Stop Marching on Empty Buildings: Strategic Action in the Trump Era

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The reelection of Donald Trump is a crisis decades in the making that presents activists with challenges the likes of which we’ve likely never seen in our lifetimes. If we are to rise to the occasion, we must engage our skills with caution and creativity in order to help each other survive until whatever comes next.

Trump’s destruction of vital services has occurred at a dizzying pace and our government is now controlled by an unelected tech billionaire. Frightened and angry people are starting to take to the streets. Unfortunately, I see many of them relying on outdated, unsustainable strategies that already lost their effectiveness before Donald Trump reclaimed the presidency.

One question I’m not alone in asking: Why do we keep marching on empty buildings? 

Repeat repeat repeat

In Texas, our legislature meets for a few months every other year. The rest of the time, our capitol building is an empty tourist attraction. Despite this, protests in Austin almost inevitably begin or end at the capitol building. Unless you gather literally 10,000s of people, your protest will be invisible on the massive capitol grounds, and most of the time you’re yelling at an empty marble edifice. Do we think the stone Goddess of Liberty on top of the dome cares about our chanting?

Currently, our state legislature is in session. If you believe marches or protests are effective, it might make some sense to rally at the Texas Capitol to highlight specific issues under debate in the state house and senate. But if we’re protesting Donald Trump and his regime, why repeat the same old capitol march? The federal government maintains multiple outposts in downtown Austin, from a courthouse to the J.J. Pickle Building, which ICE uses as a local base of operations.  

Does this rally help a transgender person maintain access to their gender-affirming medications?

I bring this up because this week there’s a call for people to march on their capitol buildings around the country in protest of the actions of our president. I don’t want to tell people to sit on their butts and do nothing, but I wonder what these marches accomplish? How does this protect your immigrant neighbors who are being raided by ICE? Does this rally help a transgender person maintain access to their gender-affirming medications?

What does it accomplish?

I’m not saying we throw out protests and rallies. What I amsaying is that folks default to a protest or rally when they’d be better off with a community meeting, a teach-in, a banner drop, or even a blockade. 

Folks default to a protest or rally when they’d be better off with a community meeting, a teach-in, or a banner drop. 

While I acknowledge there are times when simply taking the streets can be empowering, for the most part I think we’re past the time when marches and rallies automatically make an impact. The mainstream media simply isn’t interested in most of these events. And we’re no longer living in the era when just making an event on Facebook ensures hundreds or even thousands will turn up. Even when folks do show up, how do you actually build power off that initial event? Many “successful” protests I’ve seen are one-offs. People chant, march, and go home without making lasting connections.

I’m also suspicious of protests with symbolic arrests. Sometime soon, we’re likely to see someone arrange for people to chain themselves to the White House fence and get arrested, or some similar action. But these “symbolic” actions do next to nothing to slow down the march of fascism. Instead, they ensure our people get mired for months or years in the legal system.

(My criticism does not include the people protesting right now outside strategic sites in Washington, D.C. like the headquarters of the Office of Personnel Management. I think there’s some merit in bringing our dissent directly to the sites under attack by Musk and company.)

‘Something we haven’t tried yet’

Marches and rallies can still be a tool in our activist toolbox, but it’s my belief we need to act selectively and strategically during this dangerous era. There are so many options we aren’t using. Books like Shut It Downby Lisa Fithian, or Let This Radicalize Youby Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes are full of suggestions for creative ways to take action against our oppressors. After Trump got re-elected, Kaba created this Google Doc of actions you can take which are neither protesting nor voting and it’s still a great resource. As Robert Evans wrote, “The larger solutions to our common woes, if they ever arrive, will be something new. Something we haven’t tried yet.”

As of the moment I’m writing this, we are just days into the second Trump presidency, and we don’t yet know how severely he will crack down on dissenters. But it’s safe to say there will be violent crackdowns, because we know there always are, whether Democrats or Republicans lead the government. It’s going to be a matter of degrees, but the results may well be horrifying. 

Even if Trump somehow decides to handle us with kid gloves, we face years of near constant attacks. As so many have pointed out, what matters most right now are building tight-knit communities that are prepared to defend each other. We must ready ourselves for years of dissent, while finding ways to maintain moments of joy and avoid burnout. The actions we plan now need to be planned with that difficult future in mind. 

Let’s stop marching on empty buildings. Let’s find new ways, and rediscover old ones, which force them to hear us. 

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