Democrats need to take bolder and more aggressive actions to oppose the Trump administration, protesters across the US told the Guardian during a day of rallies last week honoring the late congressman John Lewis.
Lewis, a civil rights leader and Democratic congressman from Georgia who died five years ago, called for people to participate in non-violent “good trouble, necessary trouble” to advance their causes.
While some elected Democrats have escalated their tactics against Donald Trump and his administration – delivering multi-hour speeches, risking arrest, and physically interposing themselves as a disruption – protesters said they want to see a more united, organized, and aggressive opposition party.
“There’s a lot more that I would like to see from them,” said Jace Snyder, a weather research technician from Lovejoy, Georgia who attended the protest in Atlanta. Snyder is particularly concerned about the Trump administration’s cuts to federal agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (Noaa).
“If they have to shut down the entire legislative process until the Republicans fold, okay, shut it down… Shut down the Senate. Don’t pass anything. Do whatever is needed to make it so that these cuts don’t happen to vital agencies.”
“We’ve gone beyond the ‘be polite to your political opponents,’ phase, because they’re not giving us the same courtesy,” Snyder added. “Fight, fight, fight with every single tool available you can.”
Quentin “Coach Q” Pullen, a veteran, fitness coach and candidate for the Fayette county board of commissioners, said he reviewed some of Lewis’ speeches in preparation to speak at the Atlanta event. So much of what Lewis has been talking about since the 1960s is still relevant today, he said.
“We’ve got to rise to the time, because if we don’t, there’s too much at stake that he bled for,” Pullen said. “He bled so that we don’t have to. But now we’re back at a point where they’re almost going to make us do it.”
Protestors also said they wanted to see Democrats stand up for their own values rather than tacking to the center or right during elections in a bid to win, which hasn’t been working. For some who rallied on Thursday, the Democrats’ position on the war in Gaza, and Joe Biden’s support for Israel, are bruising reminders that their party is out of step with its base. Palestinian flags flew among the marchers in Minneapolis, and people chanted to stop the war.
Simon Elliott, from Minneapolis, said Democrats should embrace popular positions, like spending more on human needs than on war and deportations. “Right now we’ve seen the Democratic party and elected officials, they’re really in retreat,” Elliott said. “It seems as though they somehow are just overwhelmed by the pace at which the Trump administration is moving. We’ve seen very little resistance from the Democratic party.”
Democratic Socialists of America representatives moved through the crowd in Minneapolis, asking people if they thought the Democrats were doing enough. They found receptive audiences who wanted to see more from their elected officials, both in tactics and policies.
“Justice requires all of us to participate with our whole being, all of the time,” said Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor and a candidate for US Senate. “We are choosing courage over compromise.” From the crowd, a protestor yelled “tell Amy!” an apparent reference to Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota’s senator who has voted to confirm some of Trump’s nominees.
The Target boycott featured heavily in Minneapolis’ protest, which stopped for a length of time outside Target headquarters downtown as people chanted: “Target, Target you can’t hide, you sold us out, you have no pride.”
Rebecca Larson, the co-lead of Indivisible Twin Cities, said the group is working on other ways to put pressure not just on elected officials, but other pillars of civil society. Indivisible and other progressive groups have been calling for Democratic officials to be more vocal and actively work as an opposition party. But people who want to resist don’t need to wait on their elected officials before getting more heavily involved.
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“We are looking at ways that all people, every individual, can find a way to not cooperate,” Larson said. “It involves things like supporting the Target boycott. It does involve things like calling your elected officials. It involves going to protest. And for some people, it may include more acts of civil disobedience, like we saw during the civil rights era in the 60s. We’re trying to encourage everybody to participate in the resistance in whatever way that they can.”
Grecia Glass in Minneapolis said Democrats are doing better at standing up to Trump than they were a few months ago. She has a few favorites: Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, Jamie Raskin. “Some of them are doing it, and I stand behind them.” But, she said, “I’m very unhappy with the Democratic party as a whole.”
When asked about people such as Brad Lander standing up to immigration officials, she said, “that was amazing, what he did”. Lander was hauled away and detained by masked Ice officials while shielding immigrants outside their court hearings in the city.
In Washington, Jane Anderson from Columbia, Maryland acknowledged that there’s not much more Democrats can be doing right now with minorities in both chambers of Congress. “We need to be out on the streets, no doubt about it, but I don’t want anything to get dangerous because that’s just the Republican playbook,” she said. “I think peaceful protests speak a lot louder than violence”
Heidi Smith-Miranda, who came to the Minneapolis protest from Coon Rapids, Minnesota, said: “I like good trouble and I like nonviolence. But my dad fought in world war two, sometimes there’s only so much you can do peacefully.”
“I don’t want to be violent, nobody wants to be violent, but it’s really hard to just stand by and watch your neighbors get pushed around, pushed to the ground and thrown into a van by a masked group of people,” she added.
Mary Baird, who traveled to the Washington protest from North Carolina, said Democrats need to remember that they are ultimately accountable to their voters.
“We don’t really want to vote out the Democrats but we will,” she said. “So don’t think that just because you’re a Democrat that your seat is safe, because we’re sick of this fascist shit.”
