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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

US grassroots fights Trump with signs, pizzas

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Valerie Hamilton -


Kevin Sharp always thought of himself as a responsible, engaged citizen.


“I studied the issues, I made sure I understood them as well as I could. I have never missed an election in my adult life,” the 59-year-old electrical engineer from Tucson, Arizona, said. “I always thought that was sufficient.”


When Donald Trump was elected president, he says, he realised there was more to be done. And so when he caught wind of a playbook for citizen engagement against Trump making the rounds on social media, he took action.


‘Indivisible: A Practical Guide to Resisting the Trump Agenda’ was written by former US Congressional staffers demoralised by the election to share their knowledge of the corridors of power.


Its premise is simple: put pressure on lawmakers to resist Trump by letting them know voters are watching.


Since its launch in December, the guide has gone viral, and thousands of activist groups inspired by it have sprung up across the nation.


Sharp founded one of them, Indivisible Tucson, which now counts 1,300 members and one goal: make their representatives “support our values, and lobby as hard as we can” if they don’t.


While Democratic lawmakers from Washington to California are mounting legislative challenges on Trump and his Republican allies, citizens are stepping off of the sidelines in a new wave of grass roots activism.


On January 21, millions of people marched in support of women and against Trump in cities around the country in what some analysts called the largest protest in American history.


Fuelled by popular outrage and organised with the mass power of the Internet, constituents are thronging normally moribund “town hall” meetings with lawmakers demanding they block Trump’s agenda.


Key lawmakers have upped voice mail capacity and asked constituents to use Twitter and Facebook after their phone lines were jammed with calls over Trump cabinet nominations.


One woman, intent on contacting Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, sent him a pizza — with a note asking him to reject the nomination of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.


Last month, hundreds of protesters plastered House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy’s district office with signs denouncing his vow to scrap health insurance reforms.


Hundreds more turned up outside Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s home in small-town Janesville, Wisconsin — the largest protest there in 25years, according to police cited by local media.


The surge in activism reminds some observers of another upstart political movement — the right-wing Tea Party, which threw up roadblocks to former president Barack Obama’s agenda and shaped national debate in the wake of his election in 2008.


“It’s almost a mirror image of the Tea Party,” Michael Kazin, a Georgetown historian and editor of Dissent magazine, said.


In some cases, the resemblance is deliberate.


“Indivisible” authors say they watched and learned from the Tea Party’s rise and based their guide on its locally focused, purely defensive strategic action — minus what they call “wrong” ideas and “horrible” behaviour.


“If a small minority in the Tea Party could stop President Obama, then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump,” its authors wrote.


Kazin said they are on the right track.


“If Democrats want to recover their former strength under Obama... this is the kind of thing they have to do,” he said. “They have to show the same kind of enthusiasm and passion for opposing the party in power as the Republicans did.”


California Congressman Ted Lieu urged constituents to demonstrate, saying “it really shows Congress and courts [that] the populist movement opposing Donald Trump is bigger than the population supporting him.”— dpa


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