Together After Trump

Approximately 300 people came together at Friday’s event 350PDX held at the Central Lutheran Church to learn about how to organize after a transition to the next administration.

“Grief is intricately tied to love,” said one speaker at the event. “And our sense of anger is tied to our sense of justice,” she said.

We heard from a national panel of community organizers on how to organize under a Trump presidency and unify people across demographic and partisan divides.

An important question presented was how are we going to keep our people safe and how do we get broad-based consensus to continue to make progress? We are already trying to keep our communities safe from police aggression and state disenfranchisement. But now there are aggressive militias that are not new, but newly empowered. How do we protect ourselves from this?

Bill McKibben warned that it is entirely possible we won’t recover from the damage from this election in time. The damage may be measured in a one-degree rise in temperature or more from the administration.

Another national panelists provided a good reminder that “We are not starting from scratch.”

In terms of what we can do now, Bill McKibben noted that “we have been asked to help nationalize the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline. This is an opportunity to show resistance not only to Trump, but the Obama administration who was willing to stick this pipe into the ground.”

People are also organizing to set up sanctuary areas for immigrants and refugees, to make Portland an even stronger sanctuary city.

Here were the major takeaways:

1. The Pacific Northwest stands between where U.S. fossil fuels are extracted and their destination in global markets. By taking a strong stand on fossil fuel infrastructure locally, we can have a global impact by pressuring fossil fuels to stay in the ground.
2. We are not starting from scratch. Progressive activists have laid the groundwork for a rich ecosystem of organizations fighting for change.
3. There are concrete actions we can take:
   • Target companies who support fossil fuels, such as those funding the Dakota Access Pipeline. Click here to find out how to easily contact the banks funding the Pipeline.
   • Support the Bunk Bus taking medical supplies/shelter to the Standing Rock site;
   • Inform ourselves of other fossil fuel infrastructure projects planned around the state, and what we can do about them.
   • Help social justice attorneys identify how our community is being impacted in a post-Trump political landscape to take action.

Contact 350PDX.org if you would like to volunteer or find out about more opportunities to get involved locally.