10+ Things YOU Can Do to Fight Fascism Today – Individual and Collective Actions

As a five-decade social justice organizer, college educator of 32 years, and parent to two activist adult children, I was and am repeatedly asked, okay so you’ve defined a serious problem – in this case, the rising threat of American Fascism (https://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Three-Cornerstones-of-Fascism_Fascism-Cant-Happen-Here-220926-61.html) – ‘now what?’ ‘What can I do as a single person?’ Plenty!

Below is a starter list of ideas that seek to undermine the Billionaire oligarchs’ class war on us, the 99%, and then turn the tide in restoring and amplifying key democratic institutions.

1. Vote, and help get out the vote via canvassing and phone banking
2. Educate yourself and others about Fascism (https://americanfascists.us)
3. Shop for Social Justice (https://betterworldshopper.org)
4. Join and support Labor Unions: e.g., Starbucks and Amazon workers (https://sbworkersunited.org) (https://amazonlaborunion.org)
5. Switch to a Credit Union and away from Big Banks (https://cuna.org)
6. Promote and demand peace here and around the world (https://www.codepink.org)
7. Join, support, and/or start local Cooperatives: markets, farms, housing, day care, etc. (https://movementcooperative.org)
8. Patronize independent bookstores (https://powells.com)
9. Embrace the transformational ‘Justice for All’ agenda (https://justiceforall.global)
10. Avoid plastics, reuse bags and containers (https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org)

1.-10. Explained:

1. I know that some of you reject or question the point of voting; and that’s exactly what the Billionaire ruling class wants us to think. Here in 2022, the midterm election will go a long way in advancing or forestalling the 2024 presidential contest that, if it goes badly, Fascism, and the low-level Civil War, already underway against BIPOC, AAPI, indigenous, and immigrant folks, could be worse than our 19th century Civil War.

2. Educate, educate, educate.

3. Every dollar you spend is a political decision, denying or enabling the power of the Billionaire class. Spend conscience first, not convenience first.

4. Workplace democracy through the union movement is a potent instrument for rebalancing worker-management and economic control. You can join many unions as an associate member and support others with your activism and spending decisions.

5. We ultimately need to get to public banking, where the Bank of North Dakota (https://bnd.nd.gov/public) allowed that state to weather the Great Recession better than any other in the union. But in the meantime, switch your primary (if not all) banking practices to a credit union, where there is greater transparency, accountability, and socially responsible investment practices.

6. Other than the decontextualized, one-sided Russia-Ukraine war coverage – which makes nuclear conflagration more likely, not less – the American media pays scant attention to other ongoing international and civil war conflicts such as Myanmar, Afghanistan, Yemen-Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia-Eritrea-Sudan, Colombia-Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, Somalia-Kenya, Congo-Uganda,
India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, and at least 18 other war zones. The U.S. is involved directly in at least five – Afghanistan (yes, still), Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen – and indirectly in dozens more via “advisors,” arms supplies, weapons sales, and intelligence support. So, if we don’t insist on diplomatic paths to peace, while the U.S.-based military-industrial complex continues to make astronomical profits (https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/ProfitsOfWar) the rise of global – not just American – Fascism will continue unabated.

7. The Cooperative Movement is a powerful pro-democracy, counter punch to the Billionaire’s State-Corporatist/Neo-Liberal economy that accelerates global warming, economic inequality, civil wars, mass privatization, anti-unionism, and the worst migratory population shift since the end of the Second World War.

8. Convenient as it may be, dump Amazon and patronize independent bookstores and businesses.

9. There is no getting around it: only an all-inclusive connection of social justice campaigns – connecting our people, politics, and policies – will create the transformational society and world we all want and need. (More on this theory of change in a future post.)

10. We make a decision every time we go shopping, right? Bring cloth bags, reject non-biodegradable plastic bags and containers wherever possible. Thank you!