I’ve spent a decade fighting Trump. Here are six lessons I’ve learned | Saul Austerlitz

A decade ago, I knew nothing about organizing. But ordinary people are essential to fighting the rise of authoritarianism In January of 2017, I sent a tentative email to a few dozen friends and acquaintances who I suspected were also freaked out by the election of Donald Trump, asking if they wanted to join a local chapter of an effort called Indivisible, intended to serve as a grassroots liberal counterweight to the new administration. It was frankly not possible, at that point, to know less about activism than I did. In the more than nine years since, our group has sent an email every weekday – approximately 2,300 in total – with a single concrete daily ask for our members: call your elected representatives. Make a donation. Show up for a rally. During that span, we have knocked on tens of thousands of doors, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, sponsored refugee families, and mobilized our friends, neighbors, colleagues and acquaintances to keep fighting for democracy. After Trump was re-elected in 2024, I worried that our members would simply give up, unable to fight creeping authoritarianism any longer. Instead, something remarkable has happened: our group has more tha