Democratic Alliances

Let's Connect!

The first political organization I joined when I moved to Germany is Democrats Abroad. From there I attended meetings and after suggesting that we have a book club group to read Project 2025, we formed one. While it was miserable reading, the document helped us form a closer group, and shared understanding of what we would be facing in a Trump 2.0 administration. It also started us learning more about Christian Nationalism and far-right organization.

One of the best things we read to understand how well funded and connected the far right is Katherine Stewart’s book, Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. In it she points out that Democratic donors tend to fund individual candidates, while far right donors fund organizations created to and dedicated to spreading their agenda regardless of who is in power. They are well networked around the world, and they share training information and funding. We have watched Trump fund Milei, far right leader in Argentina with US citizens tax dollars. There are a lot of people who are being less obvious about where they spend their money, although enterprising people like Katherine Stewart are looking at who they are, as should we.

We also read George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson’s, Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism, which began in most of us an understanding of the appearance of far-right think tanks and how they legitimized ideas like, if the wealthy have huge tax cuts they will then fund the rest of society, even though it has proven to do the opposite. Wealth does not trickle down like that.

I had also been thinking that the Democratic politicians should be doing what the far right does by connecting around the world. US democratic politicians should also meet up with politicians in the rest of the world, and build alliances, and share donors and funding, only they should be democratic. No more American alone. We need allies, and those democratic alliances are the very alliances that Trump is destroying. So, I have been writing to my Democratic elected officials and suggesting this, as well as thinking of how I can be building bridges between the US and Europe where I live.

I am glad to say that I saw Governor Gavin Newsom doing this at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, and then Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doing it by meeting with a German SPD politician together at the Technical University of Berlin and talking to an audience of engaged students. I wrote a piece on it.

I became a member of Indivisible in the USA when I first became aware of it as an organization. It is a growing organization that is dedicated to promoting democracy and social justice in the USA. They are behind the No Kings Rallies. They have a campaign against Trump’s fascist police force, which is now a word that gets your social media checked if you write it. I think we should call them Not nICE!

I was on their email list for Indivisible Chicago, but could not attend most events because I am now mostly in Europe, not in the US. I was influenced by the Indivisible model to start some regular rallies in Bremen. What appealed to me is that they recommended starting locally. I was not sure what I could do, but I had been reading about organizing and what works. So, I decided to hold monthly rallies on the third Saturday of the month, in the afternoon, around the idea of Creating for Democracy. We were to gather and share creative responses to the current events in support of Democracy. It could be an essay, song, poem, visual art piece, performance piece, whatever. I just wanted to grow a group of Americans, Germans and others living here who care about democracy.

While one does not have to apply for holding a demonstration I did, just to be safe. That required me to take on legal responsibility for the safety of people, which I was willing to do. So, I applied to the city of Bremen department for for 8 months of rallies in a local park behind the art museum, and by a statue of the German Jewish writer and poet Heinrich Heine. He is considered a writer of the Romantic period, and his lyrical poetry was set to music by composers like Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. His outlaw status later on in life because he criticized the German government made him seem like a fitting companion to what we stood for. So, we started meeting there.

There are such groups in Italy and France who have morphed into Indivisible Abroad groups, but they have been around a long time. It was hard to do. I was back and forth too much to make these meetings consistent. This is also why I was not very organized because I needed to help my mother and to close up our house to put it on the market and missed many of these rally days. I had been hoping to start something regular that could grow.

When I was in the US in June I attended a No Kings Rally in Chicago. I could see the power of Indivisible’s organizing. I wrote about it in Live from Chicago. Little did I know then that Trump would ramp up things with ICE. He was threatening to send in the National Guard for the rally, but he did not. Still, we learned he meant business later that summer.

Before going to Chicago in the summer, I learned about Indivisible Abroad from a meeting I attended where some people were trying to start an Indivisible Germany. I heard about it from an American friend in Bremen who is very politically active and attended an Indivisible Abroad Germany meeting on Zoom where we talked about the budding group of Indivisible Abroad. At that point I think one had been started in England and they were going to be a model for starting local Indivisible groups in the rest of the world. I was viewing my rallies as a possible starting point for Indivisible Abroad in my city in Germany, but I had a lot of family responsibilities in the summer in the USA.

So, I went back to the USA in August and September. At that time the idea for a second No Kings Rally came about. It coincided with the day I had already scheduled for a rally, so no permission would need to be gotten, and we could just go ahead and turn the theme into No Kings! I discussed this with friends while I was away, knowing I would be back in time to attend at the beginning of October.

I returned to Germany shaken by the actions of ICE in Chicago, but determined to get things going. Then I got sick and a lot of people stepped in and worked hard to get the word out about the rally. For a city with what we believe has 800-1000 US residents, around 120 people showed up, which is great! People wanted to come together and connect and came from some nearby cities as well. It was very uplifting. We had some Germans there as well. Many of our families are a combination of Americans and Germans, and Germans were starting to really notice how awful Trump 2.0 is. We were even covered by a local media station, Buten un Binnen and had a member video the action. Here is a video of our rally in Bremen.

After that I had one more meeting scheduled in the park. A smaller group of us met in November, on a cold fall day and shared our feelings and some works of protest art, and ideas and feelings. We decided we wanted to continue to meet regularly and that we would meet indoors in January in the city central library.

Then in January a small group of us met at the local library and decided to form the group Indivisible Bremen. We feel that Indivisible is the umbrella under which we want to do political action. We agree that the goals and values of Indivisible Abroad fit with what we want to be able to do. I am grateful for these people for coming together because I know so many are Americans are feeling demoralized and this group still has energy to continue to do what we can to resist this regime and others like it. I finalized the paperwork and registered us later that day. I also suggested that members sign up for Indivisible Abroad. With this energy we can ignite the energy in others. I went to a party that evening and a friend said she was excited about Indivisible Bremen.

Most of us wanted to be able to be involved in issues that affect both the US and the country we are living in. We would like to collaborate with German democratic political parties in actions to support Democracy in the US and in Germany. There are many shared items. We want to join them in opposing both German and US far right parties and organizations. We also want to oppose Trump’s actions that impact the democracy of Europe and Germany together. We also welcome their support in standing up for democracy in the US.

It is exciting to be on the ground floor of a movement. I hope we can grow, that is one of the things we are committed to. Currently we are setting up our organization. We got a shout out in the Indivisible Podcast What’s the Plan, welcoming us to the Indivisible umbrella or organizations this week. They announce newly formed groups in the 5-10 minutes of the podcast. After announcing new groups in the US, they picked us as the new group Abroad. You can see us on the website even though we only have an email address for now. We hope to soon have our own webpage on the main Indivisible Abroad website soon. In the meantime we will be announcing our events on the newly created main Indivisible Abroad website. You can now see the Bremen group on the map in Germany, as well as Frankfurt.

In addition to being in Indivisible Bremen, members are encouraged to sign up for Indivisible Abroad. That way one can join the Signal chats and Slack group. There is also have an Economic Resistance committee that is working on a statement and boycotting actions. More established Indivisible Abroad groups have already started developing relationships with large Unions and political parties in their countries, or in other parts of Germany.

Those of us who live abroad have the opportunity to build bridges with the people of the countries in which we live. The far right has been networking like this for at least the last 40-50 years, and they have strong ties. Marco Rubio spoke his Trump policy words at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, and then went right to Hungary and Slovakia to talk with leaders Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico who seem more allied with the Kremlin and Putin than the European Union of which they are members. In the meantime, the German AfD party has been regularly sending members to the US to gain support from Trump and his cronies. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has been a regular go to person for the AfD.

After being with a member of the SPD, AOC was going to meet with members of Die Linke (the German Left party) which won the majority in Berlin in the last election in the area of the Humboldt University in the City Center. She said at her talk at the Technical University, know who your enemies are and join hands with the others. That is her modeling what she is saying. I hope she had a meeting with the Green party as well. The CDU was well represented at the Munich Security Conference so the opportunity was there. I know that Newsom took advantage of being there to recommend that people could get around Trump’s restrictions by making business deals directly with him. I am sure he was invited to meet with a lot of people. There are parties for whom I would never vote in Germany, but they are democratic still, and as such, politicians with which American Democrats should be meeting and aligning.

American Democratic politicians should also be inviting democratic politicians from other countries to meet, and putting this front and center in their media. The Conservatives have CPAC, their annual conference, which I believe they hold in Hungary now. Why cannot the Democrats create an annual conference, for which they sponsor younger and poorer members to go to another country that is known for its democracy and make world wide meetings of Democratic parties too.

What I am suggesting, is that we write to all of our Democratic politicians and ask them to be doing these things. We democratic Americans living abroad will do our part to build bridges with the people.

https://americangerman.institute/2025/12/the-afds-new-transatlantic-network/

https://indivisibleabroad.org/

https://indivisibleabroad.org/bremen.html

https://www.butenunbinnen.de/

https://www.notus.org/house/anna-paulina-luna-alternative-for-germany-invitation