How California can tear the fascists down

I walked up on a mountain in the middle of the sky
Could see every farm and every town
I could see all the people in this whole wide world
That’s the union that’ll tear the fascists down, down, down
–Woody Guthrie, 1942
Californians can’t beat the Trump administration by ourselves. We need allies.
A whole wide world of them.
California, despite our size and power, isn’t strong enough to win a protracted legal, political, and perhaps violent war with a lawless US government.
And while it’s reassuring to see Gavin Newsom respond quickly to the Trump threat — a legislative special session, a trip to Washington — the governor can’t lead the “Trump-proofing” of California alone. And our anti-Trump effort can’t be confined to the US, much of which doesn’t seem to care that its next president has vowed to be a dictator and “terminate” the constitution.
Instead, we should adopt the wisdom of General-President Dwight Eisenhower: when you can’t solve a big problem, make it bigger.
To protect our democracy and our way of life, California needs its local officials and locally engaged citizens to connect to their counterparts around the world–and build a planet-wide coalition of local governments, provinces, and organisations who also face attacks from right-wing national governments.
Such a global defence coalition is overdue. Prominent right-wing leaders already have their own network. Donald Trump himself has hosted Hungarian strongman Victor Orban at Mar-a-Lago, talked regularly with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, endorsed Brazilian right-winger Jair Bolsonaro’s re-election coup, and maintained friendly relations with India’s authoritarian prime minister Narendra Modi.
The communities that suffer under such leaders could benefit from their own coalition. The benefits would go beyond moral support. Local partners worldwide and California could provide mutual aid in the form of money, personnel, or expertise when crises arise. This will be especially important to California if Mr Trump denies us emergency funding after natural disasters.
But the greatest benefit of an alliance with local communities will be ideas. As more nations are consumed by political fights, the actual governance of countries is increasingly left to localities. And many local governments have responded to their national government’s failures with innovations that could be applied here in areas from democratic process to waste management.
Mr Trump’s ludicrous cabinet is built for politics, not real governance, so California will need all the ideas it can get. Cities from Rio to Istanbul have much to teach us about prospering under autocratic national leaders. Seoul activists could explain how to use mass protests to force out lawless presidents, as they did in the 2017 Candlelight Revolution. California, with an outdated constitution dating to 1879, could learn from subnational entities –from Mexico City to South Africa’s Western Cape — about how to write modern charters.
Of course, if California joins forces with governments around the world, the xenophobic Trump administration will accuse us of globalism or treason. We shouldn’t flinch. We should answer that righteous Americans, facing threats from their own national governments, have often sought support overseas. After all, our Founding Fathers needed France and Spain to win their revolution against bullying Britain.
The good news is that California local governments won’t have to start a coalition from scratch. The world has dozens of networks of localities.
The United Cities and Local Governments, the world’s largest organisation of local governments and municipal associations, has collaborative projects on issues from climate change to women’s rights to the protection of migrants.
UCLG just launched, under the leadership of The Hague mayor Jan van Zanen, “A New Peace Agenda for Future Generations” to bring together local governments to end conflicts and warsbetween and inside countries. US cities, which rarely join international networks, should jump on board.
In fact, before Mr Trump takes office, California’s state and local leaders should make a high-profile trip overseas. First, they can visit The Hague to strategise with the mayor. They they should visit local government leaders in Ukraine.
The message: Californians are in the same fight as Ukrainians — against violent autocrats who claim the power to rule us, take away our people, and destroy our communities.
To tear these fascists down, the people of every town must come together. ©Zócalo Public Square
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square and is founder-publisher of Democracy Local.