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The PoliticsGirl Podcast
Pains in the Ass for Democracy: A Conversation with Indivisible’s Leah Greenberg
00:50:21
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- [00:00]
Leah Greenberg
You want your elected officials to be afraid of you, right? You want them to be like, oh God, that's gonna, they're gonna waste my time. They're gonna, or they're gonna pull my time away, they're gonna get a bad story in the paper. I'm gonna have to have like six different meetings because of that action that they did that got the attention of this other group. You want to like, you know, I mean, it depends, right? Some of them, some of them are our friends and we want to cheer them on and help them and make their lives easier. Some of them are not our friends and we want to make sure that they have to spend a ton of time worrying about us instead of coming up with their next plan to do something bad, right? Because distracted by us, by something that we've put in motion, is an hour that they are not able to spend moving their next terrible plan to hurt people.
- [00:50]
Lee McGowan
Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host, Lee McGowan. Let's get into it. How do you counter Trump's oligarchy? How do you win back America against a fascist takeover? Blue state governors are currently working to try and Trump proof their states, and agencies and organizations like MoveOn, Indivisible, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are working overtime to do the same. In fact, independent and progressive groups across the country are seeing huge new numbers of subscribers and supporters post election. We have to keep reminding ourselves that Trump does not have the mandate he's promoting. If 100,000 people in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin had voted Democrat instead of Republican, or if more people just come out to vote, we would have a completely different country right now. But now we face an incredible uphill battle. However, instead of seeing where we are as a defeat, I believe we are better served if we see it as an opportunity. As Tom Hartman said, America itself was birthed in resistance. We have a tradition of fighting oppression and top down rule. And although Trump and his billionaire henchmen plan to try and crush us, the opposition has already begun to talk more about how to fight back and what to do next. I am joined today by Leah Greenberg, the co founder and co executive director of Indivisible. Following the election of Donald Trump In 2016, Leah and her spouse, Ezra Levine, wrote a practical guide to resisting the Trump agenda. Drawing on their experience as former congressional staffers. The indivisible guide went viral, sparking the creation of thousands of local indivisible groups in all 50 states. Leah is now at the national level dedicated to supporting and empowering the Indivisible movement in progressive advocacy, elections and grassroots organizing. Though Indivisible was founded in response to Trump's first election, the organization recognizes that Trump is just a symptom of a Sikh democracy, not the cause. And it's going to be up to all of us to help make the country better. So without further ado, please welcome my guest, human trafficking policy advocate, former congressional staffer and co founder of Indivisible, Leah Greenberg.
- [02:50]
Leah Greenberg
Welcome, Leah.
- [02:51]
So great to be here. Thank you.
- [02:53]
Well, thank you for joining me. I mean, it's so interesting to me because Indivisible have said that our shared future depends on everyday Americans choosing to fight back. Right. You clearly believe that every single one of us has a role to play, whether we live in a red or blue state or a political battleground, that MAGA's goal here is going to be to divide and conquer, to kind of isolate us from each other and break our resolve and our spirit. But you believe, like your organization's namesake, Indivisible, that we are better off if we stand together. Right. If we protect our families, if we protect our neighbors, and if we stand up for democracy. Now, I don't think either of us think that what we're dealing with, which is all, you know, obviously a 50 year plan for a complete right wing takeover of America, is going to be an easy thing to manage. But I know that you guys have a planet Indivisible. So tell me a little bit about your planner or the way you look at the problems going forward.
- [03:46]
Absolutely. Well, our plan is really rooted in a power analysis of American society, where power is distributed, how it works, what power we can collectively tap into as regular people all over the country. And the whole founding idea of Indivisible was really that, you know, there's a lot of mysticism about government. There's a lot of, you know, kind of it's a black box. I don't know how it works. I don't know what to do that makes it hard for regular people to figure out what can they actually change, how, what is their power? And so what we wanted to do collectively was demystify. This is how your elected officials work. This is what they care about, this is what they don't care about. This is how you organize locally, to put pressure on them to do the things that you want them to do or not do the things that you don't want them to do. Right. So that's just the very founding idea. It's not rocket science. It's not even necessarily super secret information, but it is about taking the things that they are responsive to and pulling them together into a strategy. Now, in this moment, right now, Donald Trump thinks that he can govern as a dictator. He wants to govern as a dictator. He's made clear that is his intention. That is not actually how power is distributed in American society. Right. We are in a federal system. You have state and local and federal representatives. Depending on where you are, some of those people may be more or less responsive to you, maybe more or less poised to step up and fight back. Some of those people might be themselves facing tough reelections, either Republican or Democratic. That's going to govern some of how they interact with you. You actually have an enormous amount of power wherever you are to pull the levers that are available to you. And if we all collectively do that, right? If all of the people in blue states are pushing our federal and our state officials to really stand up to Trump and fight back, if all the folks in swing states are working incredibly hard to protect elections and to ensure that we are able to win in 2026, if all the folks in red states are working to protect their communities. Right. Because we know that a lot of the most dangerous and harmful attacks are going to be in red states. Now, we should all be doing that everywhere. But we know that a lot of the tip of the spear really is going to be in red states. If we're all collectively doing our part, we can harness the power that regular Americans have all over the country and we can collectively push MAGA back.
- [05:54]
Yeah, no, it's so essential, I think, first of all, starting with how the government works. It's one of the things I put in my own book. Like, you know, it was like, the point was, you can't fix something if you don't know how it works. If you tell me, like, oh, Lee, the problem with your car is a carburetor, right? And then you're like, oh, that's great. Which one is the carburetor? You know, like, we need to know how it works, so we know how to fix it, but also how to work within it. I think that's incredibly important part. But I think you guys have also pointed out that we kind of face two fundamental problems in this country. First, our democracy was kind of rigged from the start to favor the white and the wealthy. Right. And second, over the last few decades, an alliance of kind of white nationalistic and ultra rich people have been actively working together to further undermine the democracy and cement their hold on power permanently. And they've been incredibly successful at doing it. I mean, if you look at Donald Trump's cabinet right now, I think the collective net worth is $360 billion. And if you look at Joe Biden's cabinet, the collective net worth is like 115 million. Like, it's not even, it's a night day difference. Right. So I would probably even go one step further to say white Christian nationalists, you know, have been trying to take control because you have people like Leonard Leo and Samuel Alito, those guys are both Opus D, far right Christians. But, yeah, this is a major problem. Right. The game in itself was rigged from the start. So if we're going to be trying to take back power, trying to understand our power, it's also good to know that because the people that are in power now, they had a long term goal to kind of take back all their toys, and they used Donald Trump as a vehicle to let a lot of billionaires do that. Right. So we have to, as the people, and we say, well, that's not us. So who's, who's thinking about us now? No one is thinking about us, so we have to do that for ourselves. And I think that's what you're saying. I mean, red state Americans are really going to have to step up. I saw today when the day we're taping here, that Missouri is now. They offered a bill, puts forth a bill to have a cash bounty for people that turn in their illegal immigrant neighbors. You know, like, this is the kind of stuff that we're going to start seeing, and this is the kind of stuff that we have to fight back on. Now. The idea of indivisible rests on this concept that our opponents depend on dividing us, Right? They depend on us not working together. So you've always said that you believe that we have to treat an attack on one of us as an attack on all of us. So we have to keep showing up for each other, particularly, like we're saying, for those who will be facing the worst of it, you know, the worst ideological attacks, which are gonna be, like we said, immigrants, people of color, low income people, and now, of course, women, and probably soon to be the LGBTQ community.
- [08:28]
That's right. That's exactly right. And you know, to the, to the point that you made, you know, I think the way that I talk about it is the worst people in the world got together and made a deal, right? The white Christian nationalists who want to control who we are, how we express our gender identity, whether we have access to rights and control over our body, made a deal with the people who want to pollute our water and want to deregulate labor law and want to, you know, make as big a profit as they can and cut the rest of us out. And they have collectively come together in this alliance where they say, we are going to give you the power to control people and to make them operate according to your 1950s vision of society. And in exchange, you're going to give. You're going to gut the public school system so that we don't have to pay taxes to support it. You're going to gut benefits so that, you know, you don't have to pay taxes to support it. And you're going to give us free reign to do what we want as corporate robber barons. Right? That is the alliance that we are dealing with here. That is what brought Trump to the fore. Because Trump did not come out of nowhere. He's, you know, a unique political figure, but he didn't come from nothing. Right. If we as an American society didn't have the conditions for him to rise, then he would never have successfully made it off that escalator back in 2016. And when we think about indivisible, right, a core part of that strategy, a core part of those worst people strategy, has always been these divide and conquer attacks. It has always been the idea that you can point to an undeserving other and say, they are the problem. It's not the rich people who are, you know, systematically gutting government in order to make themselves richer, who are the problem. It's that undocumented immigrant. Right? It is that set of people of color. It is those black people. Right. It is always. It is those women who are, you know, getting all these crazy ideas about being. Being empowered. Right. It is always a process of trying to distract and divide people and push them to focus on a target that they can kind of harness a real cultural grievance around in order to distract from the fact that they are ultimately trying to take control of the government, to cement control of the government for their small number of mostly white, very wealthy men. When they are successful in doing that, then they hand the proceeds right back over to their cabal. So it's very much about both the morality of standing together, but it is also about the strategy of standing together, because if we don't insulate ourselves from these attacks on each other, then we are not going to collectively recognize the game that is happening here.
- [10:50]
Yeah, the morality, but also the strategy that's important it seems like you guys are building a movement and quite frankly, sustaining a movement to help take power back into our own hands. Right. To empower individuals to take leadership positions in the country. Right. All around the country to start and lead local groups. And this idea being that individual people can take action in their own backyards and then coordinate with their own friends and their interests, but then join together with other leaders doing that until there is a national movement to make real change. Right. And then you have a national team that does things like strategic leadership and coordinates organizations and supports the individual activists, but also does things like directly lobby Congress and build partnerships that could be used to build the movement. It seems like you're running media campaigns that would develop a strategy that everyone could use in all their different little communities. Am I missing something else that you guys are trying to work on?
- [11:45]
No, that's exactly right. Indivisible. It's a movement of thousands of local, overwhelmingly volunteer led groups. People who are organizing in their own communities. People who, who brought together their neighbors or their friends or their coworkers and said, what can we do to stop all of this terrible stuff that we see coming over the last few years? People who then, you know, they started contacting their members of Congress, they started doing local advocacy campaigns and getting press for their own actions. They started, in some cases running for office or taking over their local Democratic parties themselves. Right. People. Once people get activated and get together and start building community together, they find there's a lot that they can do, from the very national level to the very local level, to make a positive difference. And that the act of doing so is really your best defense against despair in a moment when a lot of things are going wrong. Right. So that's the core nucleus of the Indivisible Movement, is local groups organizing everywhere, independent, overwhelmingly volunteer led. And these are just, you know, I personally love and have been so honored to be part of the leadership journey of mostly women who have been organizing these groups over the years and a bunch of new women who have come in and have started organizing even in the last few months since Kamala Harris started running, since we had the loss over the last year, we are seeing new people take on that leadership and say, you know, I gotta do something. I gotta figure it out. So that's the core and the heart of the Indivisible Movement now, the national organization. We got started as we were seeing this movement emerge back in 2017 with a focus on how could we support it, because it's not always easy to be Like a volunteer, local group. Right. That's not how the political system is set up to operate. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff that we can do to make sure that they are supported, that they have access to, you know, people who can give you a training on how do you do a social media campaign, people who can get you some support and some funding if you need to have a community meeting, people who can help you make sure that you've got a strategy that's the most effective for how are you going to contact your specific member of Congress and what can they do? Right. And so we try to build out campaigns that collectively the indivisible movement can be part of that allow us to all be more than the sum of our parts. HR9495 is a great example. This is a recent piece of legislation, legislation that poses a very serious threat to non profits everywhere would give the Trump administration the power to just categorize them with no accountability as terrorist organizations. We know that we gotta have a full scale push against that. So what we are doing is saying, you know, you are contacting your member of Congress and everyone else is doing the same thing. And collectively we are organizing the power to shut that down. Right. It's not just about any individual, it's about that individual's power pulled into a group that is local and able to really make a difference in their elected officials thinking. And then it's about all of us doing it together. Because if we all push on that brick wall, you know, we don't necessarily know where it's going to fall in, but it's going to fall in.
- [14:29]
Yeah, it's like a collective coordinated effort to find strength in numbers, which we all know works. And we know it works because they work. You know, the corporations work so hard to get rid of unions because collective bargaining actually works. You know, people don't want the numbers at the front lines because it really is overwhelming. Even if you think you've got it, look what happened in South Korea, right? They had a military, military coup for one day and the people were like, hell no. It's really very effective when people work together. So let's talk about this guide you've created, right? It's called A Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink. And it's a set of strategies and steps to help people start fighting back, which I think people do need. You know, like, like this is the steps to take because otherwise you're like, I'm so overwhelmed, I don't know how to even begin this right so you've said this guide is for anyone living in America who is feeling upset or SC or even determined to do something. So you want to talk me through the broad strokes of that guide?
- [15:25]
Lee McGowan
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- [20:02]
Leah Greenberg
So you've said this guide is for anyone living in America who is feeling upset or scared or even determined to do something. So you want to talk me through the broad strokes of that guide?
- [20:12]
The core insight is what I said a little earlier, which is Donald Trump wants to be a dictator, but that's not how power works in America. So if we are thoughtful about how power works, where it lies, where we can tap into it, then we can collectively each play a role to block some of the worst that they will do to create the conditions for elections that will still be functional as of 2026 and to win those elections, which will allow us both to create a check on the national level by taking back the House of Representatives, but also ensure that we're on track to have elections in 2028, because the people who win in 2026 are the people who are going to be running the elections in 2028. So this is a short term defensive guide, but the basic idea is we are a giant pro democracy team. We are all going to kind of block and tackle and play our respective roles in this moment, to do what we can to hold off harm, to make sure that we are toxifying these folks politically so that we head into 2026 able to really just absolutely stomp them in the midterms. And then after that, we're able to build the power to push them out for good. The basic idea is that we're going to have different. Right. So some of us are in blue states. I hear from people all the time. I heard from people all the time in the first Trump administration. I'm in a blue state, like, why am I calling Elizabeth Warren again? You know, et cetera, et cetera. The reality is blue states have a really crucial role to play right now for a couple of reasons. The first is at the federal level. Democrats are currently in one of those moments where they're trying to figure out who they are, what they're doing, whether they're going to kind of go along or whether they are going to fight back. And you can see some of them testing the waters for a strategy that looks a lot like just going along with things. We have got to shake them out of that as fast as possible. We need a unified opposition party that is consistently pointing out that these people are up to no good, that they are trying to loot the federal government and take your health care and your benefits in order to give them to Elon Musk in the form of giant government contracts, that they are collectively trying to wreak out chaos, cruelty and corruption on all of us. We can't do that unless Democrats are united. So the first part is just pushing your Democrats into that opposition posture and away from any of these, like, little flirtations with the Trump administration. That's one piece. The other is there's been a real sea change in where there is power in this country. In 2017, there were six Democratic trifectas. Now there are 15. That is an enormous amount of political power, an enormous amount of economic power, an enormous amount of cultural power that is under the control of, of blue states with unified governments. And if you are in one of those places, you got to be pushing, you got to be asking your state legislatures and your attorney generals and your governors, what are you doing to protect us? What are you doing to protect other Americans who do not live inside of our state borders and ensure that they have access to the things that we need them to have access to? What are you going to do when Donald Trump sends his goons to do immigration raids in our state? What are you going to do to protect our policies, our progress, to work with other governors to create interstate compacts that protect civil rights, environmental law, labor law? All of these are options, and they're all on the table. If we are creative and we organize and we push our elected officials into that oppositional posture, that will allow them to, to really present a meaningful counterweight to the Trump administration at the federal level. The next piece is that if we live in purple states, if we've got either Republican representatives who might be squishy or up for reelection, or if we are in a place where we're going to need to win in 2026 in order to win in 2028, we got to protect conditions of elections because the election denier movement continues to roll forward at the local level. So we've got to organize locally to fight back against that stuff, and we got to create the conditions to win. So making sure that we are politically pushing these folks regularly. Right? Because the Trump administration is going to do a bunch of incredibly unpopular stuff. And these, you know, Republicans in these states, they are not going to want to be linked to it. So it's our job to make them consistently answer for the votes that they're taking, for the work that their party is doing, for the things that they don't necessarily want to be tied to. So that when it comes to 2026, voters are thinking about all of the terrible and unpopular stuff that the Trump administration has been doing. And it's actually worth pausing there to note. Part of our analysis right now is there's, you know, there are deeper and Longer debriefs to be done about why we lost in 2024. I'm not going to get into all that here. I think it makes a lot of sense to wait until you've got the voter file to do a really deep analysis and to, you know, kind of hold on the hot takes. But what's pretty clear is that Donald Trump pulled together a coalition of people who were mad about the status quo, right? People who were frustrated about inflation and rise in prices, people who rejected what was currently happening. Now, that is an inherently politically unstable coalition, because as soon as you win, you become the status quo. You become the person who is responsible for all of the corruption and all of the chaos and all of the unpopular stuff. Donald Trump won by putting literally as much space as he possibly could between his agenda and his campaign. Right. He literally disowned his own policies. You cannot do that. Once you are in office, you are actually putting your policies into action and you're accountable for them, and so is everybody else who's got an R next to their name. So making sure that those people heading into 2026, swing district members of Congress, swing district senators, that those folks are really held responsible for their policies so that we can beat them in 2026. The additional piece that we really want to push everyone, everywhere to do is organizing locally to protect people. This is going to look different based on where you are, right? If you are in a red state, you might be facing attacks from your local or from your state level legislature. Even if you are in a blue or a purple state, you may well be seeing, you know, the local school board taken over by Moms for Liberty wackadoodles. Right? So it might look different, really, based on a very local level, but the core thing that is important is finding and connecting to people who are organizing to support communities under threat at a local level and making sure that they have the muscle behind them to do what they need to do, Right? That is connecting with your local immigrant services provider so that they have volunteers who are ready if ICE comes to town. That is connecting with people who are organizing to protect trans kids in schools. That is connecting with local abortion funds and figuring out what they need and how you can support them. Fundamentally, the way that we are going to get through this is by pushing back at every level. But a lot of the most important stuff that you can do that will make a very tangible and immediate difference in people's lives. Lives. It's about organizing locally.
- [26:28]
Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately we have to keep Reminding people that the political power in this country does not all.
- [26:35]
Lee McGowan
Reside at the federal level.
- [26:36]
Leah Greenberg
Like, they really do have a lot of power at the local and state governments. The Republicans have known this for years, right? They acted as obstructionists at the federal level where they had less power while they were busy taking over state legislatures and local offices. I feel like the Democrats have finally caught on to that. You're talking about six to. I think you said 13. But we have to build local offices, we have to go for school boards, we have to go for election boards. We have to make sure that we are concentrating on all those things that we can actually control right now while the federal government is doing what the federal government is doing. But also we have to support those elected Democrats at the federal level who are going to need our support. And we need to kind of call out those Republicans who are going to need to be pushed to either find their spine to fight back against something they know is absolutely wrong, or we'll get them out of office. You can see it sort of working already with some of Trump's cabinet picks. Like, like it really, like public pressure actually does work. We can remind Republicans that they're allowed to break with Mega. Right. The plan is to get through, it seems to me, the plan is to get through these next two years with our democracy intact, to break Trump's hold on Congress and make sure that election deniers aren't going to be in charge by 2028. Right. And I think that's really, really important because I think a lot of people are like, oh, we're never having elections again. And I know that failing, but we have like a two, which is why people can't check out now. We have this kind of two year window. Sure. They can't get their fascist machine up and running where we're just throwing sand in the gears every single second. We're pushing through locally, pushing through at the state level, and really holding the federal people accountable. I mean, one of the things I read in your guide was that you said you want to break Trump's hold. It comes down to three big plays. One is firmly rejecting Project 2025 agenda that the White House is going to push, despite the fact that they pretended they had nothing to do with it. Right? So, so Congress will pass things, but we have to pick fights with them strategically. We have to drive a national backlash against things that people are not going to like, including Republicans are not going to like. Wherever we have Democrats in power, we have to play serious hardball, right? Like really hardball and you're saying there's these Democrats out here who are sort of testing the waters of being like, can we all work together? And we have to be like, no, none of us are on board for that. Like, be obstructionist, be a resistance force. And I do think it's very positive that we're seeing people like AOC look for leadership and Jamie Raskin look for leadership. I would have liked to see different leadership in the Senate, but it is what it is. And then, of course, we have to work to protect our elections and win our elections. There's 30 states having elections in 2025. I mean, people forget it's. It next year. There's 30 states having elections, and we have to make sure we win as many of those as possible. Essentially, we do what the Republicans have been doing for years at the state and local level, but we do it without lying to people about what our plans are.
- [29:18]
That's right. Exactly. Exactly.
- [29:21]
Yeah. I think, honestly, like, it's about protecting and preparing us. Right. Like, that's what I'm getting out of the guide. Right. That, that things are about to get much worse. Right. And they're going to get worse than we expect. And we need to be ready to support anyone who is attacked, but also to support our democracy in general. We should be very clear that authoritarianism is the goal here. And it comes on sometimes, you know, very slowly because you can't just flip a switch from a democracy to an autocracy. So we have to watch out for every little indication. You call it the authoritarian creep.
- [29:54]
Right. And I think we have to walk a careful line here. Right. We talked about, we titled this guide Democracy on the Brink for a specific reason. We wanted to be very precise about the moment that we're in because we were seeing people say some really panicky and defeatist stuff, you know, like, oh, it's all over. They're going to be a dictator. They're going to, you know, it was a nice run. Democracy, et cetera.
- [30:12]
Yeah.
- [30:13]
Is. It's not true and it's not helpful. Right. Because fundamentally, they would like nothing better than for us to decide that it's all over because that means that people stop fighting back. Right. They benefit by projecting and claiming more power than they actually have. They're going to do that repeatedly throughout this process. They will claim they have the power to do things they do not actually have the power to do, and it is not smart to get then say, oh, yeah, of course they're going to do it. They don't care about the law. We actually have to consistently, as a matter of strategy, be shocked, be outraged, be furious, push back on each of those things because they don't have the power to do those things. And will we stop everything? No, we won't stop everything. I don't want to sugarcoat, I don't want to pretend that everything is going to be salvageable here. We're facing some really hard and scary stuff. But we are also not going to do the fascist work for them by giving them powers that they don't already have. So that is the line we're trying to walk. And so when we talk about democracy on the brink, when we talk about authoritarian creep, trying to talk about the fact that conditions will get worse, that people do have reasonable fear about what is coming, both for people who are organizing locally, for the communities that we know are going to be under threat, for political opponents of the Trump administration, that is real. And also the way that we are going to get through this is we all collectively organize and push back together. If only a few of us are out there pushing back, it's going to be easy for them to come for us. If a lot of us everywhere are out there pushing back, that is a completely different story. That is our chance for making it.
- [31:43]
Lee McGowan
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Leah Greenberg
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Lee McGowan
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Leah Greenberg
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Lee McGowan
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- [34:51]
Leah Greenberg
Everywhere are out there pushing back, that is a completely different story. That is our chance for making it through.
- [34:56]
Yeah, I often talk about being endlessly annoying. You know where they're like if they come in and say I have unlimited power and we're like no you don't. You know what I mean? Where you know we're Gonna sue you, and then we're gonna sue you again, and then we're gonna sue you again, and then we're gonna get in your way, and then we're gonna show up and do a peaceful protest and just stand quietly in front of the whole building where there's hundreds of thousands of people that get on TV and then they feel shamed and embarrassed. This kind of thing is important. Fascists depend on us believing that we're alone, because alone we're pretty powerless. Right. But in organized groups have vast amounts of power. So joining a group and having something to do is really important. I think you said think of it like a giant national pro democr to be on offense, some people will play defense. If we're all playing on the same team to win the game. Even underdogs can win those kind of games, right? And right now, the people are the underdogs. We clearly don't know everything that's going to be coming, so we're going to have to be working on the fly. But the goal seems to be to mitigate harm, right? To, as I said, throw sand in the gears. Right? To make it harder for them to get this machine up and running and to make it to 2026 so we can change the balance of power into our favor and then just work our asses off to just toss them all out in 2028 and be like the saddest attempt at a Russia that they could have ever made. Right. Your guide is not going to be telling everyone everything that's going to happen because you can't see the future. Right. But it's. It's helping people know where they fit in and what their part could be moving forward. I think one of the most important things for us to remember is that we can't do everything ourselves. So it's probably best to pick something that you really care about, whether that's the environment or women's rights or gay rights or voting rights, and then focus on doing that really well, and then stay in coordination with other groups who are doing that same kind of focused work, but for a different issue, and then stand there to support one another in that work. I think unity and hope is a real killer to this kind of administration coming in.
- [36:49]
That's. That's totally right. And I would say. I would say rooted in the issues you care about and also rooted in an analysis of where your power and where your leverage is. Right? Because, like, if you've got, you know, if you've got a. And this is something that's changed over the years. Right. We got started in 2017. We had people who were able to make a lot of progress pushing back on some of their Republican members of Congress, because people, you know, it was. It was relatively early in the Trump era. There were still a bunch of Republicans who did not like this Trump guy. There was a different media environment. They didn't know what they were getting into. So we could kind of push back on them at this point. I would not advocate that. If you've got a Republican in a safe district, you spend a ton of time calling them and trying to, like, appeal to their better angels. They're locked in. They are not going to move. They are more scared of a primary challenge than they are of you. So, you know, you start by rooting it in analysis of, like, okay, well, I don't. That avenue is not very useful, but I have a. I have a mayor who I need to talk to about his policies as it relates to immigrant deportations. Right. So thinking about what can you actually move based on who you are as a constituent and where your leverage is, in addition to the issues that you are most passionate about? And I loved your comment about being annoying for as. As a core part of the strategy. We actually, actually, you know, a working title for the guide at one point was like, how to Be a Pain in the Ass for Democracy. Because it's actually really important. It is really important. And it's a core part of this is that you want your elected officials to be afraid of you, right? You want them to be like, oh, God, that's gonna. They're gonna waste my time. They're gonna. Or they're gonna pull my time away. They're gonna get a bad story in the paper. I'm gonna have to have, like, six different meetings because of that action that they did that got the attention of this other group. You want to, like. Like, you know, I mean, it depends, right? Some of them. Some of them are our friends, and we want to cheer them on and help them and make their lives easier. Some of them are not our friends, and we want to make sure that they have to spend a ton of time worrying about us instead of coming up with their next plan to do something bad. Right? Because an hour that they spend distracted by us, by something that we've put in motion is an hour that they are not able to spend moving their next terrible plan to hurt people.
- [38:47]
Yeah. And I. I keep thinking about, like, how the Republican Party was taken over by MAGA in the first place, Right? It was the Tea Party being incredibly annoying to their own party, right? And then it MAGA came in and everyone was afraid of the MAGA base because the MAGA base was so like hardcore for Donald Trump. And then MAGA ended up absorbing the entire Republican Party. So you can't even be a normal, you know, conservative Republican anymore, otherwise you're a rhino and they're gonna primary you. Like you said, I think as a, you know, growing up as a well behaved, you know, Canadian wasp, I was a major rule follower, right? And I'm coming into, as they say, my villain era, right. Like you're going to embrace, we have to embrace being difficult and argumentative and non compliant, right? We all have to be kind of obstinate teenagers for democracy. I just think that's really, really important. I think that Trump and his mega henchmen and the project 2025 people and the Heritage foundation and the Fed Federalist Society and all the Christian nationalists, I think they're feeling really vindicated right now. I think they're feeling very emboldened and I think it's hard to stomach, right? I think it's, it's very hard to see that this is the man we just elected who we all know is a criminal. I think it's really hard to see the people that he's surrounding himself with. And it's just about blind loyalty, right? They broke all the rules they could the first time, they're going to break even more the second time. And I think it's very hard for people to take because it just feels so antithetical to what we learned growing up, that being good matters and doing the right thing matters and being someone of integrity, it makes a difference, right? You go, well, what are we looking at? You know, it's very upsetting, but I think that you're saying that joining a group, doing something, being in the fight is actually much better for your mental health than, than putting your head in the sand or being just upset all the time or just checking out, because ultimately if you check out, it's only going to get worse. Truly, no joke. So we have to kind of put the parts of the plan in action that make sense to us because it really will ultimately make us feel better. I mean, I mean, you're being very clear that we're not going to mince words. Democracy is in terrible danger, but it is not dead. Right? And it is really important that we don't convince ourselves, as you were saying, to give away our power or just fall in line. Because when we do that, then the fight really is lost. Right. If you look at Ukraine and their reaction to Russia versus what the Russians now react to Russia, it's like they're just like, well, this is the way it's always been. It's one of the reasons they wanted to destroy America because we were always this beacon of what democracy could be. And us as a corrupt nation only serves the Russian interests. Right? Because they're like, see, all countries are corrupt. No one has real elections. And we have to kind of be more Ukrainian than that. We have to be more fighting back and have more fun while we do it, is what we always say. You and many others have said we have to be clear about this threat, but we can't do the fascist work for them, as you're saying. As Timothy the Sider writes in On Tyranny, don't obey in advance.
- [41:36]
Exactly, exactly. And I think we are seeing some really troubling examples of what obeying in advance looks like across the media, across corporations, across even some of our friends and allies in elected office. What we are seeing is, you know, there's this moment that's happening right, where people are looking, they're looking left, they're looking right. They're saying, how much danger am I personally in? What do I need to do to not be the person who gets targeted? I'm going to trim my sales. Right. And that looks different in different places. It looks like Jeff Bezos declining to let the Washington Post endorse. It looks like some of what we're seeing with Joe and Mika on their show, it looks like companies who are kind of affirmatively changing their policies are trying to steer away from catching the attention of Trump or actively moving to kind of, you know, shovel a bribe in his direction or shovel, you know, do hire the people who will get a good word in his ear. Right. It looks like a lot of people in our society who are kind of of moving and lining up to secure their interests under a Trump administration instead of collectively forming that block for democracy. So that doesn't mean that things are lost. What it means is that we have to organize and we have to push people back into that posture. Right. Because fundamentally, there are a lot of institutions in American society that are going to be responsive to their stakeholders. And if our stakeholders, if we, the people who want democracy, are organized, then we are going to be able to push them back in the right direction. But it doesn't happen unless we do that organizing. Right. Because fundamentally, we know that power is going to have to come from people all over the country. It will not come from Washington D.C. it will come from people telling Washington D.C. what we need to see. That was a really core idea behind the original guide. There's a quote that I will always treasure as a foundational quote from a French politician, and I don't know anything almost about him at all, but French politician from the 1800s, he said, there go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader. And that is actually the kind of moment we're in. Right. There go the people. I must follow them, for I'm their leader. We are going to show people where we need them to be, and they will show. They will rush to lead once we've shown them that, and that is the moment that we're in.
- [43:43]
Yeah. Don't give these people power they don't have because you're worried they might have it. Yeah. Trump wants to govern as a dictator. Right. But he has the smallest possible congressional majority and an incredibly unpopular agenda. And we have to remember that he only won this election with 49.9% of the popular vote, and 90 million people just decided not to vote at all. Right. So none of that sets him up as a dictator for life. It doesn't make Project 2025 the law of the land, especially since he ran so explicitly on it not being his plan. It's going to look really, really terrible as it does. I think it's going to be infinitely worse than we're expecting. But I also think it will be even worse than that. If we just roll over and allow the things to happen, if we capitulate in advance, if we. We say, well, everyone's just rolling over, we may as well, too, because it'll keep us safe. I think we have to say, nope, we're not doing that. Not this time. Not ever.
- [44:37]
We gotta be pains in the pain in the asses for democracy. Right.
- [44:40]
Pains in the asses for democracy. Yeah. And then eventually, maybe our leaders will follow the people again. That would be marvelous.
- [44:47]
That's right. That's right. Well, and again, I think to your point, one of the things that consistently showed up that we heard from folks who were doing focus groups who were doing testing during the presidential election was that Trump, Trump's a core part of Trump's win came from people who simply did not believe that he was going to do the things that he was saying he was going to do, which is a super infuriating dynamic to be confronting in an election. Right. That voters are like, ah, he doesn't mean all that stuff. But once you are elected. You cannot maintain that separation. You are actually accountable for the agenda that you put in place. And the reality is that there are a lot of people who either didn't vote because they didn't think that there was that much of a difference between the parties, or people who did vote for Trump because they were frustrated about inflation, because they were frustrated about, you know, the post Covid, how things have been going, who are not part of that core fanatic MAGA base. Those are people who we actually can pull back with us, who we can reach out to and say, you know, look, this wasn't what you wanted. This isn't what we wanted. We're going to get together, we're going to collectively push back. Something better is possible.
- [45:51]
Yeah. Which is why it's so important that the Democrats reevaluate and reemerge as something different this time.
- [45:58]
Yeah, no, that's right. And I think one of the really hard things about that is we've got to recognize that we're in kind of a short term fight for democracy with people who are actively trying to, you know, actively trying to capture our institutions in order to claim power for ourselves. We're in a longer term fight to have democracy be something that matters to people. Right. To have the kinds of systems and institutions that deliver for people, people so that they believe that democracy is worth protecting and investing in. Because one of the hard things about this election cycle was we were warning people and the signs were out there, right, that this was who Donald Trump is and this is the threat he'd pose. And the reality is enough people are fed up, enough with the status quo and have enough distrust of the existing system that that did not land with enough people to put us over the finish line. So we have to actually think about what do we do to pull people back, back, not just to our side, not just for one election, but to a belief that democracy matters because it actually delivers the outcomes that they care about.
- [46:54]
Well put. Thank you so much for joining us today, Leah. I can't thank you enough for starting Indivisible and also for continuing to be in this fight with the rest of us who are going to have to encourage our friends and neighbors and family to join us and to be mass pains in the asses. So thank you so much for doing it. Thank you for the work you guys do. Please tell people how they can follow Indivisible help you and start their own groups.
- [47:15]
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. It is a pleasure to be here. If you are interested, if you would like to start a group or find a group that is local to you that you can go to the next meeting of and get get involved with. Go to indivisible.org we have got all the tools you need there to sign up. You can also sign up for our emails which will give you a weekly list of actions that you can take based on where you are most strategic things. You can contact Congress or your elected officials about whatever you need to know about what's moving. We try to keep you posted with the most strategic actions you can take. So indivisible.org to sign up and get involved in the movement.
- [47:48]
Yeah. Don't wait for somebody to tell you what to do. Don't go out there asking for permission. Become the leader you're waiting for. Right. And Indivisible will help you do that job 100%.
- [47:57]
That's what we're here for.
- [47:59]
Thank you so much Leah. I really appreciate you coming.
- [48:03]
Pleasure to be here. Thank you.
- [48:06]
Lee McGowan
So that was Indivisible's Leah Greenberg reminding us that the worst people in the world got together and made a deal to give themselves everything at our expense and we need to get together to take it back. Indivisible put together their guide as a short term defensive strategy for a long term goal. Hold the line for democracy in 2026 so we can still fight to restore democracy in 2028. She reminds us to encourage those in power not to capitulate, but to unite in their opposition to what's coming and to understand that change will won't ultimately come from Washington, but from the people that we might be feeling powerless as individuals, but as a collective we are unstoppable. Let us all be pains in the ass for democracy. It's not just morally right, it's strategically right. I want to thank Leah for joining us today and you for caring enough about this country to be here. Now go out and check out indivisible.org and start being annoying. Until next week.
- [49:03]
Leah Greenberg
PGA.
- [49:06]
Lee McGowan
Before you go, I just want to say if you're a premium member of this podcast or if you've joined recently, thank you. And if you're not, please consider supporting my work. The mainstream media has let us down and now more than ever, it is essential that those of us doing independent work are supported. I believe one of the main reasons this election has played out the way it did is the power of the right wing media ecosystem. It is so far reaching and well funded that their propaganda was extremely, extremely effective. The extremists have been able to shape the mindset of a fair amount of this nation. Our side just did not invest in independent voices like we needed to and we have to fix that. So if you aren't already a premium member, please consider going to politicsgirl.com and signing up. I cannot continue to do this work without your help. The beauty of signing up to support me is that you will get this podcast ad free along with all of my short rants sent directly to your inbox. So even if my work is silenced on social media, you will still get access to the Twitter. There is a link to sign up in the bio of this episode but also@politicsgirl.com thank you so much for your time and support and for caring about the truth and what's right in America.
- [50:12]
Leah Greenberg
The Politics Girl podcast is written and.
- [50:14]
Lee McGowan
Performed by me, Lee McGowan in partnership.
- [50:16]
Leah Greenberg
With the Midas Media Network and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.