The Guardian

07/27/2025

The exterminating force of Project 2025 is plowing through the culture, the government and people’s hearts and bodies like a drunk on a violent tear. We wake each morning, holding our breath to bear witness to the new devastation: PBS and NPR defunded, cuts to the fight against human trafficking, Medicaid gone for millions, Ice working to surveil critics, tons of food for the poor ordered burned and wasted.

The momentum of cruelty always feels inevitable. Cruelty is by definition “a callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain”. For those of us who have suffered physical, political, racial and emotional abuse, it feels like a familiar steamroller of violence. We only have to witness the cries of parents being separated from their children, men screaming out for “libertad” from cages in Everglades detention center (AKA Alligator Alcatraz), non-violent protesters beaten for trying to stop a genocide, to be frozen in that same incapacitating dread and fear.

What is the antidote to this destructive environment of mendacity possessing us now with fear, ennui and self-mutilating rage?

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, a powerhouse activist and brilliant organizer, told me: “It’s not decided where we go yet. Which is why it feels tense. What we know is that there’s no going back to an old normal because our economic system has failed us and our governmental structure is being destroyed. They’re trying to replace what was with this minority rule of disgustingly wealthy humans dictating what can happen not only in this country, but globally.

“We’ve gotta block and build at the same time. That means confronting both elected officials and the corporations that are lifting them up. We need to make sure that we are gumming up their ability to successfully implement any sort of action, whether it’s policy or otherwise, that takes more power and rights and access to life-saving resources away from our communities.”

So how do we gum up their momentum; how do we become refusers, artists of disruption, interrupters of their hateful and life-destroying trajectory? How do we clear the noise and fear in our heads so that we are able to hear the call of our inner morality?

“The thing that I love about being non-cooperative and non-compliant with the Trump administration,” Ash-Lee told me, “is its accessibility: people have all sorts of abilities, all sorts of means, regardless of class, regardless of identity, to find a tactic that fits for them. What keeps you up at night enough to make you active? Trump says we shouldn’t ask people for warrants. We demand warrants. When a business puts a ‘No Kings’ sign up or a ‘No Ice’ sign in their window, they’re not complying. And we need more people to do that wherever they are,” she said, “whether it’s a general saying, ‘I’m not gonna command my troops to do this,’ whether it’s troops becoming conscientious objectors, whether it’s us boycotting Target and T-Mobile.”