It’s After No Kings. What now?

So, you attended a rally. Now what? What’s next? I think we all can agree that whoever originally said, ‘May you live in interesting times’ did not anticipate the wholesale crumbling of the balance of power structure of the United States’ government, when they cursed us with this wish. Or maybe they did. After all, modern history is littered with moments where ordinary citizens have been forced out of their normal routines to confront and beat back despots, tyrants, bigots, traitors, and their followers. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, and now Donald Trump, just to name a few.

We’re going to be talking about how we got here for decades, implicating failures of systems like education, news-reporting, and family, alongside the sticky entrenchment of racism and misogyny within our culture. At least, I hope we will be, because planned apathy and short attention spans are the main culprits for the ability of a patently unstable and addled buffoon like Donald J. Trump and his hapless band of LARPing administration staff to rise to power.

But he’s here to stay, for now, so what do we do to minimize the harm he can do to our friends, families, systems, and communities in an environment where he has total control of the legislative branch and effectively neutered the highest court in the land (#ElectionsAreAbout Judges)?

We participate in the community. We have to stop thinking of politics in chunks of time. It's not 'we have 2 years to get ready!' 'We have 4 years to prepare!' Communities run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, year over year. Governance in communities is a lifetime commitment, not something undertaken in short bursts until you've gotten what you want.

What can you do to eliminate MAGA for good? Go participate in your communities. Start with volunteering with groups that align with your interests, graduate to nonprofit boards. Educate yourself about your municipal government. Attend meetings. Stay involved. Learn how to make policy, how to build consensus, how to work in a group of diverging interests. If you haven't been working in your communities all along, start now. And don't quit, make it a sustainable part of your life. You're not trying to save the world on your own, you're working in tandem with your neighbors to make life better for everyone.

If you asked me what the most important group for anti-Trumpists to take back, it’s PTAs. Creating policies that assign respect and importance to education. Ensuring that your community prioritizes literacy, supporting all learners, funding arts education and opportunities. An educated populace is a powerful populace. Those currently in power want to control us through poverty and ignorance.

And everyone go join your local Democratic committees. Everyone. We've got to break the hold ignorance has on this country.