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RISE OF A LIBERAL TEA PARTY
Trump opponents channel their energy into action
As the election results began rolling in late on the evening of Nov. 8 and it appeared that Republican Donald Trump was going to win the presidency, Kelly Breen could watch no longer.
“It was looking worse and worse, so I grabbed a beer and my dog and took a walk to the park to think,” said the 39-year-old Novi resident, attorney and supporter of Democrat Hillary Clinton. “The next day, I came home from work and my husband said, 'You're going to do something, aren't you?' ” It was her turn to get politically active, so her husband said he would pick up the slack with their two kids and Breen got to work, starting small and applying for a couple of vacancies on various Novi city commissions.
And late last month, she attended her
Protesters crowd the streets at the Women's March in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 21. Millions rallied all over the world. MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
ACTIVISM: New rise harkens back to the tea party movement
first protest - a rally to support the Affordable Care Act that attracted a couple of hundred people on a Monday lunch hour in front of the Troy congressional office of U.S. Rep. David Trott, R-Birmingham.
“With people's lives at stake, you have to think what is the issue is at hand. Right now, it's the Affordable Care Act and that people in war-torn areas have a safe place to be,” she said. “Those are actual life-and-death matters.”
Breen is just one of thousands of people in Michigan who are getting politically active in the wake of the election of Trump as the 45th president of the U.S.
From the millions of people around the world who attended the Women's March on Jan. 21, the day after Trump was inaugurated, to the 200 people who showed up at a Washtenaw County Democratic Party meeting on Super Bowl Sunday to the 600 people who crowded into a town hall meeting hosted by U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Cascade Township, last week, the early days of the Trump administration are beginning to look like the tea party movement that blossomed in 2009 in response to the presidency of Barack Obama.
Health care reform
The protests back then were started by a fledgling group of activists angered by all sorts of action or inaction in Washington, including the response to the financial crisis, the ballooning national debt and the impending vote on health care reform.
U.S. Rep. John Dingell, DDearborn, and other Michigan lawmakers were bombarded at town hall meetings that summer of 2009 by constituents angry at the thought of health care reform. Tens of thousands of people descended on Washington, D.C., that September with homemade signs, anti-government chants and the all-encompassing moniker of the tea party. The day after the Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress in March 2010, nearly 200 people showed up to picket and voice their opposition in front of Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.
“We were all sensing that things were going in the wrong direction,” said Wendy Day, an early tea party activist from Howell. “I had great reservations the day (Obama) was elected, but there wasn't just one issue we were talking about. It was the budget, and then Obamacare really solidified our concerns. We were protesting not only Democratic policies, but also the Republicans who were not doing what they were saying they would do.”
She bristled at the suggestion that the current protests resemble the early days of the tea party.
“We had average Americans who came to rallies who were peaceful and organized and they were respectful,” she said. “What I see going on right now is not that. What's going on in places like Berkeley (California) - those people are thugs. They travel from city to city creating chaos. They just want to riot.”
The protest earlier this month against a speech that was supposed to be made at the University of California at Berkeley by conservative activist and Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos turned violent when a small group of masked activists threw rocks at police and vandalized nearby buildings. His speech was canceled.
Progressive activists in Michigan are trying to channel that frustration and anger toward more productive activities.
Joanna VanRaaphorst, an Oakland Township resident and small-business owner, helped to reinvigorate the Greater Rochester Area Inclusion Network, or GRAIN, as an organization that can become more active in local, state and federal politics.
“We had started a think tank in town about four years ago to talk about issues of inclusion and diversity in the community, but it just kind of fizzled out,” she said. “After the election, I called the band back together and thought, if it's three people, that's OK. But at our first meeting, we had 120 people.”
They're breaking out into smaller groups to concentrate on different issues: One will be a rapid-response team to mobilize phone banks and letter writers as issues of concern come up, and another will facilitate training sessions on how to communicate with people who have different political views.
“We do have the power, and you can't sit at home and feel helpless. Our voices just have to get louder, kind of like the tea party,” VanRaaphorst said.
Chris Savage, chairman of the Washtenaw County Democratic Party and publisher of the liberal Eclectablog, gives a hat tip to the tea party for its success over the last eight years.
“I 100% admire the fact that they showed up and are making their voices heard, and that's what we were lacking last year,” he said. “But this seems bigger to me.”
The Washtenaw Democratic Party typically will get 40-50 members for a regularly scheduled meeting, but 200 showed up for a session on Super Bowl Sunday. The group is doing twice-weekly phone banking to get its message out, and it's embarking on an 83county strategy to replicate the party's energy across the state.
“You can start a movement on anger, but you can't sustain it on anger,” Savage said. “We know that we're in this bubble in Washtenaw County. We don't have all the answers, but we have the nucleus and we've got a program that seems to be working.”
Who has the power?
Dave Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University, compares the current level of activism to the Occupy Wall Street movement, rather than to the tea party.
“I'm not sure the tea party convinced anyone of the opposite party to change and I don't think the Occupy Wall Street movement did, either,” he said. “But what the tea party did is have a big impact on the Republican Party internally. A lot of incumbents were challenged in primaries from the right because they weren't conservative enough.”
That was the case for state Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, a political novice who came out of the tea party movement to win his primary election in 2010 over three better- known GOP candidates and ultimately a seat in the Senate. He often rails against the Affordable Care Act during the time for statements in the Senate chamber.
“We're finally getting an individual in a key position of authority that people have been looking for for a long time,” he said of Trump's election. “The key catalyst for me running for office was my faith and looking at the world from a different perspective. When the ACA came out, I actually read the whole bill and said this is wrong. We felt the call to do it ourselves.”
And many in this new wave of activism are hoping to do the same thing.
Shauna Shames, a feminist and an assistant professor of politics at Rutgers University-Camden, said power shifts often ignite activism in groups who feel their needs aren't adequately being addressed in government.
“You don't see activism as much when you can get what you want done through the usual institutional channels,” said Shames, who published a new book in January: “Out of the Running: Why Millennials Reject Political Careers and Why It Matters” ($27, NYU Press). For progressives, “it is suddenly abundantly and very harshly clear that won't be happening anymore.
“Those on the right have been feeling this collision for a long time, which is why the tea party came about and the war against Christmas, for example, because their view on the world was not shared. We as feminists are suddenly seeing that on our side more. There is a feeling now of total ... instability, that the ground underneath your feet that you thought was solid isn't. We could lose the right to abortion very quickly. That is something that a whole lot of women now, probably” haven't considered much until now. “It is destabilizing.”
Getting ready to run
That's especially true for women, said Erin Vilardi, founder and CEO of VoteRunLead. Since the presidential election, there's been a 10-fold boost in enrollment in classes that help women prepare to run for political office.
“It's too familiar a story for so many women, where we see a much-too-qualified woman lose to a far-too-unqualified man in their workplaces, in their lives,” Vilardi said. “It's a very familiar feeling to many women. Then, you want to throw in the misogyny and racism on top of that, and it's just ... The costs of running for office now pale in comparison for what we can achieve and the possibility that we can make change.”
Since the election, registrations for Web-based training classes have gone from 40 or 50 people to more than 1,000.
“Women are looking at Trump with no political experience, no military experience and he's now president of the United States,” Vilardi said. “They're saying, 'I can sure as (expletive) run for county commission. I can definitely run for city council.' ” The Michigan Political Leadership Program, which offers a 10-week training session for people looking to get into public service, will keep its current class size to 24 people - 11 Republicans, 11 Democrats and two independents but director Anne Mervenne said she expects the discussions to be lively, though civil.
“I think everyone knows we're in a new era, but what I've found is that because of the intimacy of our program, people get to know each other as people and you get beyond partisan stereotypes,” she said.
Ellen Lindblom, 26, a political science major at Northern Michigan University and a resident of Negaunee, said she decided to jump into the political fray on Nov. 12.
She's been politically active since 2009, joining the College Democrats at Northern Michigan University and working with the Michigan Federation of College Democrats and the Marquette County Democratic Party, but always thought she'd be a behind-the-scenes political activist.
“We had a fall conference the weekend after the election and (U.S. Rep.) Dan Kildee said to us, 'If Donald Trump can win, any one of you can win anything, so just run,' ” she said. “And that was time I decided I should just try.”
So she's thinking of running for the state House of Representatives in 2018 and hopes the energy she's seeing can be sustained.
“I have seen brand-new faces who want to get involved so badly that they're organizing their own events,” she said. “I hope the Democratic Party can harness all this energy. There's been a great outpouring of outrage and passion to make a difference in the world, and that's the silver lining in this dark and stormy cloud.”
Contact Kathleen Gray: kgray99@freepress.com
Demonstrators gathered Jan. 21 at Wayne State University in Detroit in keeping with the Women's March on Washington. ERIC SEALS/DETROIT FREE PRESS
Protesters speak out against President Donald Trump's travel ban at Detroit Metro Airport on Jan. 29
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