How strange and deeply uncomfortable to think that, should he last, we will have (at least) three (3!) more years of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Honestly, I can barely imagine what that might mean. After all, every extra day of him -- or rather him -- is eye-blinkingly strange. For instance, it's true that, while at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he didn't actually take possession of Greenland. All he potentially got (and it is indeed necessary to put that all in italics to emphasize the strangeness of almost anything having to do with You Know Who!) was "total access" to that vast ice island and perhaps a pile more military bases there, which might be considered "sovereign U.S. territories." And don't forget that there's always Iceland! (Or might he have just mixed up the two islands in his Davos speech?)
Meanwhile, speaking of ice, with the help of ICE, he's hard at work dealing with a crisis in America -- the fact that, as he put it back in 2024, "We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now." And that phrase catches his urge not just to expand American power in this hemisphere from Venezuela to Greenland, but to "cleanse" this country of everyone he can't stand, starting perhaps with Representative Ilhan Omar. But what makes it all so distinctly frightening (beyond the obvious reasons) is his urge to be in control, to be, in short, president (or perhaps emperor) of the United States, not just for three more years but for the rest of his life, which at age 79, could, of course, be three more weeks or -- god save us all -- another decade or more.
He's spoken directly of having a third term in office ("There are methods which you could do it") and yes, as with Greenland, he did back down on that after a fashion, but with Donald Trump, who knows what that might actually mean? And with all of that in mind, let TomDispatch regular Liz and Sam Theoharis take you into a world of the young in an America ruled by a genuinely eerie old man and consider what they might indeed do about this all too strange world of ours. Tom
The Young Organizers Survival Corps
Can the Young Wrest This Nation from the Clutches of Full-Throated Authoritarianism?
By Liz Theoharis and Sam Theoharis
Here's a small suggestion from the two authors of this piece (us): don't be young in Donald Trump's America if you can help it. Being young in America right now means you'll have to contend with stalling job markets, rampant inflation, deep political and economic instability, and impending climate disaster. If you point these things out, you're labeled a dangerous (and misguided) radical. If you're too busy trying to make ends meet for you and your family, you get labeled as lazy, apathetic, and defeatist.
This is not to say that older generations are doing okay. They're not. But at least they'll get to receive (and not just pay into) social security, which has to make the fascism go down easier. Before we explain or suggest what the young can do about all that, let us start by introducing ourselves, since one of us is indeed still Gen Z.
The authors of this piece are both co-workers and family members. "Theohari," as some of our colleagues like to call us.Liz is Sam's aunt and a long-time antipoverty organizer, mother, pastor, and theologian. Sam is a recent college graduate, student organizer, and law nerd. Recently, we were roommates at The Young Organizers Survival Corps boot camp.
Gathering in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains on a 157-acre farm owned and run by the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), The Young Organizers Survival Corps kicked off a six-month leadership development program to help prepare the next generation of leaders to resist authoritarianism -- something all too crucial in Donald Trump's America. A hundred young people converged from more than 22 states, representing dozens of campuses and grassroots organizations. Most of them had already been struggling around issues of tenants' rights, peace and militarism, immigrant rights, abortion rights, mass incarceration, homelessness, healthcare access, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and so much more in this increasingly disturbed country.
In our days at that farm, we studied the hard-won lessons of past social movements, trained young people in the tactics of nonviolent resistance and grassroots organizing, practiced hands-on skills in arts and culture, and learned new methods for and reasons to reclaim the power of our faith traditions.
Movement Education
Haley Farm was the perfect setting for just such a boot camp. The farm once belonged to Alex Haley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Both of those masterpieces educated millions of Americans about African-American history and the importance of genealogy, as well as radical political organizing and thought. Urging readers to investigate their own heritage, Haley used storytelling to make the country's history accessible and inspiring.
The educational mission of Alex Haley and his farm has endured for decades, long past the era in which he and so many others struggled to discover their own political bearings in the Black freedom movement. Since the Children's Defense Fund bought the Haley Farm in 1994, it has hosted trainings for CDF Freedom Schools, deepened and inspired faith-based child advocacy, convened children's authors and librarians, hosted the "National Council of Elders" (where young activists and civil rights veterans are able to strategize about the future), and gathered working groups for the Black Community Crusade for Children and the Black Student Leadership Network -- and that's just to begin a list of its work. A couple of months back, for instance, movement elders and Black organizers convened there for training in how to resist this deepening Trumpian moment of growing violence and authoritarianism.
For decades, the leafy folds of the Great Smoky Mountains in the southern Appalachians have housed other epicenters of movement training as well. Haley Farm is just towns away from the Highlander Research and Education Center (once the Highlander Folk School), another freedom training ground. Highlander was founded by popular educator Myles Horton, whose thinking has shaped the work of generations of grassroots leaders, including both of ours.
The Highlander Folk School first emerged as a cradle for organizing during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), it became the official education arm of the industrial labor movement in the South. Over the next two decades, it played an even bigger role in supporting the civil rights movement. Highlander was where the "mother of the movement," Septima Clark, first experimented with the literacy programs that would become its "citizenship schools" -- a network of some 900 community-based schools that taught tens of thousands of Black Southerners to read and pass Jim Crow literacy tests. Highlander was also where a young Rosa Parks studied before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, where the civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome was popularized, and where generations of organizers and leaders -- especially those from the South and Appalachia -- discovered the world of activism into which they had been born.
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