NOTE: As of July 22, we updated this post to include the videos from the class sessions. Watch the playlist of lectures above.
I have my doubts about whether we should call regular acts of civic duty “resistance,” rather than Constitutionally-protected democratic freedoms. Yesterday we remembered Martin Luther King, Jr. on the 49th anniversary of his assassination (and the 50th anniversary of his speech opposing the Vietnam War). As King and countless other civil rights and anti-war campaigners have demonstrated—some at the cost of their lives—civil disobedience is very often required and morally justified when legal appeals for justice fail. But for better or worse, “The Resistance” has become a catch-all media term for a loose and very often fractious collection of mainstream Democrats, progressives, and radicals of all stripes, whose tactics range from polite phone lobbying to brawling with white supremacists in the streets.
Millions of people who formerly had little to no involvement in politics have thrown themselves into activism, and veteran organizers have been overwhelmed with new recruits. Just as quickly, those organizers have met the challenge by disseminating guides for lobbying representatives, running for office, and participating in more direct forms of action.
Every movement has its resident scholars and educators, whether they be erudite laypeople, professional academics, or enterprising college students. A group from the latter category, “progressive students,” writes CNN, from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, begin today what they’re calling “Resistance School,” a “4‑week course in anti-Trump activism… open to people across the country and the world.” (You can watch the video from the course above.)
At their site, the students bill “Resistance School” as a series of “practical skills for taking back America” and open their online syllabus with a quote spuriously attributed to Thomas Jefferson: “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” It’s possible that whoever said it had bloodier things in mind. Resistance School sticks to peaceful means, with four sessions that teach, in order, “How to Communicate our Values in Political Advocacy,” “How to Mobilize and Organize our Communities,” “How to Structure and Build Capacity for Action,” and “How to Sustain the Resistance Long-Term.” Instructors are drawn from the ranks of academia, labor organizing, and the Obama administration, and you can stream the sessions on the school’s site or on Facebook, or attend in person.
The Resistance School is sure to attract criticism, not only from the expected sources but from more anti-establishment factions on the left. But that may be unlikely to deter the more than 10,000 people who have registered for the first class. Organizers have encouraged people to attend in groups, and currently have about 3,000 groups enrolled. “Some are coming with groups of 700 people,” says co-founder Shanoor Seervai, “some are smaller groups, potlucks, gathering in people’s kitchens.”
Servaai and fellow Kennedy School students have been taken aback and are now, writes CNN, “grappling with questions of scale.” How, they wonder, will such large numbers of people coordinate; how to measure the impact of the program?.… questions, perhaps, they will resolve by the fourth session, “How to Sustain the Resistance Long-Term.” But they’re certainly not alone in trying to steer a massive surge of new interest in activism and electoral politics. As the millions now planning and participating in civil actions across the country attest, people have begun to take to heart sentiments recently expressed by organizer Alice Marshall: “If we wait for some great leader to save us we are lost. We have to save ourselves.”
Related Content:
Henry David Thoreau on When Civil Disobedience and Resistance Are Justified (1849)
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
Progressives are a blight on history and will not be remembered well. Representative democratic decisions have been the most destructive in the world ever, if Trump weren’t an insider and obsessed with his popularity and not principles, he would dismantle the United States and its military empire.
I think people SHOULD “resist” this President, because he’s demonstrated in under 100 days that he’s a complete incompetent, and a danger to human life. How Republicans in Congress can stomach this, I have no idea. Surely even they see that this boat anchor is going to drag them under.
(This is in clear contrast to the inexcusable whining and wailing that went on from election day to his first few weeks in office).
I wanted to take the class but they said I wasn’t eligible because I passed Logic and Econ 101.
How do I register for the class?
Wish so many sites I enjoy didn’t out themselves as gullible idiots. Not everyone who enjoys music, film, and literature are indoctrinated liberals; you sites best remember that lest you lose your ad revenue.
The assumption that only indoctrinated liberals appreciate art and culture comes from the arrogant belief they have the only valid moral positions. Don’t presume to own art culture, regardless of high profile artists who agree with your positions. They don’t own art either. Beliefs evolve — some change, some are reinforced. We are politically nuanced; I’m a tree hugging, arts supporting, anti-discrimination against LGBT, anti-capital punishment pro-defense, pro-sovereignty conservative.
The closed minded left can keep their homogeneous ideas of what it means to be an artist.
In 1980 & 1990. I participated with the International Community of Students sessions at Tufts University, Medford, MA. “In a pioneering effort to promote authentic images of Soviets & Americans in each other’s countries and to correct distortions about each countries history & national character, a jointly taught college course has been developed for students @ Tufts U. in Medford, Massachusetts and M. V. Lomonosov U. in Moscow. The project is te brainchild of Tufts U. President Jean Mayer, who last year wrote to General Secretary Gorbachev to suggest that groups of Soviet and American students be taught with the same reading lists and sylabi. One of the primary goals of the course, says American professor and Director of Tuft’s Nuclear Age History and Humanities Center, Martin Sherwin, is to understand each others views, to learn wat they think and why they think it A satellite link will allow students to participate in joint discussions about te history of the nuclear age and the social and psychological impact of the arms race.” Once in a while the business pages of different publications report developments that substantiate the objectives the International community of students fields of research have initiated. Walter McCarthy April 29, 2017, Boston, Massachusetts
What is your point Walter?
I would like to sign up for this first time free online course. Please help me to do so.
Thank you very much