No Kings asks protesters to move into civic resistance

Presenter: Stan Taylor, please tell us about yourself and the upcoming No Kings rally Oct. 18.

Stan Taylor: I am the leader of Indivisible Eugene Springfield which is one of the founding members of the Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield or ACES, which organized the Hands Off! rally in April and the No Kings rally in June.

[00:00:26] And we are organizing the No Kings 2 rally on Oct. 18, subtitled ‘Unite and Resist: A Call To Action.’

[00:00:38] We are in the midst of an authoritarian takeover and consolidation of power, and we’re living at an inflection point in history, the end of what’s sometimes referred to as the ‘let the market decide’ or neoliberal era, and a contested stage. And the contest is between an authoritarian takeover versus a strong social movement to resist that takeover and build the world we want to see.

[00:01:13] Presenter: How can people in the Eugene Springfield community respond?

[00:01:17] Stan Taylor: One of the ways we’ve already responded is that we now have 24 activist organizations together in the Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield, ACES, which is the organization that is organizing this rally.

[00:01:37] The second thing we can do is to show up at No Kings Oct. 18 at the Wayne Morse United States Courthouse, 405 E. 8th Ave. in Eugene.

[00:01:52] It will begin at 10 a.m. with a rally and then the march to City Hall. The music will start at 9:30, so there’ll be stuff happening before the actual program begins. And of course the area around the courthouse is a very good area for sign-waving on both sides of the street. At City Hall, there’ll be tabling to help people get connected with the various organizations in the Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield.

[00:02:28] There will be rovers through the crowd to provide information about the calls to action and how to contact the organizations engaged in these calls.

[00:02:40] Presenter: The program will include speakers involved with four campaigns.

[00:02:44] Stan Taylor: At this rally, we’re taking our organizing to a new level. We’re seeking to move beyond protests to get people involved in actual resistance campaigns. We’re going to feature four different calls to action. Each of the speakers will be a leader from the organizations that are making the calls.

[00:03:10] The first campaign is ‘Eyes on Ice,’ meeting each Tuesday at the old federal courthouse at 7th and Pearl from 10 in the morning to 5 at night, to try to prevent immigrants, reporting for hearings, from being kidnapped. People can come and protest in ways where they’ll feel comfortable. including picketing; the interfaith Singing For Our Lives from noon to 1 p.m., and a silent vigil led by the interfaith group from 1 to 2 (p.m.)

[00:03:51] Presenter: The second campaign seeks to remove Flock cameras from the streets. It’s called ‘Eyes Off Eugene.’

[00:03:58] Stan Taylor: The Flock cameras are a type of public surveillance of Eugene Springfield. Just recently in a work session, the City Council has voted to turn off the Flock cameras, so there’s a need for people to turn out to that City Council meeting to hold the City Council accountable to the promise that they have made .

[00:04:25] Presenter: The third campaign is a call to hold the line for trans rights.

[00:04:30] Stan Taylor: People probably know that the trans community is one of the most vulnerable communities that’s being targeted by the Trump administration. And there’s justifiable fear among the trans community that their health care will be lost. If they lose access to the health care they need to maintain their identity, it’s an existential threat to all trans people.

[00:04:59] Presenter: The fourth campaign supports unionization at Starbucks.

[00:05:04] Stan Taylor: The Service Employees International Union, SEIU, will be featuring their unionization for Starbucks campaign. So these are the four campaigns that will be featured and there’ll be calls to action to get people to join the campaign or campaigns of their choice.

[00:05:24] We have made a strong alliance with labor in Eugene Springfield, including the SEIU Local 503, the AFSCME local union, ONA, and likely other unions.

[00:05:41] Presenter:  SEIU Local 503 President Johnny Earl will be a featured speaker.

[00:05:46] Stan Taylor: They’ll be wearing their unions’ T-shirts with the different colors of their organizations and chanting through the streets of Eugene. The march is going to be also led by Samba Ja, one of our great local drumming ensembles here in Eugene.

[00:06:06] Presenter: Stan Taylor, please tell us more about Aces and Indivisible Eugene Springfield.

[00:06:11] Stan Taylor: ACES arose in mid-March in response to Indivisible’s call for mass protests across the United States. Indivisible Eugene Springfield realized that we couldn’t organize an event of that magnitude alone, so activist organizations in Eugene Springfield came together in mid-March and formed the Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield, which now has 24 activist organizations in it.

[00:06:47] We have environmental groups like 350 Eugene and Beyond Toxics. We have socialist organizations like PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation) and the Democratic Socialists of America. We have religious groups like the Social Council for the Unitarian Universalist Church and Church Women United. We have political groups like Indivisible Eugene Springfield. We have peace groups like the Planet Versus Pentagon and Extinction Rebellion.

[00:07:21] It’s a wide coalition committed to nonviolence as an ethic and a strategy. One of our key concerns is to ensure nonviolence as the basic principle around which the events are organized.

[00:07:41] We recognize that we need to work together even though we may have differences in strategies and ideologies. ACES is making that commitment to work towards a common goal: to resist the authoritarian takeover by working to build a strong social movement here in Eugene Springfield.

[00:08:02] Indivisible Eugene Springfield is a local chapter of the national Indivisible organization, and we are working to resist authoritarianism and to build and strengthen social movements by organizing through action teams.

[00:08:19] Presenter: One example of their local focus is the campaign to stop Amazon from building a mega-warehouse in Eugene.

[00:08:26] Stan Taylor: Our most recent campaign is the ‘Say No to Amazon’ campaign to boycott Amazon, but it’s also to make people aware that Amazon data centers support Israel in the war against Gaza, help ICE track  immigrants. These are not neutral activities. So we’re engaging in the ‘Say No to Amazon’ campaign.

[00:08:53] Presenter: Stan says the coalition-building has also been happening at the national level. The No Kings website lists 250 organizations working together to build a mass social movement. The map shows over 2,500 locations for No Kings events Oct. 18.

[00:09:11] Stan Taylor: This nationwide coalition is providing one of the strongest sets of pushback to the Trump administration. It’s no surprise that the Trump administration casts nonprofits as terrorist organizations. Indivisible is one of those nonprofits that they’re targeting despite the strong Indivisible commitment to nonviolence in everything that they do.

[00:09:43] There’s a lot of strength in this model of organizing. We’re hoping they take it to the next level, not only in terms of numbers, but to get people to shift in their perception of their own role and how they participate.

[00:09:58] We’ve had a long period of time where we’ve been complicit, through being comfortable consuming. We’re not being active citizens, and we need to shift away from consumerism and into a framework of not only protesting, but get actively engaged in civil resistance.

[00:10:22] The people who have done research into successful social movements, like Erica Chenoweth, say that to withstand authoritarianism, the tipping point is to have 3.5% of the population actively engaged in civil resistance. That’s something more than protest. That’s why we’re making calls to action.

[00:10:50] Presenter: To learn more about Aces, go to linktree/ACES541OR.