If you’re concerned about Trump’s nominations, the most impactful thing you can do is to reach out to your US Senators and voice your opposition. A large volume of brief phone calls do make a difference at strategic times. Immediately after a nomination announcement is one of those strategic times, because they are figuring out how/whether to respond publicly. Democracy must be fought for even after elections have ended.
Contacting Senators from both parties also matters right now. The prevailing message in the media is that Dems need to cater even more to Republicans to win the next election, they need to hear your voice if you disagree with that.
The most effective phone calls take less than a minute: say your name, your city or ZIP code, and what you support/oppose, maybe a sentence on why. You’ll be marked down on a spread sheet that is discussed at the daily office strategy meeting.
Other actions like brief emails, meeting in-person at the district office, meeting in-person at the DC office, can also be effective, but take more time and energy. Emails aren’t always read right away like a phone call must be answered for example. And you generally need to make an appointment for an in-person meeting.
Resistance to authoritarian regimes takes many forms, I found the book Why Civil Resistance Works to be a very helpful analysis of different resistance movements and their tactics
I haven’t read this book, but I’m pretty skeptical of how they define nonviolent resistance and what makes a revolution “successful”
Are the revolutions they are principally utilizing, and that makes me think this book isn’t exactly the most academically honest study around.
The Iranian revolution had battles in the streets and plenty of deadly clashes with the Shahs regime. It also led the the largest political massacre in the country’s history.
The yellow revolution funded militant groups, featured a helicopter attack on the president’s compound, and only didn’t devolve into a massacre of civilians because a marine commander refused to participate in the wholesale slaughter of tens of thousands of people.
Led to the deaths of over a thousand civilians and is a precursor the the genocide we are currently witnessing.
Started fairly similar to the Philippine uprising, except their military commanders were perfectly fine massacring civilians, with a death toll of 3k-10k people…
I am willing to give this a read, but I would also suggest other people read “Setting Sites” by Scott Crow as a counterpoint.
The book does acknowledge and analyze the violent and nonviolent aspects of the resistance movements in the case studies, and how they impacted each other. Thanks for the suggestion on Setting Sites