06/16/2025
If you're mad because you say liberals would be at brunch if Harris was President, but you're also mad because 12.1 million of them marched peacefully yesterday, it's hard to imagine what would make you happy.
What's coming across is that you want to see them engaged in street fights because "only violence can defeat fascism" or whatever, but what's not clear at all is what on earth you think is going to turn brunch liberals into street fighters.
There needs to be some kind of connection to material reality that feels missing right now, and that's unfortunate because bold voices calling for stronger actions like a general strike could make some real headway right now.
There's a sociological idea where if 3.5% of a population become engaged on a specific thing, they become unstoppable. No Kings Day's topic was basically "ending fascism". Do you see how leftist thinking provides the clearest road map for that?
We know that fascism is more than "a Republican President". It's more than Project 2025. It's an attack on workers, and women, and people of color, and sexual & gender minorities, and civil rights. And we know that electing liberals isn't enough to end it.
We broke the 3.5% threshold yesterday, and that's huge. Can you imagine what kind of pressure we can build together? Unions, feminism, anti-racism, q***r liberation, and radical democracy are critical front lines for advancing anti-fascism.
You're not wrong that if we let orgs like Indivisible keep this energy to themselves, they may well squander it on respectability and electoralism. But is it realistic to expect them to be something they're not? Maybe it's our job to be who *we* are.
But most of what I heard online from the broader left were the same tired excuses we heard during the election. "Don't bother showing up, you're just helping them look like saviors." Can't you see that by exempting yourself, you sideline yourself?
They're not doing that *to* you. You're doing it *to yourself*. I know that probably hurts to hear, but it's real. It reminds me of newcomers in recovery who say they're being left out, but are actually sitting in a corner refusing to talk to people.
The advice I give them is the same as I would give anyone - if you want to be a part of the stream of life, you have to step into that stream and find your place in it. There is no alternate universe where you're magically popular without engaging directly.
If we want leftist ideas to be popular, we have to go where people are and popularize them. I don't know how other cities were, but in Phoenix there was an area designated for grassroots orgs to bring folding tables and set up for outreach.
I only saw one radical organization that took advantage of that, it was communists selling their papers. Let that sink in - for all the complaints against 50501 and Indivisible, they put out a welcome mat to the entire resistance and were largely ignored by radicals.
There needs to be some serious reflection on why that is. Because historical moments like this don't come along very often. I need to ask myself, what am I doing to increase awareness and build trust for radical ideas?
Our personal answers to that question make all the difference as to where history goes from here. And for those of us who create content, we have a unique power to shape the story and invite others in—through satire, storytelling, and honest reflection.
