Pledging Your Solidarity with Immigrant Communities Under Attack
A new “Solidarity Pledge" is a vital part of the effort to build a grassroots response to Trump’s flood-the-zone assault.
Currently, The Nation is running an important article by several movement leaders which asks the question, “Will You Put Your Body On the Line to Defend and Support Your Neighbors?”
The article is written by Greisa Martinez Rosas (Executive Director of United We Dream), Theo Oshiro (co-executive of Make the Road States), and Andrew Friedman (co-founder of The Action Lab). It describes a new Solidarity Pledge, organized by a coalition of prominent immigrant rights and community organizing groups, through which you can sign up to join in strategic actions to oppose mass deportations—either by providing mutual aid or vowing to take part in future civil resistance.
Over the past couple months, we have been proud to work with our friends at The Action Lab on planning around this pledge, and also on this Nation article explaining the initiative. In it, Rosas, Oshiro, and Friedman write:
“A few weeks ago, a 10-year-old US citizen with brain cancer was deported to Mexico along with her immigrant parents. Not long after, Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent lawful resident, was abducted from his home and forcibly separated from his pregnant wife, simply for exercising his First Amendment rights. In Georgia, a man was arrested as the sermon at his church came to an end, and in Chicago ICE took another man into custody right after his wife dropped their child off at school. These cruel and widespread kidnappings are an affront to professed American values.
“Amid this shock-and-awe, many of us may feel helpless to stop the devastation threatening our neighbors and communities. But, history can be our guide. By following in the footsteps of students, local officials, religious leaders, and community members who have refused to cooperate with injustice, we can uphold a longstanding American tradition of nonviolent resistance.
“Fortunately, courageous people across the country are already doing this. In addition to state and local police, elected officials, and FBI officials who have pledged to oppose the administration’s attacks, frontline civil rights and social justice organizations are taking action. They are filing, and winning, lawsuits and ensuring people know their rights.
“They have also, crucially, organized a Solidarity Pledge which invites people to put their bodies ‘on the line’ to defend and support their neighbors. The pledge reads, in part: ‘I pledge to challenge Trump’s anti-immigrant attacks by working to create welcoming and loving communities, speaking up in defense of our neighbors, and supporting families with information and mutual aid.’”
We encourage you to read the full article here.
The Solidarity Pledge is a vital part of the effort to build a grassroots response to Trump’s “flood the zone” strategy of rapidly reshaping society and grabbing power through executive actions. In the span of just a few weeks, we have seen more upheaval than typically occurs throughout an entire presidential term. This approach aims explicitly to overwhelm our ability to respond. It is a political blitz intended to paralyze democratic resistance.
Regrettably, this strategy is proving all too effective. We find ourselves overwhelmed, constrained by limited capacity, unable to adequately respond to the relentless pace of change.
Yet there are also some reasons for hope. We know from past experience that resistance can strengthen dramatically in response to specific trigger events—moments that ignite public outrage and swiftly expand collective participation in opposition movements.
Resistance to Trump continues to grow, as evidenced by political scientist Erica Chenoweth’s ongoing work tracking protest participation. But to reach our full potential, we must anticipate and strategically plan for upcoming trigger events. Amid the overwhelming torrent of policy changes and executive maneuvers, we must ask how we can cultivate the ability to channel and harness future surges of public revulsion, transforming these crises into powerful resistance movements.
The Solidarity Pledge does so by drawing from historical precedents—from action against the Keystone XL Pipeline more than a decade ago to 1980s movements against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Back in July 2019, Mark wrote another article for The Nation explaining how the tactic of a resistance pledge was developed by the Central American solidarity movement:
“In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration was sending aid and arms to Central America, ostensibly to stop the spread of Communism. In El Salvador, the United States supported a government behind death squads that murdered thousands of civilians, including Archbishop Oscar Romero. In Nicaragua, Reagan funded paramilitary Contras determined to destabilize the left-wing Sandinista government. After the White House ordered troops to invade Grenada in October 1983, participants in the Central American solidarity movement—a diverse network of groups that had formed in opposition to US policy—feared that Nicaragua or El Salvador could be next.
“A few weeks later, a group of religious activists met at the Kirkridge Retreat Center in eastern Pennsylvania and created what they called ‘A Pledge of Resistance.’ Those who took it promised that if the Reagan administration sent troops to Nicaragua, they would travel there in a nonviolent attempt to impede the invasion. Several dozen signed on, and the magazine Sojourners began to publicize the idea. In the summer of 1984, West Coast organizers inspired by the concept expanded and refined the pledge, relaunching it in the fall with the backing of a broad coalition…. In the new version, participants vowed to engage in acts of civil disobedience—such as occupations of federal buildings and congressional offices—should the US undertake any major military escalation in Nicaragua or El Salvador.
“On October 9, organizers commenced the first mass public signing of the pledge. They placed a table and public address system in front of the Federal Building in downtown San Francisco, and hundreds of people showed up. ‘At the last minute, we decided we would have an open mic,’ said Ken Butigan, an early pledge organizer who later became national coordinator of the campaign. ‘We thought maybe a couple of people would come up and say something about why they were signing.’
“In the end, more than 200 people took a turn at the microphone, explaining in personal terms why they were taking the vow. These included individuals who had spent time in El Salvador and Nicaragua and had seen the suffering caused by US actions….
“As many as 700 people signed the pledge that day, and… [w]ithin two years of the pledge’s launch, 80,000 people had signed.”
The idea of the pledge was that, in promising future action, it functioned in a manner similar to a strike vote by a union, which can show workers’ commitment to escalating their fight:
“As it morphed from a tactical idea into a national organization… ‘Signal Group’ met regularly in response to new developments to determine if and when the network should be mobilized. If they gave the signal, word would spread through 10 regional coordinators to 400 local chapters. These were based not just in large cities—Boston, San Francisco, Chicago—but also in many smaller areas, from Fox Valley, Illinois to Juneau, Alaska. By creating this infrastructure, the Pledge became more than a warning; it became a mechanism for preparedness. ‘If the United States invaded, we were not going to sit back and decide at that moment how to respond,’ said Angela Berryman, who was then the associate coordinator of the Latin America and Caribbean Program at the AFSC and who served on the Signal Group. ‘We were going to be prepared to respond immediately. The pledge was an upping of the ante.’”
In the context of the Central American solidarity movement, the Signal Group called pledge signers into action on several occasions, including in November 1989, when they launch more than 1,000 demonstrations at federal office buildings and thousands of people risked arrest. In his article, Mark quoted historian Christian Smith, author of Resisting Reagan, who wrote of Central American solidarity efforts: “Even cautiously judged, it is apparent that the movement made the Reagan administration’s Central American policy of low-intensity warfare exceedingly difficult to implement, and therefore helped to limit significantly the severity of its destructiveness.”
Today, the mass deportations that the Trump administration has promised could yet morph into a major trigger event, dramatically impacting vast segments of the population and triggering public backlash. As Rosas, Oshiro, and Friedman write:
“The kidnappings as well have far less support than the Trump administration would like people to believe. Few Americans approve of using billions of taxpayer dollars to target and terrorize patients in their hospital beds. This is true across the ideological spectrum. Eighty-one percent of self-identified conservatives agree that we need bipartisan legislation to address labor shortages and inflation and protect people that are already in the United States, and 57 percent of conservative voters believe that it is essential to preserve protections for, and welcome, people fleeing persecution.
“The truth is that many Americans recognize that the kidnappings are terrifying for individual people and families—and that an indiscriminate, militarized state makes all of us less safe.
“That’s where the Solidarity Pledge comes in; it’s a chance to put our beliefs into action. Here’s how it works: People who sign the pledge are invited to participate in mass trainings where they can learn more about what is being done to confront the threats to immigrant communities. They are given opportunities to get involved as community educators, organizers of solidarity circles of close friends and neighbors, and as leaders of a nonviolent action corps to defend immigrant workers and families.
“At a moment of fear and fracture, the Solidarity Organizing Initiative creates an opportunity for community, learning, leadership, and action, and builds important, new, decentralized civic infrastructure. These are the values that underlay a participatory multiracial democracy of care and community.”
At current count, more than 6,700 people have signed the pledge, and the effort is laying groundwork to ensure that public outrage can translate into sustained action and organization beyond traditional institutional structures. As we work to turn potential trigger events into lasting movements that embody and strengthen our collective resistance, we believe that this can be an important beginning.