It seems like it’s time to revisit our favorite dystopian and apocalyptic sci-fi literature and prepare for what lies ahead. The outcome many of us have feared for the past four years has materialized: Trump has been re-elected. Are we on the brink of a scenario akin to The Handmaid’s Tale or Parable of the Sower? Or could this be the catalyst for something more hopeful, reminiscent of Ecotopia, The Fifth Sacred Thing, or Always Coming Home?
As we reflect on these possibilities, it might also be time to turn to community organizing classics like Mutual Aid, Emergent Strategy, or The Empowerment Manual. These are the visionaries and culture builders I’m revisiting—who is speaking to you right now?
Compounding this moment is the reality that Trump won the popular vote (based on the current tally). This means the majority of voters who participated in this election chose Trump. Moreover, Republicans have gained control of both the House and Senate. What does this signify for our collective future? What changes will it bring?
For me, this is a paradigm-shifting moment. Before this election, those of us on the political left knew that what we wanted and valued, albeit imperfectly represented by the Democratic Party on a national scale, represented the people. Historically, Republicans have won presidential elections through the electoral college, but in my lifetime, a Republican candidate has only won the popular vote once—George W. Bush in 2004. This election, however, sends a stark message: at this moment in time, the Democratic Party is not being perceived as the party of the people.
I can understand why people might feel the Democratic Party has failed them. With the ongoing violence in Gaza funded by U.S. tax dollars, the rising cost of living, and a history of broken promises to marginalized communities, the frustration is palpable. What I struggle to comprehend, however, is (a) the belief that Trump or the Republicans would be any better on these issues, or (b) the decision to abstain from voting out of frustration, effectively contributing to Trump’s victory.
Like many others (though not everyone), I find myself stunned. This election has left me reflecting on my experiences with the Occupy Movement in 2011 and how those lessons resonate with this moment.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
As an undergraduate at UC Davis, I became involved in the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Living in politically active cooperative housing at the time, I was already familiar with many of the skills essential to protest and movement-building culture. My housemates and I had built trust through shared experiences—whether during long meetings or joyful parties. We had learned how to navigate and compromise on complex issues using consensus decision-making and had developed a strong foundation in community care through collective activities like large-scale cooking, herbal medicine-making, and conflict resolution. These skills proved invaluable when it came to building, maintaining, and ultimately defending the encampment on the UC Davis quad.
Movement-building culture isn’t just about opposing what we don’t want—it’s also about creating a tangible glimpse of what we do want. It’s about fostering a sense of community where people take care of one another, offering an embodied experience of the world we’re fighting for—not just against. Sharing homemade meals with new friends, checking in on each other, and tending to minor injuries were small yet powerful acts of care that helped us build this vision together in the encampment on the quad.
On November 18, 2011, several of us were repeatedly pepper-sprayed by police in S.W.A.T. gear while sitting peacefully in a ring around the encampment. Three days later, the community responded with overwhelming solidarity. An estimated 5,000 people gathered on the UC Davis quad to show their support. As organizers, we faced the challenge of welcoming everyone into the movement.
After hearing from speakers, the crowd was divided into small groups of 10–20 people, known as “affinity groups”—small units within the larger movement. Each group discussed the proposals the organizers had put forward. To ensure meaningful participation, organizers also introduced the crowd to consensus decision-making, encouraging them to deliberate and vote on the proposals within their groups. After about thirty minutes, representatives from each group came to the stage to share their group’s decisions. While achieving 100% consensus was unlikely in a crowd of this size—especially one without a shared culture or history—we set a goal of 90% consensus to move proposals forward.
What I remember most from that day was the incredible energy of thousands of people coming together and being invited into a collective process. We could have spent the day solely critiquing the academic-industrial complex, the police state, or capitalism—and we did engage in some of that. Political education is vital. But what truly stood out was how we inspired people with an alternative vision. By giving them a visceral and meaningful experience of direct democracy, we not only critiqued the status quo but also sparked excitement about the possibilities of a different kind of world.
That day marked a high point for the Occupy movement at Davis—it was also the peak before the crash. Not long afterward, a memo began circulating that critiqued many of the organizations involved in the Occupy coalition, including my cooperative housing. Each group was called out for specific ways it was deemed "not radical enough." While the memo wasn’t necessarily factually incorrect, its impact proved more destructive to the movement than anything the University could have done. People felt deflated and frustrated, and because the memo was written anonymously, it sowed distrust. The authors clearly knew us well and were among us, given the detailed and specific knowledge they shared about our communities.
If I’m being honest, the fractures in the movement were already there—the memo merely exposed them in stark detail. It highlighted the performativity of students from financially privileged families protesting tuition hikes. It criticized the dominance of white students in leadership roles within what was supposed to be a multiracial movement. And it called out students who aligned themselves with the University’s agenda of flattened multiculturalism by staffing the newly established Cultural Center.
The memo unearthed a familiar core question in political organizing on the left: in a diverse movement, when do we compromise for the sake of unity, and when do we assert our specific needs for the sake of integrity? Too often, the people expected to compromise and stay silent within our movements are the same ones asked to do so within greater society. What do we truly gain if we build a movement that prioritizes the comfort and needs of those already privileged? Yet, if we focus solely on our differences, we risk fracturing the movement and losing the ability to create the broad-based coalitions needed for meaningful change.
This tension is where I see the Democratic Party—and the political left in this country more broadly. These fault lines have always existed but are now rising to the surface, causing tremors that feel like political earthquakes.
I can name one of the major fault lines with my words: this country was built on the displacement and genocide of Indigenous and Black people. Beyond naming it, and doing some community organizing around the return of stolen money and land, what do I really feel about this fault line? In my body? How do I imagine it healing? What role do I see myself and my communities playing in this process? Can I even picture a healed future, and my communities in it?
Because this specific fault line occurred at the hands of white Europeans, how white people make sense of that fault line today is an important part of the picture. My sense is that, for many white people—regardless of where we fall on the political spectrum—the embodied answer to how we might heal these genocides often points to the idea that white people should not exist. This might manifest as fantasizing that we never existed to commit these atrocities, that we will leave this continent, or that we stop reproducing and simply cease to exist in the future. Living with the moral injury of crimes committed in our names, many white people fantasize about our own disappearance. How we respond to that fantasy often depends on our politics.
For white people on the political left, this “disappearance fantasy” often manifests as guilt and despair: It would be better if we didn’t exist, and we have nothing meaningful to contribute to healing these harms. On the political right, the same fantasy is met with fear and anger: We can’t give up power—if we do, revenge will be enacted upon us. We must double down and defend ourselves at all costs.
Because those on the left understand the importance of de-centering the white experience, the question of how white people can relate to these moral injuries often gets overlooked. Yet, if reckoning with these atrocities is essential for collective healing, then we must also carve out, imagine, and name meaningful ways for everyone—white people included—to participate in that healing.
Sogorea Te’, an Urban Indigenous Women-led Land Trust, here in Huichin offers the following vision:
Through the practices of rematriation, cultural revitalization, and land restoration, Sogorea Te’ calls on Native and non-native peoples to heal and transform the legacies of colonization, genocide, and patriarchy and to do the work our ancestors and future generations are calling us to do.
Sogorea Te’ is explicitly inviting everyone to participate in this work, and I believe the political left can learn from this inclusive approach. Of course, there are many events that prioritize or only include Indigenous or BIPOC people, and that is important. But the broader message is that everyone has something to learn and gain from the movement to rematriate land. Whether it’s getting to know our local ecosystems better, learning from people who have a sacred relationship with this land, or connecting to our own land-based traditions, there is a shared opportunity for growth.
We need cultural visions for how everyone involved in healing these harms can also experience their own healing. I believe many of the underlying issues facing this country—such as isolation, fear, lack of belonging, rising poverty, and uncertainty about the future—can be addressed through people-powered, collective movements. But, we are going to need new ways of approaching movement building. Can we collaborate without necessarily understanding everything about each other or agreeing on everything? Can we come together around our shared interests and maintain and respect our separate identities, values, cultures, etc?
As the fault lines come to the surface and reshape the political landscape, how can both allow the ruptures to be expressed and, with time, re-knit together communities of belonging from which we can build meaningful coalitions?