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Susan Campodonico hadnt been out on the street protesting since the Vietnam War. But there she was, standing in front of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland on a Tuesday afternoon, holding a neon green sign that read: Honk for single payer NOW!

She credits her presence to Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda. Modeled on the success of the conservative Tea Party, the 24-page step-by-step activist playbook has exploded since it went online three months ago. Its been downloaded almost 2 million times since then by people who want to interrogate Republicans like Rep. Tom McClintock at a town hall in Mariposa or goad Democrats like Sen. Dianne Feinstein into attending one in Oakland.

What started out as some congressional staffers sharing organizing tips has mushroomed into an organization that has inspired small, autonomous groups across the nation. Not surprisingly, many of the 5,802 Indivisible-inspired groups have emerged in the predominantly liberal Bay Area 200 across six congressional districts.

And if the guide and the groups manage to keep progressives plugged into politics between presidential campaigns, Democrats could perform better in the 2018 midterm elections, contests where that party typically underperforms.

Indivisibles premise is simple: Members of Congress dont do anything unless their constituents hold them accountable, either by showing up en masse at district meetings armed with pointed questions (and video cameras to record the confrontation), or by overwhelming their offices with phone calls. Thats just what the newly born Tea Party did to Democrats after President Barack Obama took office in 2009, helping to flip the House back to the GOP in 2010.

Margaret Hasselman during weekly protest by grassroots organization Indivisible.

Margaret Hasselman during weekly protest by grassroots organization...

So the guide, written by former congressional staffers, explains in plain, activism-for-dummies language how to make those representatives listen. It details everything from how to form a group of like-minded resisters to where to sit when protesting at a town hall meeting. (Sit by yourself or in groups of two, and spread out throughout the room. This will help reinforce the impression of broad consensus.)

That kind of granular direction has been a godsend to new activists like Campodonico, a 68-year-old Piedmont occupational therapist who was struggling with how to express her anxiety over President Trumps election.

Indivisible has told me what to say, how to say it and where to say it, Campodonico said, as cars passing the Grand Lake blared their horns in support.

While the guide is focused on Congress, its designed so each group can decide what actions its members want to take. The two dozen people Campodonico joined have gone to town hall meetings together and started a book club.

On this day, she joined 50 others in what has become a weekly hour-long sign-waving protest in front of the Oakland theater whose marquee often sports a progressive political message. Many of the demonstrators, holding hand-made placards with messages both snarky (Go Fact Yourself) and serious (No ban! No wall! No bigotry!), said hearing those honks from passing motorists makes them feel like theyre not alone in their apprehension about the new administration.

Indivisible is just one of the political startups working to channel that liberal anxiety in the current political landscape. Others, like Sister District Project, Flippable, Swing Left and the Resurgent Left, are focused on showing progressives how to campaign in red Congressional districts or state races where their help and cash will be needed.

But Indivisible stands out not only in its intent but also because it is proactive, it is sustained and its growing, said Doug McAdam, author of Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America.

Its power lies in how its groups are being formed locally, not by some far-away, top-down organization. Historically, thats how most enduring movements are formed, McAdam said, whether it is for civil rights or the Tea Party.

Looking back, we think of the Civil Rights movement as one cohesive thing, said McAdam, a professor of sociology at Stanford University. Not really. It was a coalition of countless local groups all acting under the name of civil rights. It was not a single entity.

But it was the Tea Party specifically, the way it went after vulnerable Democratic House members in the 2010 midterm elections that inspired Ezra Levin, 31, a former staffer for Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, and his Indivisible co-founders. He recalled how Tea Party activists flooded the office with calls.

To understand what its like when the phones are ringing off the hook, that means everybody, and I mean everybody even the chief of staff is answering the phones, said Levin, who was a policy analyst for an antipoverty nonprofit in Washington before recently becoming Indivisibles executive director. It was quite time consuming and disruptive. ... It puts the entire party on edge.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

Jane Vinson joins a protest by members of an Indivisible group on Grand Avenue in Oakland last week.

Jane Vinson joins a protest by members of an Indivisible group on Grand Avenue in Oakland last week.

Manuela Sanchez of Berkeley waves at a honking driver during the weekly protest by grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

Manuela Sanchez of Berkeley waves at a honking driver during the weekly protest by grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

Matt Warren holds a banner as Margaret Hasselman arrives for a weekly protest by grassroots organization Indivisible in Oakland.

Matt Warren holds a banner as Margaret Hasselman arrives for a weekly protest by grassroots organization Indivisible in Oakland.

Stephen Mr. Fun Kelly plus music during a weekly protest by the grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

Stephen Mr. Fun Kelly plus music during a weekly protest by the grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

A weekly protest by the grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

A weekly protest by the grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

David Estrada carries a banner during weekly protest by the grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

David Estrada carries a banner during weekly protest by the grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

Deborah Alexzander and Matt Warren during a weekly protest by the grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

Deborah Alexzander and Matt Warren during a weekly protest by the grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

Gayle Eads takes part during weekly protest by grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

Gayle Eads takes part during weekly protest by grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

David Estrada (left), Deborah Alexzander, Margaret Hasselman and Matt Warren during a weekly protest by the grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

David Estrada (left), Deborah Alexzander, Margaret Hasselman and Matt Warren during a weekly protest by the grassroots organization Indivisible on Grand Avenue in Oakland.

Can Indivisible do for progressives what Tea Party did for GOP?

So during a couple of weeks after the election last fall, he and about 30 former and current congressional staffers and other wonky colleagues wrote a game plan, outlining how liberals could fight back using those same tactics.

Like what to do after asking a hostile question at a town hall:

A staffer will often try to limit your ability to follow up by taking the microphone back immediately after you finish speaking. They cant do that if you keep a firm hold on the mic. No staffer in their right mind wants to look like theyre physically intimidating a constituent, so they will back off, the guide instructs.

Levin is claiming some early victories. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has long wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But after an Arkansas chapter called Ozark Indivisible criticized Cotton for canceling a town hall meeing, 1,000 people showed up for his next one. There, one of the senators constituents explained that her husband is dying of Alzheimers disease. She currently pays $29 a month for her husbands insurance.

And you want to stand there with him at home, expect us to be calm, cool and collected? the woman asked Cotton in a widely shared video. Well, what kind of insurance do you have?

Last week, Cotton was one of the first GOP senators to say that Republicans are moving too fast on pushing their replacement health care bill through Congress.

I do not want to move in a hasty fashion. I want to get it right. I don't want to get it fast, Cotton said on MSNBC.

Levins take: Do you think he would have said that if all those people didnt show up at his town hall?

Now, Indivisible faces challenges, starting with how to manage its growth. The once-volunteer enterprise is hiring several field organizers and has started raising money. More than 13,000 people have donated $520,000 in the last five weeks.

Levin believes the group isnt as diverse as it should be. This week, it will release tips on how groups can broaden their ranks.

We think that its really important that the people most likely to be targeted by immigration legislation, for example, be front and center, Levin said. People have got to pass the mike.

And then theres the question of whether Indivisible can translate that energy into electoral power, said Buffy Wicks, a top state organizer for Obama. Can they develop leaders who can lead the movement?

But Mark Meckler, the Grass Valley attorney who was a co-founder and national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots in 2009, said Indivisibles comparisons to the Tea Partiers is one of the most freaking hilarious things Ive heard in my life.

Indivisible is fundamentally organized by Capitol Hill staffers. We didnt have any Capitol Hill staffers, Meckler said. While conservative organizations that included Washington operatives like Freedom Works were also later involved in the Tea Party movement, Meckler dismissed their contributions. We didnt get anything from them.

These guys (Indivisible) think they know what the Tea Party was about, but theyre totally clueless, said Meckler, who now leads a group called Citizens for Self Governance, which wants to bring more power to the states.

Another question is how Indivisible will focus its message. Or should it?

Standing near Campodonico last week in Oakland were people holding signs in support of Black Lives Matter, LGBT rights, the environment, and dumping Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

I think it empowers us all, said Nancy McCormick, a Castro Valley resident. While the Muslim ban or the Affordable Care Act might not be my No. 1 issue, Im going to be out here because theyre all connected.

The potential downside is that with so many splintered interests, McAdam, the author and professor, said, the power of any one issue is diffused.

I wrestle with this question all the time, he said. All those different people give a movement a certain kind of dynamism. But when there are 38 different issues, there is a concern about whether there will be enough sustained energy around one to make a difference.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli

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Can Indivisible do for progressives what Tea Party did for GOP? - San Francisco Chronicle

In the hopes of amplifying their objections to President Donald Trump and his policies, Irish and American progressive activists will host an event calling for human rights and welcoming immigrants on St. Patricks Day in New York City.

Irish Stand, as organizers are calling it, will take place in the Riverside Church on Manhattans West side on Friday evening. It will feature speeches from a number of Irish civil rights advocates, including Irish Labour Party Senator Aodhn Rordin, actor Gabriel Byrne, comedian Maeve Higgins and author Colum McCann, as well as prominent American faith leaders, artists and activists like Shaun King of the movement for black lives.

Tickets are $15 and the proceeds will go to the American Civil Liberties Union.

It was especially important for Irish people to hold a rally on St. Patricks Day, Irelands national holiday, according to Sen. Rordin, whose impassioned appeal for the Irish government to criticize Trumps xenophobic rhetoric went viral in November.

We have a strong voice and we need to use it, Rordin said. We have to say, Look, on this day, on the day that everyone considers themselves a little bit Irish, we have to speak up for immigrants everywhere.

Several activists, including King, contacted Rordin after his famous November speech with the goal of collaborating on transatlantic civil rights efforts. Rordin saw Trumps election as the culmination of a nationalist wave sweeping Western countries that included the United Kingdoms vote to leave the European Union, commonly known as Brexit.

We feel it keenly in Ireland because were right between Trump and Brexit. Were right between the two major earthquakes in the Western world over the last year or so, he said.

After Trump implemented the first travel ban in January, Rordin, King and others settled on doing an event on St. Patricks Day.King recommended Riverside Church, according to Rordin, since it was the site of Martin Luther King Jr.s historic speech against the Vietnam War almost exactly 50 years earlier.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

St. Patricks Day has historically been a politically important day for U.S.-Irish relations.

For decades, Irish prime ministers have visited the White House on or near St. Patricks Day to present the U.S. president a bowl of shamrock as a gesture of friendship. During difficult times, such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, it was an opportunity for Irish officials to discuss peacemaking efforts with American lawmakers.

The tradition will continue this year under Trump, which makes it essential that other Irish people show their displeasure with Trumps anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, according to Rordin.

Its a big deal, Rordin said of the shamrock ceremony. But the fact that this is the first Patricks day since Trumps election, and the fact that the focus of this administration seems to be ... a very negative view of immigrants, we feel is an affront to our people as Irish people. If they are to have a critical view of any immigrant people, then they have a critical view, to be honest, of us too.

Irish Stand is also intended to signal that the Irish-Americans collaborating with Trump are out of touch with the national history of Irish people as immigrants fleeing persecution, Rordin said. There are currently an estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants living in the United States as well, he noted.

What were really conscious of, and what Im really conscious of, is that quite a number of Irish-Americans surround Trump Bannon, Conway, Pence, Spicer, Flynn, Kelly these are all Irish-Americans, these are all Irish names Ryan, Rordin said, referring to top Trump administration officials and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). These are all people that in my judgment have completely forgotten their family history, because the Irish story is one that has been replicated now by other people We were once the people who came to America as refugees. We were viewed by the British as being terrorists. We were people who suffered sectarian discrimination in the United Kingdom and [in the U.S.] as well.

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Irish And American Progressives Are Organizing A St. Patrick's Day Rally Against Trump In New York - Huffington Post

WASHINGTON The progressive mob that disrupted Charles Murray's appearance last week at Middlebury College was protesting a 1994 book read by few if any of the protesters. Some of them denounced "eugenics," thereby demonstrating an interesting ignorance: Eugenics controlled breeding to improve the heritable traits of human beings was a progressive cause.

In "The Bell Curve," Murray, a social scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, and his co-author, Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein, found worrisome evidence that American society was becoming "cognitively stratified," with an increasingly affluent cognitive elite and "a deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive ability distribution." They examined the consensus that, controlling for socioeconomic status and possible IQ test bias, cognitive ability is somewhat heritable, that the black/white differential had narrowed, and that millions of blacks have higher IQs than millions of whites. The authors were "resolutely agnostic" concerning the roles of genes and the social environment. They said that even if there developed unequivocal evidence that genetics are "part of the story," there would be "no reason to treat individuals differently" or to permit government regulation of procreation.

Middlebury's mob was probably as ignorant of this as of the following: Between 1875 and 1925, when eugenics had many advocates, not all advocates were progressives but advocates were disproportionately progressives because eugenics coincided with progressivism's premises and agenda.

Progressives rejected the Founders' natural rights doctrine and conception of freedom. Progressives said freedom is not the natural capacity of individuals whose rights pre-exist government. Rather, freedom is something achieved, at different rates and to different degrees, by different races. Racialism was then seeking scientific validation, and Darwinian science had given rise to "social Darwinism" belief in the ascendance of the fittest in the ranking of races. The progressive theologian Walter Rauschenbusch argued that with modern science "we can intelligently mold and guide the evolution in which we take part."

Progressivism's concept of freedom as something merely latent, and not equally latent, in human beings dictated rethinking the purpose and scope of government. Princeton University scholar Thomas C. Leonard, in his 2016 book "Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era," says progressives believed that scientific experts should be in society's saddle, determining the "human hierarchy" and appropriate social policies, including eugenics.

Economist Richard T. Ely, a founder of the American Economic Association and whose students at Johns Hopkins included Woodrow Wilson, said "God works through the state," which must be stern and not squeamish. Charles Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin, epicenter of intellectual progressivism, said: "We know enough about eugenics so that if that knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation." Progress, said Ely, then at Wisconsin, depended on recognizing "that there are certain human beings who are absolutely unfit, and who should be prevented from a continuation of their kind." The mentally and physically disabled were deemed "defectives."

In 1902, when Wilson became Princeton's president, the final volume of his "A History of the American People" contrasted "the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe" with southern and eastern Europeans who had "neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence." In 1907, Indiana became the first of more than 30 states to enact forcible sterilization laws. In 1911, now-Gov. Wilson signed New Jersey's, which applied to "the hopelessly defective and criminal classes." In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginia's law, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes saying that in affirming the law requiring the sterilization of "imbeciles" he was "getting near to the first principle of real reform."

At the urging of Robert Yerkes, president of the American Psychological Association, during World War I the Army did intelligence testing of conscripts so that the nation could inventory its human stock as it does livestock. The Army's findings influenced Congress' postwar immigration restrictions and national quotas. Carl Brigham, a Princeton psychologist, said the Army's data demonstrated "the intellectual superiority of our Nordic group over the Mediterranean, Alpine and Negro groups."

Progressives derided the Founders as unscientific for deriving natural rights from what progressives considered the fiction of a fixed human nature. But they asserted that races had fixed and importantly different natures calling for different social policies. Progressives resolved this contradiction when, like most Americans, they eschewed racialism the belief that the races are tidily distinct, each created independent of all others, each with fixed traits and capacities. Middlebury's turbulent progressives should read Leonard's book. After they have read Murray's.

George Will writes for the Washington Post. His syndicated column appears Sundays and Thursdays.

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Progressives part with their past - Bismarck Tribune

After the epic failure of the Democratic Party losing to a reality TV star in November theres been (the predictable) talk among the party aboutreflection.

Apparently corporate media executives skipped those meetings, as they continue to force feed the same stale, Democratic political operatives whose collective failures and faulty thinking created President Trump.

Over the last 24 hours, Ive seen disgraced former DNC Chair Donna Brazile, Hillary Clintons communications chairman Jennifer Palmieri, and Clintons longtime aide and adult fan girl Neera Tandenall on MSNBC to fear monger on the great Russian boogeyman and give their pearls of wisdom on how to resist President Trump.

Over on CNN, the network continues to book the same establishment Democrat pundits who graced the screens before the election. You know, the ones who were wrong about Clintons strength, Trumps unpalatability, and how angry and economically hurting a substantial portion of America is (easy to miscalculate when they all live in coastal bubbles).

One of the figures who led the pack of Democratic Party dummies was John Podesta, who WikiLeaks exposed as a ruthless, tone-deaf, and stone-cold political operative whose elitism and embrace of 1990s political thinking helped push an inauthentic, unpopular candidate like Clinton, while helping to smear a verypopular Bernie Sanders. (For his great success, he landed a cushy columnist gig with The Washington Post.)

Dont get me wrong: Im not saying being politically inept and questionably corrupt means you dont have the right to go out and earn a living. This Murderers Row of centrist, slayers for the status quo, have every right in the world to appear on cable news and in prestigious newspaper columns. More power to them.

The question is: Why does the corporate media, who sat stunned after Donald Trump became President Trump, reflexively go back to the same well that got everything so wrong rather than, gee, I dunno, book some progressive pundits who warned against the catastrophe lying ahead if the establishment pushed Clinton as the nominee.

Not to be a homer for my boss, but as Cenk Uygur wisely forecasted, Iceberg right ahead! as early as last summer.

But you dont see Cenk on cable outlets or in The Washington Post much. OrSanders national surrogate Jonathan Tasini, who loudly warned against a Clinton nomination and underestimating Trump; or Glenn Greenwald, whose website The Intercept did some of the best reporting on Clintons conflicts and corruption during the campaign (cable news will have him on only to fear monger and try and pound him into submission over Russia).

The list of other strong progressives whose political instincts were much sharper and correct than the usual suspects continuing to stain the airwaves is long: Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk, David Sirota of International Business Times, Lee Fang of The Intercept, Michael Tracey of The Young Turks, Shaun King of The New York Daily News/The Young Turks, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, and many more. (Ironically, these figures probably view it as a badge of honor not to take part in the corporate-media-industrial-complex echo chamber, but thats not the point.)

What corporate media is showing in its continual embracing of failed politicos who excel in regurgitating progressive-sounding platitudes but, in reality, love the big-money, Wall St. Democratic Party theyve helped build, is that they themselves want the status quo.

Cable news, print, and digital would rather follow the day-to-day web of President Trumps tweet storms and the resistance to him than focus on the exploding progressive movement swirling around this country (and winning many local legislative seats).

And why wouldnt they? These failed pundits are their friends: As WikiLeaks showed, Chuck Todd held Jennifer Palmieris birthday party at his home during the campaign; bigger picture, the revolving door between anchors and columnists and pundits and operatives has been wide open for years.

As I exposed, Donna Brazile was literally feeding questions to the Clinton campaign while working as a CNN contributor so naturally, MSNBC had to have her after her DNC Chair position ended!

For the Americans who still consume traditional news on TV or in newspapers, the result of being continually exposed to these failed politicos who keep passing on their failed ideas and thinking is the status quo remaining.

After all, why would voters choose something different if they have no idea there is a progressive movement exploding all around them.

Jordan Chariton is a Politics Reporter for The Young Turks, covering the presidential campaign trail, where hes interviewing voters on both sides. Hes also a columnist for Mediaite and heres his latest column. Follow him @JordanChariton and watch videos at YouTube.com/tytpolitics.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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Why Media Still Loves Failed Corporate Democrats Over Progressives - Mediaite

Saber-rattling, or agenuine threat? Left-wing groups arewarning Democratic Senators that if they don't fight against President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, they may find themselves out of a job. It's unclear if these organizationshave the wherewithal or resources to follow through on that challenge, but Chuck Schumer's caucus is no doubt acutely aware that their base is demanding nothing short offull-blown "resistance" at every turn -- and some of the loudest elements of said base are making sure that these lawmakers never forget it (via Jazz Shaw):

A "do or die" issue, says the woman from the extremeabortion lobby. Fact check: Literally true. A quick digression on abortion, since the Left is obsessed with maintaining America's radical status quo on the issue: In case you missed it, Planned Parenthoodturned down an offer from the Trump administration to maintain its federal funding if the organization stopped performing abortions. That's no surprise.Despite all the misleading and downplayingspin, abortion is amajor component of Planned Parenthood's business model -- especially when they could augment their revenues through theghoulish sale of harvested fetal organs. It should be underscored that in the event that Roe v. Wade were overturned, abortion would not become illegal nationwide; instead, states would set their ownabortion-related laws, with some abortions remaining legal in all 50 states. Many jurisdictions would, however, implement additional common-sense restrictions on the practice, a good number of which arebroadly popular with the American people. Anyway, back to Gorsuch. The Hill piece notes that conservatives are "winning the message war," as liberals have failed to convince the public that Trump's pick is an extremist:

Yet some within the professional Left are ratcheting up their threats, led by unserious bomb-throwers like Michael Moore (who recentlytweeted about the wonders of Socialism in, um,collapsing Venezuela):

These rumblings must be music to the National Republican Senatorial Committees' ears. The Democrats' left-wing base is not representative of the overall American electorate, especially in the 30 states carried by Donald Trump last fall. Senate Democrats from ten of those states (this list, plus Michigan)are up for re-election next year; five of whom represent states Trump won by 19 percentage points or more. If incumbent Democrats are forced to spend energy and money fending off insurgencies from their ideological left, they'll be in an even weaker position in a general election setting. Numerous Democrats have already indicated that a Gorsuch blockade isn't going to materialize, with somecandidly admitting that he'll be confirmed. I'll leave you with some positive reviews from Democrat-aligned Maine Sen. Angus King, who's sounding an awful lot like a "yes" vote:

Parting thought: If thenot-entirely-unsubstantiated buzz is true, and there's another vacancy on the Court opening up in the relatively near future, the calls for an all-out Democratic filibuster will grow much louder. If Schumer and company choose togo that route, Senate Republicans must be prepared to follow through on the Reid Rule and break the filibuster with 51 votes, or re-implement the'two speech' precedent. The stakes would be too high not to hold Democrats to their own standards.

Tillerson Recuses Himself from Keystone Pipeline Decision

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Angry Progressives: Damn Right We'll Primary Democrats Who Don't Oppose Neil Gorsuch - Townhall