Anthony Alvarado - DIY Resistance: 36 Ways to Fight Back!

What matters is the countless small deeds of unknown people, who lay the basis for the significant events that enter history.

Howard Zinn

Choose from the thirty-six actions presented in this book you can use to fight back against Trump and the plutocracy and win.

W hats the only difference between a wannabe despot and a real despot?

The courage of those who resist and stand up to him.

We can be one step ahead of him. We know from history how tyrants operate and how to defeat themyes! They can be defeated!

Facing up to tyrants is scary. But we are not alone in walking this path. We can learn from heroes who have fought this battle before. We are standing on their shoulders. We have the future on our side. Remember: more people voted against Donald Trump than voted for him.

It is an incredibly dangerous time for us as a country; this is easily the biggest challenge we have faced as a nation since the Civil War.

This crisis is an opportunity for courage and for growth.

Historians that study resistance have found no government can ignore the demands of its people when 5 percent of the population engages in collective action. Its called the 5 percent rule. When 5 percent of the people in a country engage in active resistance against an oppressive regime, they bring that authoritarian regime crumbling down, in people-powered nonviolent revolutionslike in Iran in 1979, the Philippines in 1986, and Eastern Europe in 1986.

It is time to take to the streets, to raise our voices, to educate ourselves and to be vigilant and outspoken in our protest.

This book takes its lessons in how to fight back against the Trump presidency from the peaceful warriors, freedom fighters, and courageous leaders in history. We can do more than survive the Trump presidency. So long as we resist we will come through this stronger and better than ever. It is time to fight back.

D.I.Y. Resistance draws inspiration from the American rebel Abbie Hoffmans iconoclastic Steal This Book, and it is likewise divided into three parts: Survive!, Fight!, and Liberate!

In Survive!, we look at the specifics of how the American democracy is under attack.

In Resist!, we look at how we can push back against the Trump regime.

In Liberate!, we look at the path forward, and how to heal this deeply divided nation.

The forces arrayed against us are some of the darkest groups and impulses ever gathered in the history of humanityNazis, fascist autocracy, lies, corporate greed, racism.

We fight for equality, and for truth, we fight for fairness.

It is rare for the lines of battle in history to be so sharply delineated, and if ever there was a time to take up the call and join the fray it is now.

The key to defeating the Trump administration is fighting the power of fear with the power of courage. That is what the Resistance needs from you, the reader, your courage. To use the same tools that courageous people like yourself have used throughout history to vanquish the tides of darkness and fear, and to change the world and to make it a better place. It begins with you.

This book is all about the actions we can take to stop the tyrant. Each chapter describes a specific action that you can take. Most you can start doing immediately. I dont expect anyone to be able to do every single one of the actions, myself included. Think of this as a cookbook of recipes. You use a cookbook by trying the recipes you want to try, not by plowing through every single recipe in the exact order in which they are written down. The Resistance is about finding the actions that work for you and doing them. The Resistance is about finding your strength, your voice, your best way of contributing to the fight. Ultimately, like with any movement, we stand together, but it begins with you the individual; therefore the Resistance is a true do-it-yourself movement. Every chapter in this book is centered on an action, something you can DO, not just read about.

High school students in Parkland, Florida, rise up to teach us how to finally win the fight against the guns that have been used to kill kids in school shootings; the teachers of West Virginia rise up and win wage increases not only for themselves but for all public employees in their state; the Times Up movement creates a new era of equality for women. Each victory makes the next one more likely. Every day, people who were on the sidelines start to enter the fray, finding their courage.

Anthony Alvarado, March 2018, Portland

Subcomandante Marcos by Nick DAuria

FIND YOUR HEROES

Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.

Abbie Hoffman

ACTION

Pick someone who inspires you and hang a picture of them where you will see it on a daily basis.

RESULT

A daily reminder that people have fought against oppressive power and made a difference, with grace and dignity.

R eady to roll up your sleeves and fight back against Trump? I know its not going to be easy, and many people are in despair.

I see people saying, Screw this. It aint my problem, Im going to just check out and do my own thing for four years. That is apathy. Really, its a form of depression. Its a common reaction.

Another reaction is to go into perpetual panic mode, letting yourself be too overwhelmed to do anything about it.

The most common reaction is probably denial, people saying, Im sure it will all work itself out.

Im not knocking those emotions. Im angry and Im upset about where Americas heading, too. Its the five-stages-of-grief thing: