Andrea Pitzer (0:00)

You're listening to Next comes what from Degenerate Art. This is Andrea Pitzer. Last Friday I went down to the Stand up for Science demonstration in Washington, dc. I am just thrilled to be here with so many mad scientists, which was part of a nationwide turnout for everything from funding science to supporting vaccination programs to choosing reality over the whimsical method of wish casting and grudges now used to set policy by the President of the United States. $8 million for making mice transgender. This is real. Tits out and tyrants down was the rallying cry of two women who had a Virginians for Science flag with them. With at least 30 demonstrations in the US and more than 150 around the world, the day was a chance for sometimes politically disengaged researchers and medical professionals to let the public know that the new administration was distinguishing itself, in the words of astronomer Phil Plait, as the most aggressive anti science government the US has ever had. Here's the game that they are playing. They take a spreadsheet with the work of thousands of scientists and professionals. They scan for examples they can distort and ridicule. They ask no one what their work actually is. They'll call hormone and transgenic research in mice making transgender mice. Unlike the USAID demonstrations I reported on earlier this year, which aimed to restore the jobs and funding unceremoniously and illegally cut by Elon Musk, let's make it very clear that every single day America is safer because of what happens at usaid. This protest was a more general call to support science. Though people carried signs with specific demands, a variety of attendees were present, from veterinarians to immunologists, mostly offering moral support to a community under attack. In April of 2012, I became the first child in the world to receive car T cell therapy, which trained my immune system to beat my cancer. Today I am almost 13 years cancer free. Without funding research that went into developing the treatment that saved my life, I wouldn't be here today at the one that I attended in dc. Thousands showed up and a lot of other variables are still in play. But I'm thinking more and more that in the end the real solution to the crisis of democracy unfolding in the United States today is likely to come down to protest. Ultimately this is going to be a political fight and 80% of more than 80% of Americans say that the President has to obey court orders. So if the President were to disobey a court order, that would be wildly unpopular in a way that is a much stronger check than any of the tools that the courts have at their disposal. That could take several different forms. And so today I want to talk about what the point of protest is, how it works, and when it's valuable. I stand up for science because science saved my life and that is a fact. But first, I want to take a moment to say two other things up front. The big reason that we're doing this podcast next comes what is to push back against authoritarianism in the most effective ways possible now, while we still can. And meeting that goal is a group project. So we want to hear from you. Do you have a question about a particular episode? Do you have more of a comment than a question that you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? Email your thoughts to next comes what? Mail.com. you can write it, you could record it, you could even videotape yourself or your actions and we might use them in a future episode. So please send in your thoughts and questions and thanks for being a part of this. And as for the second administrative point that I want to touch on today, if you're listening to audio only podcast and you find yourself confused by any part of what you're hearing, you might want to check out the YouTube version at some point, because occasionally in the clips that are inserted around my commentary, there's some interesting video where visuals are part of the story too. But producer Jason Sattler and I will try not to baffle the audio only listener folks too often and know that you have YouTube as a backup if ever you're unsure if you missed something. So the first question that has to be answered is why protest in the first place? Simply put, because protest is often at the base of the people's ability to force respect for the fact that they ultimately control who's in power. When protests are eradicated, or so limited by government as to be useless, it often signals a society's submission to authoritarian rule. Family members of Russian soldiers have protested in central Moscow, calling for the return of their relatives from the war. In Ukraine, police detained dozens of people, including journalists, at the rally against Russia's mobilization. Some were later released. Is there a part of the protest, though, that is against the war in its entirety? Or is this really just about these women wanting to have their husbands back home? Let's be clear, we don't know what these women really think. Maybe they're very much untable, but to voice such opinion is actually to put yourself very much in opposition to the official line and probably go to jail and that's evidently what they do not want. Demanding that your husband who signed a contract for one year should be sent home is pretty much, I would say, legal. Saying stop the war is completely something else. So I am talking, as I do in general, about nonviolent protests today. We shouldn't kid ourselves. The power of a bunch of bodies coming together in space is implicitly to suggest that peaceful alternatives are being offered in place of what those bodies can otherwise do. In terms of other kinds of protests that aren't about creating a crowd in public, I'm talking about making phone calls, scheduling meetings with elected representatives. These suggest a different kind of power over legislators that is still fundamental, the power to remove them. And this has physical implications as well. House Republican leaders is encouraging Republican members of the conference to think twice before holding more in person town hall meetings that becomes constituents, including some Democrats have been protesting something that's going to come up in the president's speech tonight. Elon Musk and Department of Government efficiency cuts to the federal workforce. So the power dynamic that is inherent in mass demonstrations is about that physical power, but in a much more raw way than other outlets. And that's why governments often cave to mass protests when they show enormous strength suddenly or even cave to steady unrest over long periods of time. This beautiful day started with trouble. In lower Manhattan, more than 100 people were arrested during a protest. Demonstrators were demanding more money in the war against a. In the spring of 1987, an upstart activist group started making noise and changes to help people with HIV aids. In six years, ACT UP achieved incredible victories for people with aids. The governments hope that the protests will SAP the unrest before the situation explodes into something that can't be controlled. But the fear of those dynamic actions is why police so often seek to provoke violence from protesters, so they themselves can execute the violence they fear on their own terms while they still hold the advantage. He then held up a Bible and summoned some of his top aides, all of them white, to pose for a picture. It came hours after the president unloaded in a conference call with governors of both parties. He urged them to, quote, dominate violent protesters and rioters. Yet leaders fear that they will get that equation of when to let protesters vent their anger and when to crush dissent. Wrong. They fear that seeing others resist the government will have appeal to the rest of society and further additional unrest in the broader population. We're strongly looking for arrests. You have to get much tougher. You're going to get overwritten to dominate. If you don't dominate you're wasting your time, they're going to run over you. You're going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate. There are many times they try to tamp down on protest at key moments, often unleashing violence first in the hopes of avoiding conceding power. A recent study on Russia titled Opposition Rule under Autocracy looked at what possibilities the opposition has realistically had to make changes when its access to power is so limited in a place like Russia. And the study addressed two roles that are often taken. One is running for low level office to begin to provide a challenge to the ruling regime. The other is staying an outsider, leading protests and opposition without the taint of being part of the system. The good news for those of us in the US is that there are still low level offices where real power can be exercised and used to organize movements and to protect the rights of people. The truth is, people who are new to this country do good and bad, just like all of us. But there's another truth. When those buses kept on coming, Denver made a choice as a city not to hate each other, but to help each other. Not to turn on each other, but to turn to each other. Public protest also remains for most citizens, less dangerous than it is in fully authoritarian societies. Protesters stood out in the rain today saying Ukraine and minority Americans need support now more than ever. I'm just sick of the crap. But the danger which has always existed for black Americans and Native American populations among others, is likely to expand in the coming months. And the US civil rights movement in mid 20th century is perhaps the high point of protests driving significant change in policy on a national level in America with real impacts federal law, but also locally, coast to coast. If you have a gold mine, then there's a point in the gold mine where you have the richest part, and that's called the mother lode. That's what Albany is to black people in terms of just the concentrated essence of the spirit of the people. And if you can imagine black people at our most powerful point in terms of community and peoplehood, then that's of any Georgia. The black community attacked segregation wherever it existed. Demonstrations took place throughout the city at libraries, schools, movie theaters and city hall. And we just pushed pressure, pressure, pressure. It's important to note that the relationships and the community institutions that were built before that massive, effective protest launched were what made such coordinated and disciplined actions possible. As I've mentioned before, quiet, invisible kinds of protests do exist. You might deliberately slow work or sabotage a project from the Inside, you might discourage friends, acquaintances or co workers from abetting illegal or unethical assignments. A direct order cannot compel someone to do something that is morally wrong. For example, orders that would result in harm to innocent civilians or other unethical behavior must not be obeyed. So moral, ethical, lawful. Remember those three words? But today I'm focusing on public protest when groups of people speak out in highly visible or strategic ways, usually focused on a particular issue, such as racism, economic policies, policing and such. The movement that had learned to mobilize communities now set about trying to mobilize a nation. Across the country, people made plans to attend the March on Washington, demonstrating for jobs and freedom. Many countries, including the US Have a robust tradition of protests over labor issues. Universities are also a hotbed of political dissent. There will be no civil rights movement in this country without the critical role of historically black colleges, universities and black high schools. Think of US Student anti war groups on campuses, a population that was threatened by the Vietnam War specifically due to the draft, they stood up against US involvement in Vietnam. Campuses in the US have often defended free speech, and students as particularly active demonstrators make sense as a category. They're often unmarried, not yet employed, or they have jobs that are less tied to their professional futures. Many students are living on their own for the first time and being exposed to new ideas everywhere, from the lecture hall to the late night chats in the dorms. So it's no surprise that as they incorporate new ideals into their worldview, they may start to imagine new ways they want to relate to that world. They may be, at that point, more willing to take risks than older populations with career and community pressures that discourage them from speaking out against the status quo. This is one reason why it was so disastrous, beyond being simply wrong, for universities to proceed with such animus and such violence against their own students during the demonstrations against Israeli military actions in Gaza. The university I've known and loved since the late 1970s is just being picked apart and destroyed in the name of protecting Jewish students, they say. They've done nothing, these advocates for Israel, but the university has overwhelmingly disciplined these students. Even five years ago, colleges and universities could have been counted on to help secure democracy in movements against authoritarianism. If they didn't do it enthusiastically, many of them nonetheless did it reluctantly. But now students have seen university leadership almost across the board, actively soliciting police actions against them in the wake of nonviolent protests, and also using administrative tools to punish students and sometimes even faculty. Tensions within the Harvard campus continue. Now professors are stepping up in solidarity with students facing disciplinary action for a pro Palestinian demonstration, our NBC10's Dura Khotran spoke with students who were suspended from the library and the professors who staged the demonstration in response. It risks breaking the back of one of the most effective means of guarding freedom in the country. And while it's no surprise that state and national figures opposing democracy and free speech have embraced this approach, it is shameful how many people in power and higher education have actively aided the persecution of their own students and staff. In all of my time here as a student and now as a faculty member, I cannot remember a time where the university has adopted so many rules and new enforcement practices that seem designed to try to curtail expression in the sharing of ideas. On a similar note, the Trump administration is targeting labor rights and unions as well, another traditional group that has historically defied oppressive governments. Led by electrician Lech Varensa, the workers began their illegal strike. Waenza and his colleagues had learnt from the violent suppression of their strike 10 years earlier, which saw 75 of their comrades shot dead in the streets. Instead of confronting the communist authorities head on, they locked themselves inside the shipyard on August 14th. Like the crisis, with university leadership throwing their students to the wolves, we've seen union leaders who have sided with Trump banking on their members willingness to endorse racism and fuel hatred, exceeding the cost that they will pay in wages and civil liberties. When President Trump invited me to speak at this convention, the left called me a traitor. All this is to say that many of the traditional ways that people have pushed back against government overreach and rights violations are currently under attack and have already been sold out by those who were given a chance to lead and protect them. Regular people will need to step up in their stead. One reason for physical protests is to show ownership of physical spaces. Think of civil rights protests focused around lunch counters, or walking from space to space, across a bridge or over a state line in territory dangerous to black Americans. By early afternoon, more than 200,000 people gathered for the symbolic march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. Think of the disability rights protests, where many risk their lives to carry out these actions in a refusal to exist invisibly. We as disabled persons are here today to ensure for the class of disabled Americans the ordinary daily life that non disabled Americans too often take for granted. The right to ride a bus or a train. The right to any job for which we are qualified. The right to enter any theater, restaurant or public accommodation. I hope to do a whole episode about that particular refusal to be invisible before too long. But for now, it's important to note that each of these kinds of protests by specific American communities have benefited the country as a whole. Mass protests in smaller countries have flooded the streets. Think of those against Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel or the ones denouncing Yun Suk Yeol in South Korea. The right to this kind of massive protest is much harder to get back after it's lost than it is to maintain it in the first place. This is one of the reasons that demonstrations on the National Mall are critical to the health of the country. They preemptively assert the people's traditional rule over the people's spaces. Dr. Francis Collins is an American decision scientist who discovered the genesis associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. I love my country and I'm worried about my country right now. Just behind me. If you go and visit the memorial, you'll see etched on the wall the 271 unforgettable words of the Gettysburg Address. It occurs to me there might be a peril parallel there to what we're talking about. Let me remind you of the last sentence of that Gettysburg Address that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. Are we still there? There are two reasons to be protesting right now. The first is that protests can be a quick and highly visible way to call attention to dramatic increases in wrongdoing. And the new administration is unleashing both attacks on the American people having a responsive government as well as on freedom of speech itself. We don't have to look any further than the detention of Mahmoud Khalil over the weekend to make this point. Khalil was deeply involved in the protests against Israeli actions in Gaza. At Columbia University, Khalil is a permanent legal resident and has a green card. His wife is a US Citizen who is eight months pregnant. President Trump boasted of Khalil's arrest, posting on social media, quote, following my previously signed executive orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil. This is the first arrest of many to come. As of this taping, he's a green card holder who has not been charged with any crime. Crime. But there's a second reason to protest that in some ways is just as important as making strategic gains in the moment. Key battles are unfolding right now, and the courts are still playing an important role. But with the executive branch pressing its advantage of flexibility and obfuscation Aided in some cases by what appear to be judges complicit and illegal executive overreach. It's becoming more likely that holding on to democracy in the United States will eventually come down to a show of force by Americans demanding government remain accountable to the public. Just as a government shouldn't send military recruits off to war without basic training, Americans should imagine they're likewise in training now to save the country. They need experience to have good judgment and understand the tasks at hand. It takes time to build a movement, and though we can learn from the experiences of groups like Black Lives Matter or the United Farm Workers, we need to be ready to offer more opposition to a bigger crackdown from Trump backed by the weight of the federal government. No clash. I was there. You're just a troublemaker and you're not supposed to be asking that question because we're talking about the World Cup. If you've gone to demonstrations, then you'll know what nonviolent ones feel like. I love what he said. Like three Super Bowls a day for a month. That's what it is. That's what it is. That's really amazing when you think of it. I've never heard that express. That's a lot. You'll know when the police start behaving differently. You'll know when the crowd is behaving differently. This will be what it will look like. Yes. When they play. When they play. Wow, that's great. You'll be better going now at later, making decisions in the moment and better able to keep yourself safe as the stakes grow higher. I was glad to see that last week's demonstrations for science included a safety manual with tips on how to prepare and how to respond if law enforcement got involved. The organizers likewise advocated for masking, though I didn't see many people actually wearing masks in the crowd. But they made note of ways that we would take care of each other. And they included chairs and an open space for those with accessibility, challenges or difficulty standing for long periods of time. They were aware of all the people that might want to be part of the movement that they were building, and education as they gave in terms of safety, about the risks of protesting is important, but just as critical is education about the issues you're protesting about. That might mean having frequently asked questions, materials available on a website so that people can understand what demonstrators are doing, what they themselves are doing, and why others might be affected by, by, or want to help with what the goals of the protest are. And it's not just about the demonstrators and those who might join them. Having handouts available to bystanders to provide context for whatever action you're doing is often one of the most critical ways that a protest can become successful. A big group out in public is a fantastic way to let people know that others have noticed something is wrong. Maybe they already noticed themselves or maybe they haven't. But giving them information about the issue when they see your protest is a way to recruit other people to support doing something about that problem, whether it's by becoming part of your movement or by voting or by taking action in some other way. It's fine if there are always new people coming aboard in this state, not necessarily fully informed, but with fresh energy and willingness to be part of a crowd to try to make a difference in the long run. However, often sooner than later, there needs to be some kind of direction and specific demands made by those demonstrators. If we do not get meaningful legislation out of this Congress, the time will come when we will not confine our mark into Washington. We will march through the south, through the streets of Jackson, through the streets of Danville, through the streets of Cambridge, through the streets of Birmingham. How long can we be patient? We want our freedom and we want it now. Otherwise, all that human energy and potential can get slowly bled to exhaustion without making quantifiable gains. That is often the goal of people in power when it comes to allowing these kinds of protests. But the most effective use so far, the most striking example of this kind of protest in 2025 that I've seen is the Tesla takedown movement. Protesting Tesla. This is ultimately about hitting Elon Musk's bottom line. He was able to buy his way into the White house with his $250 million contribution to Donald Trump's campaign. And he bought Twitter, giving himself a platform to spread lies. And this campaign is giving people a way to show their outrage about what he's doing to dismantle critical services and government institutions that people rely on for their health and well being in this country. The attempts to target Tesla directly are an innovative response to Elon Musk, unelected and shadily deputized by Trump, using his DOGE team to ransack government databases for profitable information while firing tens of thousands of federal employees without due process or any reason at all. That's where you want to go after somebody. I wrote a book called Ludicrous the Environment Story of Tesla Motors in 2019. The reality is where the rubber hits the road on this is that Elon Musk is not very good at building actual Businesses. Fundamentally, what Elon Musk does is he raises money, right? He hypes ideas. He raises money. Amazon or Facebook or a lot of the other sort of big oligarch companies. These are cash printing businesses, in a lot of cases, very profitable. None of Elon Musk's companies are like that. If we can bring down the price of Tesla stock to, especially to a point where it triggers these margin calls. But even, even not, that's the fundamental strategy is, is we have to turn the psychology on Wall street around Tesla from. From greed to fear. That is a perfect target to take on. And as I've said before, Musk is an ideal target for a lot of reasons, actually. Where's Elon Musk? I'm sure he's a genius and is a very credible person because of the wealth he's accumulated, but that does not put him above the law or the responsibility to come before this committee in this Congress. He is the public face of the team demolishing the federal government and carrying out the mass firings. Why isn't he here explaining it? You know why? Because he's out to privatize Social Security. He's been on television the last couple of days talking exactly about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and what he intends to do privatize it. He's less popular than Trump, and importantly, he has bankrolled Trump into the presidency and is the implicit threat to bankroll opposition to any elected officials who defy Trump. These are all pieces of this puzzle that create a unique opportunity to crash Elon Musk's wealth in a really fundamental way and potentially take him off the scene, maybe even permanently. Like the sky is the limit to this opportunity. There is no bigger Elon Musk behind Musk himself to save him if his fortune craters. So protests at Tesla showrooms around the country provide a way to link a nationwide movement in a common action and let people feel on a local level like they're part of a bigger effort. It is also, as organizer Mariame Kaba has noted, a way to do just that kind of education. I was mentioning earlier, using leaflets to explain why Musk is a threat to millions around the country. Most Americans, even if they already find Musk repellent, are unaware what he's actually up to. Tesla Takedown has produced fantastic flyers that address what protests can do. They lead with the goals of the protest and does so in terms that are very specific for individuals to act on. They're encouraging people to join the pickets. They're encouraging investors to dump their stock. They're encouraging Tesla owners to sell their cars. They are trying to take Tesla down in order to short circuit Musk's wealth, which will in turn undercut his outsized influence on Washington and the world. We have to make the brand toxic. The flyer lists some of the most agreed religious actions he's taken so far and the ways he directly benefits from federal funding that he's denying regular people at home and abroad. Elon Musk and Donald Trump have decided to lay off nearly every federal employee that they can. The only criteria they are using seems to be that they are firing the people who are easiest to fire in as large quantities as possible. They are firing first the probationary employees, which is not just people who just got hired by the federal government, but also anyone who was recently promoted. And the purpose seems to be to simply destroy the federal government in whatever way they can as quickly as possible, with the difference being that what he's taking away from others will result in widespread suffering and death. For those who've been following the effects of the Tesla protests, not only is the stock tanking, and it's a race to the gains that Elon made with all this new influence gained in the wake of the election, but it has also done one of the key things that protests do that can be really effective, and that is to pull out a police presence. If you happen to see the photos of rows of police protecting Tesla dealerships, it makes for a really striking visual that the government has certain priorities and that the police have a certain role that is not protecting you. And so even when you get the police to do those kinds of actions, you might be thinking of it as then foiling Tesla Takedown's efforts. Trump told a reporter that he considers attacks on Tesla dealerships to be domestic terrorism, but in fact, it just makes Elon look more like he's part of a police state, which in the end, serves the interests of those who would like to get rid of him. The US used to proclaim some loyalty to democracy and its institutions. This was often done while turning a blind eye to enormous wrongs, several of which at home and abroad America helped to perpetuate. But since January 20th of this year, the US, the most powerful country on the planet, is actively allying itself with many of the worst actors on the planet across the board. This has terrible ramifications around the globe and also some awful new ones here at home. The US pro democracy stance, even when it was done hypocritically, did still create pressure towards civil rights and freedoms in various settings. If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate, Mr. Gorbachev. Open this gate. But after distancing itself from Europe and turning its back on Ukraine, there is no pressure to show other democracies that the US Is keeping to its stated ideals. That's gone. Trump is not trying to appeal to anyone but the dictators that he envies. There will be no effective pressure about the optics of a given situation. That will serve as outside pressure on Trump to hew to legal standards and civil liberties. For perhaps the first time in US History, the ruling cabinet and the president cannot be shamed by the optics of a situation. I'm seriously Any more plans on additional vehicles? What's on the market? You have now the cybercap coming out next year, one with no steering wheel. Are you going to buy one of those? We'll pass. We're too old. So, Mr. President, when you look at the market, selling off, that didn't concern you? And where do you see it going? Concern me. But that doesn't mean that others with power are as impervious to shame. Everyone from governors to Tesla owners still have to live in their own communities, unable to wall themselves off from everyday people. And protest is a key tool to doing that. And when it comes to protest, there has to be some kind of organic component, a grievance at mistreatment, a wrong to be corrected. The more coherently the understanding of those wrongs are built over time, and the more specific the ways listed to address them, the better. This is why I've talked so much about networking. So what we need to do is we need to get involved locally in an issue that matters. Whether it matters to you because it has national ramifications or because it affects your everyday life in your hometown, it doesn't matter for now. But getting involved is critical. Find a policy that needs addressed. Become accustomed to showing up. Get familiar with your representatives. Help your group set specific goals, and get the word out about what's happening, about what can be done to change the current situation. Think about how various forms of protest, public or invisible, might be good avenues for what matters to you. And keep in mind that this time, no one is coming to save us. In the end, the odds are that we are going to have to save ourselves. That's it. Thanks for listening to Next comes what? Please share this with anyone who's looking for ways to help each other survive this mess. To support this podcast, please subscribe@Andreapitzer.com and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts.