The Importance Of Community And Bearing Witness - Notes From A Great Event in Bethesda Last Night

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Morning all. A few morning reads from the ongoing and historic Trumpian betrayal of America:

• Axios - Trump faces growing DOGE revolt from GOP lawmakers

• CNN - Top GOP Senators break with Trump and Putin

• Politico - The House GOP budget resolution is in trouble

• WaPo - Echoing Kremlin, Trump blames Zelenskyy for war, angering Ukrainians (gift link)

• Politico - Zelensky says Trump is “surrounded by disinformation”

• Leon Krauze, Washington Post - Mexico Has Lessons For Democrats Trying To Oppose Trump (gift link)

Last night I joined the Women’s Democratic Club of Montgomery County for an event they called “Rise & Resist: Mobilizing for Our Future.” In a comfortable setting with 300 or so people, I and my two fellow panelists - Kate Stewart, Chair Of The Montgomery County Council and Kathryn Jackson of the immigration rights and services powerhouse CASA - had a thoughtful discussion about the moment and what we can and should be doing now.

As this was the first in person events like this I’ve done since Trump returned I wanted to share some thoughts about what I learned last night and how it might inform our work together in the coming months.

First, these kind of in person gatherings to just talk, be in community, and learn from one another are really important now. Our event last night, with its mix of national and local perspectives worked really well. I loved hearing from Kate and Kathryn about how they were approaching the moment. It reminded me of how important local leaders are now in both challenging Trump and helping communities work through the clear harms that are already here and those yet to come.

Our region is being devastated by Musk’s dismantling of our government. Montgomery County, a suburb of DC, is home to 77,000 federal workers. Prior to taking the stage almost every person I talked to had a story about someone close to them who had been fired or was expecting to get fired in the coming days. These are real people with families, mortgages, lives just being dumped into the street. Here is a note one attendee shared with me. Not a lot of “waste, fraud and abuse” here. Cancer research, combating AIDS, saving lives. A lifetime commitment to serving others. Just gone.

As devastating as Musk’s wrecking of the US government will be for this region, more than 80% of federal employees work outside of the DC region. States with a high presence of federal employees include California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Oregon. Voters across the country are waking up this week to the news that what is being cut isn’t waste/fraud/abuse but vital services and respected and valued pillars of their communities. Here’s how cuts to a federal research lab in Kansas are playing:

It is going to be important for this community, present throughout the United States, to help these stories get told. We have to help bear witness to the savagery that is happening, and help make it real for people in all of your communities. For these stories make Trump and Musk reckless liars and betrayers who are not just treating hard working, patriotic Americans like shit but are taking active steps to cause deep and lasting pain in American society. And why? Just so they pay less in taxes? To please Putin? There is no defense for what they are doing and how they are doing it. Part of our job here in our community now is to ensure these stories get told again and again and again.

How does this get done? Should fired employees make videos and tell their stories? Or do interviews with local newspapers and talk about what is being lost? I don’t know exactly how this gets done but we need to be amplifiers of these stories and encourage others to join us. Let’s look at a new more headlines this week:

A few nights ago Hopium subscriber Judd Kahn posted an intriguing idea - reviving the colonial “Committees of Correspondence.” Here’s how the George Washington Museum at Mt. Vernon describes them:

Committees of correspondence were longstanding institutions that became a key communications system during the early years of the American Revolution (1772-1776). Towns, counties, and colonies from Nova Scotia to Georgia had their own committees of correspondence. Men on these committees wrote to each other to express ideas, to confirm mutual assistance, and to debate and coordinate resistance to British imperial policy. The network created by committees of correspondence organized and mobilized hundreds of communities across the British North American colonies.

…….

Samuel Adams and other Boston radicals were furious over proposed changes to who paid the governor’s and judiciary’s salaries in Massachusetts. Adams pushed the Boston Town Meeting to form the Boston Committee of Correspondence in order to rally opposition to the changes. The Boston Committee of Correspondence wrote a letter to every town in the province, sharing the news and encouraging towns to create their own committees of correspondence. Within six months, 118 outlying towns created committees and responded to Boston. These lines of communication connected Boston’s radical leaders to the towns and were used regularly for two years.

Boston’s radical leaders used this system to spread the alarm about various imperial policies, while the towns used it to share their experiences and voice their approval or disapproval of Boston’s actions. Though the Boston Committee of Correspondence was tied to their (completely legal) town meeting, as were many of the other town committees of correspondence, the opponents of the Boston-Massachusetts system saw it as a dangerous and illegal usurpation of political power.

While we would not do it the same way today, this notion of community and elected leaders working to document the tragedy that is unfolding and use it to rally opposition to Trump is very consistent with the counsel I have been offering these past few weeks and what I offered last night at the Forum. I do think like in those times having towns, cities and states pass formal condemnations of Trump’s actions - perhaps after days of public debate - will become an important tool of our new opposition.

One thing Kate mentioned last night that I thought was really important was while we should contact our electeds to urge them to do things, when they do things we ask them to it is really important that they gets calls and notes of praise and thanks. Totally agree with that.

As I prepared my talk last night I realized that what was giving me a powerful and perhaps unusual insight into our current moment was what I was learning from all of you in our chat each day. I have the blessing to be working with all of you each day, throwing out ideas and things to do, seeing them enacted in the real world and hearing from you about what is working, and what isn’t. As I said last night, and as I’ve been saying to all of you, in doing this work and learning from one another we are not just helping build this new and ferocious opposition we need, but we are actually taking the lead in building it (more on this here and here). Every day is a new day. We get up and do our work and learn and get stronger, better, smarter. Being in community as we are here, or as we were last night in person, becomes really important. For to win we need to not only keep working every day, we have to keep learning from one another each day. Much of what I recommend to you comes from things I learn from our chat and talking to others fighting across the country. The wisdom of many is far more powerful than the wisdom of a few.

Which is why I think this concept of “being in community” matters so much right now. It’s not only because we don’t feel alone, but because it is how keep growing, evolving and getting better everyday. I learned a lot last night at that event from Kate and Kathryn. Things I hadn’t thought about. New ways to approach the new challenges that are arising daily. And so we need to keep replicating this process of “being in community” either through events like last night or our daily discussion here where all of you are self-reporting and sharing what you are seeing and doing all across the country.

It was also just great to be with people, in person, and to meet so many members of the Hopium community too.

As the weather warms one way we will all start being in community far more will be through outdoor rallies and protests. This will be a welcome and necessary new stage in the formation of our ferocious opposition. But it is also one that has risks that these other forms of getting together do not have; and as in everything I am encouraging all of you to be smart and strategic about how you approach the coming wave of protests and rallies. Most of all

Only attend in person live events put on by people you know and trust

Why? For we need our live in person events to work not just tomorrow but over the next few years. We need to do them legally, with proper permitting and the protection of local police if possible. We need to keep people safe, and not create events where we are breaking the law (through ignorance or lack of planning) or where outside opponents can easily disrupt the proceedings (this is particularly important in red areas of the country). We need to have control over who speaks at our events so either by design or lack of experience a speaker does not says something that undermines our goal of keeping the focus on Trump (defund the police, or the drift of the Gaza protests into ugly antisemitism). As we’ve discussed rushing into battle without a clear plan and strategy is a recipe for movement-wide failure. Given the gravity of the moment and the extraordinary opposition these events will eventually face, allowing hastily thrown together and anonymous on-line groups drive our events is unimaginably reckless. Stick with people you know and trust, proven and tested local leaders. And on our chat I am insisting that any recommendation of an action of any kind include a confirmation of the integrity of the organizers as part of your pitch. In our discussions I feel there is a kind romantic view of in person protests or “taking it to the streets.” I do not share that view, at all. They are necessary and important but like all the other work we do we will only be successful over time if we are smart and strategic and do not give Trump easy wins.

So I want to thank Tazeem Ahmad and the Women’s Democratic Club of Montgomery County for putting on a model event last night in Bethesda. These kind of in person gatherings - a few hundred people, diverse group of doers driving a thoughtful conversation - should become a staple of our new opposition, like tele-townhalls, calls to our electeds, giving witness/modern day committees of correspondence, donation to candidates, rallies and protests and all the other work we do.

Now, Let’s Get To Work!!!! - Here are my current working recommendations for calls/contacts this week. Four today, and thanks to all of you who are busting your ass right now:

• Keep calling to stop Musk’s crime spree and assault on the US government. Encourage your Senators and Reps to file a criminal referral for him and his malicious posse to DOJ/FBI; insist Senators and Reps file amicus briefs in the court cases regarding the usurpation of their Constitutional authorities or file suits of their own; encourage them to hold a daily morning press conference to more aggressively challenge Musk’s ransacking of the USG that is making America less prosperous, less healthy, less safe and far less respected in the world.

• For those of you who live in AZ, CA, CO, IA, MI, NE, NJ, NY, PA, VA, WI please start talking to your local orgs - state and local Democratic parties, grassroots groups, traditional Dem allies - about mounting a campaign targeting the most vulnerable 17 Republican House Members to urge them to vote against the emerging - and disastrous - House budget plan. We launched this new effort yesterday, and while we should be urging all our Senators and Reps to vote against these emerging plans, those of you can work these 17 House Rs have a special role to play in the coming battle over the budget.

• Keep calling Attorneys General in the states. Ask them to protect you and your data, tax returns and privacy, and to keep federally mandated monies flowing to your states and communities. For those in the 19 states that brought the successful Treasury suit thank them and encourage them to keep going. I still believe these 19 states should make criminal referrals of Musk/his posse to DOJ/FBI and raise the stakes.

• Let your electeds know you are outraged by traitorous Trump’s selling out of Zelenskyy, abandonment of Europe and embrace of Putin; and that we cannot accept this level of appeasement of someone who is a clear enemy of America and the West, and certainly not an ally. Demand that Trump not let his Saudi meeting w/Putin become our Munich; demand that he not become our Neville Chamberlain.

Paid subscribers should self-report their actions today in our daily chat. So inspired by how hard so many of you are working. I want to make a special plea to all Hopium readers in states with Republican Senators - please make your calls, every day. Even 50 to 100 people calling every day in every red state can make a difference. We have hundreds of Hopium subscribers in every state in the country and it’s critical that we all do our part now.

For those wanting to do more traditional political/campaign work we have three Hopium-backed efforts we're rallying behind right now:

Help Get Ken Martin Off To A Strong Start - In this time of extraordinary challenge we need a strong DNC. Two weeks ago we set a goal of raising $100,000 by March 31st for our new Chair. Incredibly, over 1,000 of you have donated over $85,000 so far. Watch my interview with Ken about what he wants to do with the DNC, and chip in whatever you can to help Ken and the new exciting team at the DNC get off to a strong start. We now have a new stretch goal of $150,000 by March 31st after our very strong start for this effort (note that we did have some money clawed back due to an error in the amount someone gave!)

Help Susan Crawford and Ben Wikler in Wisconsin - As a way of honoring our good friend Ben Wikler and supporting this critical April Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, I’m asking our community to donate to the Wisconsin Democratic Party today. The money raised here will make sure Ben has the resources he needs to keep his team in place so they can support this critical statewide race. I know many of you are already deeply involved here - thank you all.

Watch our new discussion with Susan and Ben and thanks to a huge surge of support this weekend we have already raised $57,000, blowing past our $50,000 goal. We are now upping this to a stretch goal of $100,000 by March 31st. Thank you all!

Help Abigail Spanberger Win Virginia - Virginia will be one of the big battlegrounds of the November, 2025 elections and we have a great candidate for Governor, Abigail Spanberger. Watch my interview with Abigail, donate, volunteer, and learn more here. Given how many federal employees live in Virginia, this race is also now on the front lines of the Trump/Musk assault on the federal government. We’ve raised more than $39,000 so far towards our March 31st goal of $100,000 - thank you all. Let’s keep working it for Abigail!

More Things To Do - Dive into my recent interviews with folks who are making a difference. Check out our upcoming events. Sign up for our paid subscriber get together tomorrow. Register for my March 5th event with Heather Cox Richardson!

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you -