Factually! with Adam Conover - "Resistance" Isn't Enough for Trump 2.0 with Dr. Dana Fisher

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Last time we faced a Trump administration, people flooded the streets in protest. But this time feels different. Even as we watch our government being systematically dismantled, the response seems muted. Are we just exhausted? Or is something else at play? And more importantly—does protest still work, or is there a more effective way to protect our future from a newly entrenched autocracy? This week, Adam speaks with friend of the show Dr. Dana Fisher about what we actually need to be doing. Find Dana’s book at http://www.factuallypod.com/books and find Dana here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-r-fisher/ BlueSky: @fisherdanar.bsky.social; Instagram: @ApocalypticOptimist; TikTok: @fisher_danar--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. for a limited time. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. That's okay. I don't know anything. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thanks so much for joining me on the show again. A bit of a dark moment for America, safe to say.

You know, if you care about this country, if youover. Thanks so much for joining me on the show again. Bit of a dark moment for America, safe to say. You know, if you care about this country, if you want things to be better here, well, you have a lot of reason for despair right now, I think. A lot of things that I care about very deeply are being damaged, destroyed. Things that I wanted to see improved seem like they are no longer happening.

The scope of possibility in this country has suddenly narrowed in a way that I have never anticipated. You know, I did a show for Netflix a couple years ago called The G-Word about the federal government and how essential it is to our lives. Go check it out if you haven't seen it, I'm very proud of it. But I guess the show didn't work because now we are seeing a billionaire who used his money to basically install himself as president or shadow president destroy the federal government day by day without any recognition of what it actually fucking does. If you care about climate change, racism, criminal justice reform, the effort to rein in corporate power, or even something as simple as continuing to have planes

land without crashing, the prospects aren't fucking great right now. Now in the past, when faced with challenges like this, we have seen people take to the streets, the civil rights movement, the women's movement. So many times in American history, average people have stood up and demanded the change that we need to the extent that we now think of that

as one of the main ways that change is made in this country. But in response to the moment we're in right now, it seems like we are seeing less of that. The resistance, if not totally absent, seems suppressed, dampened, a little bit glum. So given all that we are facing, seems suppressed, dampened, a little bit glum. So given all that we are facing, what the fuck do we actually do?

That is what everyone is asking. That is what I feel is incumbent upon me to share with you. So many people come up to me when I'm, you know, after my standup shows, I do a meet and greet after every standup show, and they say, you know, your work has given me hope in a dark time. And I'm like, well, I'm happy to have played that role a little bit,

but I don't have all the answers. Um, I'm just feeling around for them the same as anyone else, but I am going to try to bring you some of those answers today, or at least chart a little bit of a path forward. We have an incredible guest on the show today who studies social movements and social change and how they happen and how protests have changed the world in the past and why they have failed to at times. We are gonna have a fascinating conversation about that

that I feel confident is going to give you a path forward if that is what you personally are looking for. Before we get to that, I wanna remind you that if you wanna support the show and all the conversations we bring you, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Cahn over five bucks a month. Gets you every episode of this show ad free. And if you'd like to come see me out on the road and come say hi to me in the meet and greet line after every show, well, my stand-up tour is continuing across the country. Actually, dare I say the world, March 6th through 8th, I'll be in Burlington, Vermont.

Then on March 22nd, I'll be in London, in the United Kingdom at the Leicester Square Theater. On March 26th, I'll be in Amsterdam at Boom Chicago. Yes, the name of the theater is Boom Chicago, but it takes place in Amsterdam. That's right, the theater in Amsterdam is named after Chicago. It's confusing.

Don't think about it if you're not in Amsterdam. It doesn't matter to you. If you live in Amsterdam, go to Boom Chicago to see me on March 26. After that, April 3rd through 5th, I'll be in Providence, Rhode Island, then Vancouver, British Columbia, Eugene, Oregon, Charleston, South Carolina, and early May, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Spokane, Washington, and Tacoma, Washington. Head to AdamConover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. And now let's get to this week's episode.

You know, a year or so ago, I had Dr. Dana Fisher on the show to talk about what was wrong with the climate movement and what we really needed to do to fight for the climate in a real way. And now we are gonna expand that conversation for how we fight for everything we fucking need in our society, how we stand up for each other

and build solidarity. Dana is brilliant. She is a sociologist who studies social movements and social progress for a living. And in this moment, it seemed like a perfect time to have her back on the show to discuss what she is seeing on the street in her research about how people are protesting

and what protests are most effective and how we can all make social change happen in this country. She's the director of the Center for Environment, Community and Equity and professor in the school of International Service at American University. Please welcome Dr. Dana Fisher. Dana, thank you so much for being on the show again. Thanks for having me.

So last time you were on, we were talking about the climate crisis. You were actually the last in a long line of climate experts I had on the show talking about what we can do to solve climate change. And we had some Pollyanna-ish solutions. People say, oh, we'll just get some better technology. It'll be nice. And you came on to give what I felt was a very appropriate amount of doom mixed with hope of, hey, a lot of that shit's not going to work, but there are real things that we can do.

It's just gonna be a larger political, social, revolutionary moment than we anticipate, or than a lot of Pollyannists anticipate. Last time we talked to you, it was maybe about a year ago. Now, we're facing even more crises than the climate crisis. We're facing, I think beyond creeping authoritarianism in America, maybe like jogging authoritarianism,

maybe it's doing a nice hop and a skip. Yeah, I think it's like accelerating authoritarianism. Accelerating, yeah, it's picking up speed. Certainly, yes. You want it to slow down, it's picking up speed. And that is also countering progress on, name an issue that you care about, climate, criminal justice, any of them.

Civil rights. All of them are being affirmatively rolled back. And so now we have even more things that we need to fight against, right? People are really in a dark place out there, people who care about those issues. And I thought it was a nice time to have you back on, to talk about like, what the fuck do we do now, right?

If we needed a social revolution, people in the streets, a mass movement to stop climate change, well, now we need six or seven or eight more mass movements, and it does not seem that there is one on the offing, as far as I can tell. Well, the good news is, so my last book before Saving Ourselves was called American Resistance, which basically documented the resistance

to the Trump administration and its policies during what, now I guess we have to call it Trump 1.0, right? We're now like knee deep into Trump 2.0, and actually what I've been shifting my attention to is Resistance 2.0 to see how, I mean, what I've been shifting my attention to is resistance 2.0 to see how I mean what I talked about in American resistance was the way that the movements on the left joined together in a coalition to push back against the Trump administration as policies during its first time in office.

We're back here again and one of the things that's really nice, I mean this is the silver lining of a second Trump term, is that the left is starting to merge. And we are actually already seeing it. So for example, today, my postdoc was sending me pictures. There were 5,000 people in the streets in DC. We have had a protest every day in DC for the past two weeks with thousands of people on the street.

Now the media doesn't talk about it, but it's happening. Okay, but I'm gonna push back against you because I want you to counter my gloom here. So I'm gonna bring the pessimistic take. I mean, I went to the Women's March in 2017. 2017, thank you. And you know. Here in DC, sorry, oops, here in LA.

In LA there were thousands. It was huge. Thousands, in every city there were certainly hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. It's the largest single day of protests in US history. Right. Nothing similar now. And so it's a little hard to hear,

oh, we got 5,000 people in DC. I'm like, well, that's, I mean, that sounds like an average day in DC, right? There's 5,000 people pissed about something in DC every day. So, you know. Okay, I hear what you're saying. And I'll respond in this way. First of all, so last time around, there was a Women's March. I hear what you're saying and I'll respond in this way first of all so

Last time around there was a women's march. The women's march was huge and amazing We had a people's march this time around where we had smaller numbers But there were hundreds of thousands of people out in the streets across the country two days before the inauguration this time around Okay, and since then now after the first women's march What happened was people kind of went back to their homes. A lot of them formed chapters of Indivisible. They formed what they call them huddles of the Women's March. Other groups were formed.

Ten days after the first Women's March, there was the travel ban and people got riled up and started to mobilize and they started to go to town hall meetings. They started to cause trouble and push back against their elected officials in their communities. We're starting to see something similar. 10 days after the People's March, there was the federal freeze, right? Yeah. And all of a sudden we did see,

we've seen a lot of similar pushback as we did to the travel ban since then. We did not have a Women's March. We did not have that big day in the streets. Although to be honest, the point of those types of big days in the street are all about giving people a sense to have like a collective grieving, a collective moment of identity formation.

I don't know that we need that this time around to be honest with you. The thing that I'm really afraid of is that a lot of people are feeling so personally attacked because they have, you know, trans kids who are losing their gender affirming medicine because they are being fired from the federal government because all of these different policies are being pushed back because they work in DEI. Right.

I mean, like the list goes on and on. Or they're a person of color who works for an organization that suddenly had its DEI department axed. Right. Or they're a recent arrival in the United States who came here because we're supposed to be this great melting pot. And instead, even though they have citizenship, they're being told that they are basically not having their citizenship honored. How about that one? Or they have family members. I mean, I have so many people I know who have family members who are worried are going to be deported. I mean, all of these people are terrified and all of them are being affected in ways that are really different from 2017.

And I think that what we're going to see is people working together in a really different way. But one of the things that my research has shown is that it's not necessarily going to be peaceful. And it's certainly not going to be electorally focused like last time around, because last time around, the resistance really held the line and was like, it's all about the elections. It's all about the blue wave, right? Well, we got a blue wave, and then we got Joe Biden, and here we are again. So it's not like it was a mistake

that Trump won the first time around. It was just, it was a warning. And we didn't really heed the warning as well as we should have, so now this is a bigger warning. But it still feels that the response, I mean, if you're saying that the protests that we're having now are, hey, they're sizable, the Women's March was successful to some degree,

I mean, but it still brought us to this point, like, why would we think that the amount of protests and resistance that we're seeing now would be any more effective than what happened in 2017? Oh no, I'm saying that this is just the beginning. I think we are, but I'm saying that there are people who are already protesting. I think that we are gonna see floods of people

on the streets. And I also think that we're gonna see mass strikes, which is really what we need, right? Uh-huh. I mean, because the only way to push that back against authoritarianism is like pushing back with power of people or pushing back with violence. And you know, I'm really hoping we're not gonna see violence,

but I mean, one of the things that I did at the People's March is I surveyed the people in the streets and I asked them about their perspectives on political violence and surprisingly enough, in contrast to data that I had collected right before the election, a third of the people at the People's March, and this was like nice middle-aged women with their pussy hats on, some of them had

like American flag hats on. They're still wearing pussy hats? Oh, they are. Some of them brushed them on ends. You know, God bless them. Like, I'm not a downer on the pussy hat. It's cute, it's nice. What's our problem with the pussy hat?

I mean, I actually, well, I was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, we don't need another pussy hat back in 2018. So like, people think of me as a pussy hat hater. I don't hate them. I think that they're part of collective identity formation and actually I loved seeing them in the streets. You know, just recently.

I saw someone tweet something like, we need to get over disliking the protests of others because they're cringe. Like it's okay for them to be cringe. You need to build political coalition with people who make you cringe. Oh, you certainly do. Just because someone's older than you

and a little more square, they're not quite hip. They're wearing a dorky hat. They're wearing a t-shirt. Like let's still find political solidarity with them. For the love of God. Yeah, there needs to be solidarity for sure. I mean, and there were a lot of women who had basically knitted these,

they did the same pussy design in red, white and blue. And they're like, T, this is American. Resistance is American. And they're like, we're T this is American, resistance is American. I was like, you know what, ladies, I love it. Right. So that was great to see. But what I also asked these people, and these are, again, these are like, you know, your middle age, you know, engaged people, most of them, and I'm highly educated. And I asked them, you know, this question that we adapted from a national survey. And the question was, you know, to what degree do you agree or disagree with this statement that political violence may be necessary to protect democracy. And a third of the people at the People's March said they agreed or strongly

agreed with that statement, which is a huge shift from what we have seen back during the American values survey. The last time they fielded, it was only 8% of Democrats. And let me just say at the people's march it was 93% of the people in the crowds voted for Kamala Harris. So these are Democrats and they are starting to shift their opinion. So that's the thing I'm worried about, but I'm not saying we have enough people in the streets right now. I'm saying there are enough people who are starting to feel threatened that they're going to push back. And you know, what we can hope for is they push back in a peaceful way.

But one of the things that I would just say for anybody who's feeling like they're alone and they're only one under attack, they need to look to their left and look to their right, because so many people are feeling isolated and afraid right now. And like we talked about last time, the best thing you can do in that moment is get angry because anger helps to unify our energy and help us to think through how we push back Okay, angry with other people don't get angry by yourself Scrolling. Yeah, right. You turn into Luigi and that's not that we don't nobody wants that. Well Some people do want I mean you're talking about the rise of political violence. Oh, yeah America and like

You know that killing was an act of political violence. It was explicitly and like, you know, that killing was an act of political violence. It was explicitly political assassination. Well, I mean, and at the People's March, I can't tell you how many signs, pink glitter signs, that said Free Luigi did we see in the crowd. Yeah. It was really surprising.

I mean, I did not expect that, right? I expected the hats. I figured the hats would be bad. You should have expected the Free Luigi signs. I mean, the man became a folk hero. I mean, the comments of this video are gonna be like, I love Luigi, feel free to, literally. You can give money to him now.

Apparently he is taking donations while he's in jail. I mean, that says so much about the mood in America, and that's not a mood I'm gonna contradict. That's people's actual feeling, right? But what do you credit to average folks know, average folks saying, no, political violence might be necessary on a large scale. Why would that shift happen? I think it's happening because people don't believe

in the elections anymore. I mean, first of all, I think that during the first Trump administration, lots of people were feeling really uncomfortable. And there were all these discussions in the media, oh, why aren't people having a general strike? Why aren't people getting violent in the streets? I mean, it was like, Maddie Glacy's was saying it,

Michelle Goldberg at the New York Times was saying it. And you know, I was the person who was like collecting the data in the streets. So I always was called to say, what do you think Dana? And I was like, well, I think that people are really like laser focused on the elections. Well, we have now a person in the White House who said that the last election in 2024

was the last election anybody had to vote in, right? And we know that kind of our democratic elections are, you know, fraught. And we know a lot of people are losing their jobs and losing their livelihoods, and the idea that they're gonna be like, oh, I'll just wait until 2026, it'll all be okay, I can just hold my breath.

My kids don't need to eat till then. That's unfathomable. So this shift towards violence makes sense, because we know from research that when people feel like they have no other choice, that's when they get violent. That's when they get aggressive. That's when they get really confrontational. What my hope is that people choose

a more confrontational but peaceful option. Nonviolent civil disobedience. Let's give it all a try. Let's go there first, right? But there are a lot of guns in our country and that's consturty-worthy. Yeah. You're making me think about how, you know, the Women's March was in the wake

of Barack Obama's presidency. Like I think it's really almost hard to remember what it was like to live under Barack Obama for eight years. And the sort of encompassing ideology of the time among Democrats was, hey, democracy works. We elected this guy. America elected a black president for the first time. We were a post-racial society.

Remember, we were post-racial. Yeah, that was busted very early in his presidency. But that was the vibe, right? America's getting better. The long arc of history bends towards justice, all of that. And then Donald Trump is elected, and it seems like a violation of those principles. How could this happen?

And that, to me, is what sent people into the streets, was the sort of rupture of it. Now, why was he elected? It was because a bunch of the country didn't feel that the system was, they were like democracy fucking sucks. I don't like it. I want this authoritarian figure, right?

But now, eight years after he was elected for the first time, now that he's been elected a second time, I think maybe Democrats are starting to feel, or liberals or leftists, all that, and everybody left of center. Modern and to the left. Yeah, exactly, is starting to feel like,

hold on, the system brought us this semi-legitimately, or legitimately, right? Like people fucking- Popular vote, right? Yeah, it was, like it happened, you know? And so that means the system doesn't work, right? That means there's something wrong with the system. And by the way, there are plenty of things that are wrong means the system doesn't work, right? That means there's something wrong with the system. And by the way, there are plenty of things

that are wrong with the system. If you look at the fact that, you know, Trump is seizing all this power from Congress and Congress is doing nothing to stop it. The- Well, they've gone performatively to a bunch of doorways of agencies and been refused entry and have done nothing.

Yeah, well, and that's the Democrats, right? But- That's's congressional Democrats. But the idea of the Constitution was that a president who was trying to grab power would be stopped by a Congress that's jealous of its power. That was like literally the idea. Oh, even if you're in our party, we don't want you to do those things

because this is Congress's power to the purse strings and all that. And Congress has abdicated that power because there because partisan politics has become more important than that structure. And that's a way that the system is just like affirmatively broken. So I can see why, you know, formerly milquetoast liberals who are like, no, yes, I listen to I listen to crooked media and I vote and, you know, we'll solve it through this and believe in American democracy are now like,

hey man, fuck that. It didn't really seem to work. We gave it a shot. Pod didn't save America. No offense to John Lovett who throws wonderful parties and is a nice man and I've been on their shows before and whatever. But it didn't fucking work, right?

Here we are. Um, and so maybe, maybe there's a little bit of that, that energy coming out. Well, I think that, um, there's absolutely that energy. I think there's also a lot of people who are sick of being, you know, for example, pod save America blamed the left for the success of Donald Trump in the last election. Did they? Oh yeah, they did.

And a lot of people, by the way, are annoyed with them about election. Did they? Oh yeah, they did. And a lot of people, by the way, are annoyed with them about that right now, but we won't go there. We can go wherever you want, it's fine. We can start a beef that does good on YouTube. Yeah, fuck your parties, John Lovett. Fuck you, man.

That's all right, it's all good. We'll do a little theatrical battle here. Hit me, hit me. But so the deal is that I think a lot of people who are more left leaning and more progressive are just sick of being blamed and being told that it's because we want to have more progressive policies. We wanna have more social security in our country.

And the idea that now no social security is even safe, right? And the Democrats and those, you know, those checks and balances that are supposed to protect everybody, like bullshit, right? It's like, it's basically smoke and mirrors. So I think that there are a lot of people who are completely disillusioned with what they expected America to be. I mean, I have to say that I feel that way. I mean, and I study it and it's just like, I mean, I have been out in the streets, so many protests collecting so much data. And I originally when I got those data and I saw how many people were like, political violence may be necessary. I mean, and it was interesting because it was like

a lot of folks who were LGBTQIA who were in the crowd. And there were a lot of people who there were these counter protesters who came to the People's March in Washington, D.C. All mugged it up, they were there for the inauguration. They're like, oh, let's go heckle people before we go and celebrate, right? And they were like, you know what? We are gonna fuck them up if they come near our stage, right?

And it was like a really different vibe than I'm sure you felt at the Women's March back in 2017. That was not the vibe. I mean, we were all like, oh, look, it's Madonna, you know? Yay. Israel stood still and held a sign. We all made nice signs. Exactly, nice signs.

But I think that there are a lot of people who do not think that making a nice sign, even if it's got pink glitter, is gonna be enough, right? I mean, and I think that the truth is it never was enough. I mean, that's the unfortunate truth. It's not enough just to go out and vote, even every two years. I mean, I'm sorry, but that's just not really enough. I mean, that's the unfortunate truth. It's not enough just to go out and vote even every two years. I mean, I'm sorry, but that's just not really enough.

I mean, and there's not a lot of solidarity for the people who have been suffering and having to push back more consistently. I mean, and that is like, that is one of the things that I've written about a lot in my work. And, you know, I talk about that a bunch in Saving Ourselves in terms of thinking about building solidarity around climate and around justice

and equity and labor and all of that. I think that that message is even more necessary now than it was when I wrote the book because solidarity is gonna be necessary to get us through this. Yeah. Right? I mean, or we just like put our hands up,

but this is not like one of those benign autocrats, right, I think everybody should know that by now, right? I mean, it's pretty clear. This is, a lot of people are just gonna lose everything. And we need to figure out how we're gonna support that. A lot of people already have. Yeah, support them, not that. Like we have to support the people who are losing things and figure out how to push back.

I mean, and I just don't think that like taking a Saturday when everybody's off work anyway, making a pretty sign and maybe marching and chanting, out how to push back. I mean, and I just don't think that like taking a Saturday when, you know, everybody's off work anyway, making a pretty sign and maybe marching and chanting, maybe knitting a hat, that's not enough. But I think a lot of people recognize that. And it's a little scary because what comes next? I mean, we know if you think about history, what comes next when that kind of stuff doesn't work and democracy doesn't work for you? It can be dark, but it also can be really like reaffirming solidarity and thinking through

how we get to the other side, which is, you know, which is what we need right now. We need to get to the other side here and we need to do it together. You cannot do it alone and you can't do it like this. You know, I keep telling my students, like you put down your thumb. That's my scrolling image, right?

But put down the phone, start talking to your friends and neighbors. Yeah. Posting is not activism is a really hard thing to remember. I've spent as much time as anybody like locked on my back, like scrolling, scrolling, re-tweeting, this is unconstitutional. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody cares. Nobody cares what you tweet.

Well, I mean, you do it in your echo chamber, right? So those people are like, yeah, Adam, go. But like, we need to get out and we need to build bridges, right? You can't build bridges in your little silos. Folks, this week's episode is sponsored by Delete Me, a service I have trusted for years long before they ever sponsored this show. You know, we talk a lot on Factually

about how the internet used to be more fun before everyone became terminally online. But now it's a stress minefield rife with online bullying, politically motivated harassment, and of course, scammers waiting to snatch your life savings. And to make matters worse, your personal information, your name, phone number, home address, even the names of your family members can all be floating around on data broker websites. These companies make their money by selling your info to people who, let's be honest, do not have your best interests at heart. In fact, a lot of them want to harm you. If that sounds terrifying, well, here's the good news. Delete Me can actually help. I know from experience. Their team of experts works nonstop to track down and remove your personal data from data broker sites on the internet and then they keep it gone.

You owe it to yourself to minimize the risk of harassment, theft and stalking. So maybe, just maybe, the internet can be a little less awful again. And let me tell you, once again, I have used this service myself. Every so often I get a report from them telling me all the sites they pulled my information off of, the number of bad spam calls, harassment calls I've gotten have gone down since I started using this service. I am so grateful for it. I signed up my entire family for Delete Me.

So if you'd like to join me and my family by using Delete Me, you can get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteeme.com slash Adam and use promo code Adam at checkout. That's joindeleteeme.com slash Adam promo code Adam. Folks, this week's episode is brought to you by Squarespace. You know, I used to design my own website. You know, I used to learn HTML, CSS.

I could even write a little bit of PHP. All right. That was fun. That was in the old days, the hobbyist internet when people were just logging on via Netscape and looking at your flat HTML file. Well guess what? The internet is a lot more complicated these days, and it is even more crucial to put your best foot forward. Whether you're running a business, growing a brand, or just sharing what you love. And you know what? You're too busy running that business to learn a bunch of brand-fangled new code. I definitely am. I'm too busy doing comedy to learn to code, okay?

Shut up, don't tell me to learn to code. Instead, I'm gonna tell you to go use Squarespace. That's where Squarespace comes in. That's right, you can use Squarespace to build a stunning website effortlessly. You can showcase your work, connect with your audience, and sell anything, products, content, even your time, all in one place, and completely on your terms.

Squarespace lets you seamlessly integrate your social media posts and clips right into your site so your audience can find everything in one spot. Selling products? No problem. You can sync your catalog with Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Google in just a few clicks. And of course, Squarespace makes it incredibly easy to sell,

whether it's physical products, memberships, exclusive blog content, videos, or tutorials, whatever you're offering, they've got you covered. And so if you're ready to take your company or personal brand to the next level, head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash factually

to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash factually. Let's stay on political violence for one more second before we talk about what does work. Do you think that political violence has like any efficacy for change? Like you're out there and you're asking people

what is your opinion of political violence and they say it might be necessary. My other question is, the right uses political violence constantly and did even during Donald Trump's presidency. I mean, there was Charlottesville attack on the, you know, on the counter protesters there, right? During the unite the right rally and the January 6th, like that's political violence.

Kyle Rittenhouse, remember Kyle Rittenhouse? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, who went out to murder protesters. And he got off? It seems like one side might have the monopoly on political violence, especially when that side, you know, now controls the military and- They control everything. I mean, that's the thing, right?

So I think, yeah, I mean, so I would just say with regard to political violence there, so historically we have seen, and when I say historically, I mean, like before the election, my data showed, and other, you know, and other people who have studied this showed that the people who are most likely to support political violence were right leaning, they were young, they were male, They were less educated. And this is something that I thought was interesting and they had participated in protests. But when we say protest, they had participated

in things like Unite the Right, right? These kinds of right leaning protests. So what we see now since the election, and this is the data I have from before, the January Sixers were pardoned, right? Before Trump basically fired all these people before, I mean, we had, they call it now Bloody Thursday, but it's really like Bloody Thursday, but like Friday, it's continued through the weekend.

People in the federal government are being laid off by the more than dozens, like hundreds, I mean thousands even, right? But so before that, at the time of the People's March, we found that the people who are most likely to support political violence, all of a sudden, they continued to be less educated, they continued to be younger. Gender no longer really was an issue

in terms of like saying more male, more likely to support violence, and they were the most left leaning, right? Which is kind of what we saw with those folks who were the Antifa back in the day. Sure. But, um, but I think that that section of the left is growing. I mean, and it's, it's, it's very likely to continue growing.

I mean, I have some colleagues that I work with quite closely in the federal government, well, they are right now, but many of them believe they'll be losing their jobs within the next few weeks. Um, if not the next week. And many of them were telling me, um, as I was talking to them in the past week, they were saying, you know, you should check out the federal Reddit. There's a sub Reddit just for federal workers.

And a lot of them, many of whom served in the military, right, these are people who were in the military who had a fast lane into the federal government to work there. They're like, you know, I have a gun and I know how to protect democracy because that's what I used to do for other countries, but maybe I need to do it here.

I mean, it's chilling, the language that's going on there. But if we do not take that seriously, I mean, this is one of the things that I talked about in my TED Talk around saving ourselves. If we do not face reality of where we are right now, so many of us are gonna be caught off guard that we will not be prepared for what's coming. So I think that the biggest thing we need to do right now

is we need to be prepared with regard to the climate crisis. We need to be prepared with this poly crisis of the crisis of democracy in America and recognize it. And don't just be like, okay, I mean, you know, the 2026 election is coming. Sure, I mean, I just got a text from Barack Obama just last week saying, give me money and that'll fix everything.

You know. Those text messages drive me crazy. Yeah, and by the way, that's not Barack Obama, it's some fucking fundraiser hired by a fundraiser hired by a fundraiser using a photo, but it's part of the political system. Oh yeah, I wrote a book about that one too. I mean, it is, but the idea that we have people

who are political leaders in our country who are still letting that process happen. That instrumental process that is supposed to protect our democracy, which is absolutely un-fucking enough. People get those texts and they feel insulted at this point. Like, oh, you're asking me for money. Like, for what?

Yeah, or how about I just- I gave you money last time, mother fucker. I just lost my job and you want me to give you money because the election is going to save us Yeah, how dare you because you and you think that money is going to do anything I mean the the sure Elon Musk spent a lot of money, but like Kamala spent so much money It was completely to put an ad on the side of the sphere in Las Vegas like Said just that Harris walls on the side of the sphere.

People looked at that and went, oh, okay, y'all vote for her. It says Harris Walls on the side of the sphere. That's cool. They put it on a big sphere. Yeah, okay, I know. I guess that'll help make my life better if I vote for her.

Like, what the fuck is the money even for? You know? I mean, the other thing, though, I think is that the left, and I've written, well, I've written like three books on this subject, but it gets worse and worse. But one of the things that the left has historically done is they really

consider voters as these instrumental cogs in the process of democracy rather than actually thinking through, like engaging and embracing people on the left, which is this real disconnect from the way that the right does it, right? The right really goes where people are and tries to connect with them and makes them feel like their grievances are heard, whether or not they're actually going to rule in a way that actually supports their grievances. I did a video about this.

They actually organize, you know, they have Moms for Liberty, the NRA, like these groups that you can join and you can go to a meeting and then you can go to a rally. And then you can, they have like snacks and sometimes they have potlucks. You can go, they'll be like, hey, at 4 p.m. we're gonna go throw potatoes

at some trans kids. You wanna come, it's gonna be fun. Then we're gonna get beer. Oh yeah. And you're like, okay, great. Or we're gonna, everybody's gonna adopt a voting, you know, a voting like drop box and they're gonna sit there and heckle people of color

if they try to submit a ballot, right? Stuff like that. Yeah, I know all about those. But like, the thing is on the left instead, we have these Zoom calls. And it's like, oh, I was in a Zoom like where all these famous people did Zoom. I do one of those. Yeah. I mean, and like, sure. OK, it's it's nice to feel like you you got to participate in a Zoom.

But the idea that that is the same as like feeling the solidarity of like throwing potatoes with people or going to a potluck or like having somebody who's connected to your kid and your kid's school or where you decide to like practice your religion or you know, one of those, like it's just really different and it's not really embedded in community. How much do you think, there's a little bit of a tangent but how much do you think the liberal left problem

has been caused by Zoom? Because we are the ones who, like during the pandemic, right, the pandemic's very serious, we gotta stay on Zoom, we can't go out, right? And then I just know a lot of people who never stopped being on Zoom all day. Like I'm still working from home,

every single thing I do is on Zoom. You know, liberals tend to be the ones who get mad when they are forced to return to their office, and I completely understand the reasons for that, commuting and childcare and all those sorts of things, right? But it is also important as part of human life to leave your house and be-

Social connection. Social connection and be in a room with other people or even just walk down the street to be a social animal instead of an animal in your cave, to go be in the marketplace in public and make those real life connections. And just the idea of like, oh yeah, I just joined a Zoom link, I had my camera off, you know,

and I just sort of, I watched it. Black Boxing is also the worst, right? Yeah. I taught on Zoom and teaching the black boxes, we had a snowstorm, a freak snowstorm in DC last week, and so I had to teach on Zoom and I was like, no, no, no, there will be no black boxes in here because like, there's nothing worse than talking about like what you're supposed to read and

just staring at a screen with black boxes. You need to be in a classroom or in a therapy session or in a union meeting. You kind of need to be trapped in there with the other people and with the subject matter everywhere you look, you're still in the classroom. If you're in your house and it's like, oh, the entire thing is happening on one little screen. And you can turn it off and go get a drink or be like, yeah. Or you just glance over there.

There's my poster. There's my bookshelf. There's my other stuff. You know, it's like you don't, you're not forced to be engaged with the thing or forced to be engaged with other people. And plenty, plenty of good uses of that technology, but I feel like we've allowed ourselves to be atomized in this way.

You mentioned before, having to build solidarity across kind of, and sometimes with peoples who may make you uncomfortable and trying to think about how to create those kinds of tenuous connections, right? And I think that we have seen increasingly the left rely on using those tenuous, using these digital connectors when there are these tenuous connections to be built.

I mean, and we see it, we saw it before Zoom. And one of the things that I talked about before was like during previous campaigns, where instead of trying to build real connections in communities that were like purple, what we ended up doing is importing people from blue states to go do that hard work, right? So you bring in strangers.

But one of the things that we know is strangers cannot do the same work that friends and neighbors do, right? It doesn't work the same way, knocking on some sort of random person's door or having some random person come to your door and be like, let me tell you who you should vote for. That doesn't work. I did that in the election and I'm happy I did it.

I'm happy I did what I could, but I also really saw the limits of me going to a working class neighborhood in a Phoenix suburb and knocking on people's doors. And I don't even speak the same language as many of the people whose doors I knocked versus now, by the way, I was doing it as part of an organization that was like a worker led organization that had people from that community doing the same thing. So it wasn't a waste of time, but like that as an overall strategy of, hey, let's pay door knockers,

let's run ads, all that sort of thing, rather than actually creating community infrastructure and bottom up infrastructure where the people who are in the communities are the ones telling you, the party or you, the political organization, what the priority is. Yeah, and telling you how to solve the problems that your community is feeling.

I mean, as I was saying, I was just out in Altadena, right? So Altadena was like devastated by wildfire. People in Altadena are gonna have specific needs right now. And I know that there are a number of mutual aid organizations and other groups, like we saw World Central Kitchen and other good groups out there today. But like the idea that somebody from some other state's gonna come in and like just plop in there and be like,

okay, let me help you. Okay, bye-bye, I'm going home. I mean, that never works. It never has worked. And the idea was that it used to be, well,, let me help you. Okay, bye bye, I'm going home. I mean, that never works. It never has worked. And the idea was that it used to be, well, the left had the numbers. So you didn't, you know, you could just be like, okay, we get enough numbers.

And they did that. That's how Barack Obama won. They did the math, right? But the math doesn't work anymore. And more importantly, the people on the left are just fed up with being treated like a replaceable cog in this machine that is not working.

And that is where solidarity comes in, because until we build real solidarity, we're going to lose, and if we lose, well, everybody loses, really. And you're not just talking about losing the election, you're talking about losing... Democracy? Losing, I mean, losing the planet? I mean, it's all, at this point. It's all on the line, right? Yeah, that's the unfortunate truth, but I mean that's that's why I call myself the apocalyptic optimist right because I believe That we're gonna need things need to get bad before they get better

I mean and research shows us that we don't really build the kinds of bonds we need and do the work That's necessary to make the types of social change that we need until things get really bad. If you think about the Great Depression, that was the only time that people pushed back and it you know it stopped us from having like a shift to socialism in our country which may or may not have been the best thing. What stopped us from having a shift to socialism? Because people kind of pushed back and you know an FDR basically responded and you know that was when we had the New Deal. And the New Deal stopped that process. Stopped the process of the shift to socialism.

Yeah. Which is why we say that America is exceptional, right? That labor failed to get us all the way to socialism because we had this New Deal that rebuilt America better. A lot of people at the time called what FDR was doing socialism. A lot of the programs were socialist programs, broadly speaking. But we didn't become like a democratic socialist society with multiple parties and stuff like that.

Imagine, imagine more than two parties. And there were people who were pushing to make that happen and FDR to what, head that off, was forced to do the programs of the New Deal. Exactly, exactly. I mean, there were so many people out of work and we had like environmental devastation after the Dust Bowl, right?

And we put people to work, and we built these service core programs that did all these amazing things. They built highways, they built trains. They planted lots and lots of trees. It was only possible because, though, people were suffering and dying and starving and there was mass homelessness and it was a completely unrecognizable world to us

that allowed that shift to happen, allowed FDR to come in and say, well, what if the government just employed everybody? What if we massively pushed money through the system? And that was a different concept of what government could do. We've just now had the opposite revolution. I mean, Trump was elected and is now waging a campaign of, hey, what if we don't have government at all?

What if we fire everybody willy nilly? Doesn't matter what they did. We don't even need to know what they did. We're just gonna fire them all. We're gonna burn the whole thing to the ground, like the fire in Altadena and the Palisades, that's what we're gonna do to the government. And it's going on right this moment.

Yeah. Right this moment, and it's gonna continue, I mean, I heard somebody was talking about like the project 2025, like stages and we're in stage two, and there are multiple stages to address the problem of the government, right? And it's just, it's gonna get bigger and bigger. And more and more people are gonna be out of work.

And fewer and fewer of the systems that we all rely on. Like I know of a friend who posted recently that they got a letter about how the services that their kid had in the public schools because they had a learning disability, those are gone. I mean, and Department of Education, well, from what I understand, like Elon Musk has been, you know, posting about how, you know,

that doesn't exist anymore. USAID is already gone. Department of Education will be gone. AmeriCorps, which I work with a lot, probably gone soon. I mean, so all of these systems, and the question of what will actually work and how it will actually work, and what our taxes are gonna be paying?

Those are interesting questions. This week's episode is brought to you by Alma. You know, isn't it wild how the things we often turn to for comfort end up making us feel worse? I mean, I've definitely caught myself doom scrolling, getting stuck in endless social media loops that I think are making me feel better. But at the end of the day,

I realized they're just leaving me feeling more disconnected from the world around me. In a time when we are stretched so thin between our physical and digital lives, you know what's really important? Building real human connection with actual people who can help. And that is why if you are seeking some help in dark times, I recommend taking a look at Alma. They're not one of these digital therapy services, okay? They make it easy to connect with an experienced therapist, a real person who can listen, understand, and support you through whatever challenges you're facing.

I cannot tell you how important it has been for me to find my therapist who understands me, how much that actually helped me on my journey of mental health. And you can find your person too. With Alma, you can browse their online directory and filter by what matters most to you, and then you can book a free 15-minute consultation

with a therapist you are interested in. Unlike other online therapy platforms that just match you with whoever's available via some kind of chat service, that you're playing chat roulette with your mental health, Alma lets you choose someone you truly connect with because the right fit makes all the difference. With their help you can start seeing real improvements in your mental health. Better with people, better with

Alma. So visit helloalma.com slash factually to get started and schedule a free consultation today. That's helloalma.com slash factually. ALMA.com slash factually. But if your thesis is that things have to get worse before they get better and they are about to get worse, sounds like they would need to be worse for like a decade before we get, you know, the counteraction of people really feeling how bad things are going to get and having a political, you know, like the depression,

Great Depression was not short, you know? Herbert Hoover was in office for a full term. And, you know, we had before that decades and decades of, you know, corrupt oligarchic government, right, in this country. And so are we in for, do we really need to feel the effects of the federal government being decimated?

I mean, do we need millions of people to be dying of tainted meat again before we are able to start inspecting meat? Well, I mean, here's the question is how long do we think it will last to feel the effects of these changes that Donald Trump is making in his administration? I don't think we're talking 10 years. I think we're talking less than two. Okay. And I mean, I quite frankly, I believe that we will be seeing people mobilizing the streets in much more like a mass and in much more aggressive ways within the next six months

is my expectation. I don't think we're going to wait that long. I mean, we have what you know, in the in the environmental world, they have this phrase called the poly crisis, which is all about all these different crises that will happen simultaneously. And many of them are talking about climate change and ecological degradation, et cetera, and so forth. Right. But I actually think that we have this crisis of democracy that's coming and going to crash into these other crises that we're experiencing, including the climate crisis, which California

has experienced, Florida has experienced, North Carolina has experienced. I mean, it's happened all over the country where there are pockets of people who have experienced the climate crisis. That's going to happen more and more because we haven't addressed the problem. And that will be merging with all of these people who expect FEMA is going to help them. FEMA is going to be gone. Yeah. So, I mean, so the idea that it's going to take years, I don't think so. Like, can we get to the other side quickly? I don't know. And, and to what degree can we really believe that these people are going to

leave peacefully, right? I mean, what can we really imagine that? The problem is are the people who are affected by the changes or by the climate crisis or by Trump's actions, are they going to pin the blame properly? I mean, here in Los Angeles, we've got tens of thousands of people newly homeless. The conversation is not about the climate crisis. That is not, hey, what is LA going to do about the climate crisis? It's complaining about which reservoir had how much water in it and where the fire trucks were, you know, and there is, um, there's improvements to be made,

right? But like the problem was the pattern of development and you know, the growing number of wildfires. And I mean, I did a whole video about this, the amount of, uh, you know, buildings built in the, in the urban wildland interface, you know, all of that. And changes are not being made even in a, you know, true blue city like Los Angeles. The changes being made are not about climate change, about let's rebuild in exactly the same place as quickly as possible and, you know, just have more fire trucks driving around,

which is not the sort of, you know, revolution that that you are suggesting. Right. When we feel the effects of climate change, I have to imagine the same thing is not happening in Florida. When people are being flooded, I don't know, maybe they're just blaming immigrants or something like that. Trump does have that power to say, I mean, look what happened with the, you know, the plane crash in D.C. where he blamed it on there being too many people. Yeah, DEI and people believed it, you know?

But there were also people who didn't believe it. I mean, I will just say this, I mean, you're right. And we have it like, we have a huge misinformation problem. And that's one of the things that like the Trump administration, you know, that that's their zone, right? They're really playing in that pond a lot and they're taking advantage of it That is something that I'm not sure how we deal with and how it plays into this process

But the process of social change usually comes with small bits of people who start to feel the experience and the need for social change and pushing back and and the need for social change and pushing back. And what I can tell you is that research shows, like if we look at periods of time where people have experienced devastation like these wildfires, in Texas and in other places, research shows that within six months, people start to change their opinions

and wanna respond in a different way and push more for climate policies and recognizing the role that the climate crisis played in the devastation. So I would expect we will see that. We know that windows of opportunity open after disaster and those windows should push more towards more responsible development, development that is more sustainable. But there are certainly other factors at play here and there's a lot of misinformation coming from the president and other places, right?

And that's gonna counter that. And that will mean more people will be affected and more lives will probably be lost before we get where we need to go, which is the unfortunate side of it. I mean, it seems like it's beyond misinformation. We have like a large part of the country in the thrall of like

an anti-science, truly anti-reality, ideological, you know, thought movement, right? Where, you know, it's just a lot of people believe the sky is red and are never going to be convinced otherwise or at least are, you know, are very, very far from being convinced otherwise. Now, if someone, they're firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers right now, presumably a lot of those people voted for Trump or are within that sphere and are realizing maybe, oh, that didn't benefit me directly.

Oh, I was literally fired by the guy I voted for. I can imagine that waking you up. My family's being deported. I heard there's a fair, oh, I was literally fired by the guy I voted for. I can imagine that waking you up, but. My family's being deported. I mean, I heard there was a story on NPR about like the, well, it was Colombian Americans who were like, wait a minute. He said that we were safe. You know, he basically came to our community

and said we were gonna be safe. And oh, wow, now we're, now ISIS here and oopsies, you know? So I mean, I think that there are a lot of people who are getting sticker shock, it's not really called sticker shock, what is that called? Buyers remorse. Yeah, buyers, thank you. People are getting buyers remorse right now.

And I think that that, well, that's only gonna spread because all of the consequences of these actions are really like blowing up all over the place right now. That's why I think that we're gonna see pushback and we're gonna see it quickly or more quickly than you expect. And I can say that what we do know is that it's one thing to say, oh yeah,

well, I see over there this happened, but whatever, I don't believe it. But all of a sudden, when it gets close enough to you, the research does say that even if you are like very conservative, you do start to be open to understanding climate change and wanting to do something about climate change. Although people frequently don't wanna talk about it

as climate change. They wanna talk about it as more responsible development practices. Or like in Florida, we know research says that it's more about like storm management, which is basically, you know, climate adaptation by another name. But it's fine, I don't think we need to use the word climate change

That's fine. We don't have to call it climate. We can call it like disaster response recovery and resilience. Sure. Let's call it that that's fine Well that might not incline you to reduce emissions But let's talk about the solidarity piece of it What what do we actually do because a lot of what we've just been describing is Buyers remorse. Oh, hopefully people will wake up. I don't think we can sit around and hope that people are gonna, oh, hey, once the tornado comes for them,

then they'll change their minds. We just gotta wait for everybody to be affected. I think we need to move more quickly than that. And so what does effective action look like? Not donating, not voting, not listening to podcasts, not scrolling. I mean, you should listen to podcasts. Listen to this podcast, please.

Particularly this one, yeah. But I would just say, like, when we think about building real solidarity, and one of the things that I talk about is that solidarity will help us get to where we need to go faster if we can think about how to work with people across identities, orientations, and social classes, right?

And we need to do it in our communities, right? So it needs to not be like, oh yeah, I'm really, you know, I feel for the people in New York, I feel, you know, it should be like, okay, get in your community and figure out where there are people who are like-minded and feel similarly to you and start to work with them. The people, there are people losing their jobs all over the place, so think about how to connect with them,

how to connect with labor, so that there's more support for labor and unionization, and all that comes with that, because that kind of solidarity is really necessary. That's really good. What I'm missing though is the leadership. I've been reading about how, you know, so many of our social movements have not been effective

because they've been so horizontal, right? That it's just been people flooding into the streets, a message emerging from the streets, but no more deliberate strategic action, you know? At least the civil rights movement had the Martin Luther King and the Malcolm X, right? Well, and they had the black church, right? Yes, exactly. Luther King and the Malcolm X, right? And those folks leading. Well, and they had the black church, right?

Yes, exactly. And that's organization and structure, right? Yeah, but that's basically what we would call it, is that's the organizational infrastructure that supported these moments of mobilization, right? So you need the organization and the mobilization, you need them both to happen simultaneously to get to change.

You can't just mobilize a bunch of people for a Saturday with signs, right? And chanting, like you can have really catchy chants in the streets. You may get on CNN, but that is not enough. Well, and that's the problem with, for instance, the Black Lives Matter moment was really powerful, changed a lot of minds for a period

until there was a massive backlash. But one of the problems was that there was no structure, people went out on the streets, they had their moment, but then who could speak for the movement? The actual organization Black Lives Matter is a small organization that was not really a participatory one, wasn't one that like the black church or like a union,

that like had millions of members already engaged. And part of what's happened in America is those sources of organization have started to fall apart. You know, unions are at their lowest ebb. People are going to less church than ever. Definitely liberals are going to less churches and people on the left.

And the unions that do exist, I look at the federal workers being fired. I don't see the leaders of those unions out there saying, we are now leading the resistance, even though that would be, you know, the folks who are most immediately effective and the folks who have the, hold the lever of power. Well, they've never had to use that muscle

because they've been some of the most unions that were most protected under law for the last 50 years. So they didn't need to exercise it. So I'm looking around going, where's the structure? Where's the leadership for the movement that we need to have? Yeah, I mean, I would just say like one of the things that we found when I was studying back

at the Women's March the first time around was that what what I wrote in American Resistance, the book that didn't arrive here, is basically that we saw that there was outrage. So basically outrage got people out in the streets and then their outrage was channeled through specific organizations which we call these resistance groups into resistance in at the ballot box, right? And so that was really the entire process of the resistance back last time around. This time around, it looks really different and we're starting to see unions

that are starting to try to work with other groups to try to channel the outrage as the outrage grows into actions. And I don't know where it's gonna go, but you're right. I mean, we need to see leadership and it can't just be this like performative moment of madness. It has to be like consistent, anger driven push for social change. Right. We need to see that. And I think that there's room for a lot more people to be organizing. And the ones the

people who are organizing need to think more systemically, you know, systemically, and also collaboratively because one of the challenges right now is we still see some silos. We don't see this kind of coalition forming and co-hearing that we did last time. And I think that's very normal when people feel like their communities are under fire, that people tend to like kind of focus on their little communities. And here we need to see this real, it needs, there needs to be a coalition. It needs to be, you know, working together to push back

against the power that we're seeing from the Trump administration. And this time around, there's a lot more power there. There's a lot, they've thought a lot more about what to do and they're doing it. They have a plan and they're executing it. And they are doing- Who's they?

Well, they would be the Trump administration. We got Doge. I see. Right? On the other side, yes. they? Well, they would be the Trump administration. We got Doge. I see. Right? On the other side, yes. Yeah, yeah, they do. But on our side, on the left, I think that even though we saw Project 2025, it was leaked all over the place,

everybody was like, oh yeah. I mean, I feel like it was dismissed, which tends to be what happens on the left, is they're like, they're not really thinking about this. Citizens United, it's not gonna be a problem, right? Well, it looked aspirational, you know? This is what they would love to do, but surely they won't really have the ability to do it,

when in fact, they built power over decades in order to do exactly this. Probably a lot of people on that side also didn't think they would truly do it. You know, a lot of people who voted for Trump and the business community, et cetera, look at Project 25, oh, we're not gonna do all this stuff. This is what the crazies wanna do,

but they can't go that far, and they're doing it. Well, they absolutely are. I mean, what I think we need to see also is there needs to be resistance coming from people on the right, people on the right who are starting to feel affected. And there's an interesting conversation that I've been seeing between people who are like,

no, no, no, no, no, like the, you know, the never Trumpers are like, oh, their assholes don't cut, don't connect with them. And I actually think that right now, anybody who wants to push back, everybody should be like invited into a pool to push back. Right. I think that we need, again, solidarity needs to be broad and it needs to be consistent and it needs to be strong. And solidarity needs to be broad and it needs to be consistent and it needs to be strong because until there's enough power there, everybody's going to get trampled by this. But one of the problems is that that strategy of building the anti-Trump coalition, that is what, there's a strategy that everybody took, everybody anti-Trump took, hey, we're going to be united by our opposition to Trump.

And what we learned in the election was that coalition was not large enough to win the presidential election. It did okay in the midterms, but that literal coalition of we're gonna draw a circle around people who just don't want Trump and that's pretty much all they agree about, that did not work, and so it seems as though what's necessary is a new policy project,

not just a new political project, but a new,, hey, what the fuck do we stand for? What are we trying to build? And it's difficult to see where that's going to come from. You know, like the new chair of the DNC is out there saying, hey, we don't need any new ideas. We just need to speak differently. He literally said that we just need to message what we already have been saying a little bit better.

That seems to be the opposite of the case. It seems to, the problem seems to be nobody knows what the fuck you stand. You do not actually seem to stand for anything. Right? Like I can go read the platform. It's not inspiring shit.

No, it's definitely not inspiring. I mean, what I would just say there is that that message of, I mean, basically of like, oh, all we need to do is we need better models to predict more, how many doors we need to knock on and when next time, it's bullshit. It's never worked. I mean, it has always been a failing strategy that has won sometimes, but in general, it will not work without building real, real infrastructure. And you're right about that. Like there are certain people, if you're just talking, looking for never Trumpers, that's not gonna work. What we really need is we need people who are really, who may have supported Trump,

but also recognize that unions are important and that social services are important and that public education and public healthcare can actually be good for society. All those people need to stand up and start to say that that's important to them because we're losing all of that right now. Yeah. And loss aversion is a powerful emotion and it makes,

it does make people get angry and protest when people stop receiving a check in the mail that they're used to or some service that they rely on shuts down, their post office shuts down that has the power to make them angry. But I guess my question is what can we build outside of the political post office shuts down that has the power to make them angry. But I guess my question is, what can we build outside of the political system? Because it seems as though the, the left liberal part of the political system has just been,

it's proven itself to continue to be hopeless. It's not offering a solution to people. People are fed up with it. And so how can we push from outside of it? Well, I think that the best way to do that is to push from the local level. I mean, a lot of places, there really is not much of a Democratic party at the local level,

which is part of the problem, right? So instead what we need, forget the Democratic party, just push, build stuff that, you know, actualizes what you want your world to be in your community. I mean, and one of the things that's beautiful about building your community is that it doesn't take as much to affect change and to protect yourself because when you want to make change in your local community, it only takes, you know, friends and neighbors and, you know, community members that you know and like parents that go to the same school as your kids do

or people who go to, you know, the same library, you see them at the library, you see them at the supermarket, right? Work together with the people there to identify the types of changes that are necessary and build in your community, and it will go back up to the federal level. It will work its way up, which is the way that the system is supposed to work. But we've been bypassing that for so long that people have forgotten about local communities and local ties and reciprocity. I mean, on the right, they haven't forgotten about it,

which is how they got where they are today. Yeah, is by doing these things locally on the state level and modeling what they wanna see nationally. And the liberals or leftists have not done that. I mean, if you look at why is California a punching bag is because California has You know the richest states or the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world is the status So it was thrown about but has so many problems right? homelessness and patterns of development and all this and

if You know we actually got our shit together and created the world as we wish it to exist it could be a model right? And it hasn't happened. could be a model, right? And it hasn't happened. Yeah, I mean, and I think that that's partially because there's too much focusing at the state level, right? But community level is where real change can happen. Because that's where you can build,

that's where real solidarity happens too. Not from the state in the community itself. Right, I mean, and that's the thing is I think a lot of times people, I mean, for example, right now people are talking about, oh, well, so climate policymaking is dead at the national level, but go to the state level. And I say, you know, forget the state level, start at the local community level in your community. You know, look to your right, look to your left and think about the people around you and what you all want and and make it so.

Yeah. You can do it at your school board. You can do it, you know, at your community community board. Start there and let it trickle up to the city, the municipality. But let's go there because that means politics really is local and that's something that the Democrats forgot a long time ago. Or they just thought they could juke the system. And you know what?

You can't juke that system. And that is why it is so important to build there. Yeah. And that's a kind of building that each of us can do individually. There's always something that you can go join in your neighborhood, or at least a more abundant institution that isn't doing much that you can like reform, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and you can just like work together and just, I mean, just think about how much easier it is. You know, before the 2024 election, people would say, well, what can you do in your community? I was talking about all of these great electric school buses, right? And you know, the group Moms Clean Air Force has done all this cool stuff because they have like, they have like kind of local leaders. And they were working with the school boards

to try to buy electric school buses, which are beautiful things, because first of all, they reduce carbon consumption, right? But in addition, or carbon emissions, but in addition to that, they reduce particulate matter. So asthma rates go down. I mean, like it's such a wonderful, like easy fix, but you have to push for it. But you can't push, I mean, well, you can. The Biden administration tried to make it be something

that had to come from the top down. People don't like that as much. It's better to do it organically from the bottom up and from the community up. That is a long process, but it's something that we need to start like immediately. Yeah, I mean, because well, I mean, otherwise, what's I mean, what we don't have a lot of other avenues here. I mean, there is no power to be had. You can't go in and be like, no, no, no, we're going to try to get like the the there are some courts that are still supporting the rule of law and the Constitution but there are many that are not We do not have the Congress you can't go to the Congress you can talk to specific Congress you know congressional leaders

Many of them have been proven to be not able even to get into most of the agency buildings to do the oversight work that they Are actually allowed to do as part of their jobs. Yeah. Let alone enforce the budget appropriations that they specifically approved in the continuing resolution, which is governing our country right now. So like the idea that you can have faith in that, I think everybody needs to recognize that they are, they should not be counting on that. I think the shift that we need is that liberals have for a long time thought about politics as kind of like a sport. Something you watch on TV, something where there's players, you're not one of the players,

but you can support them. You can learn a lot about them. You can say in the same way, oh, I like this or that elected, just like you can say, I like this or that, you know, basketball player or whatever. And that is, you know, when you listen to liberal political podcasts, that's the approach that they take. Hey, listen to what the experts are doing. The experts over crunching the numbers.

We're going to campaign. We're going to get out the vote. Donate to help us do that. Donate to help the experts out. I think the revolution- The name on the sphere, right? Yeah, yeah. To help us put the name on the sphere.

But I think the revolution that we need is to realize, no, we're the players. That's what the right has realized. Like when you listen to the right wing political podcast, they're like, you're pissed. You should take to the streets, show up with a gun, right? Show up and scream at a school board meeting,

cause there's- Harass this players in certain sports. Yeah, exactly. Do all of that. And I'm not saying that, that, you know, liberals need to start harassing people, but like thinking about yourself as an actual political actor. I hear a sentiment though, where people say, I can't believe I have to do this. Sure. You know, like I, people say, I can't believe I have to do this. Sure. You know, like I'm busy, I'm disabled, I'm tired.

I'm, you know, like there's lots of, and that's real. Sure, that's real, but like that, but America was formed by a revolution, right? We were formed by people pushing back against power and everybody did their part, right? We're gonna need something similar. I mean, I'm not calling for the revolution but I'm saying that we are in this moment where you push back against power or you have to shut the fuck up and accept whatever you

Get and what you're gonna get is not gonna look good and it's not gonna look like what you think it will so I think that we either everybody has to wake up and start paying attention and Recognize that this is the time if you want to be in a democracy, you need to show up and you need to put out the energy to actualize what you want America to be because at the moment America is turning into something that none of us have recognized. Well, I mean, I guess some people recognize it, but it's not something you want. So, I mean, democracy is about the people.

And we the people have been, many of us, most of us have been complacent for way too long. And we've let money permeate power across the board. And I'm not just talking about the right. I mean, we see it everywhere. But that does not get us, you know, what we need. I mean, that doesn't help people. Again, the head of the DNC saying, hey, well, there's good billionaires and bad billionaires. We'll just take the good billionaire money. Is it? No, the billionaires are the fucking problem, man. That's why there's a billionaire run in the country right now, because billions of dollars

equals power. And that means the people don't have power. The billionaire does. That's a fucking problem. You thought the billionaires who were bad were good 10 minutes ago until you did one thing they didn't like and then they decided to take the country away from you and they did it. Yeah, well, I mean, the thing is, but if you're not like, you got to read the room, right? The room right now tells us that we all need to take our power back. And we need to do it ourselves. And we need to, again, we have to like manifest what we want. Because, like, I mean, I say this in saving ourselves, but like, nobody is coming to save us.

And anybody who believes the Democratic Party is coming to save you, well, good luck to that. Because I think that the Democrats have proven themselves to be incapable of manifesting the kind of power that is needed to push back. And I think that it's really because there is so much diffuse like power that they are too unwilling to let go of to give more power to the people. So we need to claim it back and you know, it's going to be really uncomfortable and yeah, you may get to watch less Netflix. You may need to be off your phone more and you may need to go to more meetings. But I think that the idea like, you're not gonna be able to do this on Zoom.

This is not one where the dude is just gonna be able to get on Zoom and make it all okay, right? I mean, we loved that. I mean, I was so excited and that's just not enough. We can't stop this process unless we really dig in and do the work. Yeah. So let's make this really concrete.

How should people do the work? For the folks listening, right? We're like, okay, literally what is step one for me? Step one is get off your phone. Do not continue to just send money randomly to organizations to help them I mean like groups need money, but go get involved get involved in local groups There are so many local groups that are starting to do stuff. I mean Indivisible is doing really good work across the country

I know there are a number of Indivisible chapters that have formed in the past Like what are we at like week four now? Can you believe it's like a lifetime? There's Indivisible chapters, there are many other groups that are building on this federated system where you have like local chapters. ACLU is doing great work, pick a group, go to your library, support your library, go to your school board, like get involved.

Get involved and then make the change that you wanna see in the world. Be the change. Dana, thank you so much for coming on the show to give us that message for real. Where can people pick up a copy of your new book? So my new book, Saving Ourselves, you can get it, like you can, well, you can get it

in many independent bookstores. If you go to my website, danarfischer.com, you can go to there and you can find many independent bookstores that you can go to. You can also go to the publisher. You can also go to a couple places that are owned by billionaires to order it. Well, you can also get it on our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books.

Outstanding. I should have just said that first rather than asking you where people can get it. I should have just said the URL, which people know if they listen to or watch the show. Yeah, and you also, people may be interested in American Resistance which was my book before Saving Ourselves.

It's my older book. It's all about what we learned from the first resistance and it actually can, it has some suggestions about how the project was never finished and what's necessary next. Dana, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Oh my God, thank you once again, Dana,

for coming on the show and thank you so much for listening. If you want to support the show, you can, of course, do so at Patreon dot com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gives you every episode of the show ad free for 15 bucks a month. I will read your name in the credits

as I am about to do right now. This week, I want to thank it. Ninety miles from Needles, Aaron Matthew, Andrew Harding, Alaska, Amy Thornton and David Snowpack. Head to patreon.com Adam Conover. If you'd like to join them, if you want to come see me on the road in Burlington, Vermont, London, Amsterdam, Providence, Rhode Island,

many other great cities, head to adamconover.net for all my tickets and tour dates. Thank you so much for listening. I also want to thank my producers, Sam Radman and Tony Wilson. I did my outro out of order. Everybody here at Headgum for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time on Factually. I guarantee it.