Trump: 100 days that shook the world- and the activists opposing back

Three months in, the future is totally unpredictable. But a dramatic fightback is under way. Four activists tell us how they are adapting to the new normal

Naomi Wolf, writer, political journalist and cofounder of DailyClout: Trump didnt do this. You did this. Your own inaction brought us exactly here

The first 100 days of President Donald Trump: how has my life changed? First of all, there was the mourning period. Not for me, but for my fellow citizens. I was just mad. And I wasnt even maddest at the Trump voters. I understood that the critical battle lines now are not left versus right, but the 1% neoliberal globalisers inducing off with all of the pillage and disembowelling the middle class. So when I ensure the campaign, I knew that in the US, just as in the UK, a candidate who said anything at all about people forgotten in the neoliberal race would have a solid chance.

No I was mad at my own leftwing tribe. All of January, people on the left would tackle me with dazed, grief-stricken express, as if they had just emerged from a multi-car pileup on a foggy road. How could this have happened? What will we do ? I couldnt even bear to participate in those dialogues. Ultimately I started explaining my rage to my closest friends.

I had been screaming about the possibility of setting up this very moment for eight years, since I published a piece in the Guardian titled Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps and wrote a volume based on it, called The Aim of America ( 2007 ). Under George Bush Jr, the left had been very receptive to the books message about how democracies are undermined by the classic tactics of would-be authoritarians.

But once Obama was elected one of ours I had to spend the next eight years hollering like a haunted Cassandra, to a room the left had abandoned. I had yelled myself hoarse for eight years under Obama about what it would mean for us to sit still while Obama sent dronings in to take out US citizens in extrajudicial killings; what it would mean for us to sit still while he passed the 2012 National Defence Authorisation Act that let any chairperson hold citizens for ever without charge or trial; what it would mean for us to sit still while he allowed NSA surveillance, let Guantnamo to stay open, and allowed hyped terrorism narratives to hijack the constitution and turn the US into what eventually even Robert F Kennedy Jr was calling a national security surveillance nation.

Naomi Wolf, photographed last week at Stony Brook University, NY: I was mad at my own leftwing tribe. Photo: Christopher Lane for the Observer

For eight years, under Obama, my audiences were libertarian cowboys and red-state truckers; members of the military and police forces, who were appalled by what they were witnessing; and even conservatives, worried about our legacy of liberty. My usual audience, the shoppers at Whole Foods and drivers of hybrid automobiles, the trained left, my people, sat smugly at home while the very pillars of American democracy were being systematically chipped away. They were watching Downton Abbey and tending their heirloom tomato patches on weekends in the Hudson Valley, because everything was OK; yeah, he may OK drone ten-strikes, but they cant be that bad, since he was one of ours a handsome, eloquent African American, a former community organiser in the Oval Office. Seduced by the image of a charming black man on Air force One who talked about change a white female in a pantsuit( though highly paid by Goldman Sachs) talking about that highest, hardest glass ceiling the left slumbered while US democracy was undone brick by brick by brick.

So my feeling, the first inaugural month of 2017, as the left sat shiva, was: now you are worried? Now you want action? Now that the separation of powers is a joke and the constitution has collapsed around your ears, you point a thumb at Trump and say, Sudden Catastrophe?

He didnt do this. You did this.

Your own inactivity and willingness to be seduced by two-bit identity politics labels, without actually doing the hard work of being patriots and defending the actual constitution brought us exactly, exactly here.

I had sought for eight years to explain to my own people, to no avail, this: it is not that important who sits in the White House if the structures of republic are strong. If the structures of democracy are strong you are able to have a madman or madwoman for four years or even eight, and then he or she is gone, and the nations freedoms live.

But if you take an eight-year nap snoozing through a systematic dismantling of the structures of democracy freedoms of speech; independence of the press; separation of powers; fourth amendment rights to privacy; and allow the suspension of due process for the purposes of the guise of fighting the war on terror hell yeah, some day you will wake up and there will be a crazy human or a strongman in the White House and then nothing you do or say will make a difference any more.

So yeah, Month One: I had nightly glass of red wine to dull my rage at my own feeble delusional kind, and avoided the collective liberal mourning conversation.

Month Two: February was the month of OMG! Or else, WTF! I was part of it too, as Pres Trumps new-to-us-all methods of exploding Twitter bombs, engaging in scary political theater, perpetrating daily acts of apparent, um, economic treason, and doing everything there is at a bewilderingly fast pace, demanded a learning curve from us all. It was a sense of chaos, destabilisation. OMG! He issued a travel banning. OMG! People are held en masse at Newark New York City taxi drivers are boycotting the airport because of the ban! OMG, Uber is profiting on picking up those rides! OMG , now we have to boycott Uber! WTF! He is rounding up immigrants! OMG he is dividing families at the border! WTF did Kellyanne Conway merely promote Ivanka Trumps garment line? Isnt that illegal? WTF! Are Chinese influence-mongers really lining up at Mar-a-Lago to ingratiate themselves with the presidents son-in-law? WTF stripping the EPA of any budget to keep the air and water clean? OMG did he just say he doesnt believe in global warming? There was a stream of statelier edits from Congress, as the nations WTF? reaction evolved into: can he genuinely do that? Ben Cardin, the Democratic senator for Maryland, proposed a Senate resolution that Pres Trump obey the emoluments clause of the constitution, which forbids bribery( Trump had refused to put his holds in a blind trust ). States began to pass statutes, such as those protection sanctuary cities, to fight back against measures that Trump was taking federally. My day-to-day life was spent at our tech company, DailyClout, developing a group of young people to write about legislation, Congress and statehouses, and putting out news narratives, blogs and opinion pieces following these developments. DailyClout is incubated in a cool space in Manhattan called Civic Hall, which is funded by Microsoft, Google and Omidyar Networks, where we are surrounded by others largely idealistic millennials who are also building arousing new tools for new kinds of civic engagement.

Month Three: in March, we all began to see a massive grassroots resistance. I personally dont like that term, because you use that word to fight a completed fascist takeover; it gives democracys foes too much power; right now we have a battered democracy on life support that needs defending from those who wish to pull the plug.

March was the month that dozens of new entities devoted to mobilising citizen action emerged from the collective shock. There were so many forms of new organising and funding: online candidate training seminars to Knight Foundation awards for new tools to get public and municipal records to people. Existing civic tech sites such as PopVox and Countable were joined in March by a slew of new tools and sites put together by this powerful wave of activism. Our collective missions got boosted with jet fuel by the huge burst in ordinary citizens wanting and required to be taken any steps. New platforms ranged from 5 Calls which came out of the experience of volunteers in the Clinton campaign and which sends you political action steps to take in five phone calls to DailyAction, a similar service, which emerged out of Creative Majority, a Pac that supports Democratic nominees, and USAFacts, put up by Steve Ballmer, formerly of Microsoft, which compiles and crunches federal, state and local data from government sources. My working life mission didnt reorient, since I had cofounded DailyClouts platform in 2010. But use of our civic engagement tools skyrocketed. Our first product, called BillCam, lets you search a database of live state and federal bills, then pop a live bill into your blog or news articles; it lets you interact with the bills in real time and share them socially. We also made RSS feeds to stream live state and federal legislation right into the websites of local, regional and national news sites, and the websites of elected official. In March we boosted our blog stream and videos covering new state and federal legislation, and started to report on what people could do locally to push forward their issues. Our sites on social media grew by triple and quadruple digits.

Protesters against Trumps travel ban order outside JFK Airport, 30 January. Photograph: Xinhua/ Barcroft Images

I presented these tools in March to news outlets and candidates and campaigns around the country from Maine to Ohio to Oregon. I felt as if I was rediscovering my own nation, as the people in it were rediscovering belatedly how precious and fragile democracy was, and how much it depends on an informed citizenship. We were invited to demo it in a senate office; we visited Congress too, for our first exclusive interview, with Representative French Hill of Arkansas; I had never before been inside the Senate office building, or the Congresss Longworth House Office Building. It was uplifting and moving to me. I also saw that elected officials worried about democracy, and wanting to empower real citizens, existed on both sides of the aisle.

We got our widget embedding live bills into news outlets totalling 160 million readers. In Q1 of 2017, 113,000 people searched BillCam to look at bills that would affect them that they could now affect in turn. There are still shocking days missiles to Syria, gunboats to North Korea but we stay focused.

An amazing thing happened in March. The distinguished technologist George Polisner who ceased his senior-level role at Oracle in a public letter, covered widely in the US press, in which he demurred from Oracles CEOs intention of working with President Trump had started Civ.Works, a social platform, privacy protected so citizens can organise without dread of a corporate-buyout Big Brother. Polisner and DailyClout joined forces in March. Were working to combine Civ.Works power of organising with the power of DailyClouts streaming digital updates via RSS feeds, blogs and video, about local and federal legislation. No wonder I feel aroused about the future.

Am I happy about the present? I feel unbelievably energised, hopeful and certain that if enough citizens, in our democracy and worldwide, wake up( as they are) and are able to get hold of real tools to use republic and those best-case tools are now digital and link to social and digital media we can indeed be in the midst of what another chairman called a new birth of liberty. Where I live, every day, on the frontlines of this digital revolution, there is every reason to feel in spired. That doesnt mean I am happy about where the nation is I am highly scared, just as I am scared about the future of Europe in a parallel assault on its democracies.

But the biggest threat in the US or the UK isnt one registered political party or nominee. It is peoples ignorance about their own democracies and their till-now lack of real-life tools protecting children. DailyClout UK and DailyClout EU are next on our list of planned launchings: the UK legislative database is entirely unsearchable, and the UK Parliaments own website ends in dead links when you try to find actual legislation. The EU website tells you with difficulty what bills have passed but doesnt indicate you what is coming up, when you might possibly take action it offers a feed of pointless press releases instead. This lack of legislative transparency and usability got a lot to do, I believe, with the Brexit vote.

Months Four, Five and Six will see more and more of these tools from dozens of T-shirt-clad bespectacled tech revolutionaries, coming online. Geeks are the new patriots, and code is the new shot heard round the world.

Naomi Wolf recently finished a PhD at the University of Oxford and is CEO of

May Boeve, environmental campaigner and director of 350. org: We will take power back. And when that happens, we need a very bold agenda

May Boeve photographed in Dumbo Brooklyn: Were up against: the full political might of the fossil-fuel industry. Photo: Christopher Lane for the Observer

As soon as we sang the first chorus of the hymn, the tears started. Here I go again, I thought, weeping in church. This was three weeks ago. And the week before, and the week before that, all the way back to last Novembers election.

Sudden emotional outbursts are how Im able to understand what Donald Trumps presidency means to me. I wasnt disconnected to these emotions before, but its the unexpected and potent nature that has changed.

Im in no immediate hazard from the Trump presidency. Im not dreading expulsion, the loss of my healthcare, a racially motivated arrest. I havent been personally attacked online or in the real world. So when I get scared and start crying, I wonder what it would feel like to be in that more vulnerable position, and Im more distressed by the damage being done.

My lens on Trump stems from work in the climate motion. My vantage point is as executive director of 350. org, a global effort to build a social movement that can confront the power of the fossil-fuel industry and accelerate our transition to 100% renewable energy.

Trump stands in direct opposition to those goals. As chairman, he has wholeheartedly taken the side of the oil, coal, and gas industry and is already considering to it that their agenda is enacted. Previous US presidents and nominees also did business with this industry, but at the same time they decried the threat of climate destabilisation, been actively engaged to secure international diplomatic confederations leading to an agreement, and achieved some progress from the executive branch.

Before Trumps election, the climate movement had made some serious progression. Thanks to the good work of motions around the world, the social licence of this industry is on the decline. Investors are pulling their dollars, banks are cancelling loans, and public support for fossil-fuel companies is low.

Ditto for the politicians who back them up. Take congressman Lamar Smith of Texas : 45% of his constituents , not unacquainted with his ties to the oil industry, were less inclined to vote for Smith when as chair of the house science committee he failed to investigate ExxonMobils alleged climate cover-up.( 350. org is under subpoena from Smiths office for their endeavour to get the truth out about Exxon .) From the political arena to our energy markets, it felt like the tide was eventually beginning to turn in our direction.

But then along came Donald Trump to proclaim climate change a hoax( the only head of state in the world to do so ), promising to revive the coal industry( declining in the US, thanks to terrific organising ), and appointing known climate-change deniers to head the very offices responsible for regulating the problem.

When Trump won, a new kind of desperation resolved over climate activists. Were pretty accustomed to despair already climate sorrow circles have started up in Australia, home to devastating heatwaves, flames, drought, and a basically decimated Great Barrier Reef but this felt like something new.

One week after the election, I was at a gathering with motion leaders across the faith, labour, LGBTQ and reproductive justice movements. We were each asked to write down one hard truth about the election that we hadnt yet said out loud. One person wrote: The small window of hour we had to dramatically reduce emissions may have just closed.

At the very day when we need to be taking great leaps forward, Trump and his allies are dragging us backwards with an ideology that sets corporate power above all else and youd be hard pressed to find a set of corporations more desperate to hold on to power than the likes of Exxon, Chevron and numerous coal and gas companies with less brand recognition.

At least now theres no mystery about what were up against: the full political might of the fossil-fuel industry. Two instances register highly on that rating. The first is the appointment of former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. The second is the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.

A successful protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline slated to drill beneath the Missouri River and through sacred Sioux grounds has been reversed by Trump Photograph: DDP USA/ Rex/ Shutterstock

The Tillerson appointment stands out because even the most cynical and pessimistic among us didnt predict that a person at the pinnacle of big petroleum would be in charge of diplomacy in the Trump regime. As my colleague Bill McKibben has said, you might as well ask Ronald McDonald to head up the Department of Agriculture. And Exxon isnt only any oil company: it has hidden what it knew about climate change, as early as the late 1970 s, in order to continue making money on a product it knew was wrecking the planet. It money climate-denying thinktanks and retained the same firms that helped tobacco companies claim that nicotine isnt addictive. It should be bad enough to have the entire cabinet made up of the 1 %, but the state post provides Tillerson and Exxon with far too much temptation to officially use the US foreign policy apparatus to keep extracting more oil.

The night I watched that Trump suggested Tillerson for the post, I burst into tears and crawled into bed. It was a feeling closely connected to panic, in recognition of what might happen and how powerless I felt. Thank goodness Im part of a big team, some of whom love combat and were quick to start writing and producing statements denouncing his appointment. Reports “re coming out” last week that of all the cabinet members, Tillerson is doing the best chore maintaining a close relationship to the president. Because this man is used to operating in privacy, well have to stay vigilant to understand the moves hell be making.

Then there is the remarkable story about the Dakota Access pipeline and the historic resistance at Standing Rock. At no other time has there been this much widespread opposition to a gas pipeline, for the many reasons pipelines merit our opposition. This represented an alliance of tribes whose rights, subsistences and lives have been systematically desecrated by the US government and corporations. The camp at Standing Rock itself was a symbol of everything Trumpism cannot be: spiritually grounded, connected to history and land, basically respectful of the rights of nature and people, infused with art and music and heart. It moved people to act in solidarity all over the world. Many moved fund out of the banks invested in the project.

And the resistance worked. The forces-out at Standing Rock peacefully built assured that the Obama administration put a stop to the construction and allowed further review of the pipelines viability.

So it was with cruelty the same cruelty seen in the enactment of the Muslim travel ban and the gamble with the healthcare of 24 million people that Trump signed an executive order to begin construction immediately. At the end of March, oil began to flow through the pipeline. This is why Im still exclaiming in church. The minute I start to feel numb, I believe Ill lose some hope and resolve.

And there is another animating objective. Progressives share so much, but so often our human nature and lopsided structures get in the way. Can we use this moment to be honest with each other in a new and different route, and clear up longstanding disagreements and inequalities that enable us to be aligned behind a common vision? Because I believe we will take power back. And when that happens, we need to enact a very bold agenda that propels political prospects far, far away from where Trump has dragged them.

This work is already under way: its the work of dialogues between unions and environmentalists; big, well-funded organisations and smaller grassroots ones; centrist and more radical activists; and those who believe change comes from interrupting unjust laws and those whose work is to pass only ones.

Its the work of the Peoples Climate March, which will take place on Saturday, 29 April in Washington DC and throughout the rest of the country. Its message aspires to the future were trying to build, and its being organised by a diverse cross-section of the entire movement.

That tearful day in church ended on a high note. Afterwards, some friends and I went to New Yorks MoMA PS1 museum to see the Rev Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou perform. Rev Sekou is a Pentecostal minister, an author and a gospel and blues musician, who has been active in the Movement for Black Lives. Yes, I went to church twice that day, and no, that isnt the norm for me! And when he sing What a time to be alive, the revolution comes in here, I didnt feel like weeping I felt like getting back to work.

Alicia Garza, co-founder, Black Lives Matter: We are in for a long fight and not all of us will make it

Alicia Garza: The resistance is real. Photo: Kristin Little

20 January 2017 marked a turning point for the entire world. Since the election results were announced on 8 November 2016 Id been feeling mostly numb, unable to process what the impact would be for me, my family and the people I care about. I felt the need to be quiet, to be somewhere quiet. To have space to think.

Every step I took felt like walking on eggshells. The first weeks following the elections everyone around me seemed to be unsure, fearful and riddled with anxiety. I was too. Quick to lash out, slacken to listen. I had nothing to start from except what Id heard during the campaign.

And yet, at the same time, I did know what was coming. Perhaps somewhere my cells were reorganising to protect my heart from what was inevitable. More suffering, more uncertainty. More people dying for trying to live. During the campaign, the surrogates for our current president unabashedly attacked Black Lives Matter activists as terrorists and cop murderers. In the aftermath of the election, there were many different responses. Some decided to continue their work as before and felt that not much had changed. Others decided to demonstrate their resistance by doing a direct action at the inauguration. Others shared information about the key players in the incoming administration, attempting to support others in the network to understand more clearly the new political agenda. All of us remain committed to the work of black liberation.

During the holidays, my family and I talked over dinner about personal security. I described to them a new decide of protocols we would need to begin using in order to secure our safety, insofar as that was even possible. My mothers described their anxiety of what was to come. A suit filed by a rabid conservative former district attorney hung over our heads as someone charged us and other activists with starting a race war. Indeed, the election of Donald Trump was like a nuclear plume slowly rising over the United States.

What Ive learned in the first 100 days of this administration is that you can never stop dreaming about liberty. Ive expended the past few months being relatively quiet. Listening. Brushing up on my reading about the right wing in the United States and the movement it has been diligently constructing for the past 30 years. Ive carried out in order to a practice of listening more and also listening less. Listening more to whats not being said, watching as the various cliques on the right joust for power and influence. Ive taken stock of the damage, as the right wing now controls the presidency, the supreme court, Congress and the majority of state parliaments. Listening less to voices that refuse to deal with our political reality as it actually is, as opposed to how they want it to be.

The low phases over the past few months have been many. Executive order after executive order that sought to punish the communities that make America great Muslims, undocumented immigrants, black people, females, fag communities, transgender people. A law and order agenda that seeks to criminalise anyone who disagrees with the administrations aims. An us attorney general who refuses to protect each person equally. A secretary of education who seeks to privatise public education. A secretary of housing and urban planning who seeks to slash an already paper-thin budget for housing set aside for those living in poverty. A chief strategist with white supremacist tiltswho is responsible not just for advising the president, but who, to all intents and purposes, is the one pushing the many decisions that this so-called president espouses on television. And of course, the most recent bombings of Syria and Afghanistan. Surely, we are in for a long fighting and not all of us will make it.

A Protest against proposed Republican legislation that would change Medicaid funding, New York. Photo: Justin Lane/ EPA

I comfort my mothers who are concerned about the state of their healthcare. Theyre both in their 60 s and have recently retired. And so, while the Affordable Care Act isnt perfect, it is what they have and it is what they depend on. And it is what they deserve, what every human being on this Earth deserves to be cared for.

And yet I am hopeful. The disorganisation of our political scenery offers abundant the possibility for new strategies and a transformation in the way we care for each other. I welcome the opportunity to be closer to my neighbours, to fight for myself, my family and my loved ones with every fibre of my being. Inside of the quiet, the cynicism dissipates. We have no choice other than to fight back, to take back what was always flawed but still holds the promise of what could be.

I remember that the resistance is real and it lives. The day before the president is inaugurated, I join more than a million women in the streets of Washington, DC ; for many, this was their first time on a demonstration. When the president followed orders from his chief strategist to institute a travelling forbid on Muslims, airports were shut down by those “re fighting” democracy and those caught in the crosshairs of such a ridiculous attempt were given legal subsistence and reunited with their families. I work with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a prominent voice and political vehicle for the millions of domestic workers in the United States who are still excluded from most federal labor protections and so when the president initially nominated a man for secretary of labour who was known for his opposition to workers rights, we participated in the resistance to stop him from being confirmed. Representatives returned to their home districts and were forced to face their constituents in ways that they havent had to in decades.

And so, while there are many challenges to overcome, it is good to know that we are not alone in attempting to find the solutions necessary to save our lives and the lives of millions who are vulnerable not just in the United States, but around the world. Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance. Im happy to know which side Im on.

Linda Tirado, writer on poverty: My instinct is to set off around the country asking impertinent questions

Linda Tirado photographed in Washington, DC: At least I have fertile land and a defensible perimeter. Photo: Scott Suchman for the Observer

I live in the heart of Trump country, in Meigs County, Ohio, a rural district struggling with poverty and craving. My neighbours are precisely the people the right wing have been preying on and propagandising while the left abandoned them for decades. I wasnt awfully surprised to see Clinton had lost. Id simply published a column in the Guardian about why so many people would be voting for Trump. But I wept on election night and then get well and truly drunk, because I didnt want to think about what was coming next.

My household is bracing for disaster. I wrote a volume, Hand to Mouth , about what a precarious life may seem like, but this is the first time Ive felt precarity coming in my bones and also had enough income to assuage my fears of: not enough food , not enough warmth , not enough anything on hand to deal with situations of emergency. I have a garden, as anyone in the country does, but we got serious about it after the election. This is the first year Ive thought that food costs will spike enough to make it worth focusing on the garden as a food source , not just a hobby. Increased immigration raids is very likely leave food rotting in the areas and shipping expenses will probably go up as they do during periods of uncertainty; imported food will be more expensive.

And the more the country talked about Russia, the more sense it made to expand the plans we had for a few tomatoes and beans to include asparagus and maybe some root vegetables because theyll keep just fine. The logic: oil and power costs tend to spike when Russias doing a thing and were bombing the Countries of the middle east. Then we thought: perhaps berry shrubs. A few fruit trees. And a herb patch. And perhaps we should borrow a tiller at this phase or buy one? Only now, Im mapping out 2 week of my schedule around harvest time so I can be home to do the food preservation. Were not about freeze-dried food storage yet; right now people are still only joking about nukes.

Besides, this part of the countrys be transformed into a rainforest. A decade ago this part of Ohio didnt reach such high temperatures. Now summers are lush and humid, while wintertimes are becoming harsher. So its not such a bad idea, if you happen to have the land and the time to get the work done, to be working on sustainability. Partially thats environmentalism, but its an economic consideration too. Its a thing we talk about over dinner at home or with friends. We also talk about power. Electricity is expensive, so is heating oil, and gas aint free either. Power will merely get more expensive as regulations are rolled back and the market is left to its own devices. Water is already a scarce commodity. Might as well put in some solar panels if you can afford it.

I expended the weeks between the election and the inauguration largely glued to Twitter. I tried to help people reason through what had just happened. I impatiently explained the philosophical and historical definition of fascism versus the hyperbolic version. I demanded we all grow up and focus on the important stuff: not what had happened, but what was coming. My audience grew and split into groups people who liked my satirical round-ups of the incoming administrations peccadilloes, people who liked that I discussed the reasons we therefore vulnerable to a demagogue, people who just wanted someone to explain what the fuck is had happened.

I started taking more note of political dialogue I heard around me, too, here in rural Ohio, where they went for Trump hard. Consensus seemed to be constructing that voting Trump hadnt ran but as it was a last-ditch try anyway, it was worth waiting to see. Nobody quite agreed on what he was supposed to have done or, instead, there were a lot of things. Largely, he was supposed to have disrupted everything but not exactly like this. He needed to get by that stupid Twitter, anyway, everyone agreed on that. I maintain wondering what these people didnt learn from the Tea Party.

Once the inauguration was over, I largely quit trying to explain anything to anyone online; emotion was riding too high and we were back to transgressing news instead of analysis and I was scheming a garden, so I started joking that no matter what happened, at least I had fertile land and a defensible perimeter. When the kids werent listening, we talked about what guns to buy.

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