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Written by Liz Moore

On Election Night, I went to bed not knowing the results, intentionally giving myself that time. Early in the morning I woke up, picked up my phone, and saw a text message from my best friend with an emoji of a broken heart, and I knew. As I took in the news of the Presidential election results, I felt myself in horror, grief, alarm, dread, and fear. As I read messages from friends and talked with my sons, I noticed that my body was reacting to 2016’s election results and now as if they were simultaneous and the same. Two sets of election results was too much to feel! In the days that followed, I wanted to try to “be with what is,” to honor my 2016 feelings that were still in my system as well as my reactions to this current moment. I wanted to distinguish between the two with accuracy to support my desire and ability to face and enter this real moment effectively. I began writing this for greater clarity and I hope you find it useful as well.

What’s different about 2024 vs 2016, in Spokane and nationally?

First, in Spokane, we have significantly more community-based capacity now than we did in 2016. Many organizations now staffed and active did not exist in 2016 or were all-volunteer. Our region’s progressive landscape now includes Spokane Community Against Racism, Latinos En Spokane, and Spectrum Center Spokane — all with several staff — as well as the Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition (one staff) and Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (several staff). All of these organizations and networks did not exist in 2016. Asians for Collective Liberation, as Asian Pacific Islander Coalition, and Nuestras Raices, as Hispanic Business Professionals Association, were all volunteer and now have several staff. Back in 2016, PJALS had only 2 staff! Now our team is 5 full time positions and 3 part time positions! This includes two Youth Organizers, Digital Organizer, Operations Coordinator, Development Director, and, as of this month, two Organizer positions! Our “race-class education for action” program BOLD did not yet exist. Our Young Activist Leaders Program was much smaller. We are stronger now in our own organization and across our progressive landscape than we were then.

Second, as a community, we now have important victories under our belt which have built, tested, and shaped relationships, skills, and organizational and movement capacity. Just to name a few: defeated the anti-immigrant profiling initiative in 2017; ended Border Patrol boarding buses at the Intermodal Station through organizing and legal strategy; and defeated the jail expansion sales tax in 2023. I’m so grateful to the organizations and individuals who were essential to these victories.

Third, our region has important shifts in funding resources. Inatai Foundation was not funding in Spokane in 2016; now they are very significant funders of many many community-based groups that do organizing and services in alignment with their mission to “transform the balance of power to ensure equity and racial justice across Washington and beyond.” Empire Health Foundation and Empire Health Community Action Fund are also now funding “community power building and grassroots advocacy” in our region.

For more on what we did and learned 2016-2020, jump here.

 

In terms of our elected officials, we are in a similar or stronger position than in 2016.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is replaced by Rep. Michael Baumgartner. Rep. Natasha Hill replaced former-Rep. Marcus Riccelli. Senator Riccelli is now in the state Senate and is Senate Majority Leader (replacing Sen. Andy Billig). Incoming Governor Bob Ferguson was Washington’s Attorney General with a strong record of challenging and defeating the first Trump Administration in court. With incoming Attorney General Brown, we know the Washington AG’s office has been preparing for a Trump administration for a year.

Across the country, states like Washington and cities like Spokane with progressive, forward-thinking leadership are more prepared to slow or oppose the implementation of Trump’s policies.

In 2016, only 6 states had Democratic trifectas in state government; now, 15 states do. That’s 147,000,000 people and giant economies. This is no panacea, but it is clear potential for organized state policy power and corporate policy power. (source)

These dynamics bring to mind a mentor’s saying: Struggle builds strength. Because of our community’s organizing on the ground in Spokane, we have more grassroots strength now than in 2016. 

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We also have some consistent needs.

We are still in need of greater legal capacity in many domains of civil legal aid, and I believe we need an organized network of attorneys who can represent nonprofits targeted by the Trump Administration’s attacks on our ability to organize.

One consistent need is to do more to counter white Christian nationalist organizing locally.

One form of this need is to monitor and track local paramilitary and militia groups. While our region is fortunate to be the home of several experts with strong community relationships, the specific day-to-day tracking needs more capacity, which could be done by trained volunteers, who also need excellent self-care to sustain this work given the impact of frequent views of white nationalist content. I would also like to see PJALS offering more robust support and connection to activists countering white Christian nationalism in their own small towns and communities in NE Washington.

Race-Class analysis, as we teach in our BOLD program, is a consistent need locally and nationally.

We need more and more people with a deeper understanding of how class exploitation and systemic racism are one two-headed monster. Without that understanding, white people in particular are vulnerable to racist manipulation and fear-mongering.

The Trump administration and the powers behind it seem more organized and ready at the beginning of this term.

The Heritage Foundation, a long-standing right-wing think tank, has put forward Project 2020, which many have heard of, as well as Project Esther, which many have not. Project Esther is “a far-right, McCarthyist attack on our democratic norms and values.” It calls for “using tools including anti-terrorism and anti-racketeering criminal prosecution; deportations; public firings; removal of tax-exempt status; blocking of funding; and campaigns to sow discord within movements to “disrupt and degrade’” “any domestic group that supports Palestinian rights” as well as “a much broader ‘coalition of leftist, progressive organizations such as Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation and numerous others.’”

As many already know, Project 2025 lays out a plan to dismantle core functions of the federal government to protect rights, education, health, and the earth. With each new announced appointment, we see Trump advancing this aim. Many people are aware of this agenda, which is an advantage and can be used to anticipate, and to some degree plan to counter, the policy violence that will come.

Palestine solidarity is a consistent need.

Opposing US imperialism in the form of funding and support for the Israeli genocide on Palestinians was extremely difficult under the Biden presidency and promises to be even more difficult under Trump-Vance, as witness Trump’s appointments. It is a moral imperative to continue to show up and speak out for Palestine liberation. This will require tenacity and creativity.

Because this Trump Adminstration comes in the wake of campus crackdowns on student protests against that genocide, it’s incredibly important to “push college administrations to protect the rights of every member of the student body regardless of immigration status or gender identity, as well as the right to protest and the right to receive an open education, rather than whitewashed, nativist, Christian nationalist propaganda before the new administration is sworn in.” (source)

A consistent reality regarding leadership and narrative is that our movement can never rely on Democratic Party leadership to deliver the narratives we need.

This is not only because both mainstream parties advance imperialism and corporate power. While we can and must recognize the stark differences between the parties when it comes to reproductive rights and labor rights (among other differences), we need to use an anti-imperialism lens as Americans as well as an analysis of corporate power and class exploitation. But we also need to recognize that, while progressive, committed individuals may choose to run as Democrats, the politics of the party are merely liberal and pro-corporate. The narratives we need to advance in order to unite with more and more everyday people and to build our movement for racial justice, economic justice, human rights, and peace can only come from within our movement. Candidates and electeds can echo our narratives, but the grassroots movement needs to be on the mic and amplified.

Narrative is a key strategy to meet one of the roles of leaders and organizers named by Marshall Ganz as “Interpreter.” To move from confusion to understanding, an organization or community needs not just information but a shared answer to the question “what does this information mean?” For example, it’s a fact that attacks to dehumanize and scapegoat immigrant communities, Black people, and trans folks played a key role in this election. What does that mean? Some party leaders are interpreting it to mean they should move away from immigrant communities, Black people, and trans folks. NO. We need to shout and act out our collective interpretation: we do not allow scapegoating to go unchallenged. We do not allow dehumanization to result in isolation. We listen more, we get closer, we act sooner and more consistently in commitment and solidarity.

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Three Key Orientations Going Forward 

1. Organize and build our base

I agree with and want to lift up North Star Socialist Organization’s call to counter “the MAGA-Trump-Vance campaign in ways that build the Left and a base for future struggles. To do that, we call on Leftists in the US to Build a powerful organizational base that your organization is accountable to and can mobilize. …There is no victory against MAGA or neoliberals without millions of organized people, and there is no defending any kind of victory without the people to back it up. … If you are in a membership organization, deepen the base and its ability to exert leadership in the organization and in the movement. And then build solidarity across organizational bases. Test the organization’s power in campaigns and in the election.”(emphasis mine)

A base-building approach to organizing is more than mobilizing. It means building commitments to each other and strategically building real organization, as Marshall Ganz explains. “Winning an organizing campaign is typically one goal of three, and the others are strengthening the organization and building leadership.” (source) This is one reason our PJALS community gatherings, as well as our committee meetings and workshops, are core to our strategy this fall and going forward.

An essential part of base-building is education for action. As the axiom goes, we don’t organize to educate; we educate to organize. Our movement-building education for action is both an open door to welcome people newly or more deeply conscious as well as a way of “sharpening the saw” for long-term activists and organizers. I see a need for education on legal rights and bystander intervention as well as race-class analysis. In addition, we need to build our ability to see and act against the deep, long-standing anti-Blackness in our culture of white supremacy. In our predominantly white region, it is essential to deepen and broaden the understanding that racial justice is a strategic imperative. And, I have found that education on embodiment and politicized somatics is transformational in our mind-vs-body, hyper-individualized, exploitative culture.

2. Challenge Systemic Power

It’s essential to understand how scapegoating immigrant communities operates in our political and economic landscape. “Deportation in the United States is not just an immigration issue; it is a tool of racial and economic control. Resisting deportation is not just about stopping raids or disrupting ICE operations; it is about challenging the deeply entrenched systems of racialized violence and exclusion that define US immigration policy.”

Chicago organizers wrote in Resisting Mass Deportation Under Donald Trump: Here in Chicago, we’ve developed effective, grassroots strategies for defending our immigrant communities:“Local governments and communities must take bold action to challenge the systems that criminalize our neighbors…. At the core of this resistance is grassroots organizing. … enacting comprehensive and robust sanctuary-city policies, organizing neighbors to engage in direct action to protect their immigrant neighbors, and building networks of mutual aid and solidarity.”  The authors call for:

      • Training huge numbers of people how to identify ICE in our communities and how to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience;
      • Inform neighbors of their fundamental constitutional rights and what to do if ICE came to their door, workplace, or neighborhood, through activities such as doorknocking
      • Calling on elected officials who represent immigrant communities to make Know Your Rights education and deportation defense work part of the core constituent service offered by their district offices.
      • Calling on elected officials in local and state governments to “adopt robust local noncooperation policies with ICE. It is not enough to declare our cities, states, and public institutions as sanctuaries—we must ensure that local and state laws protect undocumented communities from ICE by prohibiting information sharing and collaboration with ICE, including by third-party contractors.”

During the first Trump Administration, the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network led the successful campaign to pass the Keep Washington Working Act and the Courts Open to All Act. But a 2021 report documented “Collaboration between police departments and federal immigration enforcers has persisted around Washington.” We must hold our elected officials and local agencies accountable to comply with these state laws.

We also must continue to counter the expansion of mass incarceration and the strategically racist use of “law and order” messaging. As Eric Ward writes, this is a tool of authoritarianism: “The rhetoric of ‘law and order’ has been weaponized to justify heightened policing, surveillance, and suppression, disproportionately affecting Black communities.”

Our region, like many, is home to a Joint Terrorism Task Force, formed for the express purpose of information sharing between local, state, and federal law enforcement. Not only is this a structure through which local information is shared with immigration enforcement, it is also a structure that has been used to investigate “peaceful advocacy organizations.” In light of the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther and the House bill that could punish nonprofits over alleged “terrorist” ties, it is critical that our organizations do not engage in relationships with law enforcement, do not rely on law enforcement for community safety, have legal support at the ready, and have a crystal clear understanding of our rights to our full range of activities (for which Bolder Advocacy is an excellent resource).

3. Share Resources to Meet Key Needs and Show Up for Targeted People

One strategy to share resources is Mutual Aid. As the authors of Resisting Mass Deportation Under Donald Trump describe it: “While grassroots organizing for direct action and passing noncooperation policies are crucial to challenging Trump’s deportation regime, mutual aid is an equally important part of the strategy. Mutual aid networks are community-led efforts to meet the needs of undocumented migrants and their families, covering everything from providing food and shelter to offering legal assistance. By providing tangible support, mutual aid not only helps people survive; it also builds solidarity and strengthens community ties. Mutual aid doesn’t just alleviate the immediate suffering caused by deportation policies—it fosters long-term, interdependent relationships within communities, making it harder for the government to target individuals when they have widespread, organized support.

Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network and local organizations including Nuestras Raices, Asians for Collective Liberation, Muslims for Community Action and Support, as Latinos en Spokane are the best sources of requests for policy advocacy, rapid response, and mutual aid in support of immigrant safety and rights.

Mutual aid such as abortion access funds like NW Abortion Access Fund provide transportation, lodging, and access to healthcare services. Funding for access to life-saving gender-affirming services and other forms of mutual aid will be essential.

Showing up in solidarity with targeted communities also means sharing the resources of our bodies, in the form of doing what we’re asked to do. PJALS is in the process of meeting with leaders of organizations based in targeted communities so that we can hear what kinds of support are desired, plan what actions to take in response to that direction, and be more ready to amplify requests and calls to action.

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Conclusion

Now in mid-December, horror and grief are still with me and I know I’ll continue to feel those emotions and more. I didn’t write this to numb or squelch feeling; I wrote it to process with my heart and head and to learn from our past experiences. I continue to learn and to evolve my assessment.

The axiom “Struggle builds strength” is a more accurate saying than the more rally-esque “When we fight, we win!” When we fight, we have the possibility of winning. When we fight, we have the possibility of reducing harm. Several things are simultaneously true: no one can do everything. Every person can take some effective action. During the first Trump administration I often thought, it’s so important to be as strategic as possible with our limited energy, and at the same time, we don’t know exactly what will work, and I do believe nothing is wasted. We can only make our best assessments of what strategies will create the results we want.

Now it is important to use our energies to ask ourselves the questions PJALS Community Organizer Shantell Jackson has been offering: What is your dream for yourself and your community? In service of that vision, what is your commitment? What will you commit to for the window between now and Inauguration? What will you commit to for the first 100 days? What will you commit to on an ongoing basis? These are resonant and practical questions. These are commitments to ourselves and to each other. Our commitments are worthy of explicit discussion so that we can make clear agreements and have shared expectations, both initially and as our commitments need to evolve when conditions shift.

I am grateful for our ancestors of blood and bone and of chosen lineage for the big and little things they did to bring us to this moment, with the many kinds of visible and invisible resources we hold. I hope that sharing this analysis is useful for our shared commitment to reduce harm, defy authoritarianism, dismantle white supremacy and patriarchy, amplify calls to meaningful action, and build our movement.

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Resources

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What lessons can PJALS learn from what we did in 2016-2020?

 

We were findable so people could make their first membership donation, join the email list, and connect on social media – we see this happening now as well!
We expanded key staffing in 2017, with the top priority first which was Development Coordinator. We started with a half-time position because that’s what we could be confident about funding. We continue to expand staffing when we can project sustainable funding.
In organizing against the 2015-2017 anti-immigrant profiling initiative that would have allowed any city employee (2000+ people) to inquire about anyone’s citizenship status and report information to ICE:
  • We pushed back on assertions that white people should be in the lead. We sought and built relationships with leaders and activists of targeted communities.
  • We supported campaign values that centered impacted people explicitly
  • We educated our PJALS base about this measure for two years, from initial mobilization in 2015 through the ballot year of 2017, putting it in context of Trump’s agenda and us being part of stopping it on a local level, so that when it was time to mobilize to educate voters, we were ready.
  • This victory stopped the state-level ambitions of the right-wing group behind the initiative.
We mobilized to support actions called for by Raiz, SIRC, SCAR, and other groups led by impacted people, in three ways:
  • PJALS Peacekeeper Teams of trained volunteers de-fused and de-escalated potentially volatile situations
  • We publicized these actions to our base who would not have heard about them otherwise.
  • Our PJALS community turned out and showed up, again and again!
We improved our communications systems and capacity.
  • We moved to a better database, designed for what we do; we gained the capability to generate emails and petition signatures on our own action stations. We gained texting capability!
  • We hired dedicated communications staff — the marvelous Bex Lyonne, Digital Organizer!
We expanded our Education for Action offerings:
  • Bystander Intervention trainings to interrupt racist and anti-LGBTQ behaviors and actions
  • How to be an ally to American Muslims: understanding and opposing Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism
  • Interrupting anti-Asian racism – with Asians for Collective Liberation
  • Education about the Trump-Pence agenda and key players such as Steve Bannon
  • Race-Class education through our BOLD program

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