Mid-Missouri

Peaceworks

Working towards peace and sustainability

We Shall Resist!




The election is over, and, like so many people of conscience around the nation and the world, we are astonished. We are deeply troubled. And we recognize the urgent need for us to redouble our efforts in light of the impending Trump presidency.

While during election campaigns we cannot endorse candidates, we hope you recognize that so much of what Donald J. Trump stands for is antithetical to what we in Peaceworks’ believe in and the sort of future we are working to co-create; one that’s peaceful, just and sustainable.

While it will take a little while to explore specifically what strategies we might pursue in response to the Trump victory, we can, right now, pledge the following:

·        We will stand with our Muslim sisters and brothers. We will join our Muslim members and neighbors in clear opposition to Islamophobia; in opposition to a ban on Muslims entering our country; in opposition to the denial of refuge to those fleeing war zones; in opposition to efforts to spread fear and loathing in our communities.

·        We will stand together with our undocumented sisters and brothers. We stand in opposition to efforts to deport 11 million or more U.S. residents, the vast majority of whom are honest, hardworking members of our communities. We oppose breaking up families and recognize that many undocumented people have close family members who are U.S. citizens. We will also oppose efforts to wall off our nation. And we will join our Latino and Latina neighbors in opposition to the sorts of profiling that impacts U.S. citizens as well as non-citizens, creating an atmosphere of intimidation and alienation.

·        We stand in solidarity with all our members, friends and neighbors who are people of color. We recognize that Donald Trump plunged into politics heading up the so-called “Birther Movement;” a thinly veiled racist assault on President Barack Obama and his administration. We see through a dog-whistle campaign slogan like “law and order.” We know that the sort of national “stop and frisk” policy that Trump has called for is dangerous. The implementation of such policies virtually always is unconstitutionally directed to people of color in low income neighborhoods.

·        We stand with our LGBT members and friends. We recognize clearly that the rights of LGBT people, not yet fully realized, are vulnerable to a major setback if the new president places on the courts the sort of appointees he has pledged to. We also are profoundly aware of the sorts of homophobic attitudes that are part of the worldview of so many of the people who worked on and supported Trump’s campaign for the White House. We will join with our community—gay and straight together—to oppose any attempts to roll back the hard-won gains made in recent years.

·        We stand with all the female members of our Peaceworks family and our broader community. Donald J. Trump is a walking insult to women. He is an unrepentant, objectifying, sexist boor who has admitted to sexually assaulting women. It is outrageous, in our opinion, to have someone who treats women with such brazen disrespect elected president of the nation. We will stand in solidarity with our sisters still struggling for equal rights at a time when the rights that have been won face possible rollback by the incoming Trump administration.

·        We will stand with all working for peace. While some hope that Trump will not be as likely to engage in foreign interventions, there is little to indicate that this is so. He has talked, repeatedly, about his desire to steal Iraq’s oil. He has stated that when it comes to ISIS, his intention is to “bomb the sh*t out of them.” He seems to accept the “might makes right” paradigm. And, most distressingly, he has repeatedly questioned the notion that the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal is unusable, suggesting that these weapons are legitimate. Moreover, he has suggested that proliferating nuclear weapons to Japan, South Korea or Saudi Arabia would be sound foreign policy. We will stand united with all who seek to end the permanent war economy and move our nation away from war and militarism.

·         We will also stand with all working to address the existential threat of climate change. Donald Trump is a climate change denier who has pledged to undo the modest steps President Obama has taken to address the Climate Crisis and to, instead, move full speed ahead with fossil fuel extraction. If he is allowed to pursue this course of action, including dismantling the Paris Agreement, it will undermine efforts to address the climate all around the world with disastrous consequences. We pledge to resist these reckless missteps and to continue to work to build a strong consensus favoring effective climate action. We will also stand with all, including native peoples, who are taking a stand to protect our water, earth and air from pollution and to promote, instead, an energy efficient, clean energy economy.

We will seek to build the broadest possible coalitions to resist the misguided directions the incoming Trump administration is likely to pursue, from their plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, throwing 20 million people off their health insurance, to their proposed tax cuts for the wealthy and other misdirected policies that are likely to increase economic inequality.

Our efforts to resist depend upon active participation. We invite all reading this to consider how you might join us in working to build a strong movement resistance movement. Working together we are stronger. Mutual support is essential. Your engaged participation is really needed now. Please join us.