How to deal with it? How to avoid depression? The answer, for me, came in an email from
MoveOn.org. Won’t you host a meeting of
people to talk about how we can resist Trump.
I had a big living room. I said yes.
January 15, 2017.
Thirty people showed up for this meeting. Twenty-eight of them were complete
strangers. We were all still reeling. We
needed to know what to do. There were
several areas of resistance suggested including cabinet appointments,
healthcare, and immigration. We broke
into small groups and discussed these. Came together again and decided we had
to meet again in a couple of weeks.
And so Western Front Resist was born, and we have been meeting
either once or twice a month since that time.
Some people did not come back but then more people showed up. We participated in a couple of livestreams
provided by ACLU People Power. And we
connected with Indivisible as well.
We’ve done lots together: We’ve:
• demonstrated
• make phone calls to legislators
• gone to district offices to try and meet with legislators
• canvassed
• phone banked
• attended local municipal board meetings
And all of these because we wanted our voices to be heard loud
and clear.
We’ve made our voice heard on so many issues: women’s
reproductive rights, healthcare, minimum wage increase, judicial appointments,
climate change, immigration, gun control, corruption in Washington, and more.
And what has happened is that we have become friends. We
have buoyed each other up when we were down, and we have stood shoulder to
shoulder and resisted. We have volunteered
hours and hours of our time, canvassing, phone banking, texting, and writing
postcards, in order to see progressive candidates elected. There have been some failures, but even more
successes.
November 6, 2018. We were cheered on by the blue wave that
took over the US Representatives.
Although we were disappointed the US Senate did not turn blue, we were
excited that new Representatives Sean Casten and Lauren Underwood were ones we
had campaigned for. And we were further
elated that Illinois got a Democrat governor and a super majority in both
houses.
Indivisible then sketched out a new plan for us. No longer
would we just be resisting. We can now push our Representatives to pass
progressive legislation, knowing that it would be unlikely to make it through
the Senate but would signal what the
progressive agenda will be for 2021.
And, further, we have been urged to focus on our state legislature and
lobbying to get more progressive legislation passed AND to work with other
groups to do that.
So it seems quite fitting to change our name from Western
Front Resist to Western Front Indivisible.
And don’t worry—we’ll still be resisting.
