On the heels of an embarrassingly pointless Inauguration Day melee, a handful of ineffectual protests and several national strikes that accomplished absolutely nothing, the American Civil Liberal Liberties Union is planning a national “Resistance Training” exercise for this Saturday to fight President Trump.
Having clearly watched too many Michael Bourne movies, the ACLU vows to use its largely indecipherable "People Power" event to “activate” its anti-Trump “army” to “take the fight to the streets” and "resist" Trump’s agenda…among other buzzword-y things.
From the ACLU’s website:
“The ACLU will continue to challenge President Trump’s unconstitutional actions in court and with PeoplePower.org, we will take that fight to the streets,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. “We are in the fight of our lives right now, and what we have learned since Donald Trump’s inauguration is that there is a growing army of people out there who want to be asked to do something big and important in response. We intend to activate these people to defend our Constitution, our shared American values and our future.”
To host the training, the ACLU has hired “experienced digital organizers who have worked at the White House, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and leading activist groups” – i.e., basically a whole bunch of currently unemployed people. The group will brainstorm how to “defend sanctuary cities, resist deportation raids, oppose the Muslim ban, maintain Planned Parenthood funding.”
And while “complain about the election,” “pout for an hour” and “ultimately accomplish nothing” didn’t make the official cut, I’m sure they’ll end up on the agenda.
The group claimed on Twitter that over 100,000 people have signed up for the training, which will apparently be filmed at a town hall in Miami and be live-cast at dozens of locations all across the country. (I checked – the location closest to my home is somebody’s house.)
When you're one day away from the Resistance Training and over 100,000 people have signed up to join in. RSVP at https://t.co/p1cJe0kpa0 pic.twitter.com/1lIle82P0n
— ACLU National (@ACLU) March 10, 2017
I'll cap off this PSA with a short reminder: while 100,000 disgruntled folks may have signed up for the ACLU's Whinefest2017, 63 million Americans voted for Trump.