Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making
Congress listen.
We are former progressive congressional staffers who saw the Tea
Party beat back President Obama’s agenda. We see the enthusiasm to fight the
Trump agenda and want to share insider info on how best to influence Congress to
do that.
If you want to do your part to beat back the Trump agenda and
understand that it will require more than calls and petitions. For that reason,
we prepared Indivisible, 2016
to help you resist. You should use this guide, share it, amend it, make it your
own, and get to work.
Donald Trump is the biggest popular vote loser in history to
ever call himself President-Elect.
In spite of the fact that he has no mandate, he will attempt to
use his congressional majority to reshape America in his own racist,
authoritarian, and corrupt image.
If progressives are going to stop this, we must stand indivisibly opposed to Trump and the members of Congress (MoCs) who would do his bidding.
Together, we have the power to resist — and we have the power to
win. We know this because we’ve seen it before.
The authors of this guide are former congressional staffers who
witnessed the rise of the Tea Party. We saw these activists take on a popular
president with a mandate for change and a supermajority in Congress.
We saw them organize locally and convince their own MoCs to
reject President Obama’s agenda. Their ideas were wrong, cruel, and tinged with
racism — and they won.
We believe that protecting our values, our neighbors, and
ourselves will require mounting a similar resistance to the Trump agenda — but
a resistance built on the values of inclusion, tolerance, and fairness.
Trump is not popular. He does not have a mandate. He does not
have large congressional majorities. If a small minority in the Tea Party can
stop President Obama, then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump.
To this end, the following chapters offer a step-by-step guide
for individuals, groups, and organizations looking to replicate the Tea Party’s
success in getting Congress to listen to a small, vocal, dedicated group of
constituents.
The guide is intended to be equally useful for stiffening
Democratic spines and weakening pro-Trump Republican resolve.
We believe that the next four years depend on citizens across
the country standing indivisible against the Trump agenda.
We believe that buying into false promises or accepting partial
concessions will only further empower Trump to victimize our fellow citizens.
We hope that this guide will provide those who share that belief
useful tools to make Congress listen.