Resistance

What is it good for? Absolutely everything!

If you are going to resist now is the time. We should take note of the resistance movements around us as well as our own and see what is working and amplify it.

In the 1970s women in Iceland were fed up with their treatment in society, and the fact that they were not paid as well as men. They planned a strike, which took years to do, because they were not allowed to strike if they were not part of a union, and they were not in occupations that were unionized, least of all being at home taking care of the house and children. So, on October 24 Icelandic women went on strike to protest these unfair labor conditions. The strike was known as the “Women’s Day Off” (Kvennafrídagurinn) and had around 90% participating.

There was no telephone service, no newspapers were printed. The country got to see the effects of removing women’s work. Schools closed because most of the teachers were women. This led to men having to take their children to work and take care of household tasks they did not normally do. Instead of doing their “jobs” women hit the streets in massive numbers and the organizers gave speeches that rallied the women around their cause of equity in working conditions. It has had the effect of Iceland being one of the countries with the best working parity between women and men.

In South Korea, President Yoon Suk Yeol was removed for declaring Marshall Law on the people because it was an illegal action. Now, having been indicted, he could possibly get the death penalty or life in prison. This came about because the people took to the streets and did not accept his actions, and insisted he be removed. They are also considering whether he should be removed from office. He was rebelling against a more liberal assembly who he sent military in to drag out of the National Assembly so that they would not thwart his actions. This seems to be a move for illiberal leaders to use the military to control the nation. The people mobilized and showed that they did not want to go back to autocratic rule. The actions of the people are what all autocrats fear. Let the resistance of the South Korean people give us strength for the resistance we must engage in to save the US.

In Germany the has been an agreement among the parties that are considered democratic not to align with the right wing AfD party which is currently getting support from Elon Musk. He has anointed them as the party that can “save Germany.” This along with his Nazi salute reveal his politics and why Germans should have nothing to do with him. However, after seeing the money that Musk can throw at a party, and the exposure they can get on his global megaphone X, Musk had the CDU/CSU and the FDP parties slavering after some Musk money and attention and they told him that he should consider them too. Of course this was tone deaf on their parts, because Musk does not want Nazi-lite, but the full on fascism that Alice Weidel AfD candidate for German Chancellor brings. Why is it that people do not see through the hypocrisy of illiberal leaders? Wiedel with Lebensborn-like blonde hair, and blue eyes rails against immigrants who are non-White in Germany, while sharing a Swiss household with her brown skinned Sri-Lankan born wife and their two adopted sons. On Wednesday the CDU proposed an immigration bill that reverses the position their earlier leader Angela Merkel had taken of welcoming immigrants. Friedrich Merz, their potential chancellor candidate, widely expected to win the election next month, defended that his party voting together with the AfD on this bill which would put Germany out of compliance with EU law and international laws. He had broken the fire wall, which is that Democratic parties in Germany will not collaborate with the AfD.

This Immigration Influx Limitation law would lead to families being separated, a seeming favorite of fascist leaders because of the extreme pain and terror it poses, and continuous border checks. As a protesting woman put it, “we demonstrated to take the walls down, and now they want to put them back up. It makes no sense.” referring to the coming down of the Berlin wall that had successfully divided Germany in two. Musk’s interference has helped to inflame Germans too with his support for the AfD and his Nazi salutes. He has so outraged people here that there is a schedule of demonstrations every day around the country against right wingers. I signed a petition telling CDU not to put this law to the floor, but that was ignored and it won acceptance to be voted on with a small majority. Then, two days later was the vote on the bill itself, so that day I joined a campaign to write letters to CDU representatives asking them not to vote on a bill together with the AfD, as they had the day before, and also people countrywide had demonstrations in front of CDU headquarters, in front of the Parliament in Berlin. The bill was defeated, so even though the CDU voted with AfD on a bill, enough of their members abstained from voting that it did not pass. The pressure campaigns were local. Victory for the people!

Another outcome of the Musk interference in European politics and supporting illiberal parties or leaders in countries like Germany, Britain, and Italy is that the Tesla is getting a bad reputation amongst the democratic citizens. Poland has called for a boycott on Teslas because Musk is associating himself with Nazi apologists. The impact of Musk’s behaviors on his brands in Europe is negative. An architect friend of ours sold his Tesla because it was bad for his image to drive one. He has replaced it with a Chinese E-car. In Germany Rossmann the owner of the second largest dime store like chain in Germany said he would no longer use Teslas for his business fleet.

In Croatia with grocery prices rising, people decided to boycott supermarkets last Friday. These stores include Lidl long known for price gouging since Covid in collusion with other Austrian chains, making groceries in Austria more expensive than in Germany with the same Lidl stores. The stores had about 30-50 percent fewer people on that day. This boycott has spread through social media to Balkan countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and North Macedonia. While we do not know the outcome, there is a promise to continue action and that it will lead to other actions against businesses that are considered too expensive. This is a round about way of getting politicians to do either price subsidization or price controls in other ways, but they must get involved in the prices if businesses cannot stay open, or have to cut back on workers. This method if successful, should be adopted in the US too. It might not reduce the price of eggs as long as there is Avian flu and it is not controlled, but it might force subsidization in some step of the process to make groceries affordable for more people.

In the United States Trump ignored his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and released a draconian number of Executive Orders all at once. That had the effect of alarming the entire country, I suspect even Trump voters were getting a taste of “not what I bargained for” with the sweeping nature of the reach. If he had rolled them out more slowly I think people would have been less inclined to resist. Instead Trump was met with immediate resistance, and a Republican judge put the freeze on his freeze. Judges doing their job is a form of resistance in a nation with a fascist leader, and the people tirelessly working to bring lawsuits against the illegal doings of this administration are a form of resistance that we can support.

Freezing money from the largest health care program in the US, would not only mean that we will have a sicker society, but might shut down the very hospitals and doctors that the wealthy use too, and certainly cut back on the treatment and care that can be provided. That shock to the system would in turn affect retail businesses because on all ends there would be that much money taken out of the economy. In fact, freezing all of those funds took money out of the economy on a scale that can conceivably shut many businesses down, and it doesn’t take rocket science to figure that out. Everyone I know feels cautious about spending because of the roller coaster ride they just got on with the Trump administration. I don’t know if stopping the population from spending on anything but necessities was Trump’s intention with implementing these money freezes. It seems like in a shortsighted way he just wanted to show he could give the Broligarchs their tax cuts that he promised them for the millions they threw his way. Instead he stopped the economy from functioning so abruptly that he got calls from people like Oklahoma Governor Ken Stitt, asking him to slow down the roll out so they could prepare to absorb it. Now Stitt is as big a Trump suck up as they come, and even he had to beg for mercy.

These freezes did not just effect the poor as Trump intended. They affected almost everybody. It was a wake up call. My family and friends in academia were getting letters from their universities telling them how they could use their government grant monies. My husband got two letters. The first told him that there should be no expenditures from grant monies outside of salaries until further notice. So no conferences, no supplies, nothing that would support their work. Then, he got a letter after Trump rolled back his freezes that said that the freeze had been lifted and they could go back to normal use of the money until further notice. This caveat until further notice is going to make everyone feel cautious, and wary. Many people are polishing their resumes and looking for jobs outside of the US, because what academic career can you have as a researcher if you do not have funding from your government? It is bleak. It is bleaker if you have no political power and a mean president who cares nothing about people that cannot afford to bribe him with millions and billions. However, what Trump cannot ignore is that the people rose up in outcry and the lawsuits were filed and the courts put him on hold. Having the courts put a stay on his freeze, an illegal move if ever there was one, caused Trump to back off. He does not want the courts deciding against him.

There are many archives of resistance movements, because whenever the illiberal leadership rises up, the people start to resist. Many in the US marched recently in the People’s March, mostly people who had voted for Kamala. Voting for Kamala was a form of resistance that many more may wish they had engaged in. Now the Kamala voting movement becomes the Trump resistance movement. People are joining Indivisible Groups to collectively take action. People are leaving X and joining Blue Sky. People are finding local causes to work on in community. There are those who feel depleted as Trump wants us to, and that alone should give us cause to rest and take care of ourselves. Self care is a form of resistance. Others are energized by their communities and are engaged in the struggles. However, things are very extreme and this is just the beginning. Staying safe is important as is stopping to plan. Resistance can come in many forms. It can be taking good care of yourself and your family. It can be funding legal organizations that are going to court, or immigrant support groups, or writing tirelessly to both Democratic and Republican legislators. They need to hear from the people for whom what Trump is doing is not alright. They keep tallies of this. There are 3 choices right now, fight, flight or lay low. It may be different things at different points in time. Make plans for all 3 options.

https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/icelandic-women-strike-economic-and-social-equality-1975#:~:text=The%20strike%20was%20scheduled%20for,all%20the%20typesetters%20were%20women.

https://electrek.co/2025/01/16/tesla-boycott-is-gaining-momentum-in-germany-due-to-elon-musks-meddling-in-politics/

https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-urges-tesla-boycott-after-musks-call-to-move-past-nazi-guilt/

https://www.cbtnews.com/demands-for-tesla-boycott-emerge-in-europe-amid-musks-controversial-comments/

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/26/g-s1-44857/south-korean-prosecutors-indict-impeached-president-yoon-suk-yeol-over-martial-law

https://balkaninsight.com/2025/01/31/western-balkan-consumers-join-boycott-of-retailers-in-protest-over-prices/

https://www.euronews.com/2025/01/31/consumers-across-the-balkans-boycott-supermarkets-to-protest-against-rising-prices

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-we-learned-from-the-peoples-march-about-attitudes-toward-political-violence/