Antidote
Every day, a new punch in the gut. I'm scared: are you?
I'm guessing you're probably scared enough already on your own, so relax, I'm not going to frighten you more right now.
I'm here to help. Here's the first thing I'm going to tell you, the biggest thing, the most important thing: WE ARE NOT POWERLESS.
Every single person has a certain amount of power, to obey an order or refuse it, to try to get other people to resist it, to stand in the doorway, blocking evil. To spit in your tormentor's face. To pee on their shoes.
To call our Congresspeople every single day, till they get so sick of our voices (or afraid of losing their beloved offices) that they resist this shit. To pour out in the streets, because thousands of human bodies, along with our sparkly minds, occupying a major thoroughfare wields an undiscountable power of its own. Worse comes to worse, we can always shut down traffic until everyone gets sick of having us in the way.
As Ezra Klein (of all people) recently wrote, "If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern like a king. Don't believe him…. Bravado aside, Trump's political capital is thin.… If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak.… Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality.”[1]
Absent sheer military power — which Trump has not yet attempted to use— government relies on the consent of the governed.
We each have our power to throw our wrench into the works. Defiance is one of the best moodlifters I have ever encountered, and my own people, queer people, have a gift for defiance that has been buoying me up for decades. I remember defiance surging through my veins back when Respected Rich Asshole William F. Buckley proposed in the New York Times that the government should forcibly tattoo all gay men on the butt to prevent the spread of AIDS (1986). We shut that asshole down, and we forced the government and pharmaceutical companies to develop and make available drugs that made it possible to live with HIV.
I remember defiance giving me power, cresting in my blood, when we stood against Reagan, Bush, and the other Bush, when we defied the Christian right trying to make queer people illegal in New York, in Washington, to stop us from having sex, from teaching school, from having agencies that served our community, from having our existence mentioned to children in schools. When we defied fucking Other Bush when he launched brutal and unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we massed at the airports to stop Trump’s Muslim ban from going into effect.
We have won most of these fights, and we still — all of us, not just queer people — have the power to fight and win. The power to stand in the street — and yes, spit in their faces — when they come for trans people, when they come for immigrants, when they come for Federal workers, when they come for any of us.
As our foremother Audre Lorde said,
I am
are you
Ready.
Things to do right now: 1) Call your two Senators and your Congressperson every single day, no matter their party, whether you voted for them or not. A) If they’re a Democrat, make them commit to NOT voting to confirm any Trump nominee or judge until Musk and Trump stop violating the Constitution. And make them commit to using every single procedural tactic at their disposal — they have many — to slow Trump down, to obstruct and delay, to throw a wrench in the works. Some of these tactics: quorum calls, “blanket opposition” (saying NO every single time), and “blocking unanimous consent,” which means that every little teeny thing the Senate wants to do must take the maximum amount of time. As the great group Indivisible says, “Democrats have tools to grind Senate business to a halt.”
B) If they’re a Republican, tell them to show they have courage to resist this shitshow and buck Trump publicly, or you will punish them at the polls. Show up when they speak and tie them to the Trump agenda and his cuts against every single life-affirming government program.
Here is the phone number for the Congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121.
C) Check out Indivisible at indivisible.org. These specific ideas come from them, and if you sign up, they will keep giving you more concrete ways to stop the clown car.
D) Get together with a group of people and do direct action. Direct action: the use of strikes, demonstrations, civil disobedience, or other public forms of protest to achieve one’s demands.[2]
[1] Ezra Klein, "Don't Believe Him,” New York Times, February 2, 2025.
[2] Adapted from the Oxford English Dictionary, as captured by Google on February 15, 2025.
Yes, the wanna be monarch is, in truth, only play acting. Still, even this show of executive bravado has real world consequences. That's why we need to force our representatives to shut him down.
Yes! I was not familiar with blanket opposition and blocking unanimous consent. Good things to mention in calls. I’m calling Republican senators as well as my own, imploring them to show an iota of moral courage, reminding them that history will judge them.