On the 1 year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, I am releasing some preliminary findings from the 2021 Indivisible Census. As I’ve written elsewhere and documented with data collected from participants at BLM protests in summer 2020, and with data from the American Resistance dataset, the murder of George Floyd was a turning point for the movement against systemic racism in the US (see also the discussion in a new piece in Politico today).

The 2021 Indivisible Census, which closed earlier this month, provides more evidence about the ways that White Allies have joined the call to end systemic racism in America (note that the Indivisible network is made up predominantly of highly educated, middle aged White women). When asked what issues are motivating their political work, we see a clear shift in priorities for Indivisibles: many more are motivated by issues of Police Brutality and Racial Justice and fewer are motivated by Trump (who is no longer president).

Across the country, while efforts to limit voting have been introduced in most states and gained substantial attention, more than 80 bills have been simultaneously been introduced in 34 states that aim to reduce citizen’s right to assemble and protest.  These attacks on the very foundation of democratic participation—voting and peaceful assembly—are the most recent example of a coordinated effort by the Right to target policies at the state-level while all eyes are on a new Democratic President and his high-profile efforts to implement progressive change at the federal level.

My new piece discussing what these bills mean and how they are hollowing out democracy from the state-level up is now available at Business Insider.

Last night, the 2021 Indivisible Census opened. The Census is collecting data on the Indivisible Network to see how this Resistance group has grown over the past year. It will provide insights into the priorities of the network in terms of who is participating, what they are doing, and what is motivating them. Here’s a map of respondents from the 2020 Census (14,144 members of the network participated). Hopefully we’ll get a similar response this year or even more!

I posted a piece with this name right after the midterm elections in November 2018 and, after it came up in a conversation with Danielle Kurtzleben on NPR about the future of the Resistance, it seems like a good time to revisit it.

With yesterday’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States, the 2020 election is finally behind us. As executive orders are signed to replace some of the most unpopular of Trump’s policies, we need to ask ourselves (again): Will the Resistance join the Graveyard of democratic politics? History suggests that progressive political movements lose their potency after Democratic electoral wins.  Just look at the post-9/11 anti-war movement and the Obama campaign in 2008 for evidence.  Although some called the campaign to elect Barack Obama a movement to elect the first Black president, the campaign’s infrastructure (which became Organizing for America) was subsumed into the Democratic party quickly after the inauguration.  The grassroots army of activists celebrated as the future of grassroots organizing was swiftly disarmed into a cadre of donors and phone bankers.  Will the Resistance meet a similar fate?

Before the 2020 election November, I conducted another wave of follow-up surveys with participants in the American Resistance. Some preliminary findings from that survey was published on election day in the Washington Post. Overall, the data showed that many resisters continued to be politically active through fall 2020 and that they had channeled their activism into working for the election.

In part thanks to these efforts, the 2020 election had record turnout with two-thirds of registered voters participating. But what happens to a movement that has been laser focused on one election after that election is over?  Leaders of Resistance groups have developed strategies to keep fighting and channel their members’ enthusiasm into specific political and legislative campaigns now that the Democrats hold the majorities in both houses of the Congress and the Presidency, but will the ground troops continue to follow their lead?

At this point, it is too soon to tell.  History provides a cautionary tale, but the sting of the past few years and the very real threat of the Radical Right may just provide sufficient incentive to stay engaged.

Today, the electors will meet to cast their votes for the 2020 Election. While many people who have been involved in the American Resistance since Donald Trump took office expected to be seeing light at the end of a four-year long tunnel, there is growing evidence that we are entering a dark place where violent conflict fueled by conspiracy theories against our democracy are rampant.

I spoke to Annie Gowan at the Washington Post on Friday about how we got here for her piece on public officials being targeted by activists: “What we’re seeing is an escalation, so that instead of people calling each other nasty names and cursing each other out on Twitter or Parler, instead they’re doing it in person while holding weapons…The country is at risk of serious armed confrontation in the days to come.” The original quote said that we were at risk of slipping into a Civil War (a not unlikely continuation of our country’s current path).

Since the interview, videos have circulated social media from this weekend’s protests in Washington, DC where Trump supporters were joined by Proud Boys who clashed with counter protesters. There will be a lot of discussions about who fanned the flames of this type of violence in the coming days and weeks. Unfortunately, what we saw this weekend is almost definitely only the beginning.

This week has been a rollercoaster as the 2020 election continues. Although a national day of action to send a message to #ProtectTheResults had been called for Wednesday, the organizers called off the mobilization while states continued to count their mail-in ballots. Instead, only a small number of protests took place in urban areas, with relatively small “rolling protests” in the nation’s capital.

On Tuesday, I published a piece that summarized findings from a follow-up survey with Resisters (those whom I originally surveyed in the streets protesting the Trump Administration and its policies starting after the inauguration in January 2017 and including the 3rd Women’s March in January 2019). The piece discusses how priorities have changed for these activists. Police brutality / Black Lives Matter is now the most common motivation with 76% of Resisters reporting it to be a motivation for their political work and activism.

In addition to these shifting motivations, the article notes that Resisters (who are predominately highly educated middle-aged White women) have continued to be very civically engaged. As of the end of October, 81% had reported voting in the past year (in primaries and/or early voting). These rates are much higher than the national average participation in a presidential election. Beyond voting, all indicators suggest that, no matter who wins the election once the final votes are tallied, we should continue to expect a lot of political participation from Resisters.