The Resistance Is Female
I'm the only male in the room right now.
In the fall of 2017, I was finishing up my first six months as a community organizer. Seeing as I had my feet wet, my role was gradually expanding from working in one urban community to working now with two affluent, neighboring suburban communities that bordered the poorest city per capita in the state. This division was no accident as historically the region had its New England mill workforce that was largely immigrant populations living in the inner city while the wealthy mill owners lived in the surrounding towns to make sure they weren't mingling with "those people." Despite this historical division, there existed a suburban population that identified with their neighbors of color and saw an administration willing to vilify them for political needs. In the fall of 2017, this population came together on immigrant justice work, and as the community organizer working in that community, I was in charge of helping to streamline the process.
The truth is I was largely unneeded.
The population I was working with was a team of eight suburban moms, some of whom had existing relationships that dated back 30 years. They were teachers, retired lawyers, and stay-at-home moms. They attended services at their local temple, Episcopalian, or Unitarian church. They were actively working on a campaign to challenge the status quo and to get their suburban communities to enact pro-immigrant protections. To do this, they were engaging local elected officials, police chiefs, and members of the immigrant communities themselves. They were strategically building power to ensure that each community had enough support should there be a public vote on the issue. They were doing all this to help their communities come out publicly in support of the region's immigrant communities. It wasn't enough to be supportive of these issues behind closed doors; what these women were asking was for these officials to be openly supportive of these issues in a public setting. When these women organized meetings, powerful men took notice and listened.
I tell this story now in the wake of the Wall Of Moms movement because it's important to those of us in the social justice field to acknowledge what our media has not: women have been the driving force behind the resistance to Donald Trump. Starting with the Women's March in January of 2017, women have been leading the way against rising fascism in this country. High school senior Emma Gonzalez was a driving force behind the March for Our Lives in the wake of the Parkland shooting in February of 2018. Democratic women helped not to elect but were elected themselves in the 2018 midterm elections, helping provide a critical check on the power of the Trump Administration. As November of 2020 approaches, we are seeing record numbers of women running for office and women will be critical in flipping the Senate with strong candidates found in Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, and Texas.
The truth is that nobody should be surprised by Donald Trump's desperation in trying to win back this critical demographic. Fortunately, Trump is as stupid as he is ugly and is actually alienating more suburban women through his actions. Contrary to what Stephen Miller believes, suburban women aren't terrified about their neighborhoods being overrun by scary black people. But what suburban women are terrified of is sending their children back to school at a time when schools are in no position to safely reopen. While the Trump administration continues to willingly expose our children to harm, suburban women are continuing to take notice. In the end, it is not actually good politics to ask women to knowingly place their children in harm's way to appease a wannabe dictator.
In 2016, women knew. In particular, black women knew. They knew who Donald Trump was because they saw in him their own experiences reflected. They heard him loud and clear in October of that year when the Billy Bush tape came out and Trump dismissed his repeated sexual assaults as "locker room talk." The saw him skulk behind Hillary Clinton as creepy men do when they try and intimidate women in public spaces. The #MeToo movement brought women forward to retold countless stories of being subjected to inappropriate language or acts by men in power. Millions of women heard Christine Ford who bravely and selflessly shared her story of sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh only to have Senate Republicans and Donald Trump dismiss his actions as "boys being boys." With more and more coming out about Trump's involvement with Jeffrey Epstein in running a pedophile sex ring with Ghislaine Maxwell, it's clear that Donald Trump's suburban woman problem won't go away anytime soon.
This is the bed that Donald Trump has made for himself. He has been an unapologetic misogynist his entire life. He's had 5 children with 3 different women and has cheated on all 3 of them. He gave an illegal campaign contribution to Stormy Daniels to make her go away right before the 2016 election and had his goons harass her. He's been credibly accused of sexual assault by two-dozen women. He openly went into the locker room of Miss Teen USA contestants to comment on their bodies. His known relationship with Jeffrey Epstein potentially puts him raping girls as young as 13. When he referred to Hillary Clinton as a "nasty woman", millions of American women heard a man who was threatened by a woman's intellect and whose only response was a derogatory comment about her character. For America's women, Donald Trump represents the type of patriarchy that has oppressed them since the founding of our nation, over 400 years ago.
So while Trump pits and putters about how to win back suburban women, they will continue to organize against him. They will continue to stand up to his cosplay mercenaries across the country. They will continue to call up their elected officials and ask them to get to work on critical legislation.
They will continue to support women running for local and state offices through both their time and their financial contributions. They will even continue to organize for issues they believe in at the local level, leaving community organizers in awe of their sheer tenacity and determination. They will do all this, not because they want to but because they have to. Because to give Donald Trump four more years is saying that his actions have no consequences. That he can rape and abuse women and actually be rewarded for it. The truth is out about Donald Trump and if women have their say, that truth will be enough to have tens of millions of suburban women against him in record numbers.
And they will save our republic in the process.