We are pleased to announce the release of the Resistance Guide! A powerful social movement has risen in this country to oppose Trump and to build a better America. This guide is designed to give you the essential tools and strategies to grow and maintain a resistance powerful enough to win.
Read the full PDF here, or order your hard copy here.
For the past six months, Paul Engler has been working hard with co-author Sophie Lasoff and the support of the wider Momentum community to put together a hands-on booklet provides information for those who want to start organizing around the ideas in This Is an Uprising. Sophie wrote a wonderful overview of what the project is all about. She explains:
It’s been nearly one year of Trump’s America. Since day one, my biggest fear has not been of what the right-wing is capable of – but that we would not meet the challenge to stop them. I was afraid that people would stay home, in apathy or in fear.
“It has given me tremendous hope to see that that hasn’t been true. From the Women’s March to the airport protests to the health care fight to Charlottesville, we are in one of the most vibrant eras of social movements that this country has seen in a generation.
“Even so, it’s not easy to keep hope. With the right-wing stronger than ever, it’s easy to feel complete loss. I talk with many friends and family who still feel aimless – who ask over and over, ‘what can I do?’ Others who have gotten involved, maybe for the first time, who still feel doubtful – ‘is any of this making a difference?’
“These conversations remind me how lucky I am to be part of a brilliant community of thinkers and innovators who have been experimenting with what makes or breaks explosive movements like the one we’ve found ourselves amidst today. Studying and dissecting movements of the past has given us so many answers for how we might turn a fledgling movement into one powerful enough to transform what is politically possible.
“Trump’s election was a massive wake up call – for many reasons. For us, the explosion of participation and emergent formation of the resistance’ was a wake up call that more people wanted and needed this information than we realized.
“Paul Engler recognized this opening and began writing what we’re launching today as the Resistance Guide. I’m beyond humbled to share recognition with him as a co-author. It’s truly thanks to his generous mentorship – and that of the whole Momentum community – that I am writing this today.
“We are offering it for free to download or explore at guidingtheresistance.org. But I also highly suggest you purchase a copy on Amazon, mostly to appreciate Josiah Werning’s absolutely inspired design. All proceeds go straight back into the book itself to cover costs of self-publishing.
“What you’ll find inside are 127 pages that are intended for anyone – not just professional organizers or veteran activists – looking to fight Trump and win. We are resting on the foundations of a great movement, but things are still bleak. We have a long way to go to defeat Trump’s agenda. Bottom line, our proposition is that it’s going to take *a lot of us* to get there.
“(For those who are familiar – much of the content is a simplified translation of pieces of momentum theory, social movement ecology, and populism that you may find useful to help explain your work or orient new members, regardless of its application to the Trump resistance.)
“The most beautiful thing that I’ve learned about successful movements is that they take an extraordinary amount of faith. Not only from the most committed, top leaders. Every, single person who walks out of their home and into the streets does so with a conviction that flies in the face of what we’re told to be true – that someone else holds our power. In the halls Washington, American democracy is and only has been an idea – to paraphrase Heather McGee – and it’s our job to make it manifest.
“I hope we can create the movement we so desperately need. Some days are better than others, in terms of my degree of faith. But in my experience, there’s nothing better for hope than a place to begin. This guide is certainly not everything we need, but I hope it can be a place to begin.”
