Instead of disruption, let’s organize helpful protests

Civil society will need to protest Donald Trump‘s abuses of the Constitution and ruinous policies for nearly four more years. This long game requires a new form of resistance — one that isn’t just about highlighting abuses, but that actively counters the harms MAGA is doing to the nation.

Protests today are often about drawing attention, and sometimes they deliberately inconvenience others in order to do so. The problem with disruptive protesting, even when nonviolent, is that it traps protestors in an activist’s dilemma: Ratcheting up disruption and confrontation to attract journalists’ attention and pierce the haze of social media can also mean losing goodwill with their fellow citizens. What’s the point, for instance, of stopping traffic for miles by blocking a freeway in Los Angeles where less than a third of individuals voted for this creeping authoritarianism?  

Instead of disruption, we need helpful protests that can bond a nation rather than break it even further. Activists could plant urban forests while chanting climate change slogans. They could clear trails and collect trash to protest cuts to the National Park Services.

To highlight the silencing of critics by the Trump administration, protestors could donate money to whistleblower defense funds while joining night stargazing protests and silent disco headphone protests. Such actions would hopefully attract media attention because the public is looking for signs of hope and resistance, along with craving novelty. “Money where your mouth is” marches, countering claims of astroturfing, could encourage marchers to publicly donate to a cause while QR codes could urge witnesses and bystanders to join in. Activists who sign up for online “dollar jar” protests could give to the ACLU or to veteran’s groups every time Trump tweets something uncivil.

Protests are vital to citizens and democracy for at least three reasons. First, publicly airing grievances in this way alleviates some of the cognitive dissidence we experience when the nation we live in and love is doing horrible things in our name. Second, at their best — in the spirit of Henry David Thoreau’s objection to slavery and the Mexican-American War in his essay “Civil Disobedience” —  a protest can provide a shining moral clarity. Finally, protests are important because they can snowball, inviting others to join the cause.

Embedding aid or service into protest strengthens these aspects. By expressing disapproval in concrete ways, helpful protests can likely sear ethical lucidity into each of us more effectively and more often. Albert Camus believed that to rebel is to say no to injustice, which is simultaneously a positive act of solidarity. Helpful protests would take this to heart.

Helpful protests are also a more genuine invitation to join in activism. It’s a rare individual indeed who would take up a cause if a street protest made them late to work and got their pay docked. Confrontation also just puts some people off. Those individuals might feel more willing to express their political views publicly if they were not disrupting lives but assisting others instead. This is crucial if America’s nonviolent anti-MAGA movement is to reach critical mass. 

We should seek to fuse protest and volunteerism in fantastically creative ways. Protestors could clean permanent graffiti off the walls of cities and, in their place, leave temporary messages that wash off with the rain. Activists could paint roofs white to help mitigate extreme temperatures by reflecting UV rays, while lowering utility bills. In exchange for the help, building owners could allow such roof painting protestors to leave a reflective provocation viewable from airplanes. While not everyone has the money to fly or the luck to grab a window seat, we can nonetheless celebrate the work through social media as well as traditional media outlets. Plus, this artistic protest would have the added benefit of practicality, helping the environment.

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Some university students naturally want to protest their campus administrators. But even as they demand that their college presidents stand up for academic freedom and free speech on campus, they could hold fundraising drives for students affected by cuts to their fellowships and research funding. Students could hold CPR teach-ins to protest cuts to lifesaving medical research and tariff teach-ins to instruct individuals how to sew, cook and repair household goods.

Lawyers can provide those under attack by the administration with pro bono representation. They can also publicly commit to matching the volunteer assistance pledged by new law firms joining the resistance.  

With each wave of injustice, new forms of protest often emerge to meet the moment, and we need to find our own. A strong foundation, of course, exists. In the Civil Rights Movement, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned breaking unjust laws openly, cheerfully, lovingly and civilly, while willingly accepting the penalty. Mohandas K. Gandhi spun his own cloth in protest against British rule. Opposition to the Vietnam War gave us teach-ins. Activists tried to plant trees to protest turning an urban forest into a “Cop City” police training site in Atlanta. There’s inspiration too in guerilla gardening, cultivating vegetables or flowers on land not owned by gardeners. As food justice activist Karen Washington says, “Growing food is an act of resistance.”

Volunteering has, after all, always been a kind of protest: The volunteer doesn’t accept the world as it is and enlists to change it for the better. But I’m not suggesting — as others have — that we channel anti-MAGA energy into volunteer work. Or, worse, turn existing volunteer action into protest platforms. Those needing help at a food bank shouldn’t hear our thoughts on politics. George Orwell detested the sermons that came with tea and bread when he was destitute in London.

As a socialist, Oscar Wilde argued against providing tangible, immediate aid to those in need because it would reduce the chances of long-term systemic political change. In his view, charity obscured how government has failed the poor. Helpful protests can solve, or at least alleviate, this tension by helping while also calling attention to political reform.  

In these dangerous times, we need more protest — and more methods of protest. Those opposing MAGA need to channel their creative energy and depth of generosity as effectively as mass protests harness anger and outrage. If we’re to figure out how to meet this moment,  we need to explore the full continuum of protest ideas and, in doing so, sustain our republic.