No matter the outcome of Tuesday’s election, groups are planning to ‘Shut it Down’ across the nation. The ShutDownDC website has plans for gatherings on November 3rd, and then the following day, they say, “Ready to do whatever it takes.”
“In the days following the election, we’ll continue to come out into the streets every day to respond to rapidly changing events. We may be waiting for votes to be counted or we may be responding to major attacks on democracy. Over the next few weeks, we’ll use our Spokes Council process to plan actions that are flexible and can scale to respond to a lot of different scenarios,” states their website, The week after the election, members of Congress (many of whom will have just been voted out of office) are coming back to DC to go back into session. If Trump is trying to launch a coup, that’s no time for business as usual. We’ll meet them at the train station or the airports or if they drive into town we can meet them at their homes. And if Trump has already conceded, then we can pivot and use these actions to demand COVID-19 relief and other essential legislation!”
In Portland Oregon, a “Week of Action” is planned to start November 4th, which calls for a plethora of ‘principles’
1. No Trump! No Election Theft
2. Black Lives Matter – End Racist Policing
3. Decolonize – This Is Indigenous Land
4. Mutual Aid – Share Resources
5. Neighborhood Organizing – Build Neighborhood Assemblies
6. Take Direct Action – Disrupt Business As Usual
7. Housing is a Right – Resist Evictions
8. Reproductive Justice – Defend the Right to Choose
9. Strike for Power – Our Labor Is Ours
10. Build Urban-Rural Connections
11. Solidarity with All Oppressed Peoples
12. We Protect Us – We Defend Ourselves
13. Migrant Justice – End the Criminalization of Migrants
14. Support Worldwide Liberation – Stop the Global Fascist Agenda
Their webiste says, “By shutting down business as usual, defending our communities, and building a web of mutual aid projects and neighborhood assemblies, we can form new community support structures to sustain long term opposition. We can work to take care of our communities’ needs ourselves. We join the People’s Strike campaign in calling for nationwide sustained resistance after the election, and echo calls for international resistance to fascism in the first week of November. We’re in a crisis – let’s act like it.”
We are looking into other cities that have plans to start protests either on election day or soon after.