Donald Trump is waging war on American democracy. So far he is doing it not with a sword but with a poison pen. His torrent of unlawful executive orders, demands, and threats is subverting the very foundations of our democracy: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Congress, the judiciary, and our long-standing norms. The reason Trump is shredding our democracy is because he has an insatiable lust for power. He is not satisfied to be president and share power; he seeks to be dictator and monopolize it.
Ideologically, Trump is a fascist: racist, antidemocratic, authoritarian, and an instrumental (conscious) liar. Psychologically, he is a megalomaniac. Combined, these two traits are the worst imaginable. That is why Trump is so dangerous and why he is by far the number-one security threat to our nation.
In “Macbeth,” Shakespeare leaves no doubt in our minds about how villainous and willful his protagonist is. We need to see Trump in the same light.
After being shell-shocked into passivity for months following the November election, Americans are fighting back in numerous ways. The most important of these are the many demonstrations throughout the country. The “Hands Off” protest on April 5, which involved as many as 3 million people, signaled unmistakably that Americans are not going to roll over and play dead.
But, predictably, even 3 million people weren’t enough to halt Trump. Since April 5, he has continued to eviscerate our democracy, including disobeying a Supreme Court ruling to facilitate the release from custody of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was illegally deported—or, more accurately, abducted—to El Salvador.
So where does the resistance go from here? What is the next step?
My answer is mass, nonviolent civil disobedience. I didn’t come to this conclusion lightly, because I consider the breaking of any law in a democratic society a very serious matter. But what Trump is doing is so grave that he must be stopped at all cost, and the only way to do this is to match his power with greater countervailing force.
The United States has a long and noble tradition of civil disobedience. Many times it has been used to fight injustice, but three historic events stand out in particular: the American colonists’ defiance of King George III leading up to the Revolution; Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay a poll tax to protest slavery and our country’s imperial war against Mexico; and the Civil Rights crusade of the 1950s and ’60s. In each case, the higher law of moral conscience dictated the breaking of established law.
I experienced first-hand the power of civil disobedience to bring about change as a civil rights worker in Mississippi in 1965. Three times that summer I broke the law. The first was in Jackson, the state capital, where I blocked traffic with hundreds of other demonstrators. The second time was in jail when, along with scores of others, I resisted state troopers who were trying to remove our leaders, including Stokely Carmichael, from us. And the third time was in Natchez, when I was part of a group that attempted to desegregate the city’s only park with a swimming pool. None of the actions was immediately successful, but they were part of a relentless campaign of civil disobedience that ultimately won many of its goals. Thanks in large part to civil disobedience, Mississippi and the South are dramatically different today from what they were 50 years ago.
History has conclusively shown that nonviolent civil disobedience can be a game changer. One need only think of Gandhi. But for it to be more than an act of individual conscience, as in the case of Thoreau, it has to be, as Hannah Arendt and others have pointed out, a political movement involving large numbers of people.
Trump must be stopped in his tracks. The time for civil disobedience is now!
