It’s been a month since the election that swept Trump back into the White House with narrow control over both houses of Congress. We can not give in to despair. The Trump team is trying a shock and awe strategy of making so many awful appointments and proposals that they discourage the steely and strategic resistance that we need to protect our communities.
Trump’s antics are nothing new to those of us in the South who have been fighting iterations of Project 2025 since 1825. The Arkansas Public Policy Panel, where I work, was founded in 1963 by a group of diverse moms, in the height of the Civil Rights Movement, to expand racial diversity, equity and inclusion in schools and communities. Sadly we lost a few of our founding women this year, and in reflecting on their lives I was struck by how courageous they were to stand up to Faubus, Hoover, Nixon, the KKK and the hundreds of corrupt, authoritarian politicians who controlled Arkansas. We know how to build power through resistance. We know the system has NEVER been designed for us. We know how to meet moments like this because we’ve been doing it for generations. If our foremothers could do it, then we can too.
The first thing to do when you suffer a loss is go back to first principles. Listening, sharing stories and building relationships are the fundamentals of community building – followed by making progress with people on the issues they are most passionate about. We need to listen, especially to people who didn’t vote the way we hoped. It’s true that *some* of Trump's base are ultra white nationalists, but a harder truth is that MANY Trump voters are not, and we lose big when we lump them all into the same category. We need to listen, build relationships and find common ground with a lot of Trump voters, and with even more people who did not vote at all.
This is not new to those of us in the South either. Relationships and stories are the bread and butter of community organizing, especially in the South. It’s harder, most of the time, to hate people you know. And the data supports that – White people are much more likely to support racial equity if they have relationships with people of color. People are much more likely to support GLBT rights if they know people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Our relationships and shared stories help us build resilient communities.
We need an organizing revival, especially in communities that have been the most marginalized and forgotten. Growing income inequality is leaving people and whole communities behind. Urban centers and rural communities have both been exploited and forgotten by the same global economic forces. Both rural AND urban places have been hollowed out for generations under Republican AND Democratic leadership. It’s no wonder that voters have deep economic and social anxiety, and deep distrust that our political system can address the deterioration of our communities. It’s unstrategic and privileged for us not to be deeply investing in long-term organizing in these communities.
In Arkansas we’ve ranked near last in most rankings of quality of life – from education to health and economic well-being. Yet generation after generation of political leaders have failed to address the fundamental challenges undermining our well being. The Arkansas legislature is about to meet and there are very few pieces of legislation filed to address child poverty, as one example where we rank last, but instead they are filing bills banning affirmative action programs where they can drive a wedge. What they are proposing is more voucher tax handouts despite the fact that vouchers are proven to weaken quality education in every statewide academic assessment of their impact. They are proposing more tax cuts for the wealthy despite the fact that Arkansas’ tax code is one of the most upside down in the country, where we tax poor and middle income people substantially more than we tax the wealthy.
Right-wing lawmakers get away with agendas that weaken our communities because organizing in places that have been neglected for so long is slow, intensive work with a horizon beyond the next legislative fight or election. It’s very challenging to fund consistent work in these communities, but when we cede rural spaces because they are RED, or take urban centers for granted because they are BLUE, we are leaving whole communities out of the process of defining issues, creating solutions, developing political assessments, developing leaders and making progress. This leaves communities disaffected and creates a breeding ground for authoritarianism. It’s in that vacuum that the billionaire class is privatizing our public spaces and hollowing out our communities to line their pockets.
Our bubbles are killing us. We need to lean in hard toward diversity, equity and inclusion. What does DEI really mean? Diversity - we live in an increasingly diverse country and we need to build relationships and community that embraces the richness of our diversity. Equity - we need to face the hard truth of persistent inequity - such as average Black American wealth being 1/10th that of an average White American, or women’s pay being 63% of male pay for the same job, etc. Black men in Arkansas live nearly 4 years less than white men. From health to education to wealth – America has long standing, persistent equity gaps that are immoral as well as harmful to our economy and democracy. These gaps are not conservative or liberal, they are simply facts of life in America, and we must face them head on and remain committed to solving them no matter what our political persuasions are. Finally inclusion - making sure that all of our citizens are included in opportunities – from education to economics. We have to be intentional about building systems that are inclusive of all community members, or we are likely to leave someone out. At the Panel where I work, DEI has been baked into our organizational culture and strategy since 1963 - but it still requires constant intention and maintenance or it can slip without you even realizing it, especially in the face of divisive voices who seek to divide our communities.
Diversity, equity and inclusion is more than a moral imperative, it's also a strategic one. Sharecropping tenant farmers, years ago in Arkansas, tried repeatedly to organize to demand fair wages, better working conditions, and independence from the plantation owners who were exploiting them with a system that was barely discernible from slavery. White farmers tried to organize, and they were put down violently by the state militia under the control of the plantation owners. Black sharecroppers tried to organize and they were put down with some of the most violent racial massacres in American history. It was a group of black and white farmers who finally decided to work together and they formed the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in 1934 – their interracial strategy was both a core belief in working together and a strategic choice to keep the plantation owners from using their communities against one another. And it worked, they eventually got sharecropping banned in the United States.
Right wing politicians attack diversity because divisions work for them. They know they do not have the power to win if people come together across lines of division. The big money special interests carving up our Country and the politicians ignoring our needs are affecting EVERYONE – and they get to continue that exploitation and neglect when our communities are divided. Our future depends on us doubling down on organizing across races, genders, class, geography, and issues. We have to fight the voices who want to scapegoat our most vulnerable communities for their own electoral failings. The anti-trans, anti-immigrant, anti-Black and anti-woman narratives of Republicans only worked because Democrats failed to deliver an even more compelling narrative. Some folks are understandably tempted to give up on multi-racial organizing, but we need to lean into it even harder.
Harris had an impossible task as a woman of color running for President. She had to be smart, but not too smart. She had to be tough, but not too tough. Pretty, but not too pretty. Authentically black, but not too black. It was a painful but all too familiar reminder of the double standards and impossible expectations that women, especially women of color, face as leaders. She handled it with a masterclass in grace and poise, but it’s obvious how big of a role that race and gender played in the election. When we fail to do the work around diversity, equity and inclusion, the far right is happy to fill the void with their own distorted narratives, build their own relationships and amass uncontested power that they use to harm the very people they are organizing.
It’s tempting to write the 2024 election off as an “it’s the economy stupid” election, but I believe it’s much deeper than that. I think the biggest fundamental truth of the election is that we are losing the battle of big ideas. And it’s not because we don’t have better big ideas, but because Democratic politicians have been playing small ball with incremental policy instead of addressing the systemic, fundamental problems facing our families and communities.
Democrats have been afraid of naming the corporate and billionaire culprits who are driving income inequality because they are dependent on their campaign contributions. So the Biden/Harris team, and Democrats in general, offer “$20 insulin,” “small business tax credits,” “eliminating junk fees” and countless other good, practical, popular ideas that make meaningful and incremental progress but totally miss the point. They were offering small solutions to big systemic problems, and it was insulting to many voters because they knew the proposals, even as they approved of the incremental gains, were bandaids to much deeper challenges. $20 insulin is great and popular, but feels like a token when you can’t afford food or housing and your community is losing population or being displaced.
One of the big ideas we need to promote more is the idea of a multi-racial, diverse society that delivers opportunity for everyone who works hard and plays by the rules, no matter what their background is. That is a fundamental American value that has been neglected because political groups have used identity politics to divide or manipulate us, and because our economic, health, education and other systems are failing to deliver on the promise of opportunity for all. We can not win without building a more intentional movement to cross our lines of division and deliver progress.
Most Americans actually agree with progressives on a huge range of policies. As an example, an $11 minimum wage passed as a ballot measure in Arkansas in 2018 with 68% of the vote in what was otherwise a state Republican wave election. Community organizations need to scale up our capacity to engage communities, identify the big problems they see as essential to solving, and build the constituencies and campaigns to tackle them. Look at some of the state ballot measures that passed around the country – which came from community groups and not politicians – voters want transformational solutions, not transactional policy that doesn’t meet the multiple crises in our communities.
When community groups don’t build the analysis of problems with people and fight for real solutions, the far right fills the void. Ironically, in attacking the “broken system” as Trump did, he was seen as at least acknowledging the big problems, even while he offered half-baked concepts of plans or proposals that will make economic inequality significantly worse. The far-right has a lower bar of success, they don’t have to prove that they can solve the problems, they just have to sow doubt that anyone can. Trump is right that the economy is rigged against working people, a message that Democrats should have owned, but the problem Americans now face is that the Trump agenda is about to rig it even more against us.
You should read the fine print on that Trump “mandate” – this election was much closer than the media portrays it. The Trump victory was one of the smallest in history and the House will be particularly hard to govern because the Republican majority there shrank to just 3 or 4 votes. It’s true that Republicans own every level of the Federal Government – they own what comes next. You can count on team Trump to overplay their hand in the most chaotic of ways.
The mandate that Trump does have is to deliver economic opportunity and revitalization to working people and communities across the country. But that mandate puts Trump in a bind. He has to deliver the economic policies his billionaire benefactors want, while also delivering for working people and communities who are suffering after decades of exploding income inequality. The vast majority of Trump’s proposals will actually make conditions worse for working people in neglected communities. We must hold him accountable for it. We need to reach voters who voted for Trump because they thought he would make their economy and community stronger, and that he would not tear up the foundations of a free and fair democracy. They are about to be sorely disappointed.
If previous election trends hold, voters are likely to deliver a sweeping backlash in the 2026 elections – we need to make those elections not just be about dissatisfaction with Trump, but about clear and compelling solutions to the issues impacting our communities. Community organizing and advocacy are essential to that as the antidote to authoritarianism.
While the work at the federal level becomes mostly defensive, the opportunities for progress are at the state and local levels. Friendly state and local governments can pass important reforms that advance solutions to our systemic problems and advance big ideas for the nation. Advocates in states with access to direct democracy have an opportunity to elevate important reforms into the national conversation by coordinating campaigns on similar reforms across multiple states.
One of the greatest values my dad, the former college football and hockey player, taught me was that you NEVER back down from bullies. What we do next is essential. I wish political parties and politicians, with all the resources they can mobilize, would tackle the big challenges facing our communities. Alas, we know we can’t count on politicians to save us. We need to step up our organizing, advocacy and voter engagement to fight for what our communities need to thrive. The most radical thing we can do right now is persist in building diverse and inclusive community, demand progress from our political leaders, and resist attacks on our values and communities. Our kids are paying attention to not just what we say and do, but how we say and do it. We can not give into the scorched earth, divisive politics of the new administration and hate or dismiss people who we have political differences with. The antidote to Trump 2.0 is an organizing revival to build the movement our communities need.
