought about greater peace and justice and built more compassionate, sustainable systems against all odds.
- Embrace satyagraha, recognizing that this requires cultivating the inner resolve to continually pursue justice through nonviolent, loving means.
- Work toward systemic change, understanding that this takes profound dedication, deep thinking, careful strategizing, and patience.
- Do the inner work as tirelessly as the outer work to achieve all of the above.
If you were hoping for more specific strategies to address your current concerns, this may be a disappointing list, but let’s not forget that most people across the political spectrum care about others and want a future where their fellow citizens can thrive. Rather than consider those with different political views one’s enemies, we can perceive them as fellow participants and even potential friends with whom we can communicate, and maybe collaborate, as we identify better ways forward upon which we can agree.
Gandhi devoted years to readying himself and his followers for nonviolent resistance. He spent nearly two decades in preparation for the Salt March that led to India’s independence. Just ponder that as you consider the role you will play in achieving your vision for a sustainable, peaceful, just world.
Please don’t interpret this as meaning that we should only cultivate inner strength and love, or that we should do nothing now other than plan and strategize for an indefinite future. Rather, like Gandhi, ask yourself how you can tend your time carefully knowing that ineffective—and potentially destructive—efforts will waste your precious energy and could also backfire.
Whatever injustices, cruelties, and evils you seek to end, Gandhi’s life and message are worth studying and emulating. He demonstrated that satyagraha is not only a profound strategy; it is fueled by the most powerful of human capacities: love. Given that Gandhi was perhaps the greatest changemaker in history, it’s worth deeply considering his approach as a model for today’s world. And lest we think we somehow need to dispense with our anger to follow in Gandhi’s footsteps, he also said this:
“I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.”
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