If cities are to lead the resistance against Trump’s effort to dismantle everything we city dwellers believe in, then we must start by protecting the most vulnerable. Trump’s presidency will bring policies that will harm those who have already been fighting just to survive: people of color, undocumented immigrants, Muslims, people seeking safe abortions, trans and gender nonconforming people.
We must be ready to march. But marching won’t do the whole job.
In a press conference in Seattle, in an echo of pronouncements made in cities around the country in recent days, leaders at OneAmerica, El Centro de la Raza, and other local immigrant rights groups called for specific action: letters to the editor, white allies “provid[ing] the leadership to open up a discussion on race,” thorough documentation of hate crimes as a way of showing the concrete harm of Trump’s policies. (You can donate to those groups here and here.)
Sustaining action like this means not allowing the pressures and seductive amnesias of the everyday to lull us into complacency. Remember that status updates are not the same as real resistance.
