Don't just fight, build!(Voices of the Resistance) (Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi) (Essay)

• Author: Akuno, Kali

I work with Cooperation Jackson, based in Jackson, Mississippi, which comes out of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the New Afrikan People's Organization. I bring up both the local and national groups to give you a sense of the broad movement I'm coming from, and also the more specific work going on in Jackson. That's important because I believe we have to be rooted somewhere firmly on the ground in order to have a base on which to stand, and from which to organize.

After Trump was elected, it took two or three weeks for many people to get out of the fog. There are some losses that we're going to take in this next period under Donald Trump. We have to get ourselves mentally prepared for that, and do the organizing that is necessary to withstand the assault against what little democracy has ever existed in this country, as they try to take us back to the sixteenth century.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Don't be confused about what the Republicans are really trying to do. Part of it is about profit. But they also want to make sure that those who were supposed to stay in their respective places get back in those places. And that's virtually everybody, once you really think about it. Being white is not necessarily going to protect you.

If you can engage in actions, engage. If you can't, that's OK, there will be other times. The question really is, at some point we can't just mobilize, we've got to start organizing. After the first 100 days, people need to sit down and come up with a plan or we are all wasting our time and we are going to be summarily defeated.

We have to develop a serious program and that starts with dialogue--amongst us. On a national level, we have to develop what I call a framework of ungovernability. Fundamentally, that means not giving any legitimacy to Trump, and more importantly, to the neo-confederates, who I would argue are actually far more dangerous than Trump himself.

We've got to get ourselves profoundly more organized than we are now. And we are not an organized force. Let's not kid ourselves. With the unions, with our political parties, we're not even as organized as we were twenty or thirty years ago. And by organized, I do not mean creating a great Internet platform.

We need to be so organized that you can call me, give me two days, and I can move fifty people, and put them in action on the ground in my community. That's the level of organizing that I'm talking about. We've done it before. And we can do it again...