An inside-outside strategy for defending the US Republic
About half a million people showed up for Women's March in the country's capital on January 21 to challenge the new US president. Xinhua SIPA USA/Press Association.All rights reserved. With
the curtains closed on the inauguration of the 45th president of the
United States, the threat of domestic tyranny looms large. The new US president
has denounced protestors and bullied opponents, mocked civil rights heroes, repeatedly
threatened independent media, extolled the virtues of repressive autocrats, and
appointed family members to positions of power. His business practices may
already violate the Emoluments clause of the US Constitution
designed to bar foreign powers from buying influence. The Congress, controlled
by the president’s party, has recently revived an obscure 1876 rule that would permit the
purging of disloyal civil servants.
Scholars
of authoritarianism, and those who have lived through it, have cautioned
against normalizing anti-democratic behaviors. In Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and
elsewhere, democratically elected leaders went on to gradually but systematically gut free expression and
assembly while undermining checks on executive power. Yale historian Timothy
Snyder, an expert on Nazism and the holocaust, offered advice to American citizens: “do
not obey in advance” (most support to authoritarianism is given freely),
“recall professional ethics” (commit to just practices and take action when
they have been violated) and “hinder the one-party state” (prevent parties that
have taken over the state from monopolizing control by voting in local and state
elections). Masha Gessen, an author of several
books about Putin and Russia, insisted you should “believe the autocrat”, “don’t be taken in by
small signs of normalcy” and “be outraged”.
This inside-outside strategy should stand on
three pillars.
Resisting
authoritarian tendencies and defending an American democratic system grounded
in respect for civil liberties and institutional checks and balances requires a
sustained inside-outside strategy. This strategy should focus on working within
legal and political institutions while organizing sustained pressure on the
outside, through collective action and movement building. This inside-outside
strategy should stand on three pillars:
- – a legislative strategy informed by the Indivisible Guide written by former Congressional
staffers that emphasizes local organizing and pressuring members of Congress to
resist an agenda grounded in “racism, authoritarianism, and corruption”; - – a grassroots organizing and collective action strategy
involving organizations, individuals, and movements that affirm their intention
of working across issues, across geographies, and across generations; - – an administrative strategy aimed at empowering nonpartisan
civil servants inside government to engage in ethical public service by linking
them to lawyers’ groups, civil liberties organizations and grassroots movements
who have their backs on the outside
Legislative strategy
A
group of former Congressional staffers penned the Indivisible Guide to organizing locally to thwart
racist and anti-democratic aspects of the new president’s agenda. Drawing on
lessons from the Tea Party’s successful efforts to block President Obama’s
agenda after the 2008 election, the guide hones in on two strategic components:
a local strategy targeting members of Congress and a “defensive strategy”
focused on stopping the new president from implementing specific parts of his
agenda. The strategy recognizes that the new president will rely on the support
of members of Congress to get laws passed. Those members care first and
foremost about getting re-elected, and are therefore susceptible to targeted
local organizing. The plan describes how to maximize town halls, non-town hall
events, district office sit-ins and meetings, and coordinated calls to bolster
Congressional advocacy. Members care first and
foremost about getting re-elected, and are therefore susceptible to targeted
local organizing.
The
Indivisible Guide, which began as a GoogleDoc and went viral, has inspired the
formation of over 4,500 local groups around the country that have committed to
implementing the strategy, ranging from established social justice
organizations to new groups that formed in the wake of the election. This new
national network of local self-organizing groups has tremendous potential to
not only engage in targeted advocacy, but to join forces with other grassroots
movements and coalitions to support collective action and (if necessary) mass civil
resistance to escalate political and economic pressure against the incoming
administration. That brings us to the
second pillar of the strategy.
Grassroots organising
The
Indivisible authors acknowledge that theirs is not a stand-alone
strategy. Rather, an advocacy approach targeting members of Congress should be
linked to a broader approach to building a more just and inclusive society. That
requires grassroots organizing, building broad-based coalitions, and engaging
in nonviolent mass action. Already there have been a number of local and
state-level initiatives designed to protect those, including undocumented
immigrants and Muslim Americans, whose rights may be under threat.
At
least three-dozen cities, including New York, Chicago, LA, and DC are standing
by their status as “sanctuary cities”, meaning they do not ask residents about
their immigration status nor detain them on grounds of that status. They refuse
cooperation with federal immigration officials seeking to arrest, detain, or
deport immigrants solely on grounds of their documentation status. City
officials have held fast to their commitment despite Trump’s threat to cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities
within the first 100 days of his presidency. Maryland citizens are working with
local police to prevent federal overreach involving discriminatory
surveillance, including the targeting of Muslims. Maryland
citizens are working with local police to prevent federal overreach involving
discriminatory surveillance, including the targeting of Muslims.
Single-issue
organizing around important issues like immigrant rights, criminal justice and
police reform, and reproductive rights, while important, will be insufficient
in a political context marked by threats to democratic systems and
institutions. Instead, grassroots organizers will need to focus on working
across sectors and issues and building broad-based coalitions whose members are
dedicated to the proposition that an attack on one is an attack on all.
Just
as Black Lives Matter activists traveled to Standing Rock, North Dakota to
stand in solidarity with indigenous water protectors and block the Dakota
Access Pipeline, this type of cross-issue organizing is what gives movements
numbers and strength. There have been positive steps in this direction.
Recently over fifty human rights, civil liberties, and grassroots organizations
came together and pledged to stand together and defend racial, social,
environmental and economic justice for all while resisting Islamaphobia, racism,
xenophobia, sexism and other attacks on American democracy. As part of their “United Resistance” campaign, the member organizations,
which include the NAACP, Color of Change, Greenpeace, Jobs With Justice and
350.org, pledged “take
action to support one another, to be accountable
to one another, and to act together in solidarity,
whether in the streets, in the halls of power, or in our communities every day.
When they come for one, they come for us all.”
Forging
coalitions involving the best organizers across issue areas holds out the best
prospect for successfully defending American democracy. As a practical matter,
foundations and private individuals should commit to providing multi-year
funding to support cross-issue movement building, including community
organizing, leadership development, advocacy, legal aid, and nonviolent direct
action skills and training. “When they come for one, they come for us all.”
Grassroots
movements are also well positioned to support those inside government who may
decide to challenge certain directives, rules, or policies coming out of the
next administration on grounds that they are either un-Constitutional or
unethical. Which brings us to the third pillar of the strategy.
Administrative strategy
The
2.7 million nonpartisan civil servants who run the US government from day to
day have tremendous power and constitute a key pillar of support for any
administration. Civil servants have unparalleled familiarity with the
bureaucratic process. They know how to speed things up, and they know how to
slow them down. They have access to critical information about policies being
considered and implemented. They can participate in internal decision-making.
They can provide (or deny) knowledge and expertise to those at the top of the
bureaucratic totem pole.
Historically,
civil servants have used a range of tactics to challenge government policies
deemed unethical or unconstitutional. In his famous “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action”, sociologist Gene Sharp
listed actions ranging from the wearing of symbols by government workers, to selective
refusal of assistance, to deliberate inefficiency and
selective noncooperation by enforcement agents,
to quasi-legal evasions and delays, to noncooperation by constituent
governmental units.
University of Chicago law professor
Jennifer Nou wrote
about how dissenting bureaucratic actions have been used in the US context. The ‘slowdown’, when employees perform their work but do so
at foot-dragging pace, was used during the Reagan administration. Career civil
servants in the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service who opposed the president’s
efforts to cut the food stamp budget and declare ketchup a “vegetable” did what
was technically required but refused to engage in
policy advocacy. Another tactic is ‘building
a record’, or working extra hard to create a paper trail to make it more
difficult for the administrator to reverse the decision. This approach was used
by career officials in the EPA under the Bush administration, who created 600 pages describing legal
mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gases despite the Administrator’s expressed
skepticism.
Leaking
information need not involve dramatic disclosures of information to the media.
It can involve leaking internal memos to influential individuals or interest
groups who can mobilize opposition. Senior officials in the Bureau of Land
Management used this tactic during the Clinton administration. Another dissenting action includes enlisting
inspectors general, who are present in over 70 federal agencies and are
authorized to investigate fraud and corruption within USG agencies through
audits and investigations. “Offices of goodness”, established to prevent abuses
of power within federal agencies, include the Department of Homeland Security’s
Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the National Security Agency’s
Office of Civil Liberties and Privacy. Civil
servants can sue the agency when
more subtle approaches fail… The ‘nuclear option’ involves resigning.’
Civil
servants can sue the agency when
more subtle approaches fail. This can generate outside support and pressure,
particularly when the individual(s) have strong connections to advocacy groups
and grassroots organizations on the outside. Border agents from Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, who objected to President Obama’s directives regarding
undocumented immigrants, saying they required them to violate federal law, took
this route. The ‘nuclear option’ involves resigning,
which is what some FDA staffers did to protest the Obama
administration’s handling of Plan B, the emergency contraception pill.
These
dissenting options within the bureaucracy have varying levels of moral and legal risk attached to them. As
Nou notes, they have been pursued in good and bad faith. Some civil servants
who undertook them were punished, demoted, transferred, or locked out of the policy-making
process. On the other hand, it is difficult for political appointees to fire
tenured civil servants without a costly fight. Given the financial risks
involved in engaging in bureaucratic dissent, notably resignation, those
considering it should ensure that they have the financial means to endure
changes in employment status. This might take the form of a ‘solidarity fund’
established to support civil servants who engage in dissent while working
inside the next US administration. Passive reliance on the strength of the
US Constitution and its institutions to preserve democratic norms, behaviors,
and practices is misguided in the current political context.
Both
the administrative pillar of resistance and the ‘Indivisible’ legislative pillar
will be bolstered if they are linked to a grassroots strategy of cross-issue
mobilizing and direct action. That is the essence of an inside-outside
strategy. Passive reliance on the strength of the US Constitution and its
institutions to preserve democratic norms, behaviors, and practices is
misguided in the current political context. While the president-elect spoke of “American
carnage” in his inauguration address, while failing to
reference any founding documents and their fierce defense of democracy and
freedom, now is the time for the American people to rise up and defend their
democracy – before it is too late.