Episode 291
Sam and Coco discuss the recent SCOTUS ruling that essentially overturned the Voting Rights Act and re-disenfranchised Black voters, the latest step in nailing together a form of fascist rule in this country. Then they chat about the right way to respond to this crisis. Is it by somehow “voting harder…” or through expanding our imagination to envision and act to bring into being a grassroots groundswell demanding Trump Must Go – and in the process changing the entire political conversation and calculus that everyone in power must respond to?
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Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown
Episode 291 Will The People Accept The Jim Crow 2.0?
Mon, May 11, 2026 5:59AM • 40:40
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Fascism, black voting rights, white supremacy, Trump regime, non-violent resistance, Supreme Court, midterms, passive acceptance, moral responsibility, concentration camps, civil rights movement, mass non-violent struggle, Trump Must Go Now, Refuse Fascism, political force.
SPEAKERS
Sam Goldman, Coco Das
Sam Goldman 00:00
It starts by not speaking up as they deem people illegals, and the language of dehumanization becomes enabling when you’re sitting back and you’re letting a network of concentration camps expand in your country. That is being done with our stamp of approval, every time we don’t get out there and say: You’ve gotta go. We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!
Coco Das 00:21
Fascism is never legitimate. There is a moral responsibility of people to act to stop it. It’s not a hopeless situation. We haven’t even tapped, really, our power to stop this.
Sam Goldman 00:54
Welcome to Episode 291 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism works to unite all who can be united in mass nonviolent resistance in the streets and throughout society to drive the Trump fascist regime from power. This week, we’re sharing a conversation I had yesterday with Coco Das, fellow leader of Refuse Fascism. We talk about the assault on black voting rights, the acceleration of fascism, clinging to norms when they are being set ablaze, why channeling all your energies and resources into the midterms, expecting redress to fascism is a deadly delusion, passive acceptance and enabling, the importance of uncomfortable conversations, the need for struggle, whether we’ve been here before and can organize our way out like we always have, the stakes of inaction, the power of the demand, Trump Must Go Now!, the possibility for Trump’s removal, making Trump Must Go Now! a mass demand and ways to act now to build a political force to make that demand a reality, and much more. But before we go any further, a huge thank you to everyone who supports the Refuse Fascism podcast; our patrons, paid Substack subscribers, monthly sustainers, everyone who subscribes, shares episodes, leaves ratings, leaves reviews. These really matter, and it all helps spread this analysis far and wide. Shout out to paid Substack subscriber, Brian E, who wrote: “Because we must stop fascism, we are already losing what is left of our democracy.” Thank you, Brian, and thanks to everyone helping sustain this analysis in a time when the stakes for humanity could not be higher, and for bringing this movement, Refuse Fascism, to more people. This show is part of building the understanding and collective resistance people urgently need right now, and it truly would not exist without the support of listeners like you. If you value this podcast, subscribe, leave a rating, review the show, share this episode with friends and your networks, and consider becoming a paid Substack subscriber or patron or by making a donation at refusefascism.org. Now, here’s my conversation with Coco Das.
Sam Goldman 03:26
Coco, thank you so much for responding to my late night signal message, “Can you talk tomorrow morning?” and talking to me tomorrow morning? It’s tomorrow and I’m glad to be chatting with you.
Coco Das 03:39
Yeah, glad to be here. Good morning.
Sam Goldman 03:42
This week, I feel like we are seeing the rush of jubilation from every Confederate state to further not just disenfranchise the voting rights of Black people in the light of the Supreme Court, but to make clear their intent to fully roll back the hard won rights of Black people as full participants in U.S. society to the degree that those have been won. We saw that from the Supreme Court saying: Don’t wait, go ahead, do it now. — and then the rush of all these states doing it. But we’ve also seen some, in my opinion, heroic acts of resistance and response. I wanted to start with: What is the significance of this moment? What are we seeing with the fascist assault on Black voting rights? What does this represent? What are we seeing?
Coco Das 04:37
The jubilation of the Confederacy is a good way of putting it. One of the black representatives, Justin Pearson, said something that I think is very true and very profound. He’s from Tennessee. He said this in the Tennessee State House: “These maps are tools of white supremacy at the behest of the most powerful white supremacist in the U.S.” I think that there’s different truths coming out of that. One, that this white supremacy is very deep seated, going all the way back to the slavery that the country was founded on, the genocide, and then Jim Crow. The fact that out of this Supreme Court ruling, Callais v. Landry, I believe what they basically said was that these gains from the Voting Rights Act that actually allowed minority majority districts — that is now unconstitutional. This is the Trump appointed Supreme Court. This is Trump’s SCOTUS that overturned Roe v. Wade, that said he has immunity. We don’t need to run down all the different rulings right now, but then what that did was it gave permission to all these, basically Confederate states, all the southern states, to join the race to either redraw the maps or to strike down maps that were redrawn that would seen as would benefit Democrats. This point about that right now, at the behest of the most powerful white supremacist in the U.S., is about the consolidation of fascist power. That’s not how he put it or would have put it, but that is what this is about at this moment. There’s always been drives to undo the gains of the civil rights movement and to reaffirm the white supremacy. There’s always been that backlash, but that backlash is on super steroids right now, on the road to the consolidation of fascist rule, and it’s part of, I’ve kind of called it, a rolling coup against the midterms. It’s like they’re planning for every contingency. Trump’s poll numbers are down, and there is a chance that the election could not go their way. There’s all kinds of ways they deal with that. One, he already tried a coup, so he’s always said…they’ve always made it clear they’re not gonna accept the results of any election that they lose. But then there’s all these seizing the ballots from the Fulton County, the county in Georgia, threatening to send ICE and even troops to the polls. This is a major move that we don’t know totally what the outcomes of it are going to be for the election, but it is a major move to further neutralize the chance that the Republifascists in general, could lose an election. That’s my take.
Sam Goldman 07:30
It’s important to look at both the parts of what this attack represents, in terms of an acceleration towards fascism. There is this deep, deep revanchist, white supremacist, not just move to take away Black political power through the rights representation, in undermining the right to vote as part of that, but in taking back all the rights. People have called it…the Senator that stood on her desk and held a sign, Jim Crow 2.0. They’re not just going for the right to vote. They’re going for all of society where Black people are deemed as less than full human beings. For many of these, these are the same people that talk about the “good aspects” of slavery. I’m not saying that they all want to bring back chattel slavery. I’m not saying that, but that is the morality, the logic, the political will of these forces. We have to be able to recognize that and go there. As you were talking about it, is very much part of their plan to dismantle whatever democratic rights are left, and to ensure that they can consolidate power. This is part of a larger effort to rig the midterms, to make them meaningless, to keep MAGA fascist majorities in Congress so that they can nail into place a cruel and brutal future that is based in what we’ve talked about before on the show, the triad of white supremacy, which is what we’re seeing here, of patriarchy, which we’re seeing with the Mifepristone case, and the American chauvinism, the toxic xenophobia that we see in their program of ethnic cleansing through mass deportation, and that we see also through the Supreme Court with the birthright citizenship case. It concentrates so much of the illegitimacy of the whole program. I wanted to get into kind of how people are responding to this and not responding to this on the level that there needs to be. We’ve used this line and many Refuse Fascism statements, I know I’ve said it many, many a time on the show, but there is no living with this fascism. Yet the majority of us are learning to live with it. There is an incredible amount of passive acceptance. What should propel us into the streets, what should propel, like, the level of Edmund Pettus Bridge action, is met with maybe an Instagram story. I know that it’s a lot more nuanced than that, but I would like to get into some of how you see this assault and kind of how people are responding, what openings you see in this moment to change things so that people aren’t passively accepting and learning to live with fascism.
Coco Das 10:36
It’s definitely overall not commensurate with the acceleration of fascism and just the level of the assaults. People should look at what the protest was like in the Tennessee State House, because, one, they were very clearly calling out the white supremacy of it, and they were not mincing words. There were people who had makeshift Klan hoods over their heads, carrying rope and saying: “Don’t Lynch the Black Vote.” Justin Jones burned a Confederate flag in the State House. The speeches were very stirring, and the State House was full of angry people. I think there just is a tremendous amount to learn from that. That can’t be it, and it can’t stop there, but that is the spirit. People should be so outraged and angry. This is about disenfranchising the Black vote that was so hard won, and cementing in like you were saying, this triad — cementing in a nightmare vision of white supremacist terror and brutality and domination over all of society. That example needs to be replicated on a much larger scale, of people pouring into the streets. There’s something to thinking about how voting rights was won in the first place. This is about undoing the gains of the civil rights movement. This was a struggle. People won these through tremendous sacrifice and struggle and upheaval. This is not gonna be an easy fight, to dislodge the accelerating, consolidating power of these fascists who are resurrecting the dead hand of the Confederacy. They would like to see a system of Jim Crow reinstated. How were those things fought? The sitting in, shutting down, dealing with the repression, and coming back stronger. But these things are happening in other states. So far, I don’t think we’ve seen that level of protest in the other state houses, but maybe, I could be missing something, but I think that needs to be a part of it. Every racial justice group and everybody who cares about racial justice needs to speak out and be in the streets. I want to highlight again, Justin Pearson’s point: At the behest of the most powerful white supremacists in the U.S., are we going to accept the illegitimate rule of Donald Trump? That is a huge question to confront. But I think what happened in the Tennessee State House shows the potential. You see these two sides that are irreconcilable. One side or another has to win this fight, and for the sake of humanity, it is the fascists who need to be defeated — politically, through a mass nonviolent struggle. I’ve seen the response from the DNC, which is: People just have to vote harder, vote harder. I’m not saying people should not vote, but considering all these obstacles being stacked upon voters in the midterms, first of all, waiting for that and then expecting that, even if you do win the midterms, that that’s gonna be, somehow, the end of this struggle is delusional. You have to confront reality at some point and say: Okay, we’ve gotta step outside the normal channels. Those norms are being eviscerated. How do we do that? and how do we really think about the urgency of removing this regime from power that is cementing into place a society and government that is going to be horrendous for millions of people. It’s already destroying millions of lives.
Sam Goldman 14:18
That’s really important to recognize — both where the fascists are taking things and how people are being led to respond in positive and negative ways. Then we can begin to see where the openings are. It is that reminder of how deeply divided this society is from the bottom to the top. Of course, you saw Trump congratulating the decision, thumbs upping all the states that are going forward. I have to check, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was like, giving high fives to the Virginia Supreme Court that undid the referendum, that was…I don’t want to use the word ‘gerrymandering’, but like gerrymandering to undo racism, or something like that. You have all of the talking heads on Fox News, and like all these Confederate governors celebrating, and you have House Democrats in these state houses, which I will say was most notable in Tennessee, where you have like a senator standing on a desk, and you have house reps burning Confederate flags and joining protests, and you have every Democrat walking out during the vote. But it’s not the only state where state representatives are saying something. You have Hakeem Jeffries, which, let’s be clear, I am no fan of — I am not celebrating his facilitation of fascism — but you have a Black man in political power just talking about the harm that this will take, and he becomes a target of Trump, where he takes to truth social attacking him, basically calling him violent and that he’s inciting violence for daring to call out the danger of what happens when the political impact of denying Black people the right to vote, that that is saying that they are less than citizens. This is where we’re at, and within that, there is tremendous potential for those who are right now not acting in the way that they should, to be enabled and compelled to act through people from below, taking to the streets, nonviolently resisting in the way that you were talking about. When all of society is saying: Enough, this isn’t tolerable, we’re not going to live with this — and raising the demand that the regime must be removed, I think that that could change things. But that’s not where we are now. You spoke to some of what is preventing that. And one of the biggest things that’s preventing that is: “vote harder,” vote in bigger numbers, vote like you’ve never voted before. On one level, that’s nothing new, anytime anything bad happens. That is the answer of those representing the system, to keep you within the confines this — that is my personal opinion — vote, that is your option. What we’re dealing with, though, is even if that’s the way that you see things typically, and that’s the solution that you see, we are in a very different time. You spoke to some of that. I’d love to get more into, like, why is it not just it is morally bankrupt, for sure, but why is it also a politically dead end, and not just a dead end, deadly end, for us to remain confined in there? It is not that people are stupid that they’re saying we got to vote, but it is turning a blind eye to the stakes and where things are headed, and all the evidence that that will be a mechanism. So when you’re telling people that, it is incredibly harmful. You have people who I respect in many ways doing a lot a lot of intellectual work to get people to understand the gravity of this Supreme Court ruling and other rulings — legal scholars saying things that the midterms are our next opportunity, and that’s how we’re going to have our voices be heard, and we’ve got to show up, and we’ve got to send the message that our votes matter. We’ve gotta send the message that our votes matter, when our votes don’t matter because they changed the rules to make them not matter. I have more to say on the circular lack of logic, but I just wanted to get more of your thoughts on this, and more specifically: How do we speak to that? What do we go out and what do we say to our friends and our family and our pastors and our rabbis who have a lot of heart and a lot of concern, but are right now really leading us to accept the unacceptable by limiting our actions to voting?
Coco Das 18:44
I think there are different dimensions to how to speak to it. One, there is a moral dimension. Waiting for the midterms, really, the logic is you will bide some time until the real election in 2028. Look at how much this regime has done. There are concentration camps being built where immigrants are being tortured. Iran is being threatened with obliteration regularly, and something like 600 schools have been bombed. There’s a kidnapping of a leader of a sovereign state, all of these things being done in our names, and we are saying: It’s okay to wait for six months, a year, two years, to maybe have a chance of resolving that. That has everything to do with confronting that fascism is never legitimate. You cannot toss around the word fascism, and not recognize that there is a moral responsibility of people to act to stop it — not by just waiting for normal channels that are all being torn up. I think there is that fundamental moral dimension that people in this country have a responsibility to the people of the world. This is the most powerful country in the world. Not only is Trump the most powerful white supremacist in the U.S., he is leading the most powerful country in the world. That has implications for the future of humanity. We could walk through some of the scenarios. Let’s say that the Democrats do win a majority in the midterms in the House. How much of that is going to be contested? How much of it is going to be ignored? They have all kinds of things that they’ve done — not seating someone who’s won an election? They are not constrained by the norms. Let’s not forget that there was a Supreme Court appointment that should have been Obama’s appointment that they stalled. So they have all kinds of means of, you know, ignoring, obstructing or derailing. Or, let’s say that all of their efforts to rig the midterms work and they don’t win a majority. Let’s say that somehow there’s a big majority, and they can move towards impeachment. Then we can look at the history of impeachment, and is that you know, something that has actually removed presidents from power, and in the meantime, all the things that the constant acceleration that fascism regimes have to do — they cannot lose momentum.
Sam Goldman 21:16
Well, I think that we’re getting this preview right now of what they will do if in any way their momentum is undermined. What they did in Virginia is one example of how it could play out.
Coco Das 21:31
Then, there’s no hesitation to use violence if they need to. You have the January 6th insurrection — a tyrant who incited that insurrection and then pardoned the insurrectionists. He’s not going to accept any loss. One thing we need to understand is that Trump has said this. They see the voters of these black majority cities — in Philly, Detroit, look at Chicago — the cities he names as completely illegitimate. So if they have to, they will resort to violence. If they have to. You know, he hasn’t spoken about whether you need an election. He told the CPAC, you vote for me, you’ll never have to vote again. Midterms are basically a problem. Maybe we shouldn’t have midterms. It’s by hook or by crook — they will consider anything. But on the opposite side to have an opposition that’s leading millions of people, only consider the norm that’s being torn apart is extremely dangerous. I think people need to just kind of let their imaginations loose a little bit and really walk themselves through: Okay, what is the say, best case scenario, which is getting slimmer and slimmer? We win the midterms. Then what? What it all comes down to, what each scenario leads to is waiting this out — some form of thinking you’re gonna wait this out. And while you’re waiting it out, fascism is consolidating.
Sam Goldman 23:00
A lot of what you’re saying really hits hard. All of us who are sick at heart and outraged and angry and can’t sleep at night — if you’re like me, every night, at around 3:00 a.m., I wake up with a nighttime panic attack. I think we have to do something that is incredibly uncomfortable, that is something that our society tells us not to do, which is go and struggle with people and have those uncomfortable conversations. It’s not that we go around telling people you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong… Just to tell people that they’re wrong, or to jack people up or something, but the stakes are way too high. If we don’t speak up about where this leads, then we too, who know better, are no different than those people passively sitting it out. If we don’t challenge those people, then we are no different than those people. It’s not that the vast majority…they’re not bad people, but what they are allowing, by not raising the demand the regime must be removed is paving the way to monstrosity. It really is. During Trump 1, there was a phrase that in your writing, you used a lot — you and I think Sarah — about that which you allow, you become. What this does to our collective soul as a people — what you don’t resist changes you. The more that we accept, and it goes from accepting to enabling very fast, when we’re talking about fascism — it starts by not speaking up as they deem people illegals, as they deem people thugs, and the language of dehumanization and it becomes enabling when you’re sitting back and you’re letting a network of concentration camps expand in your country. We’re already there. We’re at a point where you regularly have Trump talking about, in various ways, eliminating a civilization — the people of Iran — straight up international war crimes against any law, and we, as a people, that is being done in our name with our stamp of approval every time we don’t get out there and say: Enough; You’ve gotta go; This is not in our name; We refuse to accept a fascist America! So that accepting piece is really, really, really important, that we break through. I think it has everything to do with American exceptionalism. I think that too many people are hanging on, too hard to the fact that there is some magic self correct, because this is America. We can just open any page of history and see what America has been and continues to be, to know that that is absolutely false. One thing that I’ve read from more of like the activist space is this line of like: People need to understand we have been here before, every time together, we’ve organized our way out. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.
Coco Das 26:06
I think that there’s always been this tension since you know Trump won. It becomes almost a crutch, that this is just a repeat of what has happened before. So then, one, you don’t recognize the fascist leap. You know what is different about Trump and the MAGA movement that is trying to bring back the white supremacy, the patriarchal male supremacy, the America First xenophobia; only white male Americans matter. They are trying to bring that back, but with a vengeance. One of the things that this movement is about is undoing a very short history of this country from the 60s. It’s a very short history. It’s just not true that people have been able to organize their way out of all the terror. You needed a civil war to end the system of slavery. It took, I don’t know how many years, the formal Jim Crow system was enforced through lynchings of Black people in the South. One, is that statement true? Have we really been here before? No. This is a 21st Century American fascist movement. They saw Trump as a chance to end an existential crisis for them, and they seized on that, and he delivered, and he’s still delivering. They’re fighting this to the end. So, I think there’s two things about that statement that have to be answered. It’s not true that just people organizing and uniting has defended enough of the lives of all these people and ended these horrors. Although, I’m very much for organizing, so let’s organize to get this regime out. This also depends on what kind of organizing are you talking about? Are you organizing for a dead end, or are you organizing to actually fight this? Nonviolently, but with determination. That’s what the civil rights movement was about. It was about standing up and saying: No! No more. That’s my response. I do think that it is very, very pervasive, and I do think that saying, well, we’ve been here before becomes a kind of crutch, to say: We don’t have to do anything different than what we’ve ever done before. That’s just not where we’re at.
Sam Goldman 28:18
I feel like it’s another way to turn your eye from reality. [In] my understanding, this comes from the same system of capitalism/imperialism — Fascism comes from that system, a system run up against its limits, and this is their attempt to solve that. It is a different form of rule, though. You don’t have any democratic rights or civil rights. You’re talking about rule by brute force, and in that you don’t have any of the freedom to do the organizing that those same people are talking about. You don’t have the right to speech, or you don’t have those tools that, yes, in that brief history when rights were won, those were the tools you used. That’s something that people have to recognize. It comes from, you know, this idea that we want to be safe — we want to cling to things that we know, when the whole world is thrown upside down. Who doesn’t want to be comforted? Maybe comfort isn’t the right word, but I do take inspiration from the Fannie Lou Hamer-s, from those who did act against the status quo, who did speak up when you needed to fight for something. But what stands out in those moments is that they weren’t people that said: All’s well, that ends well — it was the people that struggled, that people did things under tremendous odds and conditions that I largely don’t have a reference point to in my personal life or my own experience. This is a time for that kind of sacrifice for the greater good of — and I know it sounds like bleh, but — the greater good of all of humanity. I know we don’t talk like that as as a people, but I do think that saying, as you so well put: Is it true? Have we? Like, all those things? I’m not being articulate about this, but there are lessons that we can learn from it, even as we are definitely not in the same place, have not always organized ourselves out of it, and if we continue on this trajectory, we will not! There are things that we can learn, and we as a people, need to learn them quick, because let’s wake up to what time it is.
Coco Das 30:30
I want to lift that up in in the context of what you were saying about, that fascism is a different form of brutal rule. It’s under the same system. It’s a different form of brutal rule over that system. But there’s the massive repression. When we’re talking about fascism, consolidating that’s what we’re talking about, like the mass repression, where you don’t have any form of redress, you don’t have the right to speak out. You’re either silenced or you’re killed or you’re disappeared. That is the form of rule that we’re talking about. It has not totally consolidated yet, but it’s on the path to consolidation. We didn’t talk about the re-indictment of James Comey, and then there are all these other examples of the revanchist political indictments of their so called political enemies. There’s two people in Minneapolis were shot and killed. There’s that point, then there’s also…like, history moves on. We are in a different point, just objectively in history, where the stakes of allowing somebody who thinks climate change is a hoax and says “drill, baby, drill,” and possibly starting World War Three between nuclear armed powers — the stakes of that are very different from, as horrible, horrific a crime against humanity as it was of Hitler being in power in the 30s. The stakes are for the future of humanity. I’ve been thinking about the election in Hungary. Orban was in power for 16 years. I think generally it is true that fascism cannot be voted out of power. But here now, you have this example of Hungary, and I remember reading Robert Paxton in Anatomy of Fascism. Fascist regimes will always be trying to accelerate and consolidate and escalate, because they have a compulsion to do that, but there is a point where they can atrophy. But it takes many, many years. It takes a long time. We don’t have that much time. The stakes of allowing the Trump regime to remain in power in this country, when the humanity and the planet are on the brink of total catastrophe — we don’t have that kind of time. First of all, there’s never any guarantee that it’s just gonna atrophy, and then weaken, and then it can be voted out. But you don’t have the time to wait that out. We are in a different point in history. It’s not a hopeless situation. We haven’t even tapped, really, our power to stop this.
Sam Goldman 33:02
Absolutely. I think it’s really important, and could be its own whole conversation. The last part of what you’re saying about: Okay, well, what do we do about it? Is the logical question that everybody would ask. You told me not to do this. You told me not to do that. You told me. So what do you want me to do? What’s gonna do this? I thought we could end the conversation with: In this moment where, we did talk about, at the beginning, some of the possibility for this demand, which is evident in the tens of millions who still do hate this, and is evident in that not everyone is locked in step along these lines; What could we do in this moment that would make a difference?
Coco Das 33:43
I think, you know, one really very simple one is popularize this demand: Trump Must Go Now!, or, if you want to, the longer one: The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go Now! It really concentrates the demand that, if it became a society wide outlook and demand, really emphasizing the word ‘NOW’, that could make a big difference in how millions of people are seeing the situation and the slogan: In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America! I think that’s something everybody can do. Then, look into things that are on the Refuse Fascism website, take the guidance from the Refuse Fascism podcast, and go and, you know, talk to your church pastor and your neighbors and your knitting circle or whatever. This really has to spread to the tens and millions of decent people who are learning to accept this, can also learn not to accept it, and can be jolted. There’s different times that these jolts come down and then people flood the streets, like in Minneapolis earlier this year. One is spreading and popularizing the demand. We have lawn signs. You can put them on your lawn. I think it’s at the end of all of our flyers. The mission is to remove this regime from power through the mass non violent struggle of millions of people who refuse to accept a fascist America and say: This is enough, this regime has to go. That can, one, make it impossible for the regime to govern if at every step, at every level of society, people are refusing to accept the outrages, to see the legitimacy of this regime. The regime is more and more losing its legitimacy among millions of people and people across the world. If you don’t show the opposition, no one’s gonna think that you oppose anything, and then you become the good German in the eyes of the world. There’s the millions of people acting together to remove the regime from power. That is the mission of the day. We don’t even know all the different forms that could take. A lot of creative forms. Those people who did the “Trump Must Go Now!” human banner on the beach. We need that every weekend, everywhere. Things like that, popularizing, spreading the demand, and, you know, acting together with with others, to get in the streets and protest, refuse to go along with things, and get ready for the time when millions of people are ready to be in the streets and not go home until the regime is removed from power.
Sam Goldman 36:21
I think that those are all really important ways. I wanted to just emphasize people using the skill and networks they have to project this demand and this strategy. You’re connected with a church — bring this into your church. Maybe you get to speak after a service for a few minutes, maybe the church takes up a collection for your Refuse Facism local chapter to make a banner or something. Maybe you’re part of a synagogue, okay, you organized your sisterhood to do a banner making event, and you put up a Trump Must Go Now! banner outside. Maybe you are an artist… Create Trump Must Go Now! signs to be put up in all the businesses and storefronts in your neighborhood, and send us the file so we can spread it nationwide. Maybe you are a teacher who is really good at writing. Make op eds making the case for this demand and this strategy, and get it in your local paper, or get it published online — submit it lots of places. You’re somebody who’s retired, call into radio shows, call into podcasts and raise this demand, and ask them to bring Refuse Fascism onto their show. There’s so many ways that people can use their time, their talents, to bring this demand to their networks and out in the world. As Coco, you were saying, you know, there’s resources, flyers, stickers, banners, lawn signs, all that stuff on the website that you can organize, and you can also organize with others. You can join a Refuse Fascism chapter or start your own.So those are just some things to add to it. And you can fundraise to get this demand everywhere. You can fundraise to get this demand up all over social media and in the print forms as well, so it saturates society. I know in Cleveland this week, there’s going to be a benefit concert with some punk bands doing a concert. So you can do things that builds that culture of resistance, and are raising funds to project this demand further.
Coco Das 37:07
Yeah, let’s make this demand a real force in society that can propel people towards what is actually needed to defeat this fascism and drive it out of power.
Sam Goldman 37:16
Thank you so much, Coco, for spending time with me this morning.
Coco Das 37:20
Thank you Sam, I love spending time with you.
Sam Goldman 37:21
Process what’s happening in a way to propel the resistance where it needs to go.
Sam Goldman 38:13
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