Last week was a terrible horrible no good very bad week. And yet, Durham showed up for July 4th, for the Eno River at the yearly Festival for the Eno, for protests. We will keep showing up. We will be there for our community with compassion and care, building coalition. And we will rest when we need to.
Speaking of being there: DONATE to flood relief in Texas. Kerr County Flood relief fund here
Kudos to ALL of us who called our Senators. Amazingly, Tillis did the right thing. That was partially due to OUR CALLS. Give yourself credit for every single message you left, aide you spoke with or letter/email you wrote. Call him and thank him, if you have the energy. (202) 224-6342
Governor Stein not only vetoed SB50, HB 318, and SB153, but also the spate of awful anti-DEI bills. Call to thank him. (919) 814-2000 All those who worked last year to elect Democrats, thank you! It makes a difference.
For a good review of different functions of Durham’s municipal government, check out Bull City’s Indivisible post.
July 17: next mobilization in Durham! Details are being worked out. Preliminary time is 6:30 pm.
Speaking of John Lewis and Voting:
Remember how Jefferson Griffin tried to disenfranchise 65K+ voters because their forms weren’t “correct?” Let’s not give him, or anyone else, a chance to try that again. Learn correct ways to empower and register voters. We will be having a big voter registration push this fall…get a jump on your training with YCV!
July 8, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM ET YOU CAN VOTE
Also July 9, 2025 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM ET and July 21, 2025 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM ET
Find your event and register here:
YCV’s Empowerment Training is an hour-long virtual webinar designed to mobilize volunteers with skills how to educate and empower voters for upcoming elections. This comprehensive training will educate attendees on You Can Vote’s work and key messages, a thorough understanding of how to properly fill out a NC voter registration form, and best practices in communicating election rules. This training is for those looking to learn more about You Can Vote, updated voting rules, best practices in voter registration, and those interested in volunteering with YCV!
For other protests, see this post by Engaged Durhamites 4 Democracy.
HOW DO WE PREPARE TO DEFEAT AUTHORITARIAN OVERREACH?
Before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of that bus, she had attended a workshop on desegregation and nonviolent civil disobedience at the Highlander Folk School, an “interracial training center for labor and civil rights activists” in the mountains of Tennessee. She trained to become a citizen leader. Now it’s our turn.
One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism
Begins July 16! Sign up HERE.
July 16: Session 1: The Moment & Your Mission -Get oriented to making meaning of this moment and the role you can play in coordinated strategic action.
Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg’s weekly Indivisible update, “What’s the Plan,” on Thursday, July 3. was chilling and powerful. Most of us focused last week on the budget’s cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, to SNAP. They discussed another aspect, this regime’s new police force; the bill last week funded what will be the third largest military force in the world, the private Gestapo or Stasi of MAGA. This bill allocates $75 BILLION of funding to ICE over the next 4 years and the power to send rogue troops into cities nationwide, making LA look like a dance party practice run. Those in power are salivating over how much money they will make locking people up in federally funded private prisons. There is some discussion of “renting” those people imprisoned out to industry, as the Nazis did with Volkswagen or the Krupp factory. There must be boycotts of any company even considering using this labor.
Ezra and Leah warned to expect continued escalation of authoritarian conditions; according to experts, we are in a period of “authoritarian breakthrough,” a time limited window where an authoritarian is racing to consolidate power before the population realizes what they are losing and the pro-democracy side consolidates its own power. It is a race.
Right now, we need a whole of society strategy that looks at every institution, every source of power in American society and asks, are you refusing or defying? Business, the media, faith communities. We need to build our coalition as widely and rapidly as possible.
Sign up for one or more of these trainings HERE. We need citizen leaders like Rosa Parks. We need all of us, not just on single days of mass action, but through sustained organizing in our communities.
Let’s build a force bigger than fear and louder than hate. Let’s get ready. Let’s get organized. Let’s stop Trump.
July 30: How to Make it Happen This train-the-trainer session is how we get to one million. Learn not just our strategy, but how you can train others and get them on board. You'll host your first community resistance gathering after this session.
August 13 What Now? You'll be onboarded to basic campaign design and learn how to implement it locally as well as get plugged into our next national campaign work. Your second community resistance gathering will move this action forward.
Sign up for all 3 sessions to get the most out of this experience. Watch it live with a friend in person, and get ready now to host your own community resistance gatherings after the second and third sessions. This is how we get to 1 million.
JULY 23 5 PM VIRTUAL EVENT:
Re-electing Justice Anita Earls in 2026 is a must to defeat gerrymandering and finally get fair maps in NC. Hear Justice Earls, a leader in voting rights and civil rights, in conversation with historian and activist Heather Cox Richardson, facilitated by Kate Barr (Durham’s own but now in Davidson).
FIND IT HERE: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson
JULY 27 : FlipNC canvass for Justice Earls. Register HERE
Join FLIP NC for our July canvass and happy hour debrief at Motorco in Durham! We'll meet at Motorco Music Hall for a brief training and return to Motorco Parts & Labor after canvassing to debrief over drinks and snacks.
During these summer canvasses, we'll talk with left-leaning voters about their concerns and make sure they know about the far-right takeover of our state courts.
It might seem early, but this type of early canvassing is the best way to increase turnout among low-propensity, left-leaning in the coming midterms.
One other important read on this authoritarian time from Harvard sociologist/political scientist Theda Skocpol via Talking points memo:
“I thought last year that the USA was somewhat protected against any similar coerceive authoritarian takeover by its federal structure, given state and local government rights to control most U.S. police powers ..
But now I see that the Miller-Trump ethno-authoritarians have figured out a devilishly clever workaround. Immigration is an area where a U.S. President can exercise virtually unchecked legal coercive power, especially if backed by a Supreme Court majority and corrupted Department of Justice. Now Congress has given ICE unprecedented resources – much of this windfall to be used for graft with private contractors Trump patronizes…to hire street agents willing to mask themselves and do whatever they are told against residents and fellow American citizens. The Miller-Trumpites are not interested only in rounding up undocumented immigrants. They will step up using ICE and DOJ enforcements use to harass Democrats, citizen critics, and subvert future elections if they can.”
This is why we must step up, now. Be like Rosa.
