So, you’re a progressive voter. Back on November 8th—maybe before, if you were an early voter—you faithfully filled out your ballot and marked the bubble next to Hillary Clinton’s name. Or maybe you voted for Jill Stein, or wrote in Bernie Sanders. Regardless, you did your bit for democracy. Now, as you watch the country go down the drain in the wake of Trump’s election, you can at least rest assured that in discharging your duty as a voter you did all you could to make things turn out better.
Or did you?
To be sure, the right to vote is a cornerstone of our democracy, and exercising that right is a vital part of being a good citizen. But voting isn’t our only important political right, and casting your ballot isn’t the only way to participate in the democratic process. In an age when elections are dominated by a two-party system soaked in super-PAC cash, one could argue that voting isn't even our most important right.
Personally, as I look into the abyss of a future with President Trump, I am reminded of what one of America’s greatest true patriots wrote more than 160 years ago: “Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.” Those were the words of Henry David Thoreau, in his famous essay “Civil Disobedience.”
Today, we progressives are being told post-election that it’s time to get back into line. It’s time to accept the results of the election without a fuss, and realize that Trump won and his policies are destined become the law of the land. It’s time to support the new president-elect and quit complaining. After all, we voted and we lost.
Thoreau had little patience for such nonsense. “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority,” he wrote in “Civil Disobedience.” "[B]ut it is irresistible when it clogs by its own weight.” By clogging the gears of the political machine with their resistance to injustice, Thoreau believed that citizens—even an electoral minority—could have an impact far greater than merely casting a ballot every couple of years.
The right to protest, with our voices and our bodies, is every bit as fundamental to democracy as is the right to vote. Failing to exercise that right, at a time when racist, misogynistic, science-denying demagogue is headed for the White House, would be just as disastrous as failing to fill out a ballot would have been on Election Day.
Thoreau even felt true resistance to oppression must sometimes push beyond the boundaries of ordinary, legal protest. He wrote “Civil Disobedience” after spending a night in jail for an act of protest against slavery. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly,” he wrote, referring to the institution of slavery, “The true place for a just man is also a prison.” More than a century later, the echo of these words could be heard in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s letter from a jail in Birmingham. In his famous letter, King proclaimed for all the world to hear that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Thoreau, who lived in a very different political world than the one we inhabit today, felt it was appropriate to resist the institution of slavery by refusing to pay a tax to the government that allowed it. Things have changed a lot since Thoreau’s time, and today refusing to pay taxes sounds too much like something the Tea Party would do. I have no wish to be associated with such a movement, and so I plan on paying my taxes this year as always. But while the most effective tactics may be different now, the responsibility to participate in protest has not diminished one iota.
What should today’s resistance look like? This is a question each progressive must strive to answer for him or herself in the weeks and months ahead. I believe there is no one correct answer; people in different places and circumstances will find different ways to take action. The important thing is that we act, and that we honestly challenge ourselves to take effective action without being too limited by our accustomed “comfort zones.”
Plenty of opportunities to protest Trump’s agenda are coming down the pipe already. On Inauguration Day, organizations like the ANSWER Coalition are planning a mass protest in DC, and solidarity events will occur in cities throughout the country. The next day, the Women’s March on Washington will take to the streets to stand up for women’s rights—again, in concert with dozens of other marches in major cities across the nation. And there’s more: on April 29th, groups fighting climate change like 350.org plan to rally hundreds of thousands for a People’s Climate Mobilization in the nation’s capital. I have no doubt that dozens of other protests will take place in DC and elsewhere in first half of 2017.
Nor are all progressives waiting for Inauguration Day. On Friday, three protesters peacefully interrupted Congress’ formal certification of the results of the presidential election, and were arrested drawing attention to a corrupt and dysfunctional electoral system. Like Martin Luther King’s words in 1963 and beyond, these protesters’ actions carry echoes of the principles Thoreau laid out in “Civil Disobedience.”
Resisting the agenda of a right-wing Congress and a demagogue right-wing president will take organization, hard work...and sacrifice. Yet it is a sacrifice we can’t afford not to make. “It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State,” Thoreau wrote of his night in jail, “than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.”
The paper election is over. Now it’s time for each one of us to cast our whole vote.