The memory of John Lewis is honored on July 17th.
Trump does not understand the depth of trouble that he is in.
A man who thinks himself a radical because he paid his supporters to attack the Capitol Building, will soon be shocked at what real, spontaneous ‘people power’ is all about.
So will the complacent mass media, which has never grasped the simple truths of other mass protests.
Peter Ackerman and Jack Duval wrote a piece a decade ago called “People Power Primed” that sets the stage for what we can expect from the mass protests about to hit America on July 17th. I am in debt to one of our Substack authors for this reference.
First, nonviolent action is often misread as a form of peacemaking or conflict resolution rather than as a way to wage and win a conflict. When launched, especially against a repressive ruler, nonviolent action is usually dismissed as lacking punch or needing outside patrons. How often have the Trump supporters sneered at the seeming lack of push-back to Trump’s edicts? Once civilian-based resistance is seen for what it is, as a way to defeat rather than soften or persuade an opponent, the home grown strategy and tactics that often produce success can be identified.
Second, elite policymakers and news producers naturally pay ample attention to the moves of high office-holders, commanding generals, and famous figures. The potential or even imminent actions of ordinary citizens usually fly beneath their political radar. The British dismissed the actions of the colonists against their rule: who had ever heard of a bunch of colonials beating well-dressed, well-drilled soldiers? When a regime succumbs to such a strategy, outside observers are flabbergasted. Trump’s circus keeps turning on itself; Pam Bondi of the Justice Dept just fired her personal ethics counsellor…its like Satan felt there were too many rules. MAGA-world is in open revolt against the Orange Mussolini, burning their made-in-China “Make America Great Again” hats and demanding an accounting.
Trump rarely loses control over his own conspiracies.
Third, any victory of people power tends to be written off as unique once a catalytic factor is noticed that seems sufficient to have turned the political tide. In Ukraine, it was Yushchenko’s poisoning that appeared to galvanize the opposition. Yet this by itself would not have mattered if there had not been indigenous civilian resistance applying extreme pressure on these regimes’ institutions and backers. Now, Trump has cut Medicare, Medicaid and other healthcare budgets by $1-trillion. He has punished almost every American.
Trump and his MAGA power pushers appear to have crossed all three lines-of-peril: the non-violent action of citizens who were upset with his rule was dismissed, despite the increasing numbers of people involved; the low ranking of the leadership of (most of) the protest movements led the elites to disdain their actions; and Trump’s planners have been trying to squelch ‘unique’ events like Epstein’s pedophelia charges while letting outrages like the storm-tossed deaths of innocent civilians in Texas go by undefended – when it was clearly caused by Trump’s policies of cut-backs to the weather service.
It is getting worse. NYC is flooding, NJ is flooding, CT is flooding… There is a climate apocalypse in progress and Trump is going anti-science on it.
Now California farm workers have announced a three-day strike, from July 16-18, calling for an end to ICE raids and deportations. It will spread.
And in Trump’s inner circle, Speaker Mike Johnson has just announced that he is defying his boss and pushing for the release of the Epstein Papers, to disclose the truth about the pedophile rapist club.
You can bet that if the files exonerated Trump, they would be printed on T-shirts and displayed by the million.
The road to Ukrainian independence was not paved with US money. It took Ukrainian drivers to maneuver the sharp turns and hard terrain that they and their people knew best. In the US, the experts are the people on the streets – and the streets are rising.
Trump was never a strategist; his big moves have put his own agendas into jeopardy and undermined his own position.
Tariffs? An anchor on the US economy that has resulted in an epic downturn in the American economy.
Immigration round-up? Nowhere near as effective as Obama yet ten times clumsier.
Social stability? He ripped the infrastructure out from under America and then partied while 100 people were swept away in foreseeable storms in Texas.
Economic futures? He stole money from the poorest people to give to the richest, while plunging America into a decades-long debt crises and destroying the world’s reliance on the American dollar.
Energy futures? He handed the solar and renewable power technology development to Asia and pushed America head-first into a bucket of oil.
Middle East stability? He bombed the nuclear enrichment sites of a nation of 90 million people, did no enduring damage, and called down retribution from on high to his ally Israel.
Then he took no action when China ran a “Silk Road revisited” freight corridor into Iran.
Vehicles? Call BYD in China if you want a decent, reasonably-priced car.
In all these endeavors, he handed global leadership to China. America’s one-time solid gold allies have been prodded into coalitions that ignore America, by countries afraid for their independence otherwise.
In fact, a dozen allies have asked the US to return their gold, being stashed for safe-keeping in the US.
And Ukraine – with its war against the only overtly violent power opposed to democracy – Trump has taken years to realize that maybe this Putin guy, who has his friends casually murdered, cannot be trusted.
He has run into a cul-de-sac and taken America with him.
And now, to hold it all together as his empire shatters, he has created the biggest police force America has ever had.
But their mission is marmalade – they can be forced to halt, by a determined and angry people.
People who think that “enough is enough”, and back them into a corner.
He has failed in everything. His cabinet are a chorus of curiosities that will be analyzed in the trivia pages for amusement value.
Never has an American president screwed up so badly.
And never has one come so close to grabbing total power.
Accomplishment is not dangerous. Incompetence is the nation-killer. And Trump is the poster-boy for incompetence…dangerous incompetence.
His national police force, however, while a huge threat, is not invincible.
An ICE convoy had to release its immigrant captives when angry citizens blocked their exit route.
ICE vans regularly get pelted with bricks and rocks.
Violence against ICE has gone up 500% in one month alone.
Their stress levels have soared.
This is David vs. Goliath…with the difference that there are a thousand Davids for each Goliath.
Which brings us to July 17th.
Here are some links that are recommended by one of our readers, to prepare yourself for a great day of Protest!
Good Trouble Lives On:
https://goodtroubleliveson.org/
See the website for specific places.
Other sites, with helpful comments…
Indivisible: https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/
American Civil Liberties Union https://www.aclu.org/action
No Kings https://www.nokings.org/next
Women's March https://action.womensmarch.com/calendars/free-america-weekend
50501 https://www.fiftyfifty.one/events
MoveOn https://www.mobilize.us/moveon/
Public Citizen https://www.mobilize.us/publiccitizeninitiative/
Here are resistance related guides from around the world: 🇺🇸 Fundamentals of physical surveillance: a guide for uniformed and plainclothes personnel https://archive.org/details/fundamentalsofph0000silj
The Royal Canadian Mou has its own publications including: 🇨🇦 GCPSG-022 (2025) - Threat and Risk Assessment Guide GCPSG-010 (2022) - Operational Physical Security Guide 🇨🇦 GCPSG-019 (2023) - Protection, Detection, Response, and Recovery Guide https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/physec-secmat/pubs/index-eng.htm The non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation also has excellent guides on: 🇺🇸 Street Level Surveillance
🇺🇸 Surveillance Self-Defense https://ssd.eff.org/
🇪🇺 🇸🇪⚠️ Resistance Operating Concept https://jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/25 🇺🇦 🇺🇲 Radio Free Ukraine Resistance Manual https://radiofreeukraine.com/3d-flip-book/resistance-manual/ ⚠️ John Hopkins University: Assessing Revolutionary And Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) Studies This one is used a lot by ICE, so the Trump Regime keeps suppressing it. Here are alternate links as it keeps getting moved around by the good guys: Small Wars Journal Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) Project https://archive.smallwarsjournal.com/blog/assessing-revolutionary-and-insurgent-strategies-aris-project Author's website: On Resistance, Revolutions, and Insurgencies https://zimmerer.typepad.com/resistance/ Free PDF download of the book from the original author: Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare, Volume II 1962 - 2009 http://zimmerer.typepad.com/Documents/ARIS%20Casebook%20Vol%202%202012%20s.pdf ⚠️ Civilian-Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/civilian-based-defense-a-post-military-weapons-system/ 🏁 Simple Sabotage Field Manual by United States Office of Strategic Services https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184?ref=404media.co ⚠️ Library of Congress Revelations from the Russian archives: documents in English translation https://www.loc.gov/item/96024752 🏁 Robert Reich/Resistance School Communicating Across Difference https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaT8gjnOmQl3dguy0_E0vVCL5ZYEyCTzu 🏁 Bernie Sanders: https://m.youtube.com/@BernieSanders 🏁 CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists: Safety Kit https://cpj.org/safety-kit/ 🏁 Activist Handbook: https://activisthandbook.org/introduction (⚠️ These are USA sponsored websites. Some publications may have been removed by the Trump regime)
In a 2005 study, Freedom House counted 67 transitions from nondemocratic to democratic governments in the world between 1970 and 2003. Strong or moderately strong non-violent civic forces were present in 50 of these cases. More than 70 percent of those involved broad-based nonviolent popular fronts or civic coalitions that were highly active.
The US is on the cusp of this experience.
A political champion of the Old School of Democrats, Andrew Cuomo, represents the shrinking moderate opposition to Trump; he recently polled 5k “Likes” on a post. His revolutionary opponent, Zohran Mamdani, got 164k “Likes” for a contrary view.
Trump can’t see it.
Fine.
Don’t tell him.
Let him find out the hard way.
As they say in People Power Primed, “The most effective and least costly agent for dissolving these regimes is not violent revolt, not war, and not even external power. It is the capacity of civilians in these societies to wage a struggle for freedom, if they are equipped with the knowledge of how to use strategic nonviolent resistance.”
Good luck on July 17th – and send photos!
according to many commentators Trump's project is to weaken the dollar and re-industrialize the US. What is not adequately stressed is that it would require as a necessary (but not sufficient) condition a very strong reduction of US real wages. But the US superwealthy do not care about this worsening of living standards of the majority, what they want is to maintain US (i.e. their) dominance over the world in order to avoid the risk that their right to be so wealthy and powerful be contested. When a majority will realise that this is Trump's intention, how will Trump react?
this needs a much bigger turnout than the last one, to keep the pressure on, from ireland