#16: Our Mainstream Response to this Moment (Part One)

Acting in alignment with our history of positive, ethical action

Summary Overview

In this two-part post, I reflect on how we as a society should seek to respond to the challenges of rising authoritarianism in our time.

In Part One, we start with a discussion of the limits of authoritarianism before then turning to examples of our society’s previous actions promoting civil rights, general resistance and organizing, and the actions of whistle blowers, along with other examples, are discussed. I also offer a brief comment on how we might maintain resilience in our confronting the current poly-crisis moment.

In Part Two, specific considerations for how democracies should respond to authoritarian challenges are presented and include such topics as early accountability and supporting ethical action. The need to rebuild institutions and regulate platforms, among others, are also presented.

I then discuss actions we might take at the state and local community level, taking recent events and action in Minnesota as a jumping off point for how we might each plan to engage with federal authorities as they come to a neighborhood near you/me.

Finally, we close with a discussion of “soft succession,” wherein states engage in quiet and non-directive opposition by withholding payment of federal taxes and directing state resources to state’s needs, along with other actions.

I should say, as of this writing (mid-February) the people of Minnesota are showing us in real time how we are called to respond to the present moment and its challenges. This has been inspiring to see and resulted in the Administration announcing the withdraw of ICE from the area (though I imagine they will continue at lesser scale…). The MN experience offers a great lesson in what may be achieved through direct, community organizing and action. And is humbling to observe from afar as we each learn our lessons regarding how communities can organize in response to ongoing federal and presidential overreach.

Others are writing about this with depth and focus (here is just one piece of interest) and so while what is happening on the ground is critical to our future action I will re-frame these challenges more broadly as this post takes a step back to consider a number of issues and our history of response to previous moments of democratic crisis.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Introduction

As we consider what stands before us, it is important to understand while there is a lot a rising autocrat can do, there are also many things he cannot do. As I turn to a discussion of how the mainstream is organizing to respond to these authoritarian times, I appreciated finding Stephen Beschloss's excellent discussion of various things not controlled by an aspiring dictator.

Beschloss observes that despite his ambitions dictators cannot:

• Take away our outrage

• Prevent us from using our minds

• Stop us from reading and writing or consuming knowledge and beauty

• Hide his fraudulence—as we're seeing, whether immediately or over time, it always comes out

• Make us hate a free and democratic America

• Convince us that our allies our really our enemies

• Make us stop loving humanity

• Stop us from realizing our collective power

• Last.

Therefore,

With regard to our public life,

how we, as Americans and other activists around the globe, choose to show up in the face of authoritarianism becomes in many ways the only and most critical question for us to consider.

Whether as individuals or impact community, we must reflect on this question.

As we do, it is good to consider the actions of those who have come before. Our work today does not stand on its own, isolated from previous generations. How we have shown up, together, in the face of tyranny and fascism has taken many forms over the years, for we have been here before.

1. Historic Resistance Movements

Throughout history, individuals and movements have risen to confront authoritarianism. During Nazi Germany, The White Rose—a student-led resistance group—secretly distributed anti-Hitler leaflets calling for nonviolent opposition. Members like Sophie Scholl paid with their lives, but their actions are now symbols of moral courage. In apartheid South Africa, figures like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu combined legal activism, spiritual conviction, and community organizing to sustain resistance over decades, laying the groundwork for democratic change.

2. Civil Rights and Nonviolent Protest

The U.S. Civil Rights Movement offers a deeply instructive model. Leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, and Fannie Lou Hamer organized sit-ins, boycotts, voter registration drives, and public marches—often under threat of violence or imprisonment. King's concept of "soul force," derived from Gandhi, emphasized that resistance could be rooted in love, discipline, and moral clarity, not retaliation—an idea many of our nation's present "leaders" might contemplate. Nonviolence wasn't weakness—it was strategic, powerful, and spiritually grounded.

The effectiveness of these approaches finds validation in the groundbreaking research of Erica Chenoweth, whose studies demonstrate that nonviolent resistance campaigns are twice as likely to succeed as violent ones.

Her work shows that when movements achieve the participation of just 3.5% of the population, they become virtually unstoppable—a finding that offers both hope and strategic direction for contemporary resistance efforts.

3. Economic and Labor Resistance

History shows us that economic pressure often proves decisive in confronting authoritarian power. The Montgomery Bus Boycott demonstrated how coordinated economic action could challenge systemic oppression, while the United Farm Workers' grape boycotts in the 1960s showed how consumer solidarity could support labor rights. During apartheid, international divestment campaigns helped isolate the South African regime economically, contributing to its eventual collapse.

Today, we see similar dynamics as corporations and workers navigate political tensions. Following January 6th, numerous businesses suspended political donations or distanced themselves from anti-democratic actors. Labor unions increasingly frame workplace organizing as democracy defense, while consumer boycotts and shareholder activism provide outlets for economic resistance. These mainstream economic responses remind us that markets, while certainly part of the problem, can also serve as venues for expressing democratic values.

4. Institutional and Legal Bulwarks

Our democratic institutions, while under attack, continue to serve as crucial barriers to authoritarian overreach. State attorneys general have formed coalitions to challenge federal overreach in courts, while local officials—mayors, city councils, school boards—have positioned themselves as democracy's front line. Professional associations have increasingly invoked ethical codes to resist authoritarian pressures: the American Library Association defending intellectual freedom against book banning campaigns, medical associations protecting healthcare access, and bar associations defending judicial independence.

Organizations like Protect Democracy, Stand Up Republic, and the States United Democracy Center, among others, have emerged to coordinate institutional resistance, working within existing systems to strengthen democratic norms. These efforts reflect a mainstream approach that seeks to fortify rather than overthrow existing structures, believing that institutions, properly defended, can weather authoritarian storms.

5. Whistleblowers and Truth Tellers

Modern examples of courageous truth-telling include whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), Frances Haugen (Facebook), and Reality Winner (NSA leak), who exposed abuses of power at personal risk. These individuals remind us that resisting authoritarian trends doesn't always mean being on the front lines of protest—sometimes, it's about releasing inconvenient truths into public discourse. Organizations like the Freedom of the Press Foundation and PEN America support such efforts today.

In our current information environment, this work takes on new urgency. Fact-checking networks, digital security training programs, and media literacy initiatives represent mainstream responses to disinformation campaigns. Journalists, librarians, and educators increasingly see themselves as democracy's information infrastructure, working to maintain spaces for truth in an environment of manufactured confusion.

6. Artistic and Cultural Resistance

As discussed in the previous post on this topic, artists, writers, and journalists have long played crucial roles in resisting repression. James Baldwin wrote searing essays confronting American racism while living in self-imposed exile. Ai Weiwei's politically charged art criticizes authoritarianism in China. Even under extreme surveillance, cultural workers have found ways to slip truth into poetry, song, film, and literature—both to comfort the afflicted and to provoke the powerful. Resources like Artists at Risk now offer sanctuary and platforms for creatives under threat.

Contemporary cultural resistance takes many forms: musicians refusing to perform in certain venues, writers using their platforms to advocate for democracy, filmmakers documenting injustice, and social media creators building counter-narratives to authoritarian messaging. This cultural work serves multiple functions—preserving democratic memory, inspiring hope, and maintaining spaces for imagination beyond the narrow confines of authoritarian thinking.

7. Modern Organizing and Mutual Aid

Today, networks like Black Lives Matter, Mijente, Survived and Punished, and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief demonstrate how people organize ethically amid threat. These decentralized models emphasize care, mutual protection, and strategic disruption. They reject the savior model and build collective power. Books like "Emergent Strategy" by adrienne maree brown and "Hope in the Dark" by Rebecca Solnit help us understand how small, relational acts of resistance—done in community—can scale into powerful movements.

Organizations such as Indivisible have brought these organizing principles into mainstream political engagement, providing toolkits for congressional engagement and local organizing that emphasize sustained, relationship-based activism rather than episodic protest. This represents a maturation of resistance thinking, recognizing that defending democracy requires long-term commitment rather than momentary outrage. If the Right can operate against a 20 or 30 year time frame, we certainly should and can. (Please see the upcoming posts on Philanthropy’s response to autocracy for more on how we might collaborate to build a long term movement).

8. International Collaboration and Learning

The mainstream increasingly recognizes American democracy's challenges as part of global patterns of democratic backsliding. The extreme right in the U.S. has for a number of years now been reaching out to and coordinating with related actors in nations around the world.

But there is a pro-democracy response to this moment as well which has fostered new forms of international collaboration and learning. Organizations like the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict facilitate knowledge exchange between movements worldwide, while coalitions like the Summit for Democracy create forums for sharing strategies across borders.

Americans are learning from successful resistance movements in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and other regions that have faced authoritarian challenges over the years. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia each offer models of how sustained, creative, nonviolent resistance can topple seemingly unshakeable authoritarian power.

Maintaining Resilience in Times of the Poly-Crisis: Learning to Love the Rain!

As we pursue positive engagement through our work, we must acknowledge these are challenging times with many and diverse "fronts" in our strategy and approach (Please note: if you’re with DHS or DOJ, I did not use the words “struggle,” “fight”, “war” or “battle” in my previous statement regarding “fronts”! 😳 ).

Coping with these multiple challenges can itself be challenging ( ! ) and a previous post reminded us of the need to maintain a capacity to celebrate the struggle!

Building on that idea, Matthias Rillig offers brief, but sound perspective on how to maintain one's grounding in the midst of responding to poly crises. In his short comment, Rillig grapples with the psychological and existential weight of living through a time marked by global instability, climate crisis, political unrest, and uncertainty in academia. He candidly shares his personal struggles with motivation amid the growing sense that the world — and in some ways our understanding of the role of science in society — may be heading in a troubling direction.

Without offering definitive solutions, he encourages readers to seek grounding in pragmatic steps: prioritizing job security, rediscovering meaning in their work, contributing to public understanding of science, and making tangible local impacts. Above all, he underscores the importance of mental health, connection, and resilience in navigating these uncertain times. This wisdom applies beyond academia—those engaged in democracy defense must also tend to their own, personal sustainability, recognizing resistance is not a sprint but a marathon requiring careful attention to our psychological and spiritual resources.

Along these lines, I recall an early mentor of mine advising me to

“…lose the anger, keep the outrage…”

and that phase has stuck with me over 50 plus years of activism on various fronts.

The opportunities for a mainstream response to rising authoritarianism, then, is neither monolithic nor simple. It encompasses

institutional defense and grassroots organizing,

economic pressure and cultural resistance,

local action and international solidarity.

What unites these diverse approaches is a commitment to defending democratic values through the means democracy itself provides—education, organization, legal challenge, economic pressure, and the persistent assertion of truth against power's lies.

In choosing how we show up in these times, we draw from this rich tradition while adapting to contemporary realities, always remembering that our collective power, properly organized and sustained, remains greater than any aspiring dictator's ambitions.

(This concludes Part One of this post. We now turn to Part Two, a discussion of how the mainstream is called to organize to offer alternatives to American authoritarianism.)

Author’s Note: While the final writing and analysis are my own, please know I did make use of various AI tools in research and drafts conducted for this project. For a fuller discussion, please see the closing Note in the first post of the Antidote to Autocracy series. Thanks!