Prepare for the mudterms.
There is an old philosemitic joke that can be interpreted as anti-semitic. God comes to Earth and says that in three weeks there will be a new flood that covers the world. The Catholics get together and the priests say that they should use their rosaries to get God to change His mind. Protestants get together and the pastors say people should look into their souls so as to prepare to accept whatever will happen. Jews got together and the rabbis say we have three weeks to learn how to breathe under water. Point made. Be pro-active rather than passive. Seize the day. Plan and execute, The lesson applied and invented by the Civil Rights Movement was to complain less and get organized. Obama said much the same thing when he chanted “Don’t boo; vote.”
It is not necessary to look back to the Civil Rights Movement to see when a social movement was well organized or to look at the Fergeson, Missouri response to the death of Michael Brown to see how the protest movement was disorganized in that roving bands of hoodlums accompanied and interfered with the peaceful protestors. That was different from when Martin Luther King Jr. had his own cadres supervise so that none of his own protesters got unruly. You have to plan ahead for contingencies,not just let events develop.
Think of the recent protest activity in Minneapolis as one that was very well organized. Protesters used whistles to alert residents thatICE agentswere in the area. They took film on the public street pof what was going on and jeered ICE agents. All of this was protected by the First Amendment and this surveillance showed ICE was involved in Fourth Amendment violations by breaking into houses and cars without judicial warrants or probable cause. The claim of ICE that protesters were impeding ICE activities was without evidence. Protesters were pointing out that many detained people were not the worst of the worst but law abiding members of the community who had arrived in the United States a generation or two back. They should have been put on a road to citizenship or at least legal residency which is what Marco Rubio suggested in Trump;s first term but was rejected on the advice of Stephan Miller, that gray eminence, as happened after Bull Conner hosed peaceful protesters back in Civil Rights days, public opinion changed against ICE especially after two American citizen protesters were killed. ICE was withdrawn from Minneapolis, as it had been from Los Angeles and Chicago and, most recently, the Homeland Security Secretary was fired so as to distance Trump as much as from ICE before the midterm elections. Maybe the electorate will forget about ICR before then, but memories about domestic matters lasts longer than foreign adventures.
Now organize for the battle of the November midterm elections, the most important ones since 1860 because a deeply Republican rigging of those midterms could destroy democracy..Trump has said that he wants to “nationalize” elections, which I take to mean federal interference. He has raided Georgia voting records, He wants access to voter rolls. He will not release documents about whether the military will be sent to election polls on election day. Constitutionalists have to prepare to monitor and intervene in such events.Trump wants a voter registration bill that will make it more difficult for poor voters to vote. So get ready. Bring food and water for long lines and wait while lawyers go to court to allow voting to proceed. Assign friendly observers to support voters if the military is also watching. And appeal to the military not to do that. Prepare to answer a call for emergency powers to the government, such as calling off the vote, if a Reichstag Fire happens or is rigged. Elections took place during the Civil War and G. I.s got to vote in France and the Pacific during World War II. Voting is essential and the pivotal battle rather than just a skirmish as was the Battle of Minneapolis