Building a Movement: How One Million Rising Is Taking On America's Authoritarian Threat

One Million Rising is an initiative launched by the national Indivisible organization in late July, designed to train and equip existing Indivisible members to recruit and educate their friends and neighbors in the principles of mass resistance – passive and active (but non-violent) civil disobedience.   The math is simple – one million activists, each engaging ten friends in ongoing, sustained resistance, would be eleven million people taking action to oppose the rise of authoritarianism in America.  And eleven million would be about 3.5% of the population – the tipping point, according to historian Erica Chenoweth, at which authoritarian regimes since 1900 have crumbled.  (For more background on this research, read this article.) 

Here in Central Indiana, ICI has been working on our own initiative to build our numbers, incorporating many of the principles and resources from One Million Rising.  Between February and July of this year, we saw our “membership” grow from 2300 followers on a Facebook page to 5100, and from about 300 subscribers to a weekly e-newsletter, to nearly 6000.  Most of this growth was “organic,” as people learned about protests and town halls on social media and signed up for them using online tools like Mobilize. 

Now, we are actively recruiting.   We have been asking members in each township in the eight-county area to host events in libraries, churches, park shelters, and art galleries, to which we invite the 200 to 500 subscribers in nearby zip codes.  At these meetings, we talk about Indivisible’s recent and future strategies, and we ask people to recruit their friends – by going through their email address book, by hosting a house party, even by going door-to-door. 

And we listen and learn what our members want.  Some want to create their own community-based Indivisible chapter, complete with social media presences, newsletters, and local calendars of events.  Some are more interested in simply forming an informal local working group as a committee of ICI.  Some have already started their own small One Million Rising groups following the national training models, and are eager to talk with others who are doing the same thing across the region.  And that is the role that ICI hopes to play … not to dictate any particular approach (we don’t like dictators, remember), but to facilitate and encourage the significant growth in numbers that is going to be required to stem the tide of authoritarianism in our state and nation.

That’s the recruitment part.  What is the resistance part?  Well … we strongly recommend that you watch the recorded trainings here:  https://www.nokings.org/rise.   Each is about 75 minutes long, so spread them out over a few days, and take some time to digest. 

Essentially, the strategy in One Million Rising involves a pivot, supplementing the work we have been doing through demonstrations and holding elected officials accountable, with a new emphasis on chipping away at the “pillars of support” that the regime has co-opted.

As this graphic demonstrates, any society rests on the pillars of its institutions – business, the media, academia, the military, etc.  It has been shocking to see how quickly, cravenly, and completely many of these pillars in the United States capitulated to Trump’s bluster and threats. 

But it is also important to understand that each of these pillars is made up of people – arranged in concentric circles around the centers of power that made the decision to collude with authoritarian demands.  In the following graphic, depicting the “business” pillar, the center circle is the CEOs and their boards. 

They are surrounded by managers, who are surrounded by workers, who are surrounded by us, the consumers, or the citizens.  In almost every case, the institutions that collaborate with the tyrants do so because of the fear or self-interest of the central leadership – not at the behest of the workers or consumers, in the case of business, or of a newspaper’s reporters and readers, etc.

In the example of the business “pillar,” we have already seen this year the power of consumer action.  Most recently, of course, ABC/Disney reversed course on its decision to suspend or fire Jimmy Kimmel, when a sizable number of customers cancelled their subscriptions and the value of its stock fell by $4 billion in a matter of days.  In August, Target fired its CEO after three consecutive quarters of declining sales, and a 9.4% loss in corporate value, following a boycott over their abandonment of their once-proud stance on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. 

The potential of our economic leverage is vast, and it is an ideal tool for mass resistance, because it is something that everyone can do.  Not everyone can march in demonstrations or knock on doors, because of physical limitations or legitimate fears of employer reprisal.  But where we spend our dollars and where we invest our 401K’s are private and personal matters, where everyone can participate.

The Disney boycott/divestment happened almost immediately, and organically, without any organized promotion.  Just imagine how effective economic pressure could be if Indivisible could educate and promote targeted actions to eleven million activists; if, locally, sixty thousand people instead of 6000 acted in unison to send a message. 

Much of the One Million Rising trainings to date have focused on these economic actions, but we will look forward to sharing concrete examples of how we can chip away at the other pillars of the regime’s support.  Meanwhile, just as our e-newsletter since March has contained weekly Legislative Calls to Action, we will work toward adding a weekly Economic Call to Action as well.

And, for those you interested in creating a small One Million Rising group among your friends and neighbors (or if you have already done so and would like to meet others on the same journey!), or if you are interested in being part of a more localized Indivisible working group within your community or township, please drop us a line at info@indivisiblecentralindiana.org.