Tag: resistance
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America at 250: This is NOT What Democracy Looks Like!
As our country celebrates its 250th anniversary, we are living through a particularly fraught period of US history with attacks on democratic participation and freedom of speech coming from inside the federal government. Across the country, the effects of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, which weakened protections in the Voting Rights Act, gave the executive…
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Persistence vs Burnout
It’s been 18 months since Donald Trump started his second term in the White House. Since then, his Administration has limited our civil liberties, cut our social services, targeted immigrants, and attacked scientific integrity and the scientific process. Americans have responded with unprecedented levels of protest. In fact, there were three times as many protests in the early months…
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Reclaiming Our Political Power
The Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast is BACK! Over the years, my research has explored many aspects of how we can build lasting and effective political power and civic capacity. In fact, I’ve written three books specifically about this subject: In all of these books, along with much of my empirical research, the value of building lasting…
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Service as Resistance: How Service Corps and Volunteer Programs Reinforce our Civic Fabric.
This week, I had the opportunity to conduct a site visit with the EarthCorps program out in Seattle. The visit is part of our multi-year Workforce Development and the 4Rs project, which is evaluating the effects of federally coordinated volunteer and service corps programs that focus on building resilience and supporting disaster response and recovery.…
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Could Redistricting Efforts Energize the Pro-Democracy Movement?
Whenever I speak about civic and political engagement in America, I always start by discussing the most common way that Americans participate in our democracy: voting. Even though many people choose not to vote, it is still one of the most common forms of engagement and an act that most people do at least once…
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How to Expand Resistance and Build Solidarity?
As Trump’s second term continues (we are currently only 1 year and 4 months into his 4-year term), we are seeing continued resistance to the administration and its policies. There have been a series of days of action that have turned out millions of Americans to march and chant in peaceful protest (most recently in…
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Americans Flex their Economic Muscles at May Day Strong
Yesterday, on May 1st, a broad coalition of progressive groups and unions participated in May Day Strong to show their strength “with many refusing business as usual through No School. No Work. No Shopping.” Working with the organizing coalition, my team surveyed hosts who were coordinating events and participants who registered to participate through a…
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How to Build Power through a General Strike
This coming Friday, the May Day Strong coalition (which includes over two hundred progressive groups and unions) is calling for “workers, students, and families [to] rally, march, and take action across the country to demand a nation that puts workers over billionaires, with many refusing business as usual through No School. No Work. No Shopping.”…
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Are We Expecting Too Much of No Kings 3?
Obsessing over magic numbers won’t save us; we have to save ourselves. Next weekend–on March 28th–the third No Kings Day will take place across the US. Organizers have been sharing this amazing map of the more-than-3000 planned events that have been scheduled for the day (the image below is from their website on 3/19). Like…
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Earth to Trump: You Can’t Cancel Climate Change
Yesterday, President Trump eliminated the endangerment finding that classified greenhouse gases as air pollutants. This finding was the basis for federal climate policy in the United States and made it possible to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Without it, the rules that regulate emissions standards for vehicles, power plants, and fossil fuel…
Dana R Fisher 