Assess Where To Participate

Actions You Can Take, and How To Find Them

Regular Calls to Action: Email Newsletters & Networks

Tools At Your Disposal

Where You Get Your News / Get Out Of Your Bubble

Resource Guides and “How To’s”

Groups That Are Organizing People

Vote

Change Things By Running For Office

Assess Where To Participate

  • Check out the personal impact canvas: If you want to make a difference but don’t know where to start, this tool can give you a quick model you can use to map how you can make a difference in a meaningful, specific ways.

Actions You Can Take, and How To Find Them

Looking for ways to be informed about what relevant actions you can take on the regular? Here’s a few solid ones I’ve come across.

Regular Calls to Action: Email Newsletters & Networks
  • 100 Days Action is a counter-narrative to Trump’s one hundred day plan. A calendar of activist and artistic strategy, 100 Days Action is a call to thinkers, artists, and writers to propose gestures that can be carried out either at home or in the world. [Daily call to action, crowd sourced]
  • How To Resist Donald Trump’s First 100 Days [Robert Reich, Salon]
  • POPVOX send out a Monday "Week Ahead" and a Friday "GavelDown" wrap-up of all that's getting a vote or discussed in Congress. You can sign up for updates. You can use POPVOX to write to Congress on all pending federal bills, nominations, and now, state bills (just launched states and still working out a few kinks there). [Email newsletter, twice weekly]
  • Countable gets you clear, concise summaries of bills going through Congress, see what others think, then take action. Telling your reps how you feel is easier than ever with email and now video messages. Make your democracy more responsive!
  • Project 1461 is pretty good. “Every day, we will learn about the political electoral processes, what issues matter most now and why; act to support progressive causes and candidates, resist the Trump administration's harmful policies, and build a better future.”  [Email, daily]
  • And tellallyourfriends.org (and has an interesting section on steps you can take to influence Trump). [resource of calls to make, everyday]
  • 2hoursaweek.org has good daily, easy-to-folllow instructions for calling reps. [resource of calls to make]
  • re:act is a list of a few concrete things you can do to take action during the Trump presidency. Delivered via e-mail once a week. [Email newsletter, weekly]
  • Flippable: flip the House, flip the Senate, flip the President. Mission is to turn America blue by building a movement to flip seats - first in state legislatures, and then in the House and Senate. To build this movement, Flippable sends regular action items to promote a progressive agenda across the country. [Email newsletter]
  • Resist by ACLU. Daily actions to resist the incoming administration. [Email newsletter, daily]
  • Wall of Us: Four concrete acts of resistance delivered to your inbox each week. [Email newsletter, weekly]
  • Every Day Project: 45 ACTIONS TO PREPARE FOR OUR 45TH PRESIDENT [Daily email with one call to action]
  • Weekly action checklist for Democrats, Independents, and Republicans of conscience, by Jennifer Hofmann. [Email newsletter, weekly]
  • Call Your Reps, a Google group for coordinating advocacy campaigns for our elected officials. We'll be providing phone scripts and organizing in person phone banking events. Sign up to hear about campaigns, get scripts, and hear about events -- and to get involved with organizing yourself. US focused, and also MA focused. [Google Group]
  • Defend Democracy site by Rebecca Solnit and Taj James, with distinct calls to action before the electoral college vote. [website resource]
  • 5 Calls, spend 5 minutes, make 5 calls. [website resource]
  • Make It Better, weekly news and action digest that’s actually digestible, by Jaclyn Friedman and Courtney Kocak. Know someone who's too busy or overwhelmed by the news to keep up, but wants to help resist Trump anyhow? Maybe someone who's never thought of themselves as an activist and doesn't know how or where to start? Think of it as an on-ramp to the resistance. [Email newsletter, weekly]
  • Daily Action, “Make civic engagement easy. You can contact your legislator on your way to work.” [mobile alerts, daily]
  • Track Trump. They do daily roundups of things that have happened since the inauguration, with a list of Trump's other plans that haven't begun yet. [website resource & email newsletter. Daily?]
  • What The Fuck Just Happened Today. Logging the daily shock and awe (with links to sources). By @matt_kiser [daily email / website resource]
  • Fifty Nifty. This is a grassroots challenge to get friends in 50 states to make calls to their congresspeople about an issue they care about. Your mission is to pass this along to friends who will make calls and also pass the message/link along. Three clicks and you’re in. This is an MIT Media Lab research experiment being run by Andrew Lippman in the Viral Communications Group to understand and encourage the propagation of social activities through personal networks. PRIVACY INFO: We will not use any personally identifiable information in our research. Anything you enter will be encrypted before storage. We ask that you use a name or nickname so that people you invite can see who it came from. We also use your name so you can track the progress of your network on the map. You have the option of suppressing that information. We will never present results of our research in a way that allows you to be identified and and we will never sell or reveal your phone number or zipcode.
  • Right Richter. Washington journalist Will Sommer publishes a kicky newsletter digest, which aggregates right-wing perspectives for left-leaning audiences.  [Email newsletter, weekly] Source: NYTimes
  • Slate’s “Today in Conservative Media” feature provides a similar service. [Blog, daily] Source: NYTimes
  • Stand With Planned Parenthood. Up-to-date on actions people can take to support Planned Parenthood (including joining their Defenders program, which sends regular text updates on how best to help PP).
  • ResistBot is an experiment in daily civic engagement. It will text you once in a while to see if you’d like to pressure your officials or keep you posted on what we think you’d be interested in. [text to fax]
  • YouLobby.org “is an organization that connects constituents to their representatives. They provide daily scripts as well as a drop-down menu of issues. I like it because it is the most user-friendly of these types of sites." (thx Jordan Conley & Ann Friedman for this suggestion)
  • Rapid Resist is a system that uses peer-to-peer text messages to recruit locals for big events and requires little from local activist leaders.
Tools At Your Disposal
  • All the President's Profiting: the Center for Responsive Politics has created this page to track payments to Trump properties from Trump-related entities and beyond.
  • Devos Watch: initiative launched by Senator Warren June 2017. An effort to strengthen public accountability of Secretary DeVos’s Education Department.
  • We’re His Problem Now Calling Sheet [Authored by Kara Waite, Google Doc contact resource] → UPDATE, NOW LIVES AT The 65.org
  • Call To Action: Easy to use resource to Find Your Congressional Representative [Website contact resource]
  • Rubber Stamp Reps: “The majority of constituents in these districts voted against this administration's platform, but their representatives are acting as rubber stamps for the White House's extreme agenda, rather than working for the people they represent. Hold these representatives accountable.” Lists which (mostly Republican) reps/ which issues.
  • WhiteHouseInc.org, a new tool to connect Americans with a randomly-selected Trump property. “Foreign leaders and Wall street executives know that if they want to reach out to our President-elect, they just have to connect with his business associates. Now with WhiteHouseInc.org the American people have a direct line to Trump too.” [Website contact resource]
  • The Trump Accountability Project (TAP) is a resource for journalists, editors, & other newsmakers reporting on the Trump administration, which catalogues the anti-LGBTQ statements and actions of President-elect Donald Trump and those in his circle. The Trump Accountability Project also includes other hateful rhetoric, discriminatory actions, and exclusionary worldviews of the incoming Trump administration. This information will equip journalists, as well as everyday people, to hold Trump and his administration accountable for their words and actions. [Website resource]
  • A former senior staffer for Hillary Clinton’s campaign has launched a new website to highlight Donald Trump’s alleged corruption: corrupt.af. “There were so many conflict-of-interest stories flying around, it was kind of hard to keep track of everything,” he said. “That's my fear. It will all go down a memory hole and people will forget.” [Website resource]
  • Don’t Pay Trump is a simple Trump boycott extension that makes it easy to be a conscious consumer and keep your money out of Trump’s hands. [Web browser tool]
  • Grab Your Wallet. Boycott Trump properties and brands. [website/ hashtag / movement]
  • Sleeping Giants. We are trying to stop racist websites by stopping their ad dollars. [hashtag / movement]
  • The "RealDonaldContext" plug-in for Google's Chrome browser: You can now fact-check Trump's tweets while on Twitter with a new Washington Post browser plugin by Philip Bump. More detailed description by Boing Boing here. [Web Browser tool]
  • IssueVoter - Receive targeted alerts before Congress votes, Send your opinion directly to your rep, Track your rep’s votes and bill outcomes.
  • Put Us First is a month-long political campaign focused on the threat posed to American national security by Donald Trump’s refusal to divest his foreign business interests. Former intelligence officers and national security officials have formed a new national security political action committee, called 4DPac (Democracy Development Diplomacy Defense), to finance and publish research on Trump’s foreign investments.
  • SwingLeft, Find your closest Swing District and join its team to learn about actionable opportunities to support progressives—and defeat Republicans—in that district, no matter where you live. NOTE: there is still some debate about this site, see here and assess for yourself.
  • Tracking Trump’s Agenda, Step by Step. President Trump has started action on several of his major priorities, but most of his proposals require moves by Congress or pose other significant obstacles. [New York Times]
  • Cabinetvotes.org. Tracking how Senators voted on the confirmation of Trump's Cabinet* appointees.
  • Tracking Congress, resource by FiveThirtyEight. An updating tally of how often every member of the House and the Senate votes with or against the president. [website]
  • Send free faxes to Senate and House. [FaxZero]
  • TrumpTax.Me. This is a rough up to the moment total of what taxpayers are paying for Donald Trump's personal life: security for his New York City home, vacations, travel for his grown children, and more. [opensource website]
  • Trump Human Rights Tracker. Columbia Law Human Rights Organizations Launch Tool to Track Trump’s Human Rights Record. Why they did it here.
  • Operation 45. Group dedicated to transparency and information, specifically targeting Trump Administration. Read more about them here.
  • Movement 2017. Useful tool for those who want to offer financial support to lesser-known organizations in their communities.  “Features 200 of the best, local progressive vote groups in key 2018 states, along with selected national groups. There are a zillion donate lists floating around, but most aren’t vetted and they tend to focus on large brand names. We focus on scrappy groups that offer the biggest bang for the buck.” Read more about them here.
  • Presterity. Presterity is a community project that grounds and orients citizens to the best available sources of information on a wide variety of related topics. Presterity seeks to enable crowdsourcing of flagged events of concern such as: abuses; self-dealing; conflicts of interest; corruption; threats to constitutional rights; degradation of the office of the presidency; a general weakening of the Republic.
  • All GOP opposed to Independent Investigation into Trump / Russia. Started GoogleDoc w /names & phone numbers of GOPers opposing independent investigation into Trump/Russia, by @igorvolsky
  • Our States is a program that tracks legislation in individual states [project by StayWoke] Source: Good
  • Advocacy Tool helps people find local, state, and federal representatives, view bills they are considering, and hold them accountable [open source project by StayWoke] Source: Good
  • Make Democracy Matter connects constituents with their electoral college voters. [project by StayWoke] Source: Good
  • Sanctions Tracker. Monitoring sanctions across four presidential administrations (1994 - present), updating daily.
  • Stance App. Instead of simply providing a way to call your reps, Stance lets you pre-record your voice message to be left on the rep’s voicemail when the phone lines are freed up. But wait!, you ask. Don’t congressional staffers answer the phones? How is Stance going directly to voicemail to play your message on their machine? Simple. It only places the calls at night, so voicemail is sure to pick up. Source: TechCrunch
  • Contacting Congress - every phone number, address, social media account, how to schedule a meeting.
  • White Nonsense Roundup (WNR) was created by white people to address our inherently racist society and stand up against racism in our own families, work spaces, and communities. You can tag them on Facebook, in a public post and they'll aid in the discussion.
  • Created May 5th, 2017: AHCA Accountability Town Halls by Marisa Kabas -> “I compiled a list of the house members who voted YES on AHCA and whether or not they have upcoming town halls” [note: does not seem to be maintained since May 2017]
Where You Get Your News / Get Out Of Your Bubble
  • Amy SIskind’s Weekly Update. “Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.” [She also tweets these updates]
  • News, Guts, and Media, Dan Rather’s new journalism project.
  • AllSides. See news and issues from multiple perspectives, discuss like adults. Unlike regular news services, AllSides exposes bias and provides multiple angles on the same story so you can quickly get the full picture, not just one slant.
  • PolitEcho. PolitEcho shows you the political biases of your Facebook friends and news feed. [Chrome extension] Source: NYTimes
  • FlipFeed. Click a button, and your regular Twitter feed is replaced by that of a random, anonymous user of a different political persuasion. Created by M.I.T. researchers. [Twitter plug-in] Source: NYTimes
  • Read Across the Aisle gamifies political outreach — as you read articles from The Huffington Post or The Federalist through the app, you’ll see a meter turn red or blue based on the particular site’s ideological bent. [iPhone app] Source: NYTimes
  • Escape Your Bubble, a plug-in that seeds your Facebook feed with opposing political views, goes a step further, repackaging partisan content with an aggressively positive affect. [Chrome Extension] Source: NYTimes
  • Right Richter. Washington journalist Will Sommer publishes a kicky newsletter digest, which aggregates right-wing perspectives for left-leaning audiences.  [Email newsletter, weekly] Source: NYTimes
  • Slate’s “Today in Conservative Media” feature provides a similar service. [Blog, daily] Source: NYTimes
  • Rose-Colored is a weekly curation of the "good news" we tend to miss these days in the form of an email newsletter. Recharge for the long road ahead with uplifting stories of resistance and progress, by Lisa Feierman
Resource Guides and “How To’s”
Groups That Are Organizing People
  • Online Class: The Active Citizen in the Digital Age. Beginning May 15, 2017, Rob Reich and Lucy Bernholz will be teaching a six week online class on the ways we engage as active citizens in our communities, shaped by our access to and understanding of digital tools. The class is free and open to anyone. [Online events, via Civic Hall]
  • Indivisible Guide has a resource for finding local groups that are organizing.
  • Indivisible Template helps small political groups set up fast, free, smart websites. [Open source customizable website]
  • National Women’s Liberation, a feminist group for women who want to fight back against male supremacy and win more freedom for women. NY and GA chapters are organizing for action. [Organization]
  • Hollaback! Is offering a Bystander Intervention Webinar: they’ve been adding more dates by the day. And they have online harassment resources and street harassment resources as well. [Website resource, online events]
  • Defend Yourself has bystander trainings and workshops available [in-person events in DC and MD]
  • Radical Book Exchange: Now, more than ever, it's time to educate ourselves: to read up on our histories (and our present), to draw wisdom from our heroes, and develop our visions and methods for change. The idea of the Radical Book Exchange to circulate essential texts for our time to help us all continue our personal education in the new year. [Book club]
  • neveragain.tech: In short, the signators pledge to stand in solidarity against things like the Muslim Registry,  ensuring safe data keeping and refusing to aid in threatening data collection practices. [Website resource]
  • Airport protests against the Muslim Ban. By State. [Website resource, from GroundGame]
  • Immigration Ban protests worldwide, by date and location. [Google Doc, source unknown]
  • Immigration Ban protests, by location [article, ThinkProgress]
  • Lawyers and Interpreters Needed at Airports. Urban Justice Center, International Refugee Assistance Project.
  • The Town Hall Project 2018. Find events with Members of Congress and their staff in your area. This has morphed from a public document to a full website. [website, updated frequently]
  • Unbubble. By signing up for Unbubble, you will be connected to 99 other Americans from all different walks of life - young, old, urban, rural, white, black, red, blue, purple, etc. NOTE: About Page not clear who creator is, be wary of giving your info out to randos. [email group]
  • #KnockEveryDoor. We’re launching nationwide, volunteer-led canvasses to organize our communities against Trump. [website / events]
  • Movement Match. People are imperfect. Organizations are imperfect. Movements are imperfect. But now is not the time for perfectionism. Now is the time to find your group, hunker down, and start planning the long game.
  • #ResistTrumpTuesdays. Joint project of The Working Families Party, MoveOn, and People’s Action. Its goal is to turn large numbers of activists out every Tuesday to fight back against a different element of Trump’s agenda. Find a local action here.
  • Millennials for Revolution.  a group of former People for Bernie organizers, wanted to “take the opposition to DC,” but realized that activists, especially younger ones, need a base of operations in the belly of the beast—a place to strategize and if necessary stay for a few nights. They’ve neared their goal of raising $50,000 to cover rent on a space near the Capitol for a year—90 percent of their donations turned out to be $27—and signed a lease on a property this week. Source info here.
  • Impeach Donald Trump Now. As of 9:00 pm EDT, April 4, 2017, 921,454 signers and counting have joined the campaign to Impeach Trump Now.  
  • Tech For Campaigns is a community where world class tech talent and progressive, centrist political campaigns in need of volunteer man-power come together. The promise is not only different political outcomes but the sustained engagement of people concerned with the direction America is going.
  • We Can Resist It. Turn Trump's tweets into donations for social justice nonprofit. Think of it like America's swear jar.
Vote
  • TurboVote. We make sure you always know when elections are happening, and have the information you need to vote with confidence. Sign up to receive election reminders, get registered to vote, & apply for your absentee ballot!
  • Let America Vote. Because voter suppression sucks, this org is leading the fight for voting rights.
  • We Will Replace You. “Any Democrats who would give legitimacy or support to Trump do not represent us and must be replaced by people who will stand up for our lives, our values, and our democracy.” Made by former Bernie Sanders folks & others.
Change Things By Running For Office

PUBLISHED January 2017, LAST UPDATED December 2017. Have a suggestion/addition/ideas? Tweet me @kgunette Thanks to all who have made suggestions.