A tea party of the left rises in Trump’s wake
But could new resistance turn on Dems?
OSHKOSH, Wis. — Lisa Gehrke knew to hold her tongue during a business trip to Chicago the night Donald Trump was elected.
Back in her hotel room the next morning, Gehrke drew a hot bath and sobbed.
Then her sadness turned to an anger that startled even her.
From that point, there was no turning back. Within days she had organized a Trump resistance group and driven 14 hours with a carload of likeminded crusaders to the Women’s March in Washington.
Trump’s election has mobilized thousands of first-time activists in a doit-yourself movement like nothing seen on the political left in years.
With bountiful energy and some impressive early successes, the grass-roots movement has drawn comparisons to the tea party movement that transformed the GOP.
Women like Gehrke are organizing nationwide via Facebook, email and often tearful support meetings.
The newly formed Indivisible Project, launched after Trump’s election, has already sprouted nearly 6,000 chapters nationwide, at least two in each of the 435 congressional districts.
More established activist groups like Move On — with their weekly Resist Trump Tuesdays protests — are enjoying a surge in membership.
These newly minted activists — along with other long-standing protest groups on the left — flooded the Capitol switchboard during Senate confirmation hearings for Trump’s Cabinet, pushed Democrats to filibuster Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch and helped tank Trump’s plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — often by noisily protesting at lawmakers’ town hall meetings.
With old-school organizing and modern-day social media they have formed instant communities that can mobilize hundreds, as a group of stay-at-home moms in Kenosha, Wis., did last week to protest Trump’s visit there.
“We always told our kids there’s a lot of really smart people in our country and we all want to make it better,” said Julia Kozel, one of the women who organized the Kenosha rally. “But I don’t feel like I could say that any more.”
Publicly, Democratic officials embrace the newfound energy on the left. But privately, Democrats also worry the movement is whipping up a deep-rooted emotional and ideological fervor. Unpredictable and with no clear leadership, the liberal uprising could turn its anger toward the Democratic Party itself.
“No party is safe,” said Jeanne Peters, a jewelry designer in West Virginia, whose Indivisible chapter has started calling both its Republican and Democratic senator and House representative every weekday with a coordinated message.
The groups make no secret they are using the tea party playbook.
Ezra Levin, a former Capitol Hill staffer who is now president of the Indivisible Project, helped fuel the movement by posting online a how-to organizing guide that borrows heavily from the tea party. “The goal of this tactic isn’t just to target Republicans. It’s to stiffen the spines of Democrats,” he said.
But while the resistance groups share many similarities with the tea party, it remains to be seen how far they are willing to go to block Trump’s agenda. Would they be willing to shut down the government, as the tea party did over Obamacare, for their own priorities — say, to save Planned Parenthood or stop Trump’s travel ban?
The moms sitting around the dining room table at Kozel’s house the day after the Kenosha protest shake their heads no, saying they wouldn’t want to disrupt government operations or break laws with civil disobedience.
But others know playing nice may only go so far. “I think the Democratic Party needs to be more progressive, and that’s what I’m trying to do,” Gehrke said.
She recently joined others writing postcards to lawmakers at the Oshkosh, Wis., home of Lisa E. Hansen, 51, a former graphic artist who was partly disabled from Lyme disease and also had never been politically active much beyond casting her vote.
“And then the election happened,” said Hansen.
Now every Tuesday, Hansen puts her walker in the trunk of her family’s car and heads to downtown Oshkosh to GOP Sen. Ron Johnson’s office, where a few dozen resisters have been protesting every week since the inauguration.
“It’s given me a sense of purpose,” Hansen said. “Maybe we should send Donald Trump a ‘thank you’ note. He brought all of us together.”