'Not just anger and not just hope, but anger and hope'

Who doesn't love making Elon Musk cry?

The new episode of NEXT COMES WHAT is up in time to encourage you to get out to a #HandsOff protest today if you can.

Andrea Pitzer uses her visit to a #TeslaTakedown during the Global Day of Visibility on the last Saturday of March to talk about why this particular strategy for wringing tears from our EV Overlord is working so well:

Musk himself becomes a key symbol of the current corruption. And since Musk is unelected and hasn't been appointed to any leadership position in the range of what he's exercising as his authority, highlighting Musk's role also underlines the degree to which the current administration is operating outside democratic institutions and any constitutional framework.

But the demonstrations simultaneously have concrete effects on his bottom line. If US courts haven't yet gotten Musk's mythical DOGE teams, hands out of the national databases, or its pocketbook, Tesla protests, at least help keep people out of Musk's cars.

While Democratic officials have generally stayed out of the #TeslaTakedown game—perhaps due to fear of being targeted by Musk, being connected to the few acts of vandalism that are happening outside of the movement, and/or general Democratic tepidness—organizers and those who have studied authoritarianism see the power of this people-powered movement.

You may remember Daniel Hunter from his epic piece "10 Ways to be Prepared and Grounded Now that Trump Has Won," published right after last year's election. That article and Andrea's "Swept into the Flood: What History Tells Us about What Comes Next, and What to Do about It" offered some of the best advice for surviving the nightmare our country was conned into becoming. And both are about as relevant today as nearly half a year ago.

The Unsinkable Kelly Hayes of "Organizing My Thoughts" interviewed Hunter this week. They both shared their thoughts on the #TeslaTakedown:

DH: I love it.

KH: Me too. I really appreciate that it’s targeting Elon Musk, and also pursuing a material outcome. When people see the stock drop, they can see the impact they’re having, and I think that’s so helpful and empowering. I also think it’s a movement that’s pulling us in the right direction, in terms of challenging these oligarchs and billionaires.

DH: I think you're absolutely right. And I think I want to just affirm many of the things you just said. The Tesla Takedown is a great example of decentralized protest. It's not a single organization directing people about what to do. People are able to figure this out and they’re making some smart, strategic decisions.

I think tactically it's smart. It's also a good direction for us, in terms of making a direct economic impact. It gives us a good narrative, and a chance to organize locally. It gives us a lot of things, but I think there are going to be challenges ahead. I think at some point the protests will start to reach a kind of threshold, and might reach the limit of their impacts. Either because Musk is able to do enough damage control, or they do some reshaping inside the Tesla structure. But I think there may be other tactics that we then need to expand to target SpaceX and Starlink. And I think those are a little bit more tricky targets, but they're ones that Musk also cares deeply about. 

I'll tell you what I love most about the Takedowns—after visiting the one in Ann Arbor last week.

It's a little nuclear reactor pumping out hope.

In this episode of NEXT COMES WHAT, you'll find out how vital hope is for this moment from Erica Chenoweth, the researcher we've referenced several times now for her work on "The '3.5% rule," which references the claim that "no government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population mobilized against it during a peak event." There are some caveats to this descriptive statement, which cannot "predict" the future, and we recently saw an exception in Bahrain during the Arab Spring when a movement of 6% of the population couldn't take down the regime.

But Chenoweth also wants you to know that the Trump resistance is alive and growing faster than it did last time:

The 3.5% is no golden ticket out of the Trump era, but it is a research-backed way to stay inspired to do the only thing we can in a time like these: build a mass movement to save our country.

Like the Takedowns, it's a way to see the future without being burdened by reality and all the anger it rightly inspires. And that's a magic formula, Chenoweth explains:

"I'll also say there's some research on the emotions of protest, and in it, there's a kind of understanding that the emotions that mobilize people are anger and hope. Um, those two together, not just anger and not just hope, but anger and hope are what make people ready to engage in collective action."

Staying angry isn't hard right now. If you've found a way to avoid it, I advise you to bottle and sell it while people still have some money.

I anticipate being angry for at least three and a half years. It's good to know that anger is powerful IF—and only if—it is paired with hope. Hopefully, that's what you get from whatever you're doing—#TeslaTakedown, #HandsOff, Indivisible, Swing Left, whatever. And, hopefully, that's what you get from NEXT COMES WHAT and me because I'm in the hopeful anger business—a purveyor of freedom's most precious natural resources.