Activist activators for Trump resistance

Let’s face it: the Trump administration is a dumpster fire, and we all need to get our buckets out.

One of the main goals here at TongassDemocrats.com is to provide people with tools to support them in their activism. I’m keenly aware of the fact that one volunteer site can’t keep up with everything that is out there – fortunately, we don’t need to.

I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for existing resources that might be useful for people looking for ways to resist the national Trump agenda, and I’ve found some things that look promising. This post is a compilation to make it easy for you to find whenever you need it.

5Calls
Put in your location, they generate the 5 most important calls for you to make. They have call scripts and tips (“calls should take 1 minute or less”, etc.).

Spend 5 minutes, make 5 calls.

There’s one simple and straightforward way to influence the Government that is supposed to represent you: Call them on the phone.

Calling is the most effective way to influence your representative. 5 Calls gives you contacts and scripts so calling is quick and easy. We use your location to give you your local representatives so your calls are more impactful.

The 65
Here’s how they describe themselves:

Over 65 million Americans rejected Donald Trump on Election Day. What if we came together every day to fight for our vision of a diverse, inclusive America? Together, we can use our voices to remind Congress that they work for all of us.

We are The 65. Join us and call your legislators today!

The65 has weekly actions, and they have call scripts organized by topic. If you’ve been looking for something that can provide you with a guide for national action, this is one option. Another is Weekly Resistance Online

Weekly Resistance Online
Similar to The 65, WRO has weekly actions.

We have pulled together a team of activists who are connected to folks doing organizing work on the ground who will work together to pick a weekly action. We will come up with our own ideas, collaborate with the other creators of online tools, and consider ideas submitted here, to choose what we think is the highest impact action each week. The model we are aiming for right now is to have a process in which White people are doing the bulk of the labor in a manner that is accountable to the leadership and feedback of People of Color.
We would love to hear your ideas, too! You can submit them here.

WRO looks like it’s on a smaller scale, and it looks like they have different actions than The 65. They also organize a targeted give to a prescreened organization each week.

The Resistance Manual 
This site is a wiki, and if you need to come up to speed on an issue fast, it’s a great place to start.

There are more of us who believe in equity and justice than those who support Donald Trump’s ideology of fear and hate.

Together, we can harness the collective power of the people to resist the impact of a Trump presidency and to continue to make progress in our communities.

I dug around and saw that they have a section for every state, and it looks like Alaska doesn’t have someone curating our page yet. Even so, there’s good information there.

Resilience
Only you know how much of your personal energy you can put toward activism on a particular day. I want this list of resources to empower, not overwhelm, you.

I’m giving you several resources instead of just one. That’s because:

1. Each site uses a different set of criteria for deciding which calls and causes to concentrate on.
2. Maybe this week, you’ve only got one set of calls in you, but next week, you’ve got more. I’d hate for you not to have enough options 🙂
3. They all look like they are volunteers. We don’t know if they’ll be able to keep up over time.

Take what you need from this list to do what you can do. This is at least a 4 year struggle, and everything we can do now makes the future better. Or at least, less bad.

Full Disclosure
Now, I want to be completely forthright: I have not been in contact with the authors of these pages, and I don’t personally know them. Some of the sites have been recommended by people I do know and trust, but none of us is an expert.

So, I’m going to urge you to use your own judgment about them, particularly when it comes to giving them your personal information like an email or phone number. If you haven’t already, you might want to get yourself a new email address that you only use for activism, because there are so many lists that want one.

One or more of these sites may turn out to be a dud. But they look OK from what I’ve seen, and if I find out otherwise, I’ll post an update.

Stay strong,
Mary
Website Administrator